[Bill Ferny]

In practice, in many ways it could have produced very humane results, and the high-medieval period whatever the downtroddeness of certain classes, in places, at times, saw tremendous growth and properity.

An excellent observation! However, from my study of European Medieval culture and society, I would take this a step further. Below is a portion of an article I recently wrote, much abridged and edited for the purposes of this thread, that touch on the modern prejudice against Medieval European culture and society:

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In more ways than one would expect, medieval society was more humane than modern society. Part of the problem is a misunderstanding on the part of modern historians regarding the medieval world view. Moderns take for granted that self-government (democracy, or in our failed attempts at democracy, representative republic), individualism and equality are necessary for a humane society. This, though, comes from two centuries of indoctrination. The merits of self-government and human equality (though I believe there is little if any merit to modern individualism), is not the scope of this essay, but we moderns must come to terms with the fact that in many regards our societies often fail in regard to these two sanctimonious virtues. Perhaps human nature, itself, is the reason. Regardless, self-government, individualism, and equality were notions absent from Medieval Europe, but in no wise were humane societies absent. A fitting description of the medieval world view was penned by Georges Duby, in his book William Marshal; The Flower of Chivalry (132):

This society, as we know, was conceived by thinking men at the end of the twelfth century as they conceived the whole of the visible and invisible universe: cemented by what the clerks called caritas and the language of the courts amitíe, sustained by “faith,” another key word evoking a combination of confidence and fidelity. On this affective relation, generating certain rights and duties, rested the coherence of a hierarchical structure consisting of super-imposed layers; everything was in order, according to God’s intentions, when men established at a certain level lived together in harmony, served faithfully, loyally, those who were their immediate superiors, and received suitable service from those who were their immediate inferiors. Order thus appeared based on the intermingled notion of inequality, service, and loyalty… These different systems of dependence often intersected, their arrangements were sometimes contradictory, but always the friendship that obliged mutual service, counsel, and assistance was deployed on two perpendicular axes: horizontally, it maintained peace among peers; veritcally, it compelled reverence above oneself, benevolence below.

(Emphasis in bold was added by me.) The later is an absolutely crucial point that moderns should take care to note. Medieval feudal society depended not only on upward reverence, but downward benevolence. Even the most lowly of villeins on the feudal manor were regarded as indispensable assets to the livelihood of the land holding baron. Their welfare directly affected the baron’s welfare. A starving villein was not fit for tilling the ground; a mistreated free-man craftsman was apt to neglect his work, or worse rebel; a cheated merchant would become a baron’s worst nightmare, and the baron may find himself banned by a entire guild or even an entire commune.

Rightly, much has been written about the warrior society of Medieval Europe. However, an over-emphasis of this facet of medieval life can be incredibly misconstruing. The bravado the medieval baron, who was principally a warrior, demonstrated was indeed real. Mixed with the medieval religious emphasis on pilgrimage and physical sanctity, it helped to produce the Crusades in all its many manifestations. On the other hand, in a world dominated by land economy, the barons were apt to demonstrate a large degree of common sense that is completely missed by over-emphasizing their warrior role in society. The baron knew that his ability to maintain and increase his wealth hinged not primarily on his martial efforts, but on his husbandry of the land. This fact is clearly evident in Magna Carta, which demonstrates that most barons were rather reluctant to go off and fight foreign wars for their king. This husbandry consisted in efficient and personal administration on the part of the baron, which included to seeing to the welfare of not only his crops and production, but to the welfare of the laborers responsible for the productivity of his land.

As a result, destitution was absent from the typical fief, barring the occasional natural disaster, in which case everyone, including more often than not the baron and his household, shared the burden. Beggars were common in cities, but are absent from the rural fiefs. Even the beggars in the cities benefited from an established system of largesse, the medieval version of philanthropy. In the service of the typical baron’s chancellor was the almoner whose principle responsibility was seeing to the distribution of offerings to the poor. This 13th century manual (translated by H.T. Turner, in Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centures ,123) explains the duties of the king’s almoner:

He ought visit for charity’s sake the sick, the lepers, the captives, the poor, the widows and others in want and the wanderers in the countryside, and to receive discarded horses, clothing, money and other gifts, bestowed in alms, and to distribute them faithfully. He ought also by frequent exhortations to spur the king to liberal almsgiving, especially on saint’s days, and to implore him not to bestow his robes, which are of great price, upon players, flatterers, fawners, talebearers, or minstrels, but to command them to be used to augment his almsgiving.

The Medieval world did not have the United Way, but every family, not only the wealthy, but even modest burghers took almsgiving very seriously. To be sure there were varying degrees of generosity, but generosity, itself, was a defining virtue of medieval life that is becoming more and more a lost virtue in the modern world. Generosity was not just a custom, a tax break, or a random act of kindness, but was underpinned by serious religious beliefs, thus taking a central place in the everyday life of medieval people.

