Chapter Two The Middle Ages
With the breakdown of Roman order and the invasions came a time of social, political, and intellectual turmoil. The artists of the Middle Ages forgot many technical things, such as the use of that type of perspective which the Romans employed in their paintings and mosaics. Roman painting had been full of life. In the early days Christian art was also full of life. One can think of the catacombs where the figures on the walls were realistically though simply portrayed. For all the limitations of the visual means, the people were real people in a very real world (see ).
Plate 4 Catacomb frescoes in Rome. “. . . real people in a very real world.” Photos by Mustafa Arshad.
A parallel can be drawn between the “living” quality of this early Christian art and the living Christianity of the early church. Leaders like Ambrose of Milan (339–397) and Augustine (354–430) strongly emphasized a true biblical Christianity. Later in the church there was an increasing distortion away from the biblical teaching, and there also came a change in art. Interesting examples of a carryover of the earlier, more living Christian art are the mosaics in the Arian Church of St. Lorenzo in Milan. These mosaics are probably from the mid-fifth century. The Christians portrayed in these mosaics were not symbols but real people.
Michael Gough in The Origins of Christian Art (1973) writes of the change from “the acceptance of an element of naturalistic realism to a preference for the fantastic and unreal.” He also points out that by the mid-sixth century “the last vestiges of realism were abandoned” (see ). The Byzantine art became characterized by formalized, stylized, symbolic mosaics and icons. In one way there was something good here—in that the artists made their mosaics and icons as a witness to the observer. Many of those who made these did so with devotion, and they were looking for more spiritual values. These were pluses. The minuses were that in the portrayal of their concept of spirituality they set aside nature and the importance of the humanity of people.
Plate 5 Typical Byzantine mosaics, detail of The Last Judgment, Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello, Italy. “The last vestiges of realism were abandoned.” Photo by Anderson.
Since AD 395 the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western portions. The Byzantine style developed in the east and gradually spread to the west. This art had a real beauty, but increasingly only religious themes were given importance, and people were depicted not as real people but as symbols. This came to its climax in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The portrayal of nature was largely abandoned, and even more unhappily, the living, human element was removed. This, we should stress once more, was in contrast to the early Christian catacomb paintings in which, though simply portrayed, real people lived in a real world which God had made.
Ravenna was a center of the Byzantine mosaics in the west, a center brought to its greatness by the eastern Emperor Justinian, though he never visited it. Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565, built many churches in the east, the most famous being Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which was consecrated in 537. These new churches of the east stressed the interior, placing an emphasis on light and color.
During this time there was a decline in learning in the west, though the growing monastic orders, gradually organized around the rule of Benedict (c. 480–547), provided a depository for many of the things of the past. Benedict himself had built a monastery on Monte Cassino near the main road from Naples to Rome. In the monasteries the old manuscripts were copied and recopied. Thanks to the monks, the Bible was preserved—along with sections of Greek and Latin classics. The old music, too, was sometimes kept alive by constant repetition. Some of the music came from Ambrose, who had been bishop of Milan from 374 to 397 and who had introduced to his people antiphonal psalmody and the singing of hymns.
Nevertheless, the pristine Christianity set forth in the New Testament gradually became distorted. A humanistic element was added: increasingly, the authority of the church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible. And there was an ever-growing emphasis on salvation as resting on man’s meriting the merit of Christ, instead of on Christ’s work alone. While such humanistic elements were somewhat different in content from the humanistic elements of the Renaissance, the concept was essentially the same in that it was man taking to himself that which belonged to God. Much of Christianity up until the sixteenth century was either reaction against or reaffirmation of these distortions of the original Christian, biblical teaching.
These distortions generated cultural elements which mark a clear alternative to what we could otherwise call a Christian or biblical culture. Part of the fascination of medieval studies is to trace the degree to which different aspects of the complex Western cultural inheritance were emphasized or deemphasized according to the moral and intellectual response of people to the Christian God they claimed to worship. It would be a mistake to suppose that the overall structure of thought and life was not Christian. Yet it would be equally mistaken to deny that into this structure were fitted alien or half-alien features—some of Greek and Roman origin, others of local pagan ancestry—which at times actually obscured the outlines of the Christianity underneath.
