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The Medieval Experience
Originally published by Charles Scribners' Sons, 1974. 'The perspective from which [this book] has been written is that of world history; the conviction determining its focus, that of Western cultural peculiarity or singularity; the belief suggesting its unifying theme, that it was during the medieval period - in particular, during the centuries from the eleventh onward - that the foundations were laid on which the edifice of Western cultural peculiarity was subsequently erected.'
From the Introduction
From the Introduction
- GenresHistory
228 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 2, 2020
So refreshing to read a medieval studies book that actually defends the Middle Ages and its contribution to Western Civilisation.
I have no idea why the book sat on my bookshelf for so long and it took the coronavirus quarantine for me to finally draw it off the shelf. But I'm glad that I did.
I expected something very specific and heavy but in truth the book would make an excellent introduction to the study of the Middle Ages. It gives (in the first chapter Space and Time: The Shape of Medieval History) a brief overview of Medieval history, spanning nearly a millenium, before moving into more thematic chapters. Because of this, it is much more accessable than C.H. Haskin's foundational The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, but not necessarily less academic.
The book is a wonderful defence of two oft-maligned things: 1) that Western civilisation is something unique and 2) the roots of it can be found in the Middle Ages, specifically Europe: "Whatever else the histories of Byzantium and Islam might have to tell us, they certainly suggest that we must seek the roots of the West's cultural singularity not in its classical inheritance alone, or in the Renaissance revival of that inheritance, but in what actually happened in Europe itself during the Middle Ages." (p. 20)
The book claims to deal with the "perspective... of world history" (back cover and the introduction) but really goes about seeking to answer the questions why Europe managed to advance so spectacularly compared to regions in similar or even more advanced/advantageous situations, like China, Japan, Byzantium, the Islamic world or India. What combination of traits made Western civilisation particularly notable and more successful? I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's work Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective
Keys to Western European success include chapters on:
1)the Separation of Church and State: Church and Sect: the role of Medieval Christianity
In this chapter Professor Oakley elaborates on a point I first encountered with Roger Scruton, that the failure of Medieval Christianity and the (Holy Roman) Empire to develop hegemony (unlike in Islam or Byzantium respectively) resulted in a tension, a torn populace with torn loyalties that proved fertile ground for disseminated power and the cultural, economic and political benefits thereof.
His use of Troeltsch's distinction between Church (universal in scope but shallow in depth of allegiance) and Sect (deep in commitment but marginal in general appeal) is very fruitful. The Church occilates between the desert fathers and Constantine, Augustine and Charlemagne, the Monasteries of St Benedict and St Bernard and...well later Monasteries, essentially a missionary church and a moderate church. It is in this atmosphere that "the very dynamism and vitality of Western civilization was the outcome of that critical, if deplorable, instability." (p. 72)
2) Industrialisation and the roots of Capitalism Making and Doing: the Nature of Medieval Economic Life
In this chapter Professor Oakley notes that much of the industrial use of non-human power originated in the Middle Ages. He borrows much from Professor Lynn White's Medieval Technology and Social Change Two things were necessary to inaugurate such a change: a change in psychology and technological improvement, "the extraordinary, sustained drive, evident both in agriculture and industry, to harness the forces of nature, to substitute for human effort natural or mechanical power" (p. 100)
Likewise with capitalism, many necessary advances occured in the Middle Ages to facilitate commerce: advances in contracts, banking, insurance, money and bookkeeping. Despite religious and cultural antipathy to commerce, merchants as a class rose to social and economic prominence, unlike in many other societies, particularly China or Byzantium.
3) Constitutionalism Subject and Citizen: the Import of Medieval Politics
One identifying feature of Western civilization is consitutionalism and Professor Oakley dispells the myth that the Middle Ages were the roots of the Absolute Monarchies of the later renaissance and enlightenment period. He traces back constitutionalism to the same cultural disunity and lack of hegemony as in the first chapter on religion. He traces much of this back to Jesus' distinction between giving to Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's (Mark 12) "became in Christian hands a permanent, universal, and dramatic limitation on the allegiance men can owe to any earthly society...divine right theory was ultimately pagan in its presuppositions and ancient in its provenance." (p. 112-3)
He traces much of this through feudalism and importantly makes an interesting connection between the Roman and pagan villae and the manorial system. Parliaments (initially courts) began as ways of the monarch exercising power but ironically laid the foundation for its future destruction.
