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Introduction to the Middle Ages From: Hooker, Richard. “The Middle Ages.” World Civilizations. 1996. Web. August 1, 2004. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/110/110SCHED.HTM The European Middle Ages is commonly understood as a northward expansion of classical culture, primarily through the means of Christianity. At best, the Middle Ages are regarded as an innovative and energetic recreation of classical culture—a kind of preface to modernity. At worst, the period is regarded as a cultural setback from the high point of classical culture in Greece and Rome, an often poor and superstitious descendant of that culture. In the least friendly assessments of the European Middle Ages, the period is a kind of holding pattern, a temporary bathroom break on the way to the revival of classical culture in the fourteenth century. In reality, however, this picture of the European Middle Ages is founded on several, deeply held fallacies [falsehoods]. The first and foremost is that the European Middle Ages is a single thing that can clearly be identified by the label. However, when you try to get people to define the start or end of the Middle Ages, there's some problems. Did the Middle Ages start at the final sack of Rome? What about the continuation of the Roman Empire in Constantinople until the conquest of that city by the Ottomans in 1453? Were the Byzantines not a part of European culture? When does the "Renaissance" start? Do people wake up one day and say, whew!, today the Middle Ages ended? What's the date? 1400? 1350? 1200? 1100? Not only is the historical category of the Middle Ages a somewhat shaky fiction, the most enduring fallacy about the Middle Ages, and European history in general until the close of the Middle Ages, is that Europeans throughout this period and before are a single culture which we can safely call "European culture." Of all the fallacies about the Middle Ages and before, this is the hardest one to shake. For there really is no such thing as European culture, at least no such thing as a single entity, until the close of the Middle Ages. European history until the 1300s or 1400s is largely characterized by two main historical tendencies: constant disruption of populations and migration, and multiculturalism. For Europe is throughout most of its history a massively and aggressively multicultural society. People with dramatically different social organizations, languages, and religions are in constant flux all throughout prehistoric and most of historic Europe. Constant migrations continually change the cultural face of Europe bringing new languages, social hierarchies, and religions—these to be displaced by new peoples, new languages, and new religions. This constant flux only settled in the Mediterranean region—hence classical culture and its unique continuity. Perhaps the best way to define the Middle Ages, or at least the best way that accounts for European multiculturalism, is to define the Middle Ages as the period in which the tense and often disruptive multiculturalism of Europe standardized into a clearly definable, single cultural entity. At the start of the Middle Ages, there are European cultures. At the conclusion of the Middle Ages, it's possible to use the term “European culture” with no plural. The Middle Ages, then, is about that transition. At the start of the Middle Ages, Europe was a jigsaw puzzle of ethnic groups. These ethnic groups, with the exception of the classical cultures [Greece & Rome], did not occupy any fixed territory or constitute individual nations of any kind. They were in constant contact with one another and with the cultures in the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and even further east. These ethnic groups were also in fairly constant motion, displacing other ethnic groups and, in their turn, being displaced by other ethnic groups— including cultural groups from Asia. The early history of the Middle Ages might be regarded as the period in which this conflicting multiculturalism still largely characterizes the European experience; it differs, however, in the introduction of a shared cultural practice: Christianity. The history, you might say, of early medieval Europe is about the acquiring of a world view that all Europeans would eventually hold in common, the Christian world view. For the glue that turned the multilingual, multicultural group of peoples into a single people was this religion: it not only united Europe in a single religious world view, it 1 also gave Europe a single [academic and religious] language: Latin. This early period, which saw the same types of migrations and multiculturalism as the classical and prehistoric periods, is the story of the introduction of a standard cultural form and its consequent social structure on the various peoples of Europe. The later Middle Ages can be understood as the period in which Europe as a continental culture was defined. This is the period when the large-scale migrations of individual cultures and ethnic groups comes to a halt; after the early Middle Ages, the constant disruption and displacement of European peoples settles down. In the later Middle Ages, most conquests are not followed by massive migration into the conquered territory. When the Normans invade England in 1066, they don't do so as a migrating population but simply to seize control over the indigenous population. During this period, Europeans begin to consider themselves as a more or less single culture that they can define against other cultures, such as the Byzantines, the Islamic world, and Asia. Social structure and cultural practices are throughout Europe becoming similar if not in some cases identical in this period and Europeans are recognizing this fact. As a consequence, Europe is developing an educated class and the overall material of this education is common throughout most of Europe. Among the educated, the universal language is Latin. In addition, political institutions settle down into a more or less shared structure. From the church in Rome to England, authority largely takes the same forms and is legitimated in largely the same way (there are, of course, significant exceptions such as the Irish, the Byzantines, the Icelanders, and, later, the Russians, all of whom are on the outer edges of European culture). This period is