This was not and is not a peculiarly medieval problem. From the earliest days of the Christian church, when Christianity was a small minority movement, believers had struggled with their personal and corporate response to Christ’s prayer that they be in the world but not of it. On one level, this challenged Christians in their attitude toward material possessions and style of living. Not only in the time of Peter and Paul but for generations after, believers were noted for openhanded generosity. Even their enemies admitted it.
On another level, this raised the issue of God’s law as against the will of the state, especially when the two came into conflict. During the persecutions of the Christians under the Roman emperors, the action of the Roman military commander Maurice is a good example of a possible response. When he received an order to direct a persecution of Christians, he handed his insignia to his assistant in order to join the Christians and be killed as a fellow believer. This action took place in the Rhone valley in Switzerland about AD 286, against a giant cliff just under the peaks of the Dents du Midi. It is for him that the little town of St. Maurice is now named.
Finally, on the intellectual level, Christ’s prayer posed the problem of whether or not it was edifying to read or quote the non-Christian classical authors. Tertullian (160–240) and Cyprian (c. 200–258) decided not, but they proved to be in the minority. It is interesting that in the area of music a strict view did prevail. The reason for the disappearance of the traditions of Roman musical practices in the beginning of the Middle Ages was that the church looked with indignation on the social occasions and pagan religious exercises connected with them. And thus the old Roman musical traditions disappeared.
In the Middle Ages proper, which everyone defines his own way but which we will call the period from about 500 to 1400, we can trace in general terms the continuing response to these same issues. Concerning material possessions, the pendulum swung back and forth between utter disregard of the command to live modestly (caring for the poor, orphaned, and widowed) and a razor-sharp application of these same injunctions (the early monastic ideal to have no money). Thus, at one extreme one could have a papal court popularly rebuked for its material lust. The twelfth-century Gospel According to the Mark of Silver pictured the pope egging on his cardinals to fleece litigants at the papal court, using phrases deliberately mimicking Christ’s teachings: “For I have given you an example, that ye also should take gifts, as I have taken them,” and “Blessed are the rich, for they shall be filled; blessed are they that have, for they shall not go away empty; blessed are the wealthy, for theirs is the Court of Rome.” John of Salisbury (c. 1115–1180), friend of Thomas à Becket and no enemy of the church hierarchy, told a pope to his face that people thought that
the Roman Church, which is the Mother of all Churches, behaves more like a stepmother than a mother. The Scribes and Pharisees sit there placing on men’s shoulders burdens too heavy to be borne. They load themselves with fine clothes and their tables with precious plate; a poor man can seldom gain admittance. . . .
In the midst of all this, Saint Francis (c. 1182–1226), recognizing the corrupting effect of this emphasis on wealth, forbade his followers to receive money at all.
Even if its upper echelon was far from pure, the church did make an effort to control the destructive effects of exorbitant money-lending by first prohibiting it and later trying to limit the interest rate on loans to an accepted market level. With further support of secular rulers, the church also sought to enforce just prices, by which it meant prices which did not exploit human beings through selfish manipulation or through hoarding goods during scarcity. However much one may argue about the success of these attempts at economic control in the name of love for one’s neighbor, it would be false to assume no difference between a society which at least makes repeated public efforts to control greed and economic cruelty and a society which tends to glorify the most expert economic manipulators of their fellow-citizens.
Even beyond this, the medieval economic teaching was not wholly negative. It exalted the virtue of honest, well-executed work. This is no better illustrated than in the beautiful late-medieval Books of Hours, private prayer books in which typical occupations are depicted as month succeeds month. The most famous of such books belonged to Jean, duc de Berry, and was executed by the Limbourg brothers in 1415. An earlier illustration of the same thing was the series of reliefs from the early fourteenth century on the campanile in Florence (see ). And if age or infirmity precluded work, the church provided society with an impressive network of hospitals and other charitable institutions. One in Siena is still in working order. The downstairs women’s ward, just through the main entrance, has a fifteenth-century display of frescoes illustrating what went on in a medieval hospital. If twentieth-century patients are grateful for modern medical advances, they can at the same time admire the superior artistic taste of the old Sienese interior decorators. Nowadays we expect the state to provide hospitals or deal out charity, and this expectation underlines a vast change in the powers of the modern state as against its medieval counterpart. But the state, strong or weak, has always posed a problem to the church, especially when it concerns questions of moral principle. To this area we must now turn.
