The Middle Ages began and antiquity ended when these German tribes finally broke down the barriers of the Roman empire. It was a new period; for a new race had taken upon itself the responsibility of bearing the burden of the future of western Europe. The German was of course unconscious of the magnitude of his self-imposed burden, for the German was young, vigorous, and moved by primitive instincts. He had leaped into the world’s fields as a conqueror; he remained as a laborer.
At the beginning the German seemed likely to destroythe entire product which antiquity had bequeathed. He was quite unprepared to assimilate the rich fruits of that ancient civilization. He had, indeed, less mind for the elaborate forms of Greek philosophy than for the lighter forms of Greek art. In his first contact he could understand neither. Moreover ancient society was so weak that it could not educate him, who was its conqueror, into its culture. Nevertheless, there was one element in that ancient society that did appeal to the German. That was the spiritual power of the Christian church. Alone amid the ruins of antiquity the power of the church had grown so strong that the men of the north bowed before it, and religion accomplished through the emotions of the Germans what art, philosophy, and statecraft failed to achieve. The preaching of the Gospel laid hold of the feelings of these primitive people, for the church in its pretensions, and sometimes in fact, represented the old Roman political unity. Moreover the church was also the repository of what was left of Greek science. The church expressed for the German his own ideal of the personal inner life. The Germans became the supporters of the church, and in this way the protectors of ancient culture. Mediæval history in western Europe is therefore the record of the development of the Germans under the influence of the Christian church. In contrast with the development of the Eastern church, which was the development of a state church, the Western church was the development of an ecclesiastical state. The Western church, and not the later empire, was the true successor of the Roman empire. Thus the early beginnings of the Middle Ages rested with the church, but the later development of the Middle Ages rested with the German people.
How the Universe appeared to the Mediæval Man. The mediæval man had very indistinct ideas about the world around him, since his interest did not lie in the earthly realm, but in the spirit that controlled it. He was content in his sciences with conclusions without their demonstrations. Although it is said that relations of space and number are never indistinct in the mind of the civilized man, the man of the Middle Ages certainly did not possess such conceptions in so vigorous a manner as to enable him to discover new truths. We must, furthermore, make a sharper distinction between mediæval popular opinion and mediæval scientific opinion than we should about popular and scientific opinion of modern times; for the results of science did not reach the people then as now. To the ordinary mediæval man the world in which he lived was what it appeared to be to his eye. The earth was flat; the sky was a material dome, which sustained the waters of the world above it. Through this sky-floor the water sometimes breaks and the earth receives showers of rain. These popular notions sometimes appeared in the verse of the time.
The mediæval scientific opinion was based on the theory of Ptolemy and his school of Alexandrian astronomers, who lived in the second century A. D., some details to the theory having been added by the Arabians. Ptolemy says, “The world is divided into two vast regions; the one ethereal, the other elementary. The ethereal region begins with the first mover, which accomplishes its journey from east to west in twenty-four hours; ten skies participate in this motion, and their totality comprises the double crystalline heaven, the firmament and the seven planets.” (See [diagram].) The mediæval man of science thought that, inasmuch as hewas upon the earth, he was therefore standing at the centre of things. Directly above him was the cavity of the sky, ruled by the moon; and below the moon were the four elements,—fire, air, water, and earth. This region was the realm of imperfection. But above the moon the scientist saw a series of nine other heavens, each with an orderly revolution of its own; and beyond all is God. The universe was therefore to Ptolemy a great but a limited sphere, consisting of ten spheres one inside another (like the rings of an onion). Eachplanet moved with the motion of its own heaven (or sphere), which was sometimes called “crystalline” because it was transparent. The movements of the heavenly bodies, each in its own revolving heaven, were contained in the whole sphere, which revolved with a motion of its own. By ascribing other movements to the planets within their respective heavens, the mediæval astronomers were able to predict every conjunction and eclipse to the minute. These separate movements of the planets were called epicycles, the form of which is shown in the diagram on the opposite page.
PTOLEMAIC COSMOGRAPHY
A diagram showing the division of the universe into the ten spheres or heavens
(From the private library of Professor R. W. Willson of Harvard University)
Such a scientific astronomy would easily lend itself to the theological conceptions of the time. The realm of perfection above the moon was supposed to be under the direct supervision of God and to be inhabited by spirits. Thus the conjunction and relation of the heavenly bodies were thought to have influence upon human life, and they furnished the basis of the astrology, necromancy, and spiritism so common in the Middle Ages. The ninth heaven embraced all the others. It swept around them all, without interfering with their own special motions, and completed its revolution in twenty-four hours. The ninth heaven was both the source and the limit of all motion and all change. Beyond it lies the eternal peace of God, which the Christian astronomer regarded as “the abode of the blessed.” This was called the tenth heaven or the Empyrean. This, in Dante’s words, is “the heaven that is pure light; light intellectual full of love, love of the good full of joy, joy that transcends all sweetness.” The tenth heaven is Paradise and is within the life of God. It is important to note that the Ptolemaic conception of the universe is the background upon which Dante constructs his DivineComedy (see [diagram], p. 376),[48] and appears in part at least as the cosmological basis of the Paradise Lost of Milton. For thirteen centuries—from 200 to 1500—conviction remained unshaken in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy as an adequate explanation of the universe.
PTOLEMAIC COSMOGRAPHY
(Showing the Epicyclic Movements of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in respect to the Earth)
The Mediæval Man at School. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was a revival in intellectual interests that was deep and broad, and the characteristicsof this revival will be discussed subsequently (see Transitional Period, p. [329]). Our curiosity, however, is aroused upon our entrance into the Middle Ages, as to what the man of the early Middle Ages studied and how much he learned. We must remind ourselves at the outset of the oft-repeated fact that, on the whole, in western Europe, for the first five hundred years of the Middle Ages, the only people who had any book-learning were the churchmen. Furthermore, with them the learning was very meagre. Their purpose in study will show this, for it was to enable them “to understand and expound the Canonical Scriptures, the Fathers, and other ecclesiastical writings.” The training was as follows:—