The Age of Chivalry (42 page)

From the 10th to the 15th century Europeans exported their culture to the continent's northern and eastern borders, and the idea of a common European society extending from the Atlantic shores to the frontier zone of the Eurasian steppes had acquired both a territorial reality and an imaginative power. From the 13th century onward Europeans could also cross their local seas more rapidly, and map them more accurately, as a result of improved techniques in maritime engineering and navigation. It was that accumulated expertise and body of knowledge that enabled European mariners to embark on their subsequent explorations of the West African coasts and of the Atlantic and Pacific seas. The great age of discovery originated in the outward-looking curiosity of Europeans during the later medieval centuries, and by 1500 the continent's culture was being transmitted across vast oceans and to continental regions in the west and south of a newly discovered world.

A
BOVE
A late-15th-century Flemish illustration, from the
Chroniques de France et d'Angleterre,
of the duke of Burgundy landing in Africa. Such explorations led to the global expansion of Christianity and European culture
.

The system of philosophical theology called Thomism was raised on the foundations laid by Tomasso d'Aquino
(c.
1224–74), the most original and influential thinker of medieval Latin Christendom. In the post-medieval centuries Thomas retained his authority as the philosopher who had reconciled the teachings of Aristotle with Christian theology
.

From the late 19th century onward a revived form of Thomism became the voice of Catholic orthodoxy in its confrontation with secularism. However, emphasis on Thomas the saint (he was canonized in 1323), the scholastic system-builder and Doctor Angelicus—whose teaching was divinely inspired—obscures the reality of a creative intellectual whose work alarmed many contemporaries.

A scion of the southern Italian nobility, Thomas was educated as a boy at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino and subsequently at the University of Naples, which had become a center for the study of philosophical and scientific texts translated from Arabic and ancient Greek. His decision to join the Dominican Order, whose members embraced poverty and begging as a way of life, rather than the more venerable Benedictines, upset Thomas's family. The Dominicans however were involved in the cut-and-thrust of contemporary life as preachers and teachers who lived in the world—and most often within the fast developing townscape of 13th-century Europe—rather than existing in monastic seclusion. Thomas's decision was a conscious rejection of the two narrow forms of life in which he had been raised: the daily regime of Benedictine spirituality—ordered, beautiful but dull—and the social milieu of the landed estate as lived by his parents in the district around the town of Aquino. The mental and spiritual life that he craved instead was one capable of responding creatively to the contemporary European scene. Mendicancy (or begging) was central to the Dominicans' radical involvement, just as it was for Francis of Assisi and his followers.

By the autumn of 1245 Thomas was in Paris, having been sent there to study by his Order, and the intellectual excitement he could generate as both teacher and writer was immediately apparent once he started to lecture at the University of Paris in 1256. Arabian-Aristotelian science and thought were now acquiring a widespread appeal in Europe, and the Church had responded initially with a panic-stricken condemnation. Aristotle in particular was deemed guilty of an arrogant rationalism and of naturalism—a creed equating nature with God. His reputation took a profound knock when the work of Averroes, the great Spanish-Islamic interpreter of Aristotle, became known in Paris and other university centers. The Averroist notion of a double truth, with the conclusions of reason and faith both being valid but also capable of contradicting each other, disturbed the Christian consensus. Other teachings by Averroes, and attributed by him to Aristotle, included the notion that the world is eternal (and not therefore created in time), and that the soul consists of two parts: an individual element which is not eternal and dies with the human body, and a divine element which links up all of humanity as common partakers in an eternal and universal consciousness.

The commentaries written by Thomas sought to show that Aristotle's thought was consistent with the Christian teaching that the individual soul is immortal and that God had intervened to create the world at a particular moment in time. Thomas's position, expounded in a dazzling series of over 80 works that include the celebrated
Summa Theologiae
(1265–73), was exposed to attack from two directions. Averroism was the most exciting form of wisdom in 13th-century Europe and its elevation of “nature”—a category that included both the physical world and human society—appealed to many at a time of material advance and intellectual progress. Traditional Christianity on the other hand, harking back to St. Augustine, emphasized the “fallen nature” of mankind that was subordinate to God's grace—a divine freedom that obeyed its own imperatives. Thomas, by contrast, chose to relate reason to faith: the theologian accepts
the insights of faith as a starting point and then expounds them by following the distinctive rules of reason. His re-evaluation of nature—the sum total of the material world's events and developments—proved particularly provocative. Matter was not distinct from spirit but its inevitable and appropriate setting, and human existence is defined by the thoroughgoing fusion of the two categories. “Spirit,” therefore, is not remote and supernatural. It exists in the here-and-now, and can be investigated, explained and enjoyed.

By the time Thomas returned to teach at Naples in 1272 he enjoyed a Europe-wide reputation. Nonetheless, the Masters of Arts at Paris, the Church's supreme body when it came to defining truths of theology, decided to condemn some of his most characteristic teachings in 1277. The Catholic Church took a long time to make up its mind about Thomas theologically, and it was only in 1567 that he was eventually named a Doctor of the Church.

St. Thomas Aquinas is flanked by Aristotle and Plato in this 14th-century tempera on wood, while Averroes reclines below him. Christ looks down from above, along with Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Moses and Saint Paul. In this hierarchy of knowledge, philosophy is subordinated to theology
. (Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas
by Francesco Traini
, c.
1340, Church of Santa Caterina, Pisa.)

Warfare was a near-constant preoccupation for medieval Europe's governing élites. Chroniclers then, and subsequently, drew a distinction between “public” wars fought by rulers and “private” wars, which were contests between individuals. In reality, however, both these kinds of medieval conflict overlapped. “Public” wars between kings may seem to be
par excellence
the arena in which established political authority and the assertion of legal rights really came into operation by sanctioning violence. But the many powerful individuals who fought each other with armies—barons, counts, margraves and dukes—enjoyed a quasi-monarchical authority in the regions they dominated. They, too, appealed to ancestral political and legal rights when fighting their own internecine battles, and the medieval evolution toward territorial monarchies whose rulers enjoyed a monopoly of force was a very long-term development
.

Medieval European society tolerated very high levels of violence as a fact of everyday life. Men (and some women) resorted to force without much compunction in order to achieve their goals, and highly personal motivations could lead to war. In the later Middle Ages monarchs still used the language of honor to justify war after they or their dynasty had been slighted. And at all stages in its evolution, medieval European warfare found it easy to accommodate the very personal reasons that lead human beings to inflict pain on each other. Medieval warfare therefore includes the blood lust of the vendetta and the revenge sought by feuding families as well as the honor code of knights and the ambitions of Christian princes. The key to all these forms of conflict was the warrior code. Its dominance and persistence meant that violent motivations could be institutionalized and expressed in warfare's varied forms.

The Germanic warriors who took over the former Western empire and divided it into kingdoms set the medieval military pattern. Ties of loyalty to the leader and a strongly personal code of honor established a resilient
esprit de corps
. Fighting was the proper occupation of an able-bodied, early medieval European male. Death in battle was glorious—although the shock recorded by chroniclers and writers of annals when great leaders fell in battle suggests that nobles were rarely exposed to high levels of personal danger. Social status mattered, and the humbly born were not supposed to engage their superiors in combat. The physical suffering and material losses inflicted on non-combatants were regrettable but unavoidable by-products of war. These mental attitudes were established as warrior kingship became the standard form of European leadership, and their authoritative appeal persisted throughout the medieval period.

R
IGHT
Knights engage in hand-to-hand combat in defense of an English-held castle in this detail from a 14th-century manuscript
.

MEDIEVAL WARFARE

796
Charlemagne's commanders discover the central European Avar confederation's treasure, some of which is then redistributed by the king as largesse.

955
Battle of Lechfeld: Otto the Great's defeat of the nomadic Magyars is a victory for physically bigger warriors sustained by protein-enriched diets made possible by north European agricultural advances.

1066–1141
Battles fought in England and Normandy show infantry's continuing relevance despite the novelty of cavalry's major role.

c
.1180
German conflicts have spilled over into north Italy where local factions acquire the Guelph and Ghibelline labels as a consequence. The alliances linking originally separate theaters of war makes medieval warfare hard to contain.

c
.1200
Europe's mercenary market is expanding. Italian city states use mercenaries rather than local militias in their internecine wars.

1272–1307
The reign of Edward I of England who deploys his military household, a permanent and professional fighting unit, in his wars against the Welsh and Scots.

1346–47
English forces besiege Calais for 11 months. Sieges, often lengthy, are basic to medieval warfare until the 15th-century spread of efficient cannonry.

c
.1400
Knights sometimes dismount to deal with the threat posed by archers whose longbows shoot arrows rapidly. Cavalry is losing its former dominance.