Plates 6–7 Fourteenth-century reliefs on Giotto’s Campanile, Florence Cathedral, Italy. “It exalted the virtue of honest, well-executed work.” Photo courtesy of F. Alinari.
The medieval situation was at the same time easier and more complex than it had been for the Roman officer Maurice. It was easier insofar as Europe was regarded as Christ’s kingdom—Christendom. Thus, Christian baptism was not only spiritually but socially and politically significant: it denoted entrance into society. Only a baptized person was a fully accepted member of European society. A Jew was a nonperson in this sense, and for this reason he could engage in occupations (such as moneylending) which were otherwise forbidden. But if the church baptized or consecrated the state, this only made more complex the problem of conscience, because a government which is to all appearances in tune with society can, for that very reason, betray society with the greatest impunity. This, of course, was and is true of the church as an organization too.
Probably the greatest artistic study of this subject produced in the medieval era is Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s (c. 1290–1348) Allegory of Good and Bad Government, painted in 1338 and 1339 for the council chamber in the great Palazzo Pubblico (town hall) in Siena. Lorenzetti clearly distinguishes between good and bad government, showing on one side the devil presiding over all those vices which destroy community, and on the other side the Christian virtues from which flow all those activities—including honest toil—which manifest oneness between men under God (see ). Considering our own day, it is interesting that one of the marks which is shown characterizing good government is that it is safe for a woman to walk alone in the streets, while under bad government she is subject to being attacked, raped, or robbed. However, as the painter knew well enough from Siena’s own turbulent city politics, if the sources of good and evil were distinct, the effects were humanly mixed together in a more or less jumbled heap of good and bad intentions.
Plates 8–9 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, details of The Allegories of Good and Bad Government, 1338–1340, frescoes in the Sala della Pace, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy. Bottom left, film crew with Francis Schaeffer in the Palazzo Pubblico. “. . . on one side the devil . . . on the other side Christian virtues.” Photos by Mustafa Arshad.
Looking at medieval reality, one observes the same mixed record with respect to state power in financial matters. The church, though often indeed furnishing models of effective economic and political management, was so involved with other medieval institutions that it was frequently difficult for it to be salt to its society. For example, estate management and various types of agricultural pioneering were most notably enterprised by the selfsame monastic orders which, in their infancy, were dedicated not to profit but to poverty. Also, if we are looking for a model of effective centralizing monarchy guided by an efficient bureaucratic apparatus, we need travel no farther than the church court in Rome. The pope—who was called the Servant of Servants—was, by a choice irony, the most effective medieval monarch at the height of papal power between 1100 and 1300.
To leave off the discussion here, however, would be to caricature the church-state situation. For, if the church provided a model for absolute power, it also generated an impressive though eventually thwarted challenge to personal monarchy. Many people are familiar with the parliamentary assemblies in the Middle Ages; most are less aware that the Conciliar Movement in the late-medieval church was another potent force for decentralization. The Conciliar Movement stood for a revival of the idea that real authority in the church is vested not in one bishop, the pope, but in all the bishops together—in a council. Thus the Council of Constance (1414–1418) deposed three rival popes, thereby ending a scandalous epoch in church history, while at the same time declaring that the council’s authority came directly from Christ and that all men, including the pope, were subject to its authority in questions of faith and church reform. The Conciliar Movement, however, was destined to wither and disappear; the principle of monarchy rather than of representative government would triumph within the Roman church.
Meanwhile, paradoxical as it may seem, the church, through its frequent tussles with secular rulers over the boundary between church power and state power, had encouraged the evolution of a tradition of political theory which emphasized the principle of governmental limitation and responsibility. There was, in other words, a limit—in this case, an ecclesiastical one—on worldly power; and the theme of kingship balanced by priesthood and prophetic office is important in the statuary of Chartres and many of the great Gothic cathedrals.
