A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance

Manchester begins by stating that, while some historians reject the term “Dark Ages”—used to delineate the six centuries between 400 and 1000 C.E.—he believes that it is appropriate. He describes the intellectually dead Europe of the period as “a mélange of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness” (3).

Europe was experiencing difficulties, which had begun with the fall of Rome, 100 years before its real death in the 5th century. Rome had expanded its empire until it had to protect a 10,000-mile border. Huns and various barbaric tribes of Visigoth warriors constantly attacked the border. Eventually Rome was sacked, and warlords ravaged the country. Europe regressed into what would be known as the Dark Ages, which would prove relentlessly bleak. Famines and plague, culminating in the Black Death and its recurring pandemics, repeatedly thinned the population. Rickets afflicted the survivors. Extraordinary climatic changes brought storms and floods, which turned into major disasters because the empire’s drainage system, like most of the imperial infrastructure, was no longer functioning.

Most of the people lived in small villages that they rarely left, creating small, insular societies with little knowledge of the dialects, cultures, or lives of people in nearby towns. However, many towns did share the Catholic faith. The Church had little success in teaching the clansmen and barbarian tribes, but great success in baptizing and converting them.

Death was a part of daily life. There were hundreds of offenses requiring the death penalty, despite the fact that nearly everyone was Christian. Mass conversion began around 500 C.E. but the new converts did not understand their new faith well. The practice of pagan rites persisted, including sacrifice, which angered the Christian missionaries and Constantine, the emperor who had forbidden any faith but Christianity.

Manchester shows, however, that Christianity has more in common with paganism than its followers would like to admit. Pagan philosophers often point out that the gospels contradict one another. They also note how the creation account in Genesis assumes a “plurality of Gods” (9), as does paganism: “Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential Christian of his time, bore a deep distrust of the intellect and declared that the pursuit of knowledge, unless sanctified by a holy mission, was a pagan act and therefore vile” (9). How, Manchester asks, could a society in which the pursuit of knowledge is seen as vile, become anything but ignorant and deserving of the name the Dark Ages?

Christian emperors and luminaries singled out lust as particularly loathsome, despite the pagans’ practice of fertility rites and their adoration of Aphrodite, Cupid, Hymen, and Venus. But overall, the empire is Christian. Princes and Kings owe their titles to divine right. In order to become a knight, one must first pray for days at an altar for Christ’s grace:

Christianity was in turn infiltrated, and to a considerable extent subverted, by the paganism it was supposed to destroy. Medieval men simply could not bear to part with Thor, Hermes, Zeus, Juno, Cronus, Saturn, and their peers. Idol worship addressed needs the Church could not meet(11).

Gradually, the Church replaced pagan holidays like Saturnalia, the Floralia, and Lupercalia with the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas, and Pentecost. Christians tried to do the same thing with pagan rites, altering them and hoping their original forms would die out, but it never happened.

Manchester points out early Christians condemned idol worship and sainthood were condemned but were later swayed when idols were made of Catholics who had become canonized as saints. Idols made sense to pagans. They had long been worshippers of relics in the image of their gods, which pagans believed were invested with power.

Manchester poses a question about the state of European society: “Was the medieval world a civilization, comparable to Rome before it or to the modern era which followed? If by civilization one means a society which has reached a relatively high level of cultural and technological development, the answer is no” (15). However, the medieval world did have its own structures and institutions that would evolve slowly out of the ruins of the Roman empire: “The interregnum was the worst of times for the imaginative, the cerebral, and the unfortunate, but the strong, the healthy, the shrewd, the handsome, the beautiful—and the lucky—flourished” (16).

No one was luckier or more powerful than royalty. In pagan tribes, the men chose their kings and chieftains, who were typically heroes on the battlefield. When a pagan ruler converted to Christianity, his men followed him to the baptismal font. All of the rulers' successors from that point on were crowned by the priesthood, leading to the idea of ruling by Divine Right. Essentially, God ordained kings: “In another age, so shocking a split would have created a crisis among the faithful, but there was no room in the medieval mind for doubt; the possibility of skepticism simply did not exist” (20).

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem had philosophized that whatever most men believe must be true. What most men believed under the Catholic Church of the time was that anything outside of Christianity was evil and must be destroyed: “'Outside the church there is no salvation.' Any other finding would have been inconceivable. Catholicism had thus found its greatest strength in total resistance to change” (20). Because the Church was seen as perfect, it was also seen as incapable of reform.

Manchester defines the medieval mind as being without ego: “Even those with creative powers had no sense of self” (21). He cites various cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build, but whose architects are unknown. The glory of an architect meant nothing as the buildings were created to glorify God. Beyond the title-holding nobles, few people even had last names. Communication between towns was difficult given the absence of newspapers and the illiteracy of the populace: “Their anonymity approached the absolute. So did their mute acceptance of it” (22).

By the early 1400s, what would come to be known as the Renaissance was commencing. A group of explorers, writers, painters, astronomers, and cartographers were starting to create and expand their work in ways that would bring great changes to the "medieval mind."