history of medieval europe - davis ok

8/14/2019 History of Medieval Europe - Davis OK

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From R.H.C. Davis, A History of Medieval EuropePart I – The Dark Ages

INTRODUCTION

The civilization that we call European is not spread evenly over thecontinent of Europe, nor is it confined to Europe. Sometimes it hasexpanded and sometimes it has contracted. Kinglake came to the endof ’ wheel-going Europe ’ and started his exploration of ’ theSplendour and the Havoc of the East ’ in the Moslem quarter of Belgrade; that was in 1844. Farther east there are lands that haveonce been European. The natives of Syria call modern Europeans,their houses, transport, clothes, and sanitation ’franji’, because untilthe modern age they had known no European colonists since thecrusaders or Franks. Even in Greece, Europeans are called Franks,since Greece was conquered by crusaders in the thirteenth century.On the southern shores of the Mediterranean, in Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania, Europeans are called ’Roumi’, because the previousexponents of European civilization were Romans. European civilizationmoves. Under the Greeks and the Romans it was based on theMediterranean. By the sixteenth century ir had shifted to the Atlanticseaboard, to the Netherlands, England, France, and Spain. In onesense, the history of medieval Europe is the history of this movementof civilization, northwards from the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire was Mediterranean and embraced all its shores. Itwas not localised. Just as the second city of Greece was Alexandria, in

Egypt, so the Emperor Constantine founded a ’new Rome ’ atConstantinople and called its people ’Romans ’. The EmperorDiocletian had built his palace at Split on the Dalmatian coast; one of the most famous schools of Roman law was at Beyrouth, in Syria, andthe third largest Roman amphitheatre in the world is still to be seen inthe Tunisian village of El Djem. Few of the great Romans of imperialtimes were of Roman stock. The Emperor Trajan was a Spaniard;SeptimiusSeverus was a native of Leptis Magna in Tripolitania. Most significantof all was St. Paul; his parents were Jews, but he was a Roman citizenbecause he had been born in the Greek city of Tarsus, which was on

the coast of Asia Minor and was capital of the Roman province of Cilicia. He died at Rome, after he had undertaken missionary journeysover the greater part of the eastern Mediterranean. The Mediterranean was not only the centre of the Roman Empire ; itwas what made the Empire possible. The magnificence of Romanroads is apt to make us think that Rome was primarily a land-powerand to make us forget that Rome could not defeat Carthage until shewas a sea-power. Rome depended on the sea. The corn for her breadcame from Sicily and Egypt, and an outbreak of piracy in the middlesea could endanger her very existence.Before the age of railways, motor-cars, and aeroplanes, all greatcivilizations depended on water-transport. The earliest civilizationsgrew up on rivers, where the hazards of navigation seemed less



terrifying than on sea. For civilization depends on cities where menare spared the trouble of growing their own food and can devote theirlives to specialized trades or arts ; cities can only obtain their materialneeds by trading ; trading requires transport; and transport is farmore difficult over land than over water. To transport goods overland

one needs roads and bridges, relays of horses and carts, andstopping-places where both man and beast can find food and rest inpeace ; it requires stupendous organisation. To travel over water oneneeds nothing more than a boat.In a boat, one can sail down the Nile and into the Mediterranean, theparadise of early sailors. It was neither too big nor too little. It was bigenough to contain the marvels of the world, the golden apples of theHesperides, the cave of Cumae and the pillars of Hercules; and yet itwas small enough for the fearful mariner never to be far from sight of land. It invited exploration. The Greeks nosed their way along itsshores in search of new lands and new markets, founding cities asthey went, as at Cyrene on the African shore, or as at Naples (HAYUNA PALABRA EN GRIEGO= the new city) in southern Italy where theircities became known as Magna Graecia. In Spain they founded thegreat market of Emporion and the city of Hemeroskopeion (’the watch-tower of theday ’). Nor were the Greeks alone. Phoenicians from Tyre had foundedCarthage, and Carthaginians founded Cadiz. Exploration and tradingwent hand in hand. Trading led to cities and cities to civilization. The Romans conquered the cities and the civilization, with theMediterranean. They made an Empire out of the economic unit that