also marked by significant rewriting of European history. In the late medieval histories of Europe concerning the classical period, the various figures and stories of central and northern Europe from the classical period, such as the stories of Arthur or Attila, are all recast to conform to the European social and religious practices of the time. In other words, the experience of early European history is reimagined by Europeans to look like the European experience in the late medieval period. The history of the classical world is also rewritten to the point where it becomes unrecognizable. The history writing of high Middle Ages can be best understood as a large-scale translation of pre-Christian European, Greek, and Roman history into medieval social, religious, and political practices—this means, of course, that early European history starts looking a whole lot like classical history which, in its turn, looks a whole lot like the contemporary experience in late medieval Europe. As with everything else in this period, this rewriting of history was a powerful force in standardizing European culture and identity.1 Finally and most importantly, the high Middle Ages was the period when most ethnic groups defined themselves historically as the cultural and social descendants of the classical world. The technology which began the standardization of the varied and distinct European cultures was Christianity; the myth that would cement this standard identity was a myth of common origin in the cultures of Greece and Rome (and mythical classical cultures such as Troy). Seen in this light, of course, the "rebirth" of classical culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is not really a departure from the Middle Ages but a continuation of the late medieval process of standardization that was rooted in the myth that European culture derives from the classical world. This is why, of course, it's impossible to date the so-called Renaissance, for the rebirth of the classical world essentially begins with the start of the High Middle Ages [roughly the late eleventh century onward, depending on the region]. And we share that myth of origin today; so thorough was the absorption of this myth that the European Middle Ages has throughout the modern period been presented as culturally continuous with the classical 1 The idea here is that as late medieval Europeans rediscover the classical world of Greece and Rome, they claim it as their own by teaching, learning, and imagining the classical world in their own (late medieval) terms. This of course is an incorrect view on a number of levels, not the least being that much of the middle ages can be characterized by a radical departure from classical culture with the triumph of the “barbarian” tribal peoples—the ancestors of these same medieval Europeans who now claim to be directly descended from Greece and Rome. In doing this, however, Europe creates a sense of identity and values for itself that all Christian Europeans can share. 2 world. We are the products of the late medieval insistence on the monocultural nature of Europe and the continuity of Europe with the classical Mediterranean cultures. The lived reality, particularly in the early Middle Ages, was far different. The Middle Ages in this approach is understood as two different processes that are not divisable in terms of time, since they happened to different degrees and at different times for the various cultural, ethnic and national groups. The standard historical terms for these processes are "Early Middle Ages" and "Late (or High) Middle Ages." The Early Middle Ages is characterized by a process in which the European prehistoric and classical multiculturalism and migrations continues to characterize the European experience with two significant changes: the introduction of writing and Christianity. The Late Middle Ages is characterized by a process in which individual cultures or ethnic groups begin to define themselves as part of a larger, homogenous European culture. This process is marked by a series of historical trends in social structure, the structure of authority, religious experience and organization, education, and culture. These processes occurred at different times for various ethnic groups and, for some ethnic groups, this process was antithetical [opposed] to the process going on in the rest of Europe. For instance, the Byzantines were the immediate inheritors of classical culture; in fact, the sack of Rome was culturally a non-event in the eastern Roman Empire, which largely continued as it had before. The period in which Europeans began to define themselves as a single culture with its origins in the classical world, led those very same Europeans to regard themselves as culturally alien to the Byzantines—and the Byzantines, whose empire had extended as far west as Venice, began to regard themselves as a fundamentally different culture from that of the Europeans… 2 The Celts While textbooks stress the descent of Europe from classical culture, the face of Europe throughout most of the historical period was dominated by a single cultural group, a powerful, culturally diverse group of peoples, the Celts. By the start of the Middle Ages, the Celts had been struck on two fronts by two very powerful cultures, Rome in the south, and the Germans, who were derived from Celtic culture, from the north. Through the period of classical Greece…to the first centuries CE, most of Europe was under the shadow of this culture which, in its diverse forms, still represented a fairly unified culture. This monolithic culture spread from Ireland to Asia Minor (the Galatians of the New Testament). The Celts even sacked Rome in 390 BCE and successfully invaded and sacked several Greek cities in 280 BCE. Though the Celts were preliterate during most of the classical period, the Greeks and Romans discuss them quite a bit, usually unfavorably. From this great culture would arise the Germans (we think) and many of the cultural forms, ideas, and values of medieval Europe. For not only did medieval Europe look back to the Celtic world as a golden age of Europe, they also lived with social structures [warrior/tribal] and world views [pagan] that ultimately owe their origin to the Celts as well as to the Romans and Greeks. The period of Celtic dominance in Europe began to unravel in the first centuries CE, with the expansion of Rome, the migrations of the Germans, and later the influx of an Asian immigrant population, the Huns. By the time western Rome and the city itself fell to Gothic invaders [in 476], the Celts had been pushed west and north, to England, Wales and Ireland and later to Scotland and the northern coast of France. Society The Celts are traditionally ignored in world history textbooks and courses, but the Celtic way of life, Celtic institutions, and the Celtic world view were superimposed onto Germanic and classical culture. The later monolithic European culture is greatly influenced by these early peoples. 