Defenestration

After Jan Hus was executed for heresy in 1415 (Jan Hus has been discussed here and here), his followers, called Hussites, continued to protest vehemently for the reform of the Church. A very popular Hussite priest of the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, Jan Zelivsky, led a procession to the Town Hall in Prague that gathered a large number of citizens. The protest was about the inequality between peasants and the nobility, and about the perceived corruption of the Church that had been successfully preached by Wycliffe. Preachers such as Zelivsky urged people to take up arms to combat their oppression.

After the procession reached Charles Square in the city, someone threw a stone at Zelivsky from a window of the Town Hall. This act caused his followers to enter the building en masse, seize the judge, the burgomaster (the Mayor of Prague), and thirteen members of the town council, and throw them all out a window. Those that did not die in the fall were finished off by the crowd.

This was called the Defenestration of Prague, from the Latin defenestrare, "to throw out a window."* Over a century later, it would be re-named "The First Defenestration of Prague," because the act was so useful that it became a pastime.

Later depiction of a Prague defenestration.

The Catholic Encyclopedia would have you believe that this event so disturbed King Wenceslas IV that he died shortly after due to shock. Perhaps someone should update that page. Wenceslas died over two weeks later, after suffering a heart attack while hunting in the woods around his castle. He had been sympathetic to non-conformists and to the idea of reform, and had been a supporter of Jan Hus. The Defenestration surely would not have pleased him, but a king in his 50s who had seen what Wenceslas had been through was used to controversy. Sadly, his death along with the Prague violence helped kick off the Hussite Wars.

The Defenestration of Prague took place 593 years ago today, in 1419. Consider how you might honor the event as you go through your day!


*Let us pause and reflect on the utility of Latin, to already have a word for this act! It was needed at least for the Latin Bible, so that Jezebel could be defenestrated in 2 Kings 9:33.

Thorkill of Arden

When Leofric, Earl of Mercia, died in 1057, his estate of Kingsbury passed to his widow, the Countess Godgifu, better known to later generations by the Latin version of her name, Godiva. The Domesday Book, compiled on King William's orders in 1086, lists her as a landowner as of the Conquest in 1066, but no longer. So where did her property go?

Prior to William of Normandy's attack in 1066, Edward the Confessor had been inviting Normans over the Channel as councilors; several of them had already been given lands. After 1066, Normans were put into all positions of power, and Saxon nobles were demoted to lesser landholders. Two Saxons, however, had chosen to support William in 1066. One of these was Thorkill of Arden (also called Turchill).

Early Heraldry for Arden

Thorkill's father, Æthelwine, was a nephew of Leofric and the Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1066. Perhaps Thorkill saw supporting William as a way to enhance his own standing. Perhaps he truly believed that William was the rightful ruler; reasons why he might were discussed here. Perhaps he just didn't like Harold. In any case, he was confirmed as Sheriff after his father's death.

At some point—the simplest explanation is the death of the Countess Godiva, whose date we do not know—King William gave Kingsbury and its 700 acres to Thorkill. This made Thorkill the sole member of the pre-1066 Saxon nobility to hold an estate of any significance at the time of Domesday.*

Thorkill held Kingsbury for several years; he is listed as the landowner in Domesday. King William's third son was crowned William II on 26 September, 1087 by Bishop Lanfranc. William II was in many ways a successful king, although not universally popular; perhaps confiscating people's lands had a role. William took Kingsbury away from Thorkill. That was not the end of the Arden family's prosperity, however: they remained prominent in Warwickshire politics. A descendant, Mary Arden, was the mother of Shakespeare.

*That is, of the nobility; Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester was, technically, the most powerful Englishman in 1086.

Leofric

Remember Edward the Confessor? He may have had good qualities, but getting along with family was not one of them. Not only was he harsh to his mother, he quarreled frequently with his father-in-law, Godwin, who happened to be one of the most powerful men in England. One of the quarrels between the two was "mediated" by Leofric, Earl of Mercia (d.1057).

