"The Triumph of Barbarism and Religion"

These words appear in the final chapter of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Thus he characterizes what he's described in prior volumes in six words.  It seems a clear statement of his position, very incisive and succinct.  It's something of a pleasure to read such a bold pronouncement from a historian, as the historians of today seem hesitant to make judgments of any kind, victims perhaps of a what appears to be a growing culture of timid ambivalence in Academia.  Woe to those who are perceived as having come to a conclusion, especially regarding anything it is now customary to claim cannot be judged.  Which is a great many things.

 

It's no doubt inadvisable to come to such a definite conclusion regarding something as complicated as the Fall of Rome (though Gibbon is always a joy to read).  Also inadvisable to attribute the Fall to only two causes or factors.  Barbarians certainly came to rule territory formerly ruled by Roman Emperors, but they did so sometimes as at least nominally the functionaries of the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, which survived for may years after the year traditionally said to be the fall of the West, 476 C.E., or if not as rulers who perceived themselves and were perceived as successors to the Emperors, continuing the rule of Rome albeit in somewhat different ways.  The leaders of those  barbarians were usually high-ranking members of the Roman military, trained by Romans, familiar with Roman customs and civilization.

 

As late as the 9th century, Charlemagne, (a descendant of the barbarians known to the Romans as Franks) took up the mantle of Rome in the Latin West.  Rome's shadow falls over most of the history of the West, though.  The Holy Roman Empire which Voltaire said was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, survived into modern times, and the Kaisers and the Czars owed their titles, at least, to the Caesars.

Religion in the form of Christianity certainly came to rule in a sense as well, in both West and East.  An intolerant religion which believes itself exclusive, possessing the truth and worshipping the One True God, by its nature seeks to rule the minds and conduct of all.  But it's difficult to maintain Christianity was a cause of the Fall of Rome, as the Christianized Roman Empire of the East continued to exist for roughly one thousand years after the year 476 C. E., although in a continuously diminished form.

 

What is taking place in our times, however, in the name of a religion and through the efforts of people who can justly be called barbarians, threatens a triumph of the kind Gibbon felt took place in the 5th century.  If Gibbon was right about the corrosive effect of barbarism and religion, combined, then perhaps his statement will be more true of our century than the centuries of which he wrote.

 

It's difficult to believe that there are heavily armed people who are intent on causing us, by force, to live and think as members of a particular religion did in the 7th century.  What reasonable person living in the 21st century would think that desirable, or even possible on a large scale?  Why return to the distant past?  But then, it isn't merely the time after the spread of Islam that these barbarians reject and want others to reject.  The time before the 7th century is also condemned by them.  Witness their destruction of the great remains of civilizations of the even more distant past.

 

Here we have the true fanatic at work.  Great efforts are being made to destroy the new barbarians or at least stop their progress.  Well and good, but one wonders, sometimes, whether some of those involved in the effort or their masters have come or will come to believe that it is necessary to fight fanaticism with fanaticism inspired by another, better, religion; or to employ irrational means to fight the irrational.

 

That would lead to a triumph of barbarism and religion of a different kind, resulting in a state somewhat more familiar to we of the West but I think equally deadly to Western civilization.

 



An Escape Into Another Dark Time

I find that I'm overwhelmed by the urge to comment on things which have nothing to do with the increasingly grotesque politics of our Great Republic and the bizarre person soon to become its enormous, orange head.  So bear with me if you please as I turn from one kind of darkness to another.

I've heard since I was in college (that is a long time ago, alas) that what is called the Dark Age of Europe wasn't nearly as dark as commonly thought.  Unsurprisingly, I've heard this claim from scholars of the Dark Ages, both professors and students.  I happened to hear a lecture to that effect by a learned professor while driving home one night.  What the professor referred to, though, were events and persons which took place and lived from roughly the 11th century to the 14th centuries.  If those are unjustly considered the Dark Ages, I wonder what we call, or should call, when considering the history of Europe (the Latin West) the period from the end of the 5th century to the 11th century.  In other words, the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire traditionally thought to take place around 475 C.E. to the bright, brilliant, not at all dark period commencing sometime in the 11th century, when, as the professor noted, Aristotle was rediscovered in Europe, Abelard and Heloise loved and thought, etc.