To complete our analysis we must also consider the relationship between Christian and classical thought in the Middle Ages. The writings of Greek and Roman thinkers who had such an impact upon Renaissance and post-Renaissance culture were in many cases available to be read because their works had been preserved, read, and discussed by medieval intellectuals. So how did the Middle Ages handle its pagan culture heritage? It is important to assert that although early Christians like Cyprian (d. 258) and Tertullian (d. c. 230) had a strictly negative attitude toward classical Greek and Roman learning, Paul had not been so inhibited. When it was to his purpose, he cited Greek authors just as he at other times employed the subtle rabbinic lines of reasoning which he had mastered as a pupil of the great Rabbi Gamaliel (d. pre-AD 70), grandson of the yet greater Rabbi Hillel (c. 70 BC–AD 10). Ambrose (339–397), Jerome (347–419), and Augustine (354–430), following Paul rather than Tertullian, learned to appreciate and utilize classical learning. Indeed, they set out thoroughly to domesticate it within the context of a majestic curriculum of Christian education, which became the general model followed right up to the Renaissance. But if a robust Christian faith could handle non-Christian learning without compromising, it was all too easy for Greek and Roman thought-forms to creep into the cracks and chinks of a faith which was less and less founded on the Bible and more and more resting on the authority of church pronouncements. By the thirteenth century the great Aquinas (1225–1274) had already begun, in deference to Aristotle (384–322 BC), to open the door to placing revelation and human reason on an equal footing.
We will consider this in detail later, but first we must conclude this whirlwind tour through the medieval centuries by looking at some of its most outstanding artistic achievements—achievements, in the main, of the church. Remembering that this church was universal in its European context, we should not be surprised that it worked along with society as a whole, particularly the leaders of society, to produce its greatest artistic monuments. This is very well emphasized in one of the founder-figures of the Middle Ages, Charlemagne (742–814), and in Carolingian culture as a whole.
Charlemagne, son of Pippin, became king of the Franks in 768 and was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day of 800. He was a formidable man with colossal energy. He was also a great warrior and constantly on campaign. After he gained control over much of the western European territory formerly in the Roman Empire, his coronation by the pope as a Roman-style emperor followed easily. In return he strengthened the church in many ways, giving the pope a strong land base in Italy and also supporting the Anglo-Saxon missionaries in the areas he conquered, especially among the Germanic tribes. Charlemagne made tithing compulsory, and this supplied funds for the establishment of church administration. He also built impressive churches, including the Palatine Chapel, consecrated in 805 at Aachen (located in what is now West Germany), the home of his old age.
Under Charlemagne, the church became a more general cultural force. Church power became coextensive with state power, and culturally the two spheres fed one another. Scholars were encouraged, and though their work was not very original, there was a restirring through sheer industry, enthusiasm, and systematic propagation. Scholars came from all over Europe to Charlemagne’s court; for example, Alcuin (735–804) came all the way from York in northern England when he was fifty years old. He became Charlemagne’s advisor, head of the palace school at Aachen, and attracted a constellation of scholars to join him there. Charlemagne invited singers from Rome to his court and founded a school of song which he personally supervised. In short, Charlemagne and his scholar-courtiers laid a base for the unity of ideas throughout western Europe. This unity was certainly aided by the invention of the beautiful Carolingian minuscule script, a handwriting which was widely copied. But, note carefully, all of Charlemagne’s scholars were clergy. Learning was not general. We still remember those days in our English language—our word clerk is related to the word cleric, that is, a member of the clergy. It seems that though Charlemagne himself learned to read, he never learned to write.
With the scholarly revival of the Carolingian Age, there also came an artistic revival. People in later centuries wondered at the costly and exquisite jewels, religious objects, and books. Most of these—like a talisman of Charlemagne which contained a relic, and an ivory bookbinding of the crucifixion—emphasize the religious orientation of the artistic revival of that time (see ).
Plate 10 Carolingian carvings in ivory. “. . . costly and exquisite jewels.” Photos by Mustafa Arshad.
In considering the culture of the Middle Ages, we must not overlook its music. Pope Gregory I (pope from 590 to 604) brought the music of the Western church into a systematic whole. This impersonal, mystical, and other-worldly music is named after him: the Gregorian chant or plainsong, a monophony. From about 1100 to 1300 there were the troubadours, a title which means “inventors” or “finders.” They were mainly aristocratic poet-musicians of southern France who inaugurated a flowering of secular music. From 1150 to 1300 was the period of a distinct epoch of music called ars antiqua—which developed various forms of polyphonic compositions. The instruments of the Middle Ages were psalteries, flutes, shawms (a double-reed wind instrument of the oboe family), trumpets, and drums. The universal folk instrument was the bagpipe. There were also the great organs in the churches, and smaller, portable organs. With the rise of ars nova in the fourteenth century in France and Italy, for the first time composers began to be known by name. Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377), a canon at the cathedral at Rheims, is the outstanding representative of French ars nova music. In Italy, Francesco Landini (1325–1397) of Florence was the foremost Italian musician of the fourteenth century.
