A remarkable thing happened in the High Middle Ages (1100-1300). Europeans rediscovered philosophical and scientific texts from the ancient world that had been lost since the fall of Rome. These texts were brought back to Europe and translated into Latin, sparking a renaissance of learning. How did this happen? How did the spread of Classical Knowledge change medieval Europe as a result?
Classical Knowledge Definition
What is classical knowledge? Simply stated, it is the scholarly output of ancient Greece and Rome scholars, particularly in philosophy, science, law, and mathematics. Some of the most essential classical scholars to medieval Europeans included Plato, Aristotle, and Tertullian. The codified Roman Law under Byzantine Emperor Justinian was also crucial to medieval scholars.
Classical Texts and the Study of Magic
Classical knowledge also included texts on academic magic. There were two types of academic magic: the first was "natural magic," which sought to harness magical properties from natural things such as stones or the stars to uncover information about the future or unlock the secrets of the universe. Fields of study using academic magic included astrology and astronomy. The second type of academic magic was demonic, which involved conjuring demons for various purposes, such as seeing the future or learning the secrets of the dead. Demonic magic included the fields of necromancy and divination.
Western Europe lost most of its classical texts after the fall of Rome in the fifth century. The learning culture centered on the western Roman Empire deteriorated into a largely rural, aggressive way of life that had no use for learned texts. While it never wholly entered a "Dark Ages," urban areas collapsed under political and economic upheaval, making the early Middle Ages difficult to endure. There was no time for philosophy when you were fighting to survive.
The exception, of course, was the Church. Monasteries were havens for men and women to spend time in religious contemplation. They were also places where monks read and created manuscripts. They controlled access to learning during the Early Middle Ages and, in some cases, preserved classical texts. Many monasteries had a scriptorium, which was a place where ancient writings were both studied and transcribed into new manuscripts.
Fig. 1 Vincent of Beauvais in a Scriptorium from the manuscript Speculum Historiale
Spread of Classical Knowledge
Rebranded as the Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire prevailed in the East after the fifth century. The Byzantine culture was a mix of Greek and Roman, and it remained a custodian of both ancient learned traditions until the Empire's decline in the fifteenth century.
Fig. 2 Byzantine Emperor Justinian
Roman law was codified in Byzantium by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, and it is from his codes that much of European law is based today.
An additional custodian of ancient learnings was the Islamic Empire, particularly in the Iberian peninsula (modern-day Spain). There, Muslim scientists and philosophers built upon Greek and Roman learned traditions and produced innovative work in the emerging field of medicine. For example, Islamic physician Avicenna wrote a medical encyclopedia, a standard text at most medieval European universities, grounded in ancient philosophical and scientific sources.
How did classical knowledge spread back to Europe?
Three significant factors prompted the cultural exchange that enabled classical knowledge to reenter Europe:
Agricultural Revolution of the Eleventh Century
After short summers and bad harvests, the weather suddenly improved between 800 and 1300. Longer, warmer summers increased food yields, creating more financial security and a market economy where people could sell their surplus goods. In light of these more favorable conditions, agricultural innovations to increase surplus and efficiency developed. More food meant that the population grew and, with it, a demand for increased trade. People began to return to urban centers to meet these demands, sparking a commercial revolution.
Commercial Revolution of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
More food stimulated population growth, stimulating demand for trade specialization and more goods. Towns and cities, especially along the Mediterranean, rose to meet this demand and flourished. Venice, for example, established trade routes between Europe and many of the world's cultural centers in the late tenth century, including Constantinople, Alexandria, and the Islamic strongholds in North Africa and Tunis. This vigorous trade caused the Italian city-states to reach population sizes not seen in other regions until much later.
The Crusades
The Crusades also stimulated the commercial revolution. Many Italian city-states financed Crusaders and received profits from the spoils of war. Plunder was also a lucrative form of cultural exchange resulting from the wars. Italian merchants often accompanied Crusaders on campaigns to identify treasures to bring back to Europe, including holy relics and ancient texts. When Crusaders sacked the city of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, they transferred a vast amount of preserved classical knowledge to Europe.
The famed Shroud of Turin in Italy was one relic brought to Europe due to the Crusades.
Unfortunately, the Byzantine Empire never fully recovered from the crushing blow dealt by the Crusades, and its power waned soon after.
Fig. 3 the Second Crusade
Classical Knowledge Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
Because of the commercial revolution and the Crusades, twelfth-century Europe saw what is often called a renaissance of learning and culture by historians. Charles Homer Haskins first brought forward this argument in 1928. He stated that,
[The 12th century in Europe] was in many respects an age of fresh and vigorous life. The epoch of the Crusades of the rise of towns, and of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West, it saw the culmination of Romanesque art and the beginnings of Gothic; the emergence of the vernacular literatures; the revival of the Latin classics and of Latin poetry and Roman law; the recovery of Greek science, with its Arabic additions, and of much of Greek philosophy; and the origin of the first European universities. The 12th century left its signature on higher education, on the scholastic philosophy, on European systems of law, on architecture and sculpture, on the liturgical drama, and on Latin and vernacular poetry."1
Haskins gave credit for this Renaissance to the educational system developed within the Catholic Church, which directly led to the establishment of the first universities by the late twelfth century. From monastic schools rose urban cathedrals and bishop academies, which brought flocks of scholars and masters to urban centers such as Bologna and Paris to seek the newly translated classical texts and implement them in medicine, law, and philosophy. Finally, the universities rose from the Cathedral and Bishop schools as hallowed institutions of higher learning and scholarly study.