Do those 5 or 6 centuries constitute something different from what are called the Dark Ages according to learned academics of our time?  Are they, for example, the Really Dark Ages, or the Very Dark Ages?

I can understand that it's appropriate to note that some good and interesting, and indeed admirable, events took place from the loosely defined Fall of Rome in the West to the Renaissance.  There were significant achievements during the Medieval Period and significant people lived during those times.  We have a tendency to identify as significant persons--as worthy of note--the influential thinkers, rulers, artists who appear in history.  Events we tend to identify as significant are usually military battles and conquests, political revolutions, inventions, and laws.  Especially during what are delightfully referred to as the "High" Middle Ages, (usually considered the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries) it's easy enough to identify "significant" history.  What of that part of those Ages which wasn't High?

Identifying what and who were significant in that period isn't as easy, unless it's easy by virtue of the fact that there are few events and people typically considered significant to history during those times.  Again, I refer to Europe and specifically Europeans, not Byzantines or Muslims.  Augustine of course didn't live to see the traditional End of the Roman Empire.  The next significant philosophical figure would, I suppose, be Boethius.  Boethius had a wonderfully Roman name:  Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.  He's sometimes called the Last of the Romans.

Boethius served as minister to Theodoric the Great, an Ostrogothic king, but one of several of what I think can fairly be called the quasi-Roman rulers in Europe who reigned after the Western Empire fell.  These kings and their kingdoms are justly considered Roman successor states, I believe.  They mimicked the Empire in various respects, even in the manner of their administration.  Boethius served until he was imprisoned by Theodoric and later bludgeoned to death by his minions.  While in prison he wrote his famous Consolation of Philosophy, and it's to be hoped he was consoled by it, particularly as he was beaten to death.

The Europeans seemed to have busied themselves primarily  by fighting off the infidels and fighting among themselves until the Frankish kings came along and, eventually, one Frank in particular, Charlemagne, became the (first) Holy Roman Emperor.  While he ruled, the Holy Roman Empire may not have been holy, but was in fact an empire and was in fact rather Roman.  The ghost of Rome certainly was regularly seen in those times and haunts us still today.

It was during Charlemagne's relatively benign and enlightened rule, and the fitful peace that resulted, that what is considered dark became less dark.  So we see such thinkers as Duns Scotus appearing, a greater appreciation of learning and writing (needed for administering a large territory).  We may owe to Charlemagne what there is of Latin Christian learning, knowledge and art during the less-than-high Middle Ages.

Naturally, Europe was impacted as well during the time of the less-than-high or darker Middle Ages by the incursions of the Byzantines while Justinian was Emperor of the East.  Justinian aspired to be Emperor of the West, and due to the ability of his generals Belisarius and Narses actually conquered portions of the old Western Empire, but only for a relatively short time.  The Arabs of course had taken North Africa and the Spanish peninsula, and held Spain until the Reconquista. 

Just what is "Dark" and how dark were the Middle Ages in Europe?  It seems there can be no question that something very bad happened after the Western Roman Empire fell, no matter what is said regarding those times.  Even what we today consider simple things, such as the provision of flowing water to people and the handling of their waste, disappeared.  Such things didn't reappear in cities like Paris until Napoleon's reign. 

It must have been a remarkably dirty world after the Roman baths stopped functioning. Roman moralists used to claim that the baths, which were frequented by many who relished soaking in the hot and cold water rather than merely washing themselves hurriedly, sapped the strength and weakened the sense of stern morality fostered by their ancestors. I think it's likely, though, that even the most censorious moralist would have been more appalled by people who either didn't bathe at all or did so only rarely. The effect on health and hygiene must have been profound. The poor have always been poor and miserable, but it's likely that they became more miserable during the Middle Ages, and less of them were educated and more died by hunger, disease and war.  Urban life was almost nonexistent for a time.

People no longer knew how to do certain things. The legions were gone, and the work they would do to build and maintain infrastructure when not making war was not done by anyone else. People began to borrow stone and marble from old buildings in order to construct anything new, not having the knowledge or skill--or perhaps even the opportunity--to do otherwise. Knowledge of the natural world wasn't encouraged, the world being less important than it was to those of the past.

It may be that the Renaissance led many to think of the Middle Ages as being Darker than they were in fact.  But it's difficult to think they were not darker times than what came before and what came after, in many important respects.  Why and how they were darker is an important question to be addressed.