King Cnut (c.985-1035) divided England into four provinces (East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, and Wessex) and gave each to an earl. The earldom of Mercia was given to Leofric after its original earl,  Eadric Streona, died in 1017 (within months of Cnut's division). The position meant Leofric was second in power to Godwin of Wessex.

When Cnut died, Leofric supported as his successor Harold Harefoot over Harthacnut. Harold was the son of Cnut's first wife, Ælfgifu, and Leofric may have been related to her. Harold became king, but when he died in 1040 and Harthacnut ascended the throne, Leofric must have felt a little awkward. Fortunately for Leofric, Harthacnut died in 1042, and his half-brother Edward the Confessor took the throne.

When Edward and Godwin quarreled in 1051, Leofric brought an army, along with Earl Siward of Northumbria, and joined Edward's troops in facing Godwin's forces. Leofric counseled that they should settle the conflict peacefully rather than risk destroying the fighting power of England. The result was Godwin's (brief) exile.

Life was good for Leofric, and his son Ælfgar replaced Godwin as Earl of Wessex; but Godwin and Edward were reconciled a year later, and Ælfgar had the humiliation of losing his earldom. In 1053, when Godwin died, Ælfgar got the position back again. Ælfgar seemed to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, not his father, and was exiled in 1055, whereupon he raised a fleet and tried to attack England. But that's a different story.

Talk about a different story: I've left out one tidbit about Leofric—the one everyone knows, although they don't know they know it. Leofric and his wife, Godgifu (Anglo-Saxon for "god gift"), were very devout people. They endowed a Benedictine monastery in Coventry, and later records credit them with supporting monasteries at Chester, Evesham, Leominster and Much Wenlock. Some later writers claim she was the primary influence for her husband's generosity. In fact, there is a story (without evidence) that she was so opposed to the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants, that she was willing to go through an 11th century version of "truth or dare." What we know of her husband suggests that not only would he not have been so cruel to his tenants, but neither would he force his pretty young wife to shame herself by riding naked through the streets of Coventry. Still, the story won't go away, although Godgifu probably wouldn't recognize either the telling or the Latinized version of her name, Godiva.

Domesday Book

In 1085, Duke William of Normandy had been ruling England as King William for twenty years (it all started here). He decided it was finally time to take inventory of his property. He sent his agents (3-4 commissioners for each of 7 areas the country was divided into) to make a survey of everything south of the border with Scotland.* They met with groups of representatives (barons and villagers) and asked a series of standard questions. By the end of summer in 1086, the reports (in Latin) were all being compiled back at Winchester, along with data on the value of the land and its assets immediately pre- and post-Conquest. The entire work is in the same very neat handwriting, so a single scribe was given the job of compiling/collating everything. The official name of the result was "The Book of Winchester."

So why is it usually called "Domesday Book" now? That nickname was given to it about 100 years later, and just like it looks, it means "Doomsday." The idea behind the nickname is that the book was such a complete listing of everything in England that it was equivalent to the "Book of Life" used by God at the end of time to judge your deeds. It was that complete.

Except, of course, it wasn't.

For one thing, work ceased by the time King William died in September 1087. The section on East Anglia hadn't been compiled into the total work. There is, therefore, a "Little Domesday Book" with the East Anglia data. Also, important cities such as London and Winchester were not included, probably because William figured he knew them well enough and didn't need an accurate accounting of their property assets, such as he would want for the countryside.

Also, attempts to judge population using Domesday fall short of expectations. Although farms and buildings were counted, only heads of households were included in the population count. In castles, the number of men were counted, but the population in monasteries and convents was not. Best guesses, extrapolating from what data are included, is a population of 1.25-2 million, a far cry from the estimated 4 million during the Roman occupation.

Still, the Book contains a lot of fascinating information in its 413 pages, which I will draw on in the future.


*N.B.: The border with Scotland was much farther south than it is now.

Updates

My research (or just day-to-day life) sometimes bring me details that I wish I'd known when I wrote a certain blog post, or that I think are interesting tidbits that tie into posts. Occasionally, I will throw these updates together with links to the originals.

