37 pages • 1 hour read
William ManchesterA World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Faith Versus Reason
Manchester casts the tension between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance as one in which faith is in conflict with reason. The pursuit of reason requires that any claim or proposition be subjected to logical inquiry based on evidence. If there is enough evidence to support the proposition, it can be viewed as true or factual. If there is not enough evidence to merit its acceptance as truth, then the claim is discarded or refined prior to further evaluation. But faith as dictated by the Church was not subject to questioning. The pope’s edicts were unassailable and expected to be taken as true at face value since the pope delivered God’s messages. In this arrangement, to reason was to argue both with the pope and with God. For instance, Leonardo’s vaunted curiosity was praised until it revealed truths that were potentially at odds with scriptural precepts.
Luther’s theses were the result of his reasoning with the Church’s behavior, rather than his mute acceptance that his own understanding was incomplete. The Church’s resistance to change was one of its greatest strengths until skeptics and reformers began to reason that this very resistance was the Church’s greatest weakness. The Church increasingly found itself in indefensible doctrinal positions and was forced to double down in order to save face, rather than admit that papal bulls could be subject to revision.
The Importance of the Individual
During the Dark Ages, Manchester states that personal ego was not a reality. The artists had little sense of self. Everything that was produced was either for survival or to glorify the Church. The legendary cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build have unknown architects. Who built them was less important than why they were built—as monuments to God. The longing to express one’s own views or feelings was, in Manchester’s view, non-existent given that one was unlikely to hold opinions that ran contrary to the Vatican’s orders. Without individuals imagining how a society, church, or organization could be better, the possibility of progress is small. Luther’s defiance gave people more ability to think for themselves, which in turn led to them evaluating their own actions and relationships with the Church. This freedom led to the emergence of new leaders, new schools of thoughts, and new solutions to old problems. This expression culminates with the voyages of Magellan, who acted out of a desire for heroism and a genuine love of exploration and discovery.
The Power of Education and Literacy
When Gutenberg introduced the printing press in 1457, approximately half of Europe was considered “illiterate” (97). The religious order considered Latin the only true language of God, and those who could not understand it were considered illiterate. Prior to the invention of the printing press, the "medieval mind" focused primarily on daily life and did not have room to question the papacy. When the Bible became accessible to the populace in their own languages, the common people had the ability to hold the religious leaders accountable. They were also able to see the inherent hypocrisy in how society operated, understanding how the clergy had been driven by greed, not God, in offering and collection indulgences.
By 1516, the Vatican council tried to squelch the rise in literacy in education but failed. The rise of the printing press, and subsequently literacy and education, gave "heretics" (122) such as Erasmus and Martin Luther the ability to disseminate ideas that went against religious doctrine. The "medieval mind" changed to accept reason and the concept of the self. Similarly, the people became empowered as literacy spread along with new ideas—ideas which questioned Europe's self-appointed leaders.