When we think of the artistic achievements of the Middle Ages, we usually think of architecture. It would be impossible to speak of the gradually awakened cultural thought of the Middle Ages and not consider the developments in architecture in some detail. Let us start with the first great medieval style—the eleventh-century Romanesque, whose essential distinguishing marks are the rounded arch, thick walls, and dim interiors. With the original developments in Romanesque architecture came a leap forward. Because Romanesque, as the name suggests, looked back to Roman styles, it owed a lot to Carolingian churches, such as the Palatine Chapel (ninth century) modeled on San Vitale at Ravenna (sixth century) and such early Christian churches as St. Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome (fourth century). But whereas in Italy architects remained slavishly tied to the old Roman style, as in Romano-Byzantine San Marco in Venice whose plan was from the eleventh century, one can see in French and English churches the creative adaptation which made the style Roman-esque, rather than just Roman. In France the abbey churches of Vézelay from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and Fontevrault from the twelfth century exemplify this.
The crucial moment in England came with the Norman invasion in 1066. The Chapel of St. John in the White Tower of the Tower of London was built about 1080 (see ). Winchester Cathedral was built between 1079 and 1093, and Durham Cathedral was begun in 1093. The latter is one of the primary sources of the ribbed vault—as our eyes follow the columns upwards, our gaze is carried to ribs in the ceiling. This prepared the ground for the later Gothic architecture.
Plate 11 The Chapel of St. John in the White Tower of the Tower of London. “The crucial moment in England came with the Norman invasion in 1066.” Photo by Mustafa Arshad.
Then, in 1140, Abbot Suger supervised the building of the abbey of Saint Denis. Now surrounded by a rather depressing suburb of Paris, it is one of the places of wonder of the world, for here the Gothic style was born and the awakened cultural patterns of the Middle Ages took another great leap forward (see ). Whoever designed the choir of Saint Denis invented the Gothic style. Here the Gothic was born, with its pointed arches, the lightness supplied by its many large high windows, and its clerestory (the windows set high in the walls which allow light to stream down from above). Out of the Gothic also came the wonder of the rose window as well as the flying buttress, which, by taking the weight of the outward thrust of the walls caused by the weight of the roof, enabled the walls to be thinner and the windows larger. When we see the Cathedral of Chartres, begun in 1194, we see the Gothic in all its purity: the pointed arch, the flying buttress, and the ribbed vault. At Chartres too, we have fine examples of advance in sculpture, for instance in the west facade. One could date the early or classic Gothic from 1150 to 1250, and the late Gothic (which was more ornate, especially in England) from 1250 to 1500.
Plate 12 Top Chartres Cathedral, France, and bottom, Basilica Cathedral of Saint Denis, France. “The Middle Ages took another great leap forward.” Photo by Mustafa Arshad.
Florence showed marks of the Gothic in its art from the thirteenth century onward. Arnolfo (1232–1302), who worked on the old palace beginning at 1266 and began the cathedral in Florence in 1294, worked in the Gothic style. Although the Florentine Gothic was never a fully developed Gothic, the earlier Gothic of northern Europe did have its influence. Santa Trinita (second half of the thirteenth century), Santa Maria Novella (1278–1360), Santa Croce (commenced 1295) were all built in the Gothic style, and the Loggia (1376–1382) is late Gothic. Although the Baptistry itself is Romanesque, the panels of the bronze south door (1330–1336)—done by Andrea Pisano (c. 1290–1348), who was a friend of Giotto—are Gothic. In Lorenzo Ghiberti’s (1378–1455) north door, which he made between 1403 and 1424, Ghiberti still used the Gothic panel frames, though the subject matter within the panels was much more free. By the time Ghiberti reached the wonder of the eastern portal (1425–1452)—called by Michelangelo the “Golden Gate of Paradise”—the Gothic frames were completely gone and the Renaissance was in bloom. The transition from the Gothic period to the Renaissance period can be seen and felt most clearly at the wonderful doors of the Baptistry.