May 19
The Domus Conversorum, the "House of Converts" in London for Jews who converted to Christianity (or else be banished from England). A picture of what is on the modern site is here. (The photographer's caption is a little misleading.)
Also, there was a building called "Domus Conversorum" in Oxford, and for awhile it was thought that Oxford (which had a large Jewish population pre-Expulsion) had its own Converts' Inn. It is accepted now, however, that the property was called thus because the rents from it went to supporting the Domus in London.

July 2, 3, and 5
John Wycliffe was a fascinating character for many reasons, but I may have been remiss in "finishing him off" by not giving you the whole story (one of this blog's followers commented on this on Facebook).
Wycliffe died 31 December, 1384, after suffering a stroke a few days earlier while saying Mass. It wasn't until 4 May 1415 that the Council of Constance declared him a heretic (prior to this, only some of his writings were proscribed). His books were to be gathered and destroyed. The Church—never one to do things by halves when defending the faith was involved—exhumed his body in 1428, burned it, and scattered the ashes in the nearby River Swift near Lutterworth.

July 21
Update on the Greenland/Medieval Warm Period topic
Just this week it was reported that satellites have seen a sudden and massive melting of the ice on Greenland. The specific/immediate cause is unknown. This may make archaeological digs for Erik the Red's settlements easier to examine. The report is here.

(Also, I want to say "hi" to any visitors from reddit.com. Yesterday saw a large influx of visitors from that site to yesterday's post on vocabulary first found in Chaucer's writings. Thanks for visiting anc creating a pleasant spike in my site traffic!)

Words from Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1342-1400) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) are both credited with increasing English vocabulary. There is no proof that either of them actually invented the words we find in their works. All we can say for certain is that the words appeared for the first time in their works; it is likely that many of these words were in common use on the streets of London.

While Shakespeare is usually the first to come to mind when the subject of contributions to the English language comes up, Chaucer actually gets credit for having more words we know now appear in his works first. Of course, since he had a two-century head start on Shakespeare, maybe it isn't a fair contest.

Chaucer gets the credit if you can:

check the galaxy called Milky Way
bear a corrosive test
observe an oriental Persian
foster a superlative rumour
clasp a dagger
be victorious
varnish a convertible
muse on femininity
amble the equator
preen, murmur, vomit, fart, strangle, commit, retain, oppress, create a mystery, or replenish material.

John of Gaddesden

With us there was a doctor of physic;
In all this world was none like him to pick
For talk of medicine and surgery;
For he was grounded in astronomy. —Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Doctor, from the Ellesmere MS.

John of Gaddesden (c.1280-1361) was a "Doctor of Physik" who was quite well-known in his day, so much so that modern scholars looking to find analogs for the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have suggested he is the likeliest candidate for Chaucer's "doctor of physic." As a fan of both Chaucer and historical detail, I'm going to weigh in and say . . . maybe.

Who was Gaddesden, and why was he considered the model for Chaucer's pilgrim? For one thing, he had written Rosa medicinæ (The rose of medicine; sometimes called the Rosa Anglicæ), a compendium of medical information called so because it was in five parts, like the five sepals of a rose. In it, he quotes numerous authorities from the past; Chaucer's list of authorities with whom his doctor is familiar lines up nicely with Gaddesden's sources. Also, Gaddesden had a reputation for charging high fees, and Chaucer makes it clear that his doctor loved gold.

To be honest, however, Gaddesden's book was quoting the same authorities that anyone would quote when compiling a book on medicine. It was completely unoriginal. Even his title seems derivative, probably based on Lilium medicinæ (the Lily of medicine) by Bernard Gordon, produced at Montpellier in 1303. Gordon, a Scotsman, was one of the teachers of Guy de Chauliac. Chauliac, in turn, taught Gaddesden. What did Chauliac think of his student's work? Not much; he said of it:

Last of all arose the scentless rose of England, in which, on its being sent to me, I hoped to find the odor of sweet originality, but instead of that I encountered only the fictions of Hispanus, of Gilbert, and of Theodoric.

