DARK AGES AND MIDDLE AGES
“Dark Ages” is
the name given to the period in Europe
after the decline of the Roman Empire. This fall of the Empire occurred in
fifth century. The Barbarians from the north and east destroyed the buildings
and the arts in Europe which existed during the Roman times. So, as there was a
dearth in the literature, arts, education, trade etc. this period is referred
to as “Dark Ages”. In those times monasteries were the only source of
knowledge. The Eastern Empire was not invaded by the Barbarians. So arts and
culture was flourishing there.
During the Dark Ages, there were many changes.
·
There was no literature, arts, education
etc.
·
The countries were into areas governed
by feudal lords. There were a number of Barbaric tribes. The Kings had less
power.
·
Tribes were given importance. People
were loyal to a tribe and not to a country. The Germanic legal traditions
differed- they had individual laws for the tribes. There was no written
literature produced during this time.
·
Church had the authority. So, it unified the
people of Europe. It was the Church which preserved the ancient writings.
The Middle Ages or the Medieval Period was the
period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance. It was
an age of theological learning. Medieval theology was based on the nature of
reality and the eternal life. A plethora of factors contributed to making of
the Middle Ages – evolving traditions of Christianity, the socio-political
culture of the Germanic tribes, vestiges of the Roman administrative and legal
system, the legacy of classical age. Christianity had an upper hand in the
development of medieval civilization. Early Christianity was heterogenous,
containing a large number of sects with a disparity in their beliefs and
practices, and they were always engaged in disputes. In order to settle this,
many church councils were convened. It established the Athanasian view of the
Trinity as orthodox Christian doctrine.
Some of the major figures who were in these debates were the Gregory of Nyssa,
Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Augustine of
Hippo etc. Jerome, one of the greatest Christian thinkers, is credited with the
translation of the Bible from the original languages into Latin. The Church was
the only institution which had enjoyed continuity from the Antiquity to the
Middle Ages. Latin remained the language of scholarship and law during the
Middle Ages. The Germanic tribes who invaded the empire retained Latin as their
means of communication wherever they settled. However, vernacular languages and
literatures grew in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But this didn’t lead
to the dissolution of Latin. It began to be spoken as two languages, by the learned and the folks
respectively. An important aspect of Christianity was monasticism. Founded in
the East by St. Basil and in the West by St. Benedict. It entailed regimen for
poverty, humility, labor and devotion. It was monks who wrote most of the books
and transmitted early manuscripts. The monks later develop into regular clergy.
The slave mode of production led to a contempt of manual labor.
Many
of the Germanic peoples were settled in various parts of the Western Roman
Empire long before the decline of Rome. Vandals took up the city. The lifestyle
was primitive and a system of feudalism developed. In the Early Middle Ages,
commerce and industry declined and land came to be concentrated in the hands of
a few. Famine and diseases were on the spread. The economic system then was
limited to a local trade. This hierarchical way of life was sanctioned by the
Church, as it was a place where every person was considered part of the larger
and was divinely established. One of the most significant figures of the time
was Charlemagne. He had established an empire that extended over the western
and central Europe. He was crowned by Pope Leo III which signified the
formation of the Holy Roman Empire and the influential relationship between the
Frankish Dynasty and the papacy. Thus the Empire could achieve both political
and religious unity. The intellectual side of the Early Middle Ages were led by
two main factors- the heritage of classical thought and the varying relation of
developing Christian theology to this heritage. Macrobius and Servius were two
influential critics of the Late Roman period who contributed to the knowledge
of Neo-Platonism in the Middle Ages. A major thinker was Boethius. His
translations of Aristotle’s treatises were of relevance to the thinking in the
later Middle Ages.
In the
Early Middle Ages, the position of literature and arts were subordinated to
the issues of salvation and preparation
of next life. There were two broad approaches to the classical literature with
the development of the theology. The first was to distance Christianity from
paganism. The second was to continue the Christian appropriation of classical
rhetoric and philosophy.
Also, the Christian theologians Clement
and Origen attempted to reconcile with
the Ancient Greek with the tenets of Christianity. Origen formulated a system
of allegorical interpretation in accordance with three levels – literal, moral
and theological. The thinkers like St. Augustine had a more accommodating view
of classical learning and literature. The Church was for a long time, opposed
to drama and plays. It was seen to associated with idolatry.
St.
Augustine’s work was the one with an in-depth synthesis of the classical and
Christian notions. He influenced the traditions of both Roman Catholicism and
Protestant thought.
Augustine’s
views was more like Plato’s, for he
considered Plato as the greatest philosopher. His aesthetics stood on a
modified Platonic framework that spoke of a heightened spiritual realm. Art,
which was made of sensous elements was given a lower position, far removed from
God, the ultimate source of reality. He is characterized as believing in
determinism-only those who belong to the heavenly city, the elect, will attain
salvation. Augustine argued that only God can restore the natural state of
goodness in which man was created.
In the High
Middle Ages, there was an increase of population. Crop yields increased and the
trade was also flourishing. The Later Middle Ages witnessed progress in many
levels. There was economic revival. Feudalism had attained more stability. The
contractual relation in a feudal society was between a lord and a vassal. By the later Middle
Ages, cities had grown. The cities were dominated by two types of organization-
the merchant guild and the artisan guild. The guild system was in part based on
Christian doctrines stemming from the Church fathers and Aquinas who advocated
fair prices, and contributed towards the welfare of the community. The medieval
world divided the organization of the knowledge into the trivium and the
quadrivium. The trivium included grammar, rhetoric and logic and the
quadrivium- music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. These were called the
seven liberal arts, the number seven reminding the seven sacraments, the seven
pillars of wisdom, the seven virtues, the seven heavens. The major figures of
this period were Plotinus, St. Augustine, who lived in 300 C.E, St. Thomas Aquinas
etc. It was Aquinas who made a demarcation between the realm of faith and the
realm of reason. Dante’s Divine Comedy and William Langland’s Piers Plowman spoke of divinity. There was a bridging of gap between
secular and religious.
Geoffrey
de Vinsauf
Vinsauf’s
treatise Poetrica Nova
is a work on the rules and practice of poetry, along with the study of
great poets. It became an important training manual of poets in Europe from the
thirteenth century till well into the Renaissance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Day,
Gary. Literary Criticism- A New History.
Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. 2008
Habib,
M.A.R. A History of Literary Criticism. Atlantic
Publishers and Distributers.New Delhi. 2006
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