A World Lit Only By Fire

One of the summer reading choices is William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire, an informal history of the end of the Middle Ages in Europe and the beginning of the Renaissance. The basic thesis of Manchester's book is that the medieval mindset of Europe was shattered by several events that occurred around the the year 1500. The events he describes, the decline of the Roman Church, the advent of humanist thought, the increasing power of the "New Monarchies," and the circumnavigation of the Earth by Magellan and his crew, are presented as the keys to the formation of the modern mindset and very clear break with the Middle Ages. In the introduction to his book, Manchester admits that, while he was not completely unfamiliar with the world of the early sixteenth century, it was not ground that he had often trod upon. In fact, Manchester is better known as a 20th-century historian, having written books on John F. Kennedy, Douglas MacArthur, and Winston Churchill. This is why he had his work reviewed by James Boyden, "an authority on the sixteenth century." However, we must still be very careful when reading Manchester. While he did get many things right, he still got much of it wrong.

I know what you're thinking. "How in the world can you say that?! Why would you have us read a book that is wrong?!" No need to panic. Like I said, Manchester did get some things right. His claim that these events that occurred between 1450 and 1550 DID have a profound impact on the way that Europeans thought about themselves and the world around them. These are only some of the events that historians identify as those things which led to the development of the modern world. What Manchester gets wrong, in the judgement of myself and that of many current historians, is the scale of this change. Manchester presents the world of Medieval Europe as a "dim era." He makes the claim that "Intellectual life had vanished from Europe," using the illiteracy of Charlemagne to support this claim. He paints a picture of a dark age of "incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness. It's very easy for us to sit back from the comfort and pass judgement on people who lived from 1,500 to 650 years ago. We can travel around the world in a matter of hours. Information travels even faster! An era when it may have taken months to travel from one side of Europe to the other, and books were a precious and incredibly expensive commodity may, indeed, seem a bit dark to those of us living in the information age. Unfortunately, modern historical research has discredited this view of the Middle Ages as a Dark Age. In fact, historians haven't really held this belief since the 1920s and 30s.

Students at a medieval university; Is that guy in green texting?!

Just like any era in history, the Middle Ages in Europe were far more complex then many people give them credit for. Learning and intellectual life was not unknown to the Europeans of the Middle Ages. While formal education was not nearly as widespread as it is today, the monasteries and universities of Europe were lively centers of education and debate. Theology was the major subject of intellectual inquiry, but the traditional liberal arts (The trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) formed the foundation of education at medieval universities. The learning of the Classical Era did not die during the Middle Ages, either. It was being preserved in the Latin manuscripts copied in the monasteries of Europe and in the Arabic transcriptions of the Greek classics by Muslims in Spain and the Middle East. The 15th century would see the rapid "rediscovery" of these classical works described by Manchester.

"To what extent is the term 'Renaissance' a valid concept for a distinct period in early modern European history?" This is one of the first questions we tackle at the beginning of the year in class. It's really just a very academic way of asking what made the Renaissance the Renaissance, and is it really so different from the era that came before. As we get a broader picture of what the Later Middle Ages was like, and a more comprehensive view of the Renaissance, we will find more continuity between the two than is presented in Manchester. That's the beauty of history; it's an ongoing conversation and debate.

On a side note: Manchester is a bit obsessive in his coverage of Magellan. He devotes one third of the book to his historic voyage. The only thing you really need to come away with is that Magellan's voyage provided confirmation of the spherical nature of the Earth. While this is something that many had already assumed (Otherwise, why would you sail west hoping to reach the east?), it did have the effect of changing the way we thought about the nature of the universe that would impact the Scientific Revolution of the following century.

As always, you can use the comments section or email me to ask any questions.