Those who write about Gaddesden being Chaucer's doctor usually justify it also be calling them "contemporaries." Let's look at the timeline: the Canterbury Tales probably wasn't started until 1387. Even if the Prologue were the first thing he wrote—highly unlikely—this was a quarter century after Gaddesden's death; a death that would have taken place when Chaucer was about 20 years old and had been connected to the household of Prince Lionel, the second son of King Edward III, only for a few years. Gaddesden seems to have been attached to the household of Edward, the Black Prince, who would have spent much of Gaddesden's later years on the continent while Chaucer was in England.

They could have crossed paths, but probably not significantly, and Gaddesden would have been long out of the public eye and consciousness when Chaucer came into his own as a poet. For Chaucer to write up a physician who quoted historical authorities, knew astrology, and loved gold probably just meant that he had met typical physicians.

Great Surgeon

The history of medicine includes many brave and progressive thinkers who were not willing to follow the herd or be content with what was already known. One such in the Middle Ages was Guy de Chauliac. Born about 1300, he studied at a university in Montpellier known for its expertise in medicine. After becoming a Master of Medicine and Surgery around 1325, he went to Bologna for further study. His reputation became such that he was invited to Avignon to be personal physician to Pope Clement VI, then Pope Innocent VI and Pope Urban V. The papal connection gave him access to a library that included the texts of the Greek physician Galen in their original; most of Europe knew Galen through less accurate Latin translations.

He possibly saved Clement's life during the spread of the Black Death, when he advised the pope to stay near blazing fires. Although many physicians fled Avignon at the arrival of the Plague, Chauliac stayed to study the disease and treat people. He determined that it was contagious, but couldn't figure out the method of contagion. Still, he advised bloodletting, a healthy diet, and exposure to pure air (hence the fires, which would have serendipitously served to keep fleas away). He also realized that there were two diseases involved because of different sets of symptoms: the initial Bubonic Plague, and the follow-up Pneumonic Plague which found its foothold in the weakened population and killed much more swiftly. Chauliac spoke out strongly against those who blamed the Jews for the Plague, explaining that scientifically it made no sense to consider them at fault.

Tools for withdrawing an arrow.

His value to the rest of the world and history was the writing of Chirurgia magna (Great [book of] Surgery) in 1363. Its seven volumes covered every imaginable medical topic of the day: intubation, surgery, disease, anesthesia, hernia, cataracts, ulcers, bloodletting, cauterization of wounds, and the use of special instruments (some of which he designed himself, such as an elaborate contraption for withdrawing an arrow from flesh). Chauliac drew on the past, quoting Galen (129-c.200) and Avicenna (Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina, c.980-1037). He placed great emphasis on learning anatomy, saying that "A surgeon who does not know his anatomy is like a blind man carving a log."

Chauliac was not always accurate. He believed, for instance, that pus was an important part of the healing process and should be left alone. Nevertheless, his Chirurgia became a standard text for the next three centuries, translated into several European languages. Unfortunately for future generations, anti-Islam sentiment caused many translators to leave out knowledge from Islamic scholars, resulting in a less complete and less accurate work. Still, he has been labeled the "Father of Modern Surgery," and his great work was the standard text until the 17th century.

Medieval Re-Births

Far from being a complete intellectual vacuum in the years between the decline of Rome and the Renaissance, Europe experienced three distinct periods when the slow slog of culture enjoyed a short sprint forward. Two of them were connected specifically with royal patronage and the attempt on the part of a ruler to create something academically impressive and politically lasting. Scholars dispute the accuracy of calling them "renaissances" because their impact was not as lasting as the shifts in the 14th century that sparked an uninterrupted (so far) progression in all human endeavors. Erwin Panofsky, a 20th century German art historian, produced a slim tome in 1944 called Renaissance and Renascences in which he used the latter term to distinguish those other periods in history. Let's do that.

Charlemagne

The first Renascence took place during the reigns of Charlemagne (c.742-814) and his son, Louis the Pious (778-840). Charlemagne was not only King of the Franks. He managed to unite much of western and central Europe, and once he conquered Italy, he was in a position to be named Holy Roman Emperor.