2 This fundamental difference becomes particularly evident during the Crusades, when Eastern and Western Christendom come into contact with disastrous results. 3 Most of what we know about Celtic life comes from Ireland—the largest and most extensive of the Celtic populations, the Gauls in central and western Europe, we only know about through Roman sources—and these sources are decidedly unfriendly to the Gauls. We know that the early Celtic societies were organized around warfare—this structure would commonly characterize cultures in the process of migration: the Celts, the Huns, and later the Germans. Although classical Greek and Roman writers considered the Celts to be violently insane, warfare was not an organized process of territorial conquest. Among the Celts, warfare seems to have mainly been a sport, focussing on raids and hunting. In Ireland, the institution of the fianna involved young, aristocratic warriors who left the tribal area for a time to conduct raids and to hunt. When the Celts came into contact with the Romans, they changed their manner of warfare to a more organized defense against a larger army. It was these groups that the classical writers encountered and considered insane. The Celtic method of warfare was to stand in front of the opposing army and scream and beat their spears and swords against their shields. They would then run headlong into the opposing army and screamed the entire way—this often had the effect of scaring the opposing soldiers who then broke into a run; fighting a fleeing army is relatively easy work. If the opposing army did not break ranks, the Celts would stop short of the army, return to their original position, and start the process over again. Celtic society was hierarchical and class-based. Tribes were led by kings but political organizations were remarkably plastic. According to both Roman and Irish sources, Celtic society was divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy, an intellectual class that included druids, poets, and jurists, and everyone else. [This structure is very similar to nearly all the later tribal peoples in Europe.] Society was tribal and kinship-based; one's ethnic identity was largely derived from the larger tribal group, called the tuath ("too-awth") in Irish (meaning "people") but ultimately based on the smallest kinship organizational unit, the clan, called the cenedl (ke-na-dl), or "kindred," in Irish. The clan provided identity and protection—disputes between individuals were always disputes between clans. Since it was the duty of the clan to protect individuals, crimes against an individual would be prosecuted against an entire clan. One of the prominent institutions among the Celts was the blood-feud in which murder or insults against an individual would require the entire clan to violently exact retribution. The blood-feud was in part avoided by the institution of professional mediators. At least in Ireland, a professional class of jurists, called brithem, would mediate disputes and exact reparations on the offending clan. [These traits, too, are seen in nearly all the later tribal peoples in Europe.] Even though Celtic society centered around a warrior aristocracy, the position of women was fairly high in Celtic society. In the earliest periods, women participated both in warfare and in kingship. While the later Celts would adopt a strict patriarchal model, they still have a memory of women leaders and warriors. Celtic society was based almost entirely on pastoralism and the raising of cattle or sheep; there was some agriculture in the Celtic world, but not much. The importance of cattle and the pastoral life created a unique institution in Celtic, particularly Irish, life: the cattle-raid. The stealing of another group's cattle was often the proving point of a group of young warriors; the greatest surviving Irish myth, the Táin Bó Cualingne, or "The Cattle Raid of Cooley," centers around one such mythically-enhanced cattle-raid. There was no urbanization [city life] of any kind among the Celts until the advent of Roman rule; in Ireland, urbanization did not occur until the Danish and Norwegian invasions. Society was not based on trade or commerce; what trade took place was largely in the form of barter. Celtic economy was probably based on the economic principle of most tribal economies: reciprocity. In a reciprocal economy, goods and other services are not exchanged for other goods, but they are given by individuals to individuals based on mutual kinship relationships and obligations. (A family economy is typical of a reciprocal 4 economy—parents and children give each other material goods and services not in trade but because they are part of a family). Religion From the nineteenth century onwards, Celtic religion has enjoyed a fascination among modern Europeans and European-derived cultures. In particular, the last few decades have seen a phenomenal growth not only in interest in Celtic religion, but in religious practices in part derived from Celtic sources. For all this interest, however, we know next to nothing about Celtic religion and practices. The only sources for Celtic religious practices were written by Romans and Greeks, who considered the Celts little more than animals, and by later Celtic writers in Ireland and Wales who were writing from a Christian perspective. Simply put, although the Celts had a rich and pervasive religious culture, it has been permanently lost to human memory. We can make some general comments about Celtic religion based on the often-hostile accounts of classical writers. The Celts were polytheistic; these gods were ultimately derived from more primitive, Indo-European sources that gave rise to the polytheistic religions of Greece, Persia, and India.3 The Romans