Poverty is a rather relative term. In the medieval world poverty among the villeins was not something that belonged to individuals, but to communities, and was caused, not by a lack of benevolence from above, but more often than not from natural causes such as plague, fire, flood or famine. In the rural fiefs, villeins met at intervals in assemblies called bylaws, in which they discussed means to overcome problems, to identify those who needed assistance, and ways in which to make life together more commodious by assigning labor and responsibilities. Bylaws were not governed by the manor lord or any of his household staff, but by the villeins, themselves, according to long standing custom and common sense. Matters were not decided by vote, but by unanimous consent. Individual nay-sayers swallowed their arguments for the sake of the community. In this there is more democracy than any modern representative republic! Commenting on the sixteenth century emergence of capitalist farming in England, the changing of the villeins into wage laborers, historian R.H. Tawney observes: “Villeinage ceases but the Poor Laws begin.”

The burghers of the medieval city also commanded a larger degree of humane treatment to the surprise of the modern observer. City charters, often hard won from the barons, none-the-less insured a surprising degree of liberty for the craftsman and laborer without them having any degree of self-government. Communes established liberties whereby craftsmen and merchants could band together in guilds to protect both the integrity of their trade, prices, and their personal well being. Upward mobility, long thought to be the sole prerogative of latter centuries, was not only present, but common in the medieval world. A simple hod carrier could rise through the ranks of the masons to become a master cathedral builder; skilled masons often lived more comfortable lives than many landed barons in the countryside; a glass blower could become a sought out artist to provide stained glass for cathedrals, castles, wealthy homes, or palaces; cobblers, tanners and (more commonly) wool merchants by the merits of their skill and financial savvy alone could become wealthy enough to purchase land and title (and by virtue of title, knighthood) of their own, thus achieving a higher social status. As in all times and places, personal achievement in the medieval world was dictated by an individual’s skill, energy and commitment. All in all, upward mobility in modern societies may seem more achievable in comparison, but in reality it is no more or less common in the medieval world as it is in our own.

Medieval education often takes the brunt of modern ridicule. While the ridicule is unfair (for there were many scientific theories in the 19th century that are laughable in comparison to 20th century knowledge), education was, typically, rigid and uncompromising, conforming to the trivium and quadrivium with little room for formal innovation. However, in stark contrast to formal education, medieval philosophy and theology rightfully earned the moniker “the medieval synthesis.”

Medieval thinkers, Christian and non-Christian alike, were, above all, practical and “wholistic” thinkers, who not only considered the mind or soul or body in isolation, but the whole man, and this man as an integral part of a greater whole. In this they are the true heirs of the classical tradition of Greece, because for both the Medievals and the Greeks, philosophy was above all a practical guide for right living. Its starting point was the material world, and its ending point was the way in which men and women live in the material world, or in other words, ethics. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics does not stand as an appendix or gloss to his Physics, it is rather the logical conclusion and synthesis of his entire philosophical system. In the same way Plato’s Republic is the synthesis, the practical conclusions drawn from his whole system, and it is not just the conclusion, it is the willed direction to which his thinking was ordered from the beginning. Practicality is the starting and ending point of both Classical and medieval philosophy.

The Greeks and the Medievals stand in stark contrast to the philosophical traditions that had their birth in the so called Enlightenment. While the later is a collection of subjective humanisms, as closed off to the real world as Parmenides, the former is a collection of objective humanisms whose systems deal with the practical experiences and activities of everyday people. Did modern science spring from philosophies that close human beings in a dark closet, from men who spent their time asking themselves what if a tree fell in the woods with no one to hear it fall, would it make a sound? Such questions are the epitome of the impractical and irrelevant. How can people who take such questions seriously scoff at the belief that the Scholastics argued over how many angels could dance on the head of a pen? Or did modern science really spring from the inquisitive spirit of the medieval realists who wondered at the real world around them? Aren’t the scientists of the modern age, its physicists, biologists, mathematicians, chemists, medical doctors, and technicians the sons and daughters of the medieval philosophical tradition? Perhaps the greatest testament to the irrelevance of Sartre and Camus, and the rest of the traditions that had their birth with a generation that arrogant and ignorant predecessors called the Enlightenment, is the advancement of science and technology despite their assertions that nothing is real or knowable or worth knowing beyond the sensing person.
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The point in posting this abridged article is in response to Mr. Brin’s ignorant views regarding Medieval Europe, its culture and society. What is posted above is rather brief and vague on some issues, but because I’ve been at the editing process for a few hours already, and I don’t want to bore you, I’ve left out much material dealing with specific medieval thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, Saint Bonaventure, medieval technology, a brief discussion on the treatment of women (which is very surprising) and Jews.

In short, I think the medieval world, as it actually existed, would greatly surprise Mr. Brin. There are many things inherent in medieval culture, society and feudalism that is both relevant and constructive for our modern world. To ignore them, ridicule them, or use the word “medieval” as an insult or negative criticism of Tolkien or any other “romantic,” is the height of ignorance.

I'm far from contending that the medieval world was a Utopia. However, it was just as much a Utopia as our modern world is. Mr. Brin's blind ignorance concerning the medieval roots of modern technology, and his use of the word as an insult is unfortunate. There is much in the medieval world that we moderns can use to improve our own world. Tolkien's romanticism if it does laud the medieval mentality, does so in order that we might benefit.

[ March 01, 2003: Message edited by: Bill Ferny ]