Empires require a great deal of bureaucracy, however, and the dearth of literate men to serve as court scribes and secretaries was problematic. Literacy was also a problem because many parish priests could not read the Bible. In fact, the lack of widespread formal training in Latin meant that its common use—what now is referred to as vulgar Latin—was developing into regional dialects. Some of these dialects would evolve into what we call the Romance languages.

Sample of Carolingian Minuscule

With the chance to re-create the glory that was the Roman Empire, Charlemagne gathered scholars to promote the proper use of Latin. While establishing schools to accomplish this and—and along the way developing a new script called "Carolingian minuscule" that was more legible than what came before—he promoted learning, art, law, architecture, and Christianity. In order to do this, he brought together many top scholars of the day, such as:

• Peter of Pisa, who taught Charlemagne Latin
• Paulinus of Aquileia
• Paulus Diaconus
• Alcuin of York
• Joseph Scottus

These men and others helped to create a "bright spot" in a time so often called "dark." There were still dark times to come in western Europe, but thanks to the Carolingian Renascence, Western Civilization survived—in the words of Sir Kenneth Clark in his epic Civilization: "by the skin of its teeth."

Medieval Warm Period

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) existed from 950/1000 to 1200/1250 CE (estimates vary because of the difficulty in collecting accurate data and the desire to allow some leeway for natural change in climate trends). It was followed by cooler temperatures and something called the Little Ice Age (LIA) which lasted from about 1500 until about 1850. (The span is also referred to as the Medieval Climate Anomaly, if you want to Google it.)
Some medieval records indicate weather (drought years, particularly bad storms, et cetera), but they didn't have the organizational longevity (or the interest) to record long-term climate trends. Besides tree rings and ice cores, is there any "anecdotal" evidence from the Middle Ages itself that suggests long-term changes in average temperature?

Erik the Red

Let us look at Erik Thorvaldsson (950-c.1003), aka Erik the Red. Erik's father wasn't the most easygoing guy, and was exiled from Norway, whereupon he took his family to Iceland. Around 982, Erik himself got into trouble for killing some people (poor anger management was apparently a family issue). He sailed from Iceland to Greenland, where legend says he created the first settlement. It is likely that there was already a Norse presence, but Erik can probably claim credit for the first permanent habitation.

If we can believe the sagas and records, then even though life was very harsh, in the 1120s there were sustainable settlements on the eastern shore that held 2000-4000 people. One modern scholar reports "190 small farms, 12 parish churches, a cathedral, an Augustinian monastery, and a Benedictine nunnery." On the western shore were "90 farms and four churches."

Why the Norse settlements ultimately failed is a target for speculation–one theory is that rising amounts of sea ice made navigation, and therefore trade that was necessary to keep their society going, difficult–but here's the thing: excavations of those early settlements have found quite a bit of evidence of their way of life—but they have to dig under "permanently" frozen ground to do so.

It is clear that those settlements existed—could only exist—at a time that was significantly warmer than Greenland's climate is today.

Mirrors for Princes

Machiavelli's Il Principe (c.1513) was far from innovative. Writers since classical times had produced works that explained the proper behavior—or improper behavior—of rulers. The genre was called specula principum, or "mirrors for princes." These took the form of instruction books, often aimed at a young ruler who was just coming into power, or could be biographies of rulers who should (or should not) be emulated.

The reign of Charlemagne seems to have motivated the desire to "raise the bar" for rulers and inspired many writers to produce mirrors for their local rulers in the 9th century. Charlemagne's life was, of course, the example to be followed as far as Einhard's Vita Karolini (Life of Charles) was concerned. No one wanted to see the Carolingian empire suffer after Charlemagne's demise, and so his descendants had no lack of advice. His son Louis the Pious was the target of one speculum by Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel; Louis' son Pepin I of Aquitaine was the target of one by Jonas of Orléans; Louis' grandson Lothair II of Lotharingia was addressed by Sedulius Scottus in a work called "On Christian Rulers."