in trying to explain these gods, however, linked them with Roman gods as did the Romanized Gauls—so we really have no idea as to the Celtic character of these gods and their functions. We do know that Celtic gods tended to come in threes; the Celtic logic of divinity almost always centered on triads. This triadic logic no doubt had tremendous significance in the translation of Christianity into northern European cultural models. It is almost certain that the material world of the Celts was filled with divinity that was both advantageous and harmful. Certain areas were considered more charged with divinity than others, especially pools, lakes and small groves, which were the sites of the central ritual activities of Celtic life. The Celts were non-urbanized and according to Roman sources, Celtic ritual involved no temples or building structures— Celtic ritual life, then, was centered mainly on the natural environment. Celtic ritual life centered on a special class, called the druides or "druids" by the Romans, presumably from a Gaulish word. Although much has been written about druids and Celtic ritual practice, we know next to nothing about either. Here's what we can gather. As a special group, the druids performed many of the functions that we would consider "priestly" functions, including ritual and sacrifice, but they also included functions that we would place under "education" and "law." These rituals and practices were probably kept secret—a tradition common among early Indo-European peoples—which helps to explain why the classical world knows nothing about them. The only thing that the classical sources attest is that the druids performed "barbaric" or "horrid" rituals at lakes and groves; there was a fair amount of consensus among the Greeks and Romans that these rituals involved human sacrifice. This may or may not be true; there is some evidence of human sacrifice among the Celts, but it does not seem to have been a common practice. According to Julius Caesar, who gives the longest account of druids, the center of Celtic belief was the passing of souls from one body to another. From an archaeological perspective, it is clear that the Celts believed in an after-life, for material goods are buried with the dead. The Gauls The earliest Celts who were major players in the classical world were the Gauls, who controlled an area extending from France to Switzerland. It was the Gauls who sacked Rome and later invaded Greece; it was also the Gauls that migrated to Asia Minor to found their own, independent culture there, that of the 3 The Celts, along with the Greeks, Persians, Indians, and Romans, were all Indo-European peoples and as such shared a prehistoric background; thus the similarities in essential religious beliefs. 5 Galatians. Through invasion and migration, they spread into Spain and later crossed the Alps into Italy and permanently settled the area south of the Alps which the Romans then named, Cisalpine Gaul. The Gauls were a tribal and agricultural society. They were ruled by kings, but individual kings reigned only over small areas. Occasionally a single powerful king could gain the allegiance of several kings as a kind of "over-king," but on the whole the Gauls throughout Europe were largely an ethnic continuity [ie, shared a sense of identity] rather than a single nation. Ethnic identity among the early Gauls was very fluid. Ethnic identity was first and foremost based on small kinship groups, or clans—this fundamental ethnic identity often got collapsed into a larger identity, that of tribes. The main political structures, that of kingship, organized themselves around this tribal ethnic identity. For the most part, the Gauls did not seem to have a larger ethnic identity that united the Gaulish world into a single cultural group—the "Gauls" as an ethnic group was largely invented by the Romans and the Greeks and applied to all the diverse tribes spread across the face of northern Europe. The Gauls did have a sense of territorial ethnicity; the Romans and Greeks tell us that there were sixteen separate territorial nations of Gauls. These territorial groups were divided into a series of pagi, which were military units composed of men who had voluntarily united as fellow soldiers. The Gauls, however, were not the original Europeans. Beginning in an area around Switzerland, the Celts spread westward and eastward displacing native Europeans in the process. These migrations begin around 500 BCE. The Gaulish invasion of Italy in 400 was part of this larger emigration. The Romans, however, pushed them back by the third century BCE; native Europeans in the north, however, were not so lucky. Two Celtic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones ("Teuton," an ethnic term for Germans, is derived from the Celtic root for "people"), emigrated east and settled in territory in Germany. The center of Celtic expansion, however, was Gaul, which lay north of the Alps in the region now within the borders of France and Belgium and part of Spain. The earliest account of the Gauls comes from Julius Caesar. In his history of his military expedition first into Gaul and then as far north as Britain, Caesar described the tribal and regional divisions among the Gauls, of which some seem to have been original European populations and not Celtic at all. The Gaulish tribes or territories frequently built fortifications that served as the military and political center of the region. These fortified centers took their names from the larger tribe—for instance, Paris took its name from the tribe of Parisi and Chartres was originally named after the tribe, the Carnuti, which had built it. Gaulish society, like all of Celtic society, was rigidly divided into a class system…According to Julius Caesar, the three classes of Gaulish society were the druides, equites, and plebs , all Roman words. The druids were the educated among the Gauls and occupied the highest social position…The druids were responsible for cultural and religious knowledge as well as the performance of rituals... However obscure these religious functions might be, the druids were regarded as powerful over both society and the world around them. The most powerful tool the druids had was the power of excommunication [outlawry]— when a druid excommunicated a member of a tribe, it was tantamount to kicking that person out of the society. 6