existed already, and called the Mediterranean ’our sea’, marenostrum . They then set about defending it, for the sea wasvulnerable from the land. Any invader who marched overland andconquered a portion of its shore, could build a fleet and disrupt theeconomic unity on which the Empire depended. Fortunately, theMediterranean had natural defences on three sides. On the west andon the south were the Atlantic and the Sahara, both equallyimpassable. On the east, the Syrian desert formed a barrier againstthe Persians except at its northern extremity which was defended bythe fortress of Nisibis. The weak frontier was on the north. If theRomans had only had to defend Italy, they could have made the Alps

their frontier; but they had to defend the whole of the northMediterranean shore. To protect the shores of Greece and Dalmatiathey advanced to the Danube which they made a frontier against theGoths. To protect their province on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul,they advanced into northern Gaul; to secure northern Gaul theyoccupied Britain and advanced eastwards to the Rhine. Augustusdecided that the advance should go no farther, and in consequencethe northern frontier of the Empire followed the lines of the Rhine andDanube with only a small extension to the east in the region of theNeckar. A longer frontier could not have been devised. To garrison it,the Romans recruited Syrians, Armenians, Dalmatians, Spaniards, andeven German auxiliaries. The frontier was the military centre of theEmpire, for its purpose was not just the defence of Gaul or Illyricum,



but of the whole Mediterranean. The Romans knew that once a rivalpower reached the shores of ’their’ sea, it could shatter theireconomy and so bring an end to their Empire and their civilization. The fact that Mediterranean civilization depended on the unity of that sea made it vulnerable from within as well as from without. It was

essential to keep the Mediterranean peoples at peace with oneanother. It was the triumph of the Romans that they discovered howto do this with the least possible military effort. They knew that all theMediterranean peoples had a common interest in the commerce of their sea, and they believed in men. They believed that all men hadby nature an instinctive knowledge of what was right and what waswrong, and they believed that it was possible to frame laws inaccordance with the standard of nature. They distinguished betweencustom which was of no more than local significance, and law whichappertained to justice and was consequently of universal significance. They would have found the greatest difficulty in understanding theway in which we now think it natural for different civilized states tohave different laws. Of course they did not expect all men to sharetheir law at once, but they did expect all civilised men to share it.Roman law was aiming at absolute justice as ordained by nature, andmen whose reason was educated would recognize it naturally. Forcenturies their confidence was justified; but Roman civilization was tobe shaken when barbarian invaders claimed that their own laws wereparticular to themselves, since they were not founded on nature andreason, but on the dictates of their own divine ancestors.It always has been that different races find self-expression in their

religion as well as in their laws. But the Romans were convinced of thecommon humanity of all men, and just as they postulated a jusgentium, or law that was common to all peoples, so they postulatedthat there must be a common religion. They thought that, just asthere were different languages with different words for the sameobject, so the differences between the gods of different peoples weredifferences only of names. They identified Zeus with Jupiter, Baal withSaturn, and the Celtic Mapon with Apollo. Julius Caesar reported thatthe Gauls paid most deference to Mercury, and after him to Apollo, Jupiter, and Minerva, ’and about them their ideas correspond fairlyclosely with those current among the rest of mankind’. The statement

shows a magnificent belief in the universal humanity of man, since itimplied that even barbarians knew by instinct something of the truthdiscovered by civilized man. But the belief depended on pantheism. There had to be many recognised gods it all the gods of thebarbarians were to be found equivalents in the Roman pantheon; andany new gods had to be content to take their place alongside deitiesthat were already numerous. What could not be tolerated was areligion that claimed to have a monopoly of truth -that claimed notonly that it was right, but that all other religions were wrong. Just asthe Roman Empire embraced all Mediterranean peoples and gavethem Latin names, so Roman religion embraced all gods and requiredthat they also should observe the pax Ramana.



The structure of the Roman Empire was based on the unity of theMediterranean, its peoples and its gods. In the following chapters wewill see how that unity was broken. It was first cracked by the claim of the Christian Church to be the guardian of absolute truth, becausethat claim made religious compromise impossible. It was further

cracked by the determination of barbarian invaders to prefer the lawof their ancestors to the law of reason, since that preference impliedthe superiority of loyalty to one’s race over loyalty to the civilizedworld. It was shattered when traders lost the freedom of the sea.When that happened, the greater part of Europe reverted to anagricultural economy in which there was no place for the cities thatmade men civilized.

history of medieval europe - davis ok

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