Historian Richard Southern built upon Haskins' work to argue that the twelfth century saw an emergence of a civilizing process for medieval Europeans. Access to classical knowledge allowed the rise of new respect for the humanities and focused less on warfare and violence and more on cultivating the learned individual.
Historians also argue that the twelfth century saw an emergence of individualism previously attributed to the sixteenth century with the rise of humanism. The rediscovery of Aristotle's works brought an understanding of the individual as a political power source. This line of thinking would profoundly impact the development of political science as a study and a practice.
Importance and Impacts of the Spread of Classical Knowledge
The reentry of classical texts into Medieval Europe shaped its course in many different ways. It prompted interest in academic learning and the rise of universities, established new approaches to the practice of law and politics, and combined ancient philosophy with contemporary theological thought to produce innovative new philosophical developments.
Fig. 4 Gravestone of Bartoluzzo de'Preti
Education
The return of classical knowledge to Europe prompted an unprecedented interest in pursuing scholarly study. So many people flocked to Cathedral schools in cities such as Bologna, Paris, and Oxford that they began to organize themselves as guilds to regulate curriculum, the number of students, and teacher salaries. When conflicts arose between the students and surrounding townsfolk, kings issued them charters granting formal protections and land in which to build the universities that we know today.
Scholasticism
Classical knowledge also inspired learned men such as Peter Abelard to develop a new form of teaching called scholasticism, which uses two or more opposing viewpoints to uncover the truth through debate. Today's universities still employ this technique. Scholasticism was immensely popular in the medieval world, inspiring such important thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, whose thoughts on the relationship between faith and reason profoundly shaped Catholic Church doctrine.
Fig. 5 St Thomas Aquinas
Scholasticism resurrected teachings from the Greek paideia. Paideia is a Greek term for the education needed to produce an ideal state member. These consisted of the following subjects:
- The Quadrivium ("Four ways") was considered the foundation for the study of theology and philosophy:
- arithmetic
- music
- geometry
- astronomy
- The Trivium ("Three ways") was taught as preparatory subjects before the quadrivium and is considered the foundation of both classical and modern education. The study of law has roots in the Trivium:
These curricula assemble the "seven liberal arts" that influenced European universities' core studies from the Middle Ages until today.
Law
Historians argue that a growing interest in pursuing rationalism, a trait entrenched in Roman law, developed due to the spread of Classical knowledge in Europe during the twelfth century. The development of Roman Law supplemented the early medieval practice of customary law that arose from barbarian societies to make it more logical and autocratic. The University of Bologna, established by royal charter in 1158, was the center for studying Roman Law. From there, legal reform spread throughout Europe. Napoleonic law was based on Roman Law and is still present in Continental European legal systems today.
Philosophy and Theology
In the medieval imagination, philosophy and theology were the same, as most philosophers were clergy. Using the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Tertullian and prominent theologians such as Augustine of Hippo, these twelfth-century theologian-philosophers tackled questions relating to the relationship between faith and reason.
Some scholars used logic to analyze church doctrine, as Peter Abelard did with his controversial work Sic et Non (Yes and No). He believed that logical analysis could point out and correct contradictions made by past masters of theological discourse. Unfortunately, his experiment backfired because it embarrassed the Church by pointing out its inner contradictions. As a result, the Church condemned Abelard and ordered the book to be burnt.
This episode showcases the conflict the established Church dealt with concerning the availability of classical knowledge in this period. It wrestled with what new ideas to accept and what ideas were potentially harmful to its position as a spiritual and political European leader. This conflict would only worsen with the development of humanistic thought in the sixteenth century, which was the forerunner of the philosophical and theological developments that created the Protestant Reformation.
Classical Knowledge - Key takeaways
- During the High Middle Ages (1000-1300), texts from ancient Greece and Rome returned to Europe. They sparked what historians call the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, an age of scholarly pursuits that resulted in the founding of universities throughout Europe.
- Classical knowledge returned to Europe through Byzantium and the Islamic Empire, which preserved classic texts.
- Trade routes and the Crusades fostered cross-cultural exchange, bringing the texts back to be translated into Latin and studied by European scholars.
- The impact of classical knowledge's spread in medieval Europe is vast.
- Rediscovery of Roman law reformed legal practices at both national and local levels.
- Educational methods were transformed into the educational practices we use today.
- Concepts of humanism and individualism began to take shape.
References
- Haskins, Charles Homer, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, 1928.
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