Review of: Ian Wood, e modern origins of the Early Middle Ages. Oxford University Press. Oxford 2013. xii + 374 pp. £65 ISBN 9780199650484. (Peritia 27, 20016). (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages
Reviews in History, 2014
The beginnings of Europe is not a very complicated historical subject. After the end of Roman domination in the fifth century CE, so-called 'successor states' grew up in the territories and around the margins of what had been the Western Roman Empire, and out of those states grew France, Spain, Italy and (with greater complications) England and Germany. Since the 'Fall of Rome' itself, historians have grappled with the questions of how and why the great Empire should have come to an end. Despite coming to different conclusions, historians share the view that whatever did happen was of massive significance for the development of Europe. Discussion of what we would now term 'the transformation of the Roman World' revolves around three contested areas: first, an assessment of Roman rule: was it so oppressive that it could not be sustained? Second, an assessment of the successors to the Romans, the 'barbarians': by conquering the Empire, did they free populations from Roman oppression, bringing to them new blood and new spirit? Or were the barbarians themselves the oppressors who destroyed Roman power and along with it the protection of Roman law and the preservation of ancient privileges? Third, what part did the rise of Christianity and the Catholic Church play in the ending of Roman rule? Was the influence of Christianity baleful or liberating? The very different answers to these questions depend on when they were posed, on who asked them and on where in Europe the questioners were located. In a book that can only be described as a 'tour de force', Ian Wood takes us through the permutations in the answers. He aims to show us how debates on the 'Fall of Rome' have tended to concentrate on those issues which reflect the social and political debates of the day. It is also a labour of love: noting the sheer amount of historical scholarship that has poured into the debates on, say, the establishment of the French monarchy, Wood regrets its relative neglect, and is concerned to rescue it 'from the amnesia which has drawn a veil over past history'. The author delights in the detail of these forgotten histories and in the lives of their progenitors. He includes here novels, opera and plays which reflect views of this past The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages is thoroughly researched and written with the great clarity that comes from an unparalleled knowledge and understanding of the subject. The centrepiece of the work is the development of scholarship in France, where debates about early history and identity had most resonance as the French grappled with the nature of monarchy and the legitimacy of the power of the few over the many. At issue was the relationship between Romans, Gauls and Franks, beginning with the notion that the Franks were free, equal and a source of nobility. Their conquest of France liberated the Gauls from the oppressive
IV The Central Middle Ages (900–1200) (i) European History
Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 1990
General G. Holmes, The Oxford illustrcr/ed history of niedieval Eltrope (OUP, f17.50) is divided into six chapters to provide one chapter for northern and one for southern Europe for each of three periods; the relevant ones for this period are the work of the late D. Whitton and Rosemary Morris. Considerations of space make the treatment something of a gallop. For a studied attempt at periodization. see P. Delogu (ed.). Periodi e conrenuti de1 tiiedio evo (Rome: II ventaglio), which tries to categorize the early, central and late middle ages. Jacques Le Goff. Merlievol civilization (Basil Blackwell. f22.50) is a translation of La civilistition tle l'ocrideirt riifdiPval, which first appeared in 1964. when it shocked conservatives iind Catholics by its resolute aim of treating civilisation in its broadest sense of popular attitudes and how they were shaped rather than concentrating o n medieval Europe's finest achievements. Lively. though superficial and now somewhat dated. it is the only comprehensive overview of medieval mentalites in English. A. Gurevich. Medieval popiilur ciiltiirc (CUP. f27.50) attempts to work out popular attitudes to death and religion from didactic religious literature. More profound than Le Goff. it is also more muddled. On Europe and the wider world, see J.R.S. Phillips. Tire rriedievd exparision of Europe (OUP. f27.50). pbk f8.95). a useful introduction to the question. and the idiosyncratic L.N. Gumilev, Searches for an inicrginary kiiigdoiri: the legend of the kirigdoni offrester John (CUP. 1987, f37.50). Neither, alas. really tries to sort out modern scholarship on the Letter of Prester John. At last. a work which tries to set medieval money. usually purely the preserve of numismatists, in its wider context: P. Spufford. Money uiitl its iise in i~ietlievcrl Europe (CUP. f50.00) is extremely informative but not so strong on synthesis. with paragraphs too short to allow for any development of an argument. The twelfth century is passed over rather quickly. especially where France and Spain are concerned. H.W. Goetz. 'Gottesfriede und Gemeindebildung' (Zeit. der Savigtiy-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte. Gernianisrisckc Abteilitrig. 105) says that nascent communes used similar concepts to the Peace of God movement because they grew out of the Same background, rather than being directly derived from it. E. Patlagean. 'Europe, seigneurie. feodalite: Marc Bloch et les limites orientales d'un espace de comparaison' (Studi niedievuli. 29) attacks Bloch for assuming that eastern Europe wasn't feudal. M. Mitterauer, '"Senioris sui nomine". Zur Verbreitung von Fiirstennamen durch das Lehenswesen' (Mitteilungen des Institiits fiir osterreickische Geschichtsforschung, 96) attributes the diminution of the number of forenames in circulation to the practice of naming sons for one's lord. One of the most ambitious publications of the year was the proceedings of the 1986 Monumenta Germaniae f Iistorica conference on medieval forgeries. Fiilsclzctngen inz Mittelulter. Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica (5 vols., Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung). The first volume deals with forgery in narrative sources. the second with the punishment of forgers (mostly dealing with the proscriptions of canon law), the third and fourth with forged charters and the 24 CENTRAL MlDDLE AGES 2s fifth (more details below) with letters. Out of over 150 articles at least half deal with the 10th-12th centuries. Ecclesiastical and papal history E-D. Hehl (ed.), Die Konzilien Deutschlands
Early Medieval Foundations: 4. Politics and Power
Blackwell Companion to the Medieval World, ed. by Edward English and Carol Lansing , 2009
The European Middle Ages are an extraordinarily rich field of interdisciplinary study. Cultural forms and institutions central to European identity took shape during this period. The rise of Europe from an obscure backwater to cultural and colonial expansion on the world stage found it origins in the Middle Ages. In this volume 26 distinguished scholars examine major issues in the study of medieval Europe. Much recent scholarship has sought to identify and strip away later intellectual categories and seek a fresh understanding of medieval culture and society on its own terms. That approach is reflected in the articles in this volume on questions such as the end of late antiquity, reform, the crusades, the family, chivalric culture, Romanesque and Gothic architecture, Christianization and heresy. It addresses key themes such as sexuality, gender, and power and class. More traditional topics are also explored including economic and demographic expansion and change, urban politics, kingship, hospitals, education, and scholasticism. The volume is vital for European specialists and an important resource for comparative world history.
Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages , 2022
Introduction to *Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages* Cambridge University Press, 2022. The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.
The mediaeval is present to both sides in the current conflicts between the Anglo-American Protestant powers, who depict themselves as the defenders of our Western Christian Civilization, on the one hand, and the Islamic Middle East, on the other. It belongs to their war of words; both sides hurl the mediaeval as an abuse. On the one side, as in the Middle Ages, Islam thinks itself attacked by a new group of invasive Christian Crusaders, once again desecrating their holy places, occupying their homelands, and massacring them. On the other side, modern Westerners label their Muslim opposition as “mediaeval,” a name evoking the dark and backward, a confusion of religion and the secular bringing cruelty and ignorance. Significantly, however, the “Middle Ages” or “Dark Ages” is a period only within European history. Thus Westerners accusing their adversaries of being mediaeval are attacking something in their own formative history, something about themselves and their past they fear and hate. When we study and evaluate the mediaeval, we are engaged simultaneously in a confrontation with what we represent as an external enemy and with ourselves. The mediaeval as an historical period and cultural characteristic was invented in the European Renaissance—which we treat in the next Section of the Foundation Year Programme. It depicted the immediately preceding centuries as a barren period characterized by darkness and ignorance, in comparison with the earlier glories of Greece and Rome. The proud spirits of the Renaissance supposed themselves to have recaptured and even surpassed the Ancient birth of humanism. The thousand years from 500 C.E. to 1500 C.E. between the two moments of humane light and glory thus became the dark middle period. The view of European history as having a negatively characterised middle was reinforced by the Protestant Reformers. They set the Bible against Christian tradition and sought to recover the purity and simplicity of primitive Christianity behind all the supposed accretions of a thousand years of ecclesiastical mediation. “Gothic” became a term of opprobrium, equivalent to “barbaric.” No such idea of these centuries occurs within Islam. In the millennium between the seventh and the seventeenth centuries, Islam spread over and united a world far more vast and more culturally inclusive than Rome ever ruled. Islamic culture assimilated the philosophical, theological, scientific, and technological accomplishments of the Hellenes and Romans, added to them in very significant ways, developed its own proper art, architecture, literature, religious and political forms, and educated a relatively backward and barbaric Europe. In this Section, we shall first look at the conclusion of late Ancient spiritual culture through the Neoplatonisms of Plotinus (died 270) and Iamblichus (250-330), and their Christian continuations in the Latin Augustine (354-430), on the one side, and the Greek Byzantine Dionysius (6th century), on the other. Then, we shall consider how Islam picked up and developed the Hellenic and Roman heritage, pagan and Christian, how it transmitted these to Latin Europe, and how the culture of the high Middle Ages was constructed in relation to what the Islamic world conveyed. Despite its pejorative origins, the notion of a “middle” age can serve us in characterising this period. In general, mediaevals are related to the ancients through the mediating “middle” of the religions and philosophical schools of Late Antiquity. The character of philosophy in the Middle Ages is indicative.
What was History?: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe
Renaissance and Reformation
Atkinson has thus convincingly rediscovered what Terence Cave might have deemed a "cornucopian text" in his classic 1979 study of such bett er-known contemporaries as Erasmus, Rabelais, and Montaigne. If she does not mention Cave, her select bibliography contains virtually all other pertinent primary and secondary sources. Th ere follow fi ve appendices documenting Vergil's career and sources, plus a list of references to the inventores topos in authors from Hyginus to Samuel Johnson and Diderot. A detailed index completes this volume. Th e book has been carefully produced, with only one typo caught by this reviewer (page 155, line 1), although it is odd-perhaps a Renaissance-humanistic prejudice-that "the middle ages" is not capitalized. For its substantial and clearly-presented contribution to Renaissance culture and its transmission, this book belongs in every university library.
The Journal of Medieval Latin, 2005
Let me begin by saying what a great honour it is to have been invited to the Centre for Medieval Studies, where I am pleased to find many friends, some of long standing, others of more recent vintage. It is above all an honour to have been asked to deliver the annual J.R. O'Donnell Memorial Lecture on Medieval Latin Studies, particularly humbling when I think of the many great scholars who have given O'Donnell Memorial Lectures before me. Never has a humility topos been more sincere, although I am aware that the title I have chosen hardly bespeaks humility. It would indeed be hubris to imagine I could ever give a full account of the topic I have announced. Accordingly, I trust you will understand that my remarks here are exploratory in nature. Considering the topics I have chosen to broach, I strongly suspect that even as we advance a step or two, new perspectives and new questions will arise, starting-so I anticipated when I delivered the lecture-with the comments and questions of my first audience, which included, naturally, the many experts on Medieval Studies and Medieval Latin who have the Centre as their home. An exculpatory or at least explanatory word or two on the temerity of the broad topic I have announced will be in order. I seem to have a fatal attraction to puzzles and sectors of the map marked "danger: do not enter." When I first started to study Medieval Latin in earnest, I recall being quite nonplussed by the attitudes of the classicists who were, after all, teaching me Greek and Latin. (Alas, I did not have the good fortune to study Medieval 1 This paper closely follows a presentation I was honoured to give to the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto on November 12, 2004. The text has been adapted somewhat for publication but still bears clear signs of its origins as a public lecture, as David Townsend, to whom I am much obliged for his kindness, patience, and wisdom, recommended. The notes do not conceal that this is a topic on which I have worked over a number of years and from a number of different angles, some quite different from my current perspective; it remains one to which I hope some day to return in greater depth. I further thank Michael Herren and Uwe Vagelpohl for assistance in the fmal stages of preparation.