4) the intellectual foundation of science Reason and Faith: the Direction of Medieval Intellectual Life
This topic has interested me for quite some time. It has been dealt with in Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History, The Savior Of Science, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization just to name a few. But nowhere was the connection between the foundation of science and the seemlingly accidental nominalism (of Ockham and later Hume) made as clear.
Why Catholic/scholastic belief in a rational, ordered and disenchanted universe should be necessary for science is rather obvious. But why the nominalism of Ockham and Hume should prove to such fertile ground is less clear. The above mentioned books all deal with the first, but only Oakley has offered any real insight into the second. Isn't it ironic that Hume, who questioned causation itself, should be associated with the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of science?
Professor Oakley details a lot of what I would call false starts (in Ancient Greece, then later Byzantium, the Muslim world, Jewish intellectuals and China) but notes something different about (western) European Christian thought "for Muslims are 'a people of the book' in a way that Christians can never be" (p. 154).
Additionally, the shift in metality (just like with regards to industrialisation) was accompanied by a a technological advance, "Nowhere in Islam does one find ecclesiastically sponsored insitutions like the Latin universities." (p. 153)
But getting back to nominalism,
5) Love and Sentimentality Passion and Society: the Texture of Medieval Sentiment
This last chapter is the final aspect or trait of western society that Professor Oakley traces back to the Middle Ages. The fact that in the west the connection between romance and marriage is unquestioned just goes to show the complete success of this medieval contribution.
However, for all the interesting things he says about religious ecstacy, brotherly love between knights and the courtly love of the troubadours, he nearly ruins the five star rating with two flaws:
1) he insists on tracing back the troubadours to Arab poetry or Avicenna's Treatise on Love despite the fact that "there is no documentary evidence that the work was translated into Latin before 1130" (p.201). The troubadour's sycophantic and adulterous love need not be searched for any further than the story of David and Bethsheba, no need to time-travelling Arab poets.
2) he relies on the literature of (1970s) contemporary feminists to conclude with "contemporary feminism would suggest that it [romantic love] may in some ways have rendered those bonds [marriage] more destructive by making them less visible." (p204) How can I eye-roll in a review?
Please don't lay modern feminism at the feet of the Middle Ages, especially in a chapter on sentimentality that discussed St. Bernard but not Peter Abelard and Heloise. Don't blame the lack of female representation in universities in the Middle Ages without discussing Charlemagne's illeteracy but the education of his daughters, Hildegard von Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich.
Overall, a fabulous book.
I have no idea why the book sat on my bookshelf for so long and it took the coronavirus quarantine for me to finally draw it off the shelf. But I'm glad that I did.
I expected something very specific and heavy but in truth the book would make an excellent introduction to the study of the Middle Ages. It gives (in the first chapter Space and Time: The Shape of Medieval History) a brief overview of Medieval history, spanning nearly a millenium, before moving into more thematic chapters. Because of this, it is much more accessable than C.H. Haskin's foundational The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, but not necessarily less academic.
The book is a wonderful defence of two oft-maligned things: 1) that Western civilisation is something unique and 2) the roots of it can be found in the Middle Ages, specifically Europe: "Whatever else the histories of Byzantium and Islam might have to tell us, they certainly suggest that we must seek the roots of the West's cultural singularity not in its classical inheritance alone, or in the Renaissance revival of that inheritance, but in what actually happened in Europe itself during the Middle Ages." (p. 20)
The book claims to deal with the "perspective... of world history" (back cover and the introduction) but really goes about seeking to answer the questions why Europe managed to advance so spectacularly compared to regions in similar or even more advanced/advantageous situations, like China, Japan, Byzantium, the Islamic world or India. What combination of traits made Western civilisation particularly notable and more successful? I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's work Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective
Keys to Western European success include chapters on:
1)the Separation of Church and State: Church and Sect: the role of Medieval Christianity
In this chapter Professor Oakley elaborates on a point I first encountered with Roger Scruton, that the failure of Medieval Christianity and the (Holy Roman) Empire to develop hegemony (unlike in Islam or Byzantium respectively) resulted in a tension, a torn populace with torn loyalties that proved fertile ground for disseminated power and the cultural, economic and political benefits thereof.
