Toto

The discusion on the Flat Earth and Amadeo's historical posts have been split off here since they have veered a little too far from the OP.

Clivedurdle

Are not the tales of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur

a touchstone for defining the Dark Ages? They are not stories like Caesar and Cleopatra, but rather tawdry damp tales of the forest?

There is no trace of huge empires battling it out over centuries, of leaders being killed by pouring gold down their throats or Emperors lamenting the loss of three legions.

Slight difference of scale - emperors and warlords! No cities the size of Rome!

Amedeo

The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are not synonymous terms. As a historical period, some historians close the Middle Ages with the discovery of America at the end of the 15th century, for demographic reasons I mentioned much earlier. In that case, the M.A. overlaps with the Italian Renaissance, which started at the beginning of the 14th century.

The term "dark ages" bespeaks of the quality of the Middle Ages (which started with the defeat of paganism in 312). But in the chronological period of 312-1492, Europe was certainly not equally dark, and it is not the case that nothing bright occurred.

What was bright in, or what was the enlightnment of, the Middles Ages? Certainly not the "culture" compiled by someone under the name of "Twelveth Century Renaissance." Here are the major things that brought light into the darkness:

-- The classics and the new arithmetic which the Muslims brought into Europe (translated into Latin especially by Gerardo of Cremona, and, in the case of arithmetic, pursued mainly by the Italians: Cardano, Pacioli, Fibonacci, et al.) The classics were absorbed by the Medieval theologians, and a few theologians developed a few natural-philosophy themes and logic/language themes. By the way, the universities of Europe, where there occurred the 12th century revival of learning, were theological universities. The secular university started and developed in Italy, where, for example, many Europeans went to study in the 15th century. The great theological universities of France and England were not teaching philosophy, mathematics, medicine, law, etc. etc.

-- The pointed-arch architecture which the crusaders brought back home from the Palestinian Arabs and was developed in France to start with and, later in Germany and England, by building upon the previously dominant Romanesque architecture. (It had been introduced earlier in Sicily by the Muslims themselves, just as they had done in Spain.) [What was later called "gothic" architecture was originally called Francogenic architecture. "Gothic" or "barbaric" was the Italian term because of its primitive structuring: the use of external buttresses to hold up the roof-supporting walls.] The uniqueness of Francogenic architecture was due to an abbot's theory of God as light, wherefore he wanted to create churches with extensive windows, in order to create a paradisiacal environment for the church attenders. (The objective did not really hinge upon the pointed-arch system of architecture, but it historically did and was successful at that.)

-- One thing that was cultivated by the Church was church music. Right at the beginning of the Dark Ages, there was the foundation of the diversified Ambrosian music [4th century] in northern Italy. Then the Beneventan school of music was developed in sounthern Italy after the Longobard invasion and settlement. And from the 9th century on, there began to be polyphonic music, first evinced in Spain and then highly developed especially in France and England. In the 12th century, the major theorist of music and teacher was the monk Guido d'Arezzo (from whom we still have the names of the notes, Ut [Do], Re, Mi, Fa, etc.)

-- In Provence there arose, in the 11th-12th century, the troubadours, of whom I spoke: poets in the vernacular language who composed and performed the music for the poems. [They are lute and voice compositions.] They instituted what was later called "Romantic Love" or "Courtly love" -- which would take too long to explain here.// Music spread into the then kingdom of France, north of Provence, and the poet-composers were called trouveres. Their monophony grew alonside the ecclesiatical polyphony. So, in the 13th century, France surpassed all countries in the creation of music. [Creation, not revival.]

-- The growth of the Arthurian literature (which you just referred to) was mainly in France, Germany, and England. It is largely a literature, practically all poetic, of chivalry either in a Romantic-love framework or in a Christian esoteric framework . Before the rise of this literature, there were many Arthurian tales. As a matter of fact, even before Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote of Arthur in his famous history of England, tales circulated even in Italy -- probably brought there by the Normans of Normady (before 1066). The gate-arch of a cathedral in Modena (sculpted right after the news that Jerusalem had been rescued -- occupied -- by the Crusaders, in 1098) depicts, at the center, a lady {Gueneviere} in distress in a castle, and knights, on both sides, going to rescue her. They were led by a chief whose name was incised, "Artu`". In the later literature, it is usually Lancelot, the Romantic knight, that rescues Arthur's wife. (Lancelot is what the troubadours were with respect to the king's or count's wife.)

No Robots

You forgot the mystics. See The Flowering of Mysticism: The Friends of God in the Fourteenth Century, by Rufus Matthew Jones.

Amedeo

I may have forgotten more than that! Meanwhile, why don't you expand a bit on mysticism [which has actually always interested me]?

No Robots

Rufus Jones, an American Quaker, is the best writer I know on the subject. I have a quotation from him that summarizes his position here.

