On Defining the “Middle Ages”
On Defining the “Middle Ages”
It is always difficult to be precise about when one era ends and another begins. Traditionally, accounts of the development of Christian theology proceed directly from the close of the patristic period, marked by the Council of Chalcedon (451), to the great theological renaissance in western Europe during the Middle Ages. This is unsatisfactory for many reasons. The most obvious of these is that the “Middle Ages” was a cultural development that was specific to western Europe. This traditional account also overlooks the fact that the Roman empire in the east was relatively unaffected by the fall of Rome in 410. While the western Roman empire fragmented, giving rise to social and political instability in much of western Europe, the eastern empire remained in place for a further thousand years. The development of Byzantine theology does not easily fit the categories of western European history. It also overlooks earlier renewals in Christian theology in the west – for example, the important developments that took place during the reign of Charlemagne (747?–814, reigned 800–14), the first Holy Roman Emperor.
One of the most important developments in the history of Christianity during this period was the “Great Schism.” For a variety of reasons, relations between the eastern church, based at Constantinople, and the western church, based at Rome, became increasingly strained during the ninth and tenth centuries. Growing disagreement over a clause in the western version of the Nicene Creed (see pp. 287–90) was of no small importance in this increasingly sour atmosphere. The west spoke of the Holy Spirit “proceeding from the father and the son”; the east only of his “proceeding from the father.” (This debate is often referred to as the filioque controversy, from the Latin term meaning “and from the son.”) Other factors also contributed to these tensions, including the political rivalry between Latin-speaking Rome and Greek-speaking Constantinople, and the increasing claims to authority of the Roman pope. The final break between the Catholic west and the Orthodox east is usually dated to 1054, although this date is slightly arbitrary.
One major result of this tension was that there was little theological interaction between east and west. Although western theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74) felt free to draw on the writings of Greek fathers, these works tended to antedate this period. The works of later Orthodox theologians, such as the noted writer Gregory Palamas (c.1296–1357), attracted little attention in the west. It is only in the twentieth century that western theology may really be said to have begun to rediscover the riches of the Orthodox tradition.
The term “medieval theology” is often used to refer to western theology during this era, whereas the term “Byzantine theology” is used to refer to the theology of the eastern church over roughly the same period, prior to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. During this period in western European history, the centers of Christian theology gradually moved northward, to central France and Germany. Although Rome remained a center of Christian power in the region, intellectual activity gradually came to migrate to the monasteries of France, such as Bec, Chartres, and Reims. With the foundation of the medieval universities, theology rapidly established itself as a central area of academic study. A typical medieval university possessed four faculties: the lower faculty of arts and the three higher faculties of theology, medicine, and law. In what follows, we shall consider some of these developments in western Europe, before turning to consider developments in Byzantium.
Map 2.1 The main theological and ecclesiastical centers in western Europe during the Middle Ages.