Alcuin of York, a prolific writer and famous teacher, wrote De virtutibus et vitiis (On virtues and vices, c.799) for Count Wido of Brittany. A friend of Alcuin's, whom he met at Charlemagne's school in Aachen, was Paulinus of Aquileia who wrote the Liber exhortationis (Book of exhortations, 795), for Count Heiric (Eric) of Friuli. Paulinus (c.730-802) had been born in the Friuli region of northeast Italy and he and Heiric were friends, so he felt entitled to tell Heiric a thing or two, including advising him to free his slaves. (Having slaves was common.) Paulinus also wrote an elegy when Heiric was killed in 799.

Mirrors for princes were popular right through the Renaissance by scholars who felt qualified to give advice to powerful men. We know of ones that were written for the future Henry VIII (by John Skelton; a copy exists in the British Museum), for King Charles V of Spain (1516, by Erasmus), for King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway (1597, by Johann Damgaard), and King James I of England wrote one for his eldest son, Henry, who died of typhoid at 18; maybe Charles I read it when he ascended the throne.

Medieval Acrostics

The simplest form of acrostic is a poem or other writing in which the first letter of each line spells out a word (presumably on that is related thematically to the writing). They are frequently used in education today because they are fun, but 2000 years ago they were considered valuable learning tools because of their embedded layers of meaning, especially the type of acrostic called carmina figurata ("shape poem"); it could either be a poem with words constrained to a shape such as a chalice or dragon, or it was designed so that various letters could be highlighted to make shapes or focus the reader on certain words or names.

This practice had been elevated to a high art by Roman poets. The sample on this page is from Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius, who was writing to please the Emperor Constantine in order that Optatianus might be recalled from exile. Optatianus is credited with inventing this type of carmina figurata, where the shapes to be found are internal to the poem, which is written out as a block (or other symmetrical shape) of text to aid in finding the lines. You can see not only the chi-ro symbol, but the name "iesus" spelled around the outside of the square. An interesting scholarly examination of Optatianus' figure poems can be found here.

But away from the 4th and back to the 8th century: as part of Alcuin's academic push, he gave various assignments to the men working with him at Charlemagne's palace school at Aachen. One of the men working with him was Joseph Scottus.

We know almost nothing about Scottus outside of his connection with Alcuin. He was Irish, and probably studied at the monastery in Clommacnoise. It is assumed that at one point he studied under Alcuin at York, and that connection drew him to the Frankish court when Alcuin took over. Despite his background and anti-Irish sentiment at the time, he was on very friendly terms with Charlemagne, and Scottus took over for Alcuin in 790 when Alcuin had business back home.

Very little writing by Joseph has survived, most of which is acrostics. Alcuin apparently tried to revive the form, and a manuscript of acrostics exists in Switzerland that clearly came from Charlemagne's school: the majority of acrostics are by Joseph Scottus, with others by Alcuin himself and Bishop Theodulf of Orléans. (Alas, I can find no pictures of the manuscript to share!)

A Note on Ireland

Anti-Irish sentiment has a long heritage. In the Middle Ages, Ireland was a target of Western Europe disdain for at least two reasons.

16th century map of Ireland.

Gerald of Wales (c.1146-c.1223), a royal clerk under King Henry II, accompanied Henry's son John to travel to Ireland in 1185. Gerald praised the land, but condemned the people:

They use their fields mostly for pasture. Little is cultivated and even less is sown. The problem here is not the quality of the soil but rather the lack of industry on the part of those who should cultivate it. This laziness means that the different types of minerals with which hidden veins of the earth are full are neither mined nor exploited in any way. They do not devote themselves to the manufacture of flax or wool, nor to the practice of any mechanical or mercantile act. Dedicated only to leisure and laziness, this is a truly barbarous people. They depend on their livelihood for animals and they live like animals.

This could have been an accurate account of what he saw, but could just as easily have been intended to provide justification for Henry's conquest of Ireland in order to gain for himself and his sons more lands and resources. Pope Adrian IV (the first Englishman to sit the Throne of Peter) had written a papal bull in 1155 called Laudabiliter;* it gave Henry permission to assume control over Ireland and apply Gregorian reforms.

