William Morris’ medieval insight and the Middle Ages.
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https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1894/middle.htm
The letters you are now typing in are one of the Middle Ages’ many legacies to our humanity.
“The letters you are now typing in are one of the Middle Ages’ many legacies to our humanity.”
Yes indeed, more or less. Lower case is derived from the Carolingian minuscule, circa 9th century. Italics came into use in the 15th and 16th centuries.
But our upper-case letters were perfected in the Roman era.
NOTTHATWEWOULDBEALLTHATCOMFORTABLEREADINGINTHECLASSICALROMANWAYNORHANDLINGINTERMINABLYLONGSCROLLSBECAUSETHESPINEDBOOKWEALSOOWETOTHEMIDDLEAGES
Just demonstrating that reading as the Romans were used to would not be so easy.
The destruction of knowledge has to be laid, above all in Britain, on the Reformation and the destruction of the monasteries – so much so, that all we have left of English medieval literature now would fit into one grocery box. That included herbal medical knowledge.
Our European languages, plus the Slavonic alphabet, spined books, punctuation, gothic architecture, the preservation of Latin and Greek classics, stirrups, and so much more, we owe to the Middle Age.
To the migrant Visigoths and Vandals (also used today as a term of abuse) we owe the abolition of gladiatorial “games” and much else, whilst the generally ignored Twelth Century Renaissance imported via Spain Arabic knowledge. The Troubadours have bequeathed us our concept of Romantic Love which informs centuries of poetry and prose.
“NOTTHATWEWOULDBEALLTHATCOMFORTABLEREADINGINTHECLASSICALROMANWAYNORHANDLINGINTERMINABLYLONGSCROLLSBECAUSETHESPINEDBOOKWEALSOOWETOTHEMIDDLEAGES
Just demonstrating that reading as the Romans were used to would not be so easy.”
Well, yes, quite. Nobody would write like that now. But that misses the obvious distinction between the capital letter forms themselves, unsurpassed for over two millennia, and the way in which they’re presented.
But I’m not particularly bigging up the Romans over the Middle Ages, and I agree they’re a fascinating period.
Quite how relevant this is to socialism I’m not sure, apart from the Morris connection and the fact that in a socialist society we’d have more time to appreciate the good things of the past (if we were interested in looking back).
No real relevance, except for Morris’ appreciation of the colour and beauty of medieval decor and the belief that, take away classes, wars, subordination and plagues, Morris saw the positives in the medieval as an ambience many people in socialism would wish to emulate: beautiful books and buildings, woodland and forest, bright colours.
But the topic was opened as a migration from the Coronavirus topic, where P. Shannon equated “medieval” with a “total loss of knowledge.” I felt bound to respond against such ill-informedness and repetition of school-history-textbook prejudice.
Fair enough. It’s maybe unfortunate that the word ‘medieval’ as a derogatory term is pretty much in common usage. But I suspect many people who use the word casually don’t really think the Middle Ages were all bad, it’s just one of those expressions whose meanings have become skewed and is maybe not to be taken too literally.
The Saracens were shocked and amazed at the smell, habits, medical ignorance etc. of the European crusaders. Is this not a testament to the loss of material culture after the Roman withdrawal from Northern Europe in the 5th century that instigated the ‘Dark Age’ and continued into the Medieval period?
Scroll down for a list of links to the falsehoods we believe about the Middle Ages, including hygiene.
Think you wouldn’t have hated the smell of Victorian times and people, or of innumerable people and places today?
Maligning 1,000 years of human generations and individuals is extreme arrogance.
Also this echoes the presumption that these centuries were static and not vibrant and as alive and moving as all times are.
TM – Once again in your revisionist fervor you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nobody is claiming that we should ‘malign 1,000 years of human generations’ or that ‘these centuries were static and not vibrant’ but the loss of some material culture after the Roman withdrawal is undeniable. Many historians still support Gibbon’s contention that Christianity was one of the most reactionary ideologies that the world has ever suffered and that it helped to destroy Rome and inhibited cultural development in Northern Europe in contrast to Muslim culture etc. Cultural development is not smooth and progressive in all societies at all times as your statement ‘alive and moving’ would suggest.
I agree with you about Christianity. Change of culture is not the same as loss of culture, and I consider medieval culture very rich and admirable.
The destruction of the great libraries was indeed the biggest of disasters, but you can’t blame the Middle Ages for that, nor the “barbarians”, but the common people of the East Roman Empire themselves, egged on by their own home-grown Christian fanatics.
I’m not denying that the Saracens were better bathed than the west Europeans, but I seem to remember that it was the Christian Romans (Byzantines) who called the Crusaders smelly (?)
At least we can take comfort in the ancient Romans being well-groomed whilst they committed genocide here and there and enslaved entire populations. Good ol’ soap and water! 🙂
TM – I think it was rather more than just personal hygiene that was lost but also medical science, philosophy, astronomy, many technologies etc. Historians make the point that it was the cultural encounter with the Muslims during the crusades (Spain as well as the Levant) that enabled Medieval Culture in Northern Europe to begin to flourish culminating a few centuries later in the Renaissance. Phrases like: Medieval, Renaissance and The Dark Ages have become very unfashionable but I think it is important to emphasize that history does not always develop smoothly and progressively if only because this was one of the great erroneous criticisms of Marxism.
The Muslims had also occupied the Iberian peninsula since the 8th century, driving the 12th century renaissance, moving through Provence (which Marx called the Garden of Europe) and down into Italy before most of the Crusades. There was a deep dichotomy between north and south Christendom, with the north being despised by medieval southerners for its bare cathedrals, excessive piety and cultural “inferiority” to the medieval south. The Albigensian Crusade of 1209-44 was the northern response, allied with the papacy, to this contempt for religiosity on the part of the southern medieval lands, above all the Provencal-speaking ones.
Centres of cultural co-operation included Aragon, Catalonia, the Languedoc and Norman Sicily, where religious faiths worked in alliance to build Sicily’s cathedrals (see Dark Ages, Age of Light). The principalities of Toulouse and Aquitaine and the Kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon gave protection to Jews, Muslims and “heretics”, and employed many as advisors. The border between Moors and Christians was frequently fluid, and Sephardic culture blossomed.
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