During the change from the Romanesque to the Gothic, Mariology began to grow in the church. The Romanesque churches were not dedicated to the Virgin, but the Gothic churches of France were overwhelmingly dedicated to her. Here again we see and feel a growing tension: the birth pangs of the Middle Ages were characterized by an awakened cultural and intellectual life and an awakened piety. Yet at the same time the church continued to move away from the teaching of early Christianity as distortions of biblical doctrine increased. Soon European thought would be divided into two lines, both of which have come down and influenced our own day: first, the humanistic elements of the Renaissance, and second, the Bible-based teaching of the Reformation.
When we approach the Renaissance we must not make either of two mistakes. First, as we have seen, we must not think that everything prior to the Renaissance had been completely dark. This false concept grew from the prejudice of the humanists (of the Renaissance and the later Enlightenment) that all good things began with the birth of modern humanism. Rather, the later Middle Ages was a period of slowly developing birth pangs. Second, while the Renaissance was a rich and wonderful period, we must not think that all which it produced was good for man.
In the last half of the eleventh century and into the twelfth century came a surge of activity which laid an economic foundation for the thirteenth-century peak of medieval culture. The population rose; integrated villages appeared, which increased the efficiency of agriculture; towns were planned on a convenient grid pattern. Even the Crusades became vehicles of economic expansion. By 1100 the heavy plow had become common, central to a process which historians regard as a revolution in cultivation. By the twelfth century water mills and windmills were common. This was a step forward in passing from the use of human and animal energy alone. The Greeks and Romans had never made this step. So with the heavy plow, the use of water and wind become a great leap forward. Italian towns became wealthy with oriental trade, and Flemish towns became rich through textiles. Gradually, the towns freed themselves from feudal restraints to achieve varying amounts of political freedom, expressed in the proud town halls erected in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The early universities also began to emerge. By the late thirteenth century there were universities at Paris, Orléans, Toulouse, Montpellier, Cambridge, Oxford, Padua, Bologna, Naples, Salerno, Salamanca, Coimbra, and Lisbon. These universities offered a rival education to one which was purely clerical. The vernacular languages began to be used in written form; for example, portions of the Bible were translated into French. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the proclamations of “the peace of God” and later “the truce of God,” while of doubtful success, were at least attempts to limit the wars between the nobles. And, of course, Romanesque and later Gothic architecture were great breakthroughs in the annals of human thought and achievement.
Having said all that, we must recognize that there eventually came a change which does merit the name Renaissance. But we should realize that it was not the rebirth of man; it was the rebirth of an idea about man. There was a change in thinking about man, a change which put man himself in the center of all things, and this change was expressed in the arts. The word renaissance, taken to mean “rebirth,” has less obvious meaning if applied at this time to political, economic, or social history, although changes of mentality do have an impact in all areas of life. But even where the word can be used without qualification, it should not be taken to imply that every aspect of the rebirth was a gain for mankind.
The Renaissance is normally dated at the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, but to understand it we must look at events which led up to this, especially its philosophical antecedents during the Middle Ages. And that means considering in a bit more detail the thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Aquinas was a Dominican. He studied at the universities of Naples and Paris, and later he taught in Paris. He was the outstanding theologian of his day and his thinking is still dominant in some circles of the Roman Catholic Church (see ). Aquinas’s contribution to Western thought is, of course, much richer than we can discuss here, but his view of man demands our attention. Aquinas held that man had revolted against God and thus was fallen, but Aquinas had an incomplete view of the Fall. He thought that the Fall did not affect man as a whole but only in part. In his view the will was fallen or corrupted but the intellect was not affected. Thus people could rely on their own human wisdom, and this meant that people were free to mix the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of the non-Christian philosophers.
Plate 13 Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). “His thinking is still dominant in some circles.” Photo courtesy of Radio Times Hutton Picture Library.
This is well illustrated by a fresco painted in 1365 by Andrea da Firenze (c. 1319–1377) in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Thomas Aquinas sits on a throne in the center of the fresco, and on the lower level of the picture are Aristotle (384–322 BC), Cicero (106–43 BC), Ptolemy (AD 100–170), Euclid (active around 300 BC), and Pythagoras (c. 580–495 BC), all placed in the same category as Augustine. As a result of this emphasis, philosophy was gradually separated from revelation—from the Bible—and philosophers began to act in an increasingly independent, autonomous manner.
Among the Greek philosophers, Thomas Aquinas relied especially on one of the greatest, Aristotle. In 1263 Pope Urban IV had forbidden the study of Aristotle in the universities. Aquinas managed to have Aristotle accepted, so the ancient non-Christian philosophy was reenthroned.
To understand what result this had, it is worthwhile to look at Raphael’s (1483–1520) painting The School of Athens (c. 1510) to comprehend some of the discussions and influences which followed in the Renaissance period (see ). The fresco is in the Vatican. In The School of Athens, Raphael painted Plato with one finger pointed upward, which means that he pointed toward absolutes or ideals. In contrast, he pictured Aristotle with his fingers spread wide and thrust down toward the earth, which means that he emphasized particulars. By particulars we mean the individual things which are about us; a chair is a particular, as is each molecule which makes up the chair, and so on. The individual person is also a particular and thus you are a particular. Thomas Aquinas brought this Aristotelian emphasis on individual things—the particulars—into the philosophy of the late Middle Ages, and this set the stage for the humanistic elements of the Renaissance and the basic problem they created.
Plate 14 Raphael, The School of Athens, fresco, 1508–1511, Vatican Palace, Rome. “. . . it is worthwhile to look . . . to comprehend some of the discussions and influences which followed in the Renaissance period.” Photo courtesy of Organizzazione Milan.
This problem is often spoken of as the “nature versus grace” problem. Beginning with man alone and only the individual things in the world (the particulars), the problem is how to find any ultimate and adequate meaning for the individual things. The most important individual thing for man is man himself. Without some ultimate meaning for a person (for me, an individual), what is the use of living and what will be the basis for morals, values, and law? If one starts from individual acts rather than with an absolute, what gives any real certainty concerning what is right and what is wrong about an individual action? The nature-and-grace tension or problem can be pictured like this:
Grace, the higher: God the Creator; heaven and heavenly things; the unseen and its influence on the earth; unity, or universals or absolutes which give existence and morals meaning.
Nature, the lower: the created; earth and earthly things; the visible and what happens normally in the cause-and-effect universe; what man as man does on the earth; diversity, or individual things, the particulars, or the individual acts of man.
Beginning from man alone, Renaissance humanism—and humanism ever since—has found no way to arrive at universals or absolutes which give meaning to existence and morals.
Aquinas’s teaching had a positive side in that before his time there was little emphasis on the normal, day-to-day world, that is, the world and our relationship to it. These things do have importance because God has created the world. By the mid-thirteenth century, certain Gothic sculptors had begun to fashion leaves and flowers and birds, and had given these figures a more natural appearance. Thanks to Thomas Aquinas, the world and man’s place in the world was given more prominence than previously. The negative result of his teaching was that the individual things, the particulars, tended to be made independent, autonomous, and consequently the meaning of the particulars began to be lost. We can think of it as the individual things, the particulars, gradually and increasingly becoming everything and thus devouring all meaning until meaning disappears.
Two things, then, laid the foundation for what was now to follow: first, the gradually awakened cultural thought and awakened piety of the Middle Ages; and second, an increasing distortion of the teaching of the Bible and the early church. Humanist elements had entered. For example, the authority of the church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible; fallen man was considered able to return to God by meriting the merit of Christ; and there was a mixture of Christian and ancient non-Christian thought (as Aquinas’s emphasis on Aristotle). This opened the way for people to think of themselves as autonomous and the center of all things.
The unfortunate side of the Renaissance was the reaffirmation of the distortions. But soon there would be steps in another direction—a reaction against the distortions. There were earlier stirrings in this direction, but an important step came when an Oxford professor named John Wycliffe (c. 1320–1384) taught that the Bible was the supreme authority and produced his English translation of the Bible, raising a voice which had influence throughout Europe. John Huss (1369–1415) was influenced by Wycliffe. He also spoke out, affirming the Bible as the only final authority, emphasizing a return to the teaching of Scripture and the early church, and insisting that man must return to God through the work of Christ only. These teachings of Wycliffe and Huss moved away from the humanism which had gradually but increasingly entered the church. Thus the way was now open for two movements which were to have their influence down into our own day: the humanistic elements of the Renaissance and the scriptural Christianity of the Reformation.