...and that was the second reason for anti-Irish sentiment: Ireland needed to be brought into line doctrinally with the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic missions to Ireland (notably that of the Scotsman, St. Patrick) had introduced Christianity centuries before this. Christianity had survived in Ireland while it suffered in Britain due to invasion from Northern European pagan groups. But the Christianity restored in Britain afterward was closely tied to Rome, while Christianity in Ireland had developed its own practices and rituals.

Old habits are hard to break; "No Irish Need Apply" was not uncommon even in the second half of the 20th century, and Irish stereotypes and persecutions today are no new thing.

*The names of papal bulls don't always signify their topic; in this case, it is named for the opening word, which says (in English) "Laudably and profitably doth your Majesty consider how..." N.B.: scholars have argued for the last few centuries over the authenticity and authority of Laudabiliter, but for the present purpose, we can accept that it was very real for the 12th century.

Why "Middle" Ages?

So if the phrase "Dark Ages" was coined by Petrarch to describe the loss/lapse of much classical learning and advancement since the Decline of Rome (5th century CE), why do we say "Middle Ages," and what were they in the "middle" of?

Petrarch's term didn't become a widespread label; the centuries immediately following him didn't study history dogmatically the way a modern liberal studies education demands. It was a German classical scholar named Christoph Cellarius (1638-1707) who standardized the three general periods of the past two millenia with his mammoth work Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period. "Medieval" was from the Latin medium aevum (literally, "middle age"). This triple division struck the right note and entered the realm of conventional wisdom.

Still, the "Dark Ages" didn't go out of fashion, although its definition and popularity shifted. The American Cyclopaedia in 1883 said:

The Dark Ages is a term applied in its widest sense to that period of intellectual depression in the history of Europe from the establishment of the barbarian supremacy in the fifth century to the revival of learning about the beginning of the fifteenth, thus nearly corresponding in extent with the Middle Ages.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911) defined the Dark Ages as the period from the fifth to the tenth centuries, affirming that "the Dark Age was a reality."

In 1929, however, the 14th edition of Britannica removed the term "Dark Ages" and stated:

the contrast, once so fashionable, between the ages of darkness and the ages of light has no more truth in it than have the idealistic fancies which underlie attempts at mediaeval revivalism.

A scholarly view of the "Dark Ages" has largely been eliminated in favor of the generic term "medieval" to distinguish between the Classical and Modern eras (Cellarius would be proud). In fact, because artistic, cultural, political and technological (et alia) development is a continuum, the division of "eras" has been muddled with a recent trend to refer to the Renaissance as the "Early Modern Era" (I remember a lecture from my grad school days in which we joked that maybe the Middle Ages would soon be labeled the "Really Early Modern Era."

Part of this desire to eliminate the concept of "dark" Ages is also 20th century understanding that not only was the period not a complete intellectual wasteland, but also that there were at least three "re-births" of education and art prior to what we think of as the European Renaissance.

But that's a topic for another day.

Why "Dark" Ages?

Once in a time known as the Dark Ages
There lived a legend whose coming had been foretold
by the great prophet Merlin.

This is the opening of a 1999 film on Joan of Arc. Joan's dates were 1412-1431, a far cry from anyone's idea of the Dark Ages.* What were the Dark Ages, exactly? The term is commonly used to refer to a time when education lapsed and "not much happened." Well, the amount that was happening could fill a daily blog for quite awhile.

The concept of a Dark Age is credited to Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), who traveled Europe looking for Latin classics. The story goes that, upon discovering a "lost" collection of the letters of Cicero (106-43 BCE) in the 1330s, he expressed his disgust that such splendor had existed long ago but not preserved or improved upon in the intervening years:

Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offense and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

Essentially, for Petrarch, the Dark Ages was that period between the glory that was Rome and the glory that was his own era. Nowadays, if the term "Dark Ages" is used at all, it is used for the first half of the Middle Ages, denoting the period right after the fall of Rome to about 1100.

So where/when did we start talking about the "Middle" Ages?

[to be continued]

*And don't get me started on "Merlin" having a prophecy about Joan.