His use of Troeltsch's distinction between Church (universal in scope but shallow in depth of allegiance) and Sect (deep in commitment but marginal in general appeal) is very fruitful. The Church occilates between the desert fathers and Constantine, Augustine and Charlemagne, the Monasteries of St Benedict and St Bernard and...well later Monasteries, essentially a missionary church and a moderate church. It is in this atmosphere that "the very dynamism and vitality of Western civilization was the outcome of that critical, if deplorable, instability." (p. 72)
2) Industrialisation and the roots of Capitalism Making and Doing: the Nature of Medieval Economic Life
In this chapter Professor Oakley notes that much of the industrial use of non-human power originated in the Middle Ages. He borrows much from Professor Lynn White's Medieval Technology and Social Change Two things were necessary to inaugurate such a change: a change in psychology and technological improvement, "the extraordinary, sustained drive, evident both in agriculture and industry, to harness the forces of nature, to substitute for human effort natural or mechanical power" (p. 100)
Likewise with capitalism, many necessary advances occured in the Middle Ages to facilitate commerce: advances in contracts, banking, insurance, money and bookkeeping. Despite religious and cultural antipathy to commerce, merchants as a class rose to social and economic prominence, unlike in many other societies, particularly China or Byzantium.
3) Constitutionalism Subject and Citizen: the Import of Medieval Politics
One identifying feature of Western civilization is consitutionalism and Professor Oakley dispells the myth that the Middle Ages were the roots of the Absolute Monarchies of the later renaissance and enlightenment period. He traces back constitutionalism to the same cultural disunity and lack of hegemony as in the first chapter on religion. He traces much of this back to Jesus' distinction between giving to Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's (Mark 12) "became in Christian hands a permanent, universal, and dramatic limitation on the allegiance men can owe to any earthly society...divine right theory was ultimately pagan in its presuppositions and ancient in its provenance." (p. 112-3)
He traces much of this through feudalism and importantly makes an interesting connection between the Roman and pagan villae and the manorial system. Parliaments (initially courts) began as ways of the monarch exercising power but ironically laid the foundation for its future destruction.
4) the intellectual foundation of science Reason and Faith: the Direction of Medieval Intellectual Life
This topic has interested me for quite some time. It has been dealt with in Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History, The Savior Of Science, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization just to name a few. But nowhere was the connection between the foundation of science and the seemlingly accidental nominalism (of Ockham and later Hume) made as clear.
Why Catholic/scholastic belief in a rational, ordered and disenchanted universe should be necessary for science is rather obvious. But why the nominalism of Ockham and Hume should prove to such fertile ground is less clear. The above mentioned books all deal with the first, but only Oakley has offered any real insight into the second. Isn't it ironic that Hume, who questioned causation itself, should be associated with the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of science?
Professor Oakley details a lot of what I would call false starts (in Ancient Greece, then later Byzantium, the Muslim world, Jewish intellectuals and China) but notes something different about (western) European Christian thought "for Muslims are 'a people of the book' in a way that Christians can never be" (p. 154).
Additionally, the shift in metality (just like with regards to industrialisation) was accompanied by a a technological advance, "Nowhere in Islam does one find ecclesiastically sponsored insitutions like the Latin universities." (p. 153)
But getting back to nominalism,
the Greek philosophers [and by extension the scholastics] had been in a sense too open to rational investigation to be able to sponsor the type of empiracal natural science that emerged in the scientific revolution...The ultimate goal of their investigations, then, was a very ambitious one: nothing less than the discovery and disclosure of the very essences and purposes of things...What took its place [due to Ockham and later Hume] was the more modest project of investigating natural phenomena empirically or experimentally with the object of understanding how things behave in the natural world. (p.166)
5) Love and Sentimentality Passion and Society: the Texture of Medieval Sentiment
This last chapter is the final aspect or trait of western society that Professor Oakley traces back to the Middle Ages. The fact that in the west the connection between romance and marriage is unquestioned just goes to show the complete success of this medieval contribution.
However, for all the interesting things he says about religious ecstacy, brotherly love between knights and the courtly love of the troubadours, he nearly ruins the five star rating with two flaws:
1) he insists on tracing back the troubadours to Arab poetