The Historians' History of the World 07

It is strange that such a perspective has persisted so long, when it requires but the slightest analysis of the facts to prove its utter falsity. The merest glance along the centuries reveals the fact that this stretch of a thousand years is no level plain, no monotonous repetition of unprogressive generations, but is varying in character and progressive in all the deeper and more essential elements of civilisation; in short, is as marked by all the signs of evolution as any such sweep of years in all the world’s history. Yet the mistake in perspective was made a long time ago; it is a heritage of the Renaissance. When men looked back from the attainments of the sixteenth century to the ancient world which so fascinated them, they forgot that the very elevation upon which they stood had been built by the patient work of their own ancestors, and that the enlightenment which they had attained, the culture of the Renaissance itself, would have been impossible but for the stern effort of those who had laid the foundations of our society upon Teutonic and Christian basis in the so-called Middle Ages. The error of the men of the Renaissance has passed into history and lived there, clothed with all the rhetoric of the modern literatures, and upheld with all the fire of religious controversy. How could there be anything worth considering in an age that on the one hand was void of a feeling for antique ideas and could not write the periods of Cicero, and on the other hand was dominated by a religious system which has not satisfied all classes of our modern world? But if we condemn the Middle Ages on these grounds, we are turning aside from the up-building of the Europe of to-day, because its æsthetic and religious ideals were not as varied or as radical as ours. And for this we are asked to pass by that brilliant twelfth century which gave us universities, politics, the dawn of science, a high philosophy, civic life, and national consciousness, or the thirteenth century that gave us parliaments. Is there nothing in all this teeming life but the gropings of superstition? It is clear that as we look into it, the error of the Renaissance grows more absurd. Our perspective should rather be that of a long slope of the ascending centuries, rising steadily but slowly from the time of the invasions till the full modern period.

Let us look at the details. The break-up of the Roman world which resulted in the first planting of the modern nations, did not cause that vast calamity which we call the Dark Age. The invasion of the Teutons and the infusion of their vigour into the effete society of southern Europe was not a fatal blow to civilisation. Rude as they were when first they crossed the frontiers of the empire, the German peoples, and especially their leaders, gave promise that almost in their own day whatever was of permanent value in the Roman world should be re-incorporated into the new society. This series of recoveries had to be repeated with every new people, but it finally seemed about to culminate in the wider renaissance of Charlemagne. By the year 800 it looked as though Europe were already on the clear path to modern times. But just as the young Teutonic civilisation reached the light, a second wave of invasion came dashing over it. The Vikings, whom Charlemagne’s aged eyes may have watched stealing past the hills of Calais, not only swept the northern seas, but harried Frankland from the Rhine to the Rhone, until progress was at a standstill and the only thought of the ninth century was that of defence. Then the Hungarians came raiding up the Danube valley, and the Slavs pressed in upon the North. Along the coasts of the Mediterranean the Moorish corsairs were stifling the weak commerce of Italian towns, and landing they attacked such ports as Pisa and even sacked a part of Rome. The nascent civilisation of the Teutons was forced to meet a danger such as would call for all the legions of Augustus. No wonder the weak Caroline kings sank under the burden and the war lords of the different tribes grew stronger as the nerveless state fell defenceless before the second great migration, or maintained but partial safety in the natural strongholds of the land.