Here is what Constantin Brunner has to say:

In point of fact there are two kinds sorts of mysticism, differing from one another as the ranting of drunkards from the language of illumined spirits. There is the muddled, stammering mysticism, and there is the mysticism luminous with truly ultimate ideas. On the one hand there are the empty dimness and darkness, the barren, chilling sentimentalism and mental debauchery, the foolishly grimacing but rigid phantasms of the Cabbala, of occultism, mysteriosophy and theosophy. We cannot draw too sharp a dividing line between these and the brightness, the simple sincerity, and healthy, rejuvenating strength of genuine mysticism, which takes the most precious gems from philosophy's treasure chest and displays them in the beauty of its own setting. Mysticism is in complete accord with the result, with the sum of philosophy. In fact, mysticism is precisely the sum and the soul of philosophy, in the form of that rapturous, passionate outpouring of love.... We are concerned with an understanding of this serious mysticism, and its meaning could be stated in three words... godlessness... freedom from the world... blessedness of soul.--Brunner, Our Christ, p.1-5

Amedeo

But then, who are the mystics of the second kind during the Middle Ages??? Offhand I can only think of Francis of Assisi. And it just happens that the Franciscan theologian, Bonaventura, is an "intellectual mystic" in the sense that he speaks of the soul as being able to ascend into God, as his Itinerarium in Deum specifically illustrates. (He also understands the world as an allegory of the divine Trinity -- showing its traces and image -- wherefore the ascent is threefold. He expounds the ascent of the intellect and the will/love but does not clearly see the third way, which would be artistic/esthetic.) But the Francescan mysticism (either Francis' rapture or Bonaventura's philosophy) does not include and is actually contrary to "freedom from the world." So, I cannot think of a single instance of Brunner's "authentic mysticism."

Meanwhile, we may have to think of a third kind of (medieval) mysticism, which we might call "prophetic mysticism," since in his Divine Comedy, Dante refers to Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202), my Calabrese compatriot, as "... Giacchino / di profetico spirito dodato" (Joachim, endowed with prophetic spirit). He founded a religious Order. I am not sufficiently familiar with his mind, but one of the things I know is that the envisioned and described human history in terms of the Age of the Father, which started with creation; the Age of the Son, which started with the incarnation of the Word in Jesus, and the Age of the Spirit, which will start after the cataclismic end of the world. His is a "prophetic Catholic historiography."

Looking backwards, I see that before the year 1000, there developed in Christendom, a kind of prophetic or apocalyptic mysticism (or esoterism), which rested on doing penance because of the approaching end of the world, predicted to be in the year 1000. (The American Rev. Falwell -- not a penitential person, to be sure -- predicted the end for the year 2000, but when interviewed on TV after Jan. 1, 2000, he explained that actually, according to some calculations, the millennium starts in 2001. Recently he died a natural death.)

Before 1000, there were penitential processions in the streets, and they used whips to punish each other for their sins. They are called the flagellants.
Some of the processions of these firm believers (who paid heed to Jesus' idea that if your eyes are occasions of sin, plug them out, and his prophesy of the imminent end of the world) must have been macabre. Not less macabre must have been the ox-drawn cars in Florence which carried corpses in mid 14th century great plague. The drivers would chant hymns as they impersonated Death, so that "the Triumph of Death" was created. (It was customary to have "triumphs" in Renaissance festivals in Florence, namely cars or floats with the representations of the Virtues, of Classical gods, etc., in parades.) There are many pictures of all sorts of "triumphs." In those days, even a card "game of triumphs" was created (which became a "trump" game in old England). And since the then-Italian playing cards were tarocchi [tarot cards, invented for the Visconti counts of Milan], the picture cards of the tarocchi started to get called "triumphs" or trump cards. In the extant Visconti-Sforza tarocchi, the 13th of these trump cards is "Death". (Much later, gypsies grabbed tarot packs for fortune telling.)

I think tarocchi players [OF THE RENAISSANCE] are more interesting than the desperate flagellants [OF THE DARK AGES]. There are even Renaissance wall paintings of ladies and gentlemen playing tarocchi. Chess games and card games (originally imported from the Islamic world in different periods) became typical Renaissance diversions. In Italy, humor started with taunting verses which made up a "stambotto" (the "estribot" that originated in Provence). Later on, this became a poem of love or grief whose hendecasyllabic verses were then systematically used in the Divine Comedy.

Clivedurdle

But the tales of Arthur are Medieval tales looking back to an alleged golden age in the dark ages!

A warlord and his magician in the damp forests reduced from Rome with toilets and running waters and vast legions.

Early Grimm!

Is it not agreed we are looking at a massive economic recession over several centuries that had glimmers of recovery but did not really get going until after the black death and the mongols?

Amedeo

It's a fascinating subject to delve into: An art-work of one Age whose subject matter belongs to another Age!

A long time ago, I was impressed by the fact that Homer's "Iliad" is at the threshold of the Classical Culture Age [for too many reasons to explain here], but it is about exploits of Heroic Age. {{Vico sees the first cycle of [actually] Greek history in terms of the Age of Gods, the Age of Heroes/Warlords, and the Age of Men -- as the protagonists of history.}}

The same thing happened in Italy: Dante's "Divine Comedy" is at the threshold of the Renaissance [or second Age of Men], but it is about the medieval/Christian World. Two other great poetical works, which most people are not familiar with, are Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" and Tasso's [translated as] "Jerusalem Delivered" -- which are the equivalent of "historical novels" about the affairs and world of the Crusaders. (These two books provide many plots for many operas before the 19th century.) Whereas some Arthurian stories are about the love and chivalry of people at Arthur's court or times, Ariosto's work is packed with stories of chivalrous love between gallant crusaders and paladins on one hand, and beautiful Saracen ladies, lady-soldiers, and sourceresses on the other. (There is a syncretism of Carolingian tales and crusaders tales.)

The rise of literature in the national/ethnic languages -- Provenzal, French, German, Italian, etc., out of a Europe whose literature was in Latin -- is one aspect of a RENOVATION (a term an Italian historian used and I mentioned, which is wider than "renaissance"). {In Italy, the Renovation comprised new political constitutions -- republics and free communes -- and the new "national" language and literature, before the 14th century.}

Amedeo

Brief Outline of Historical Cosmography
(a reference page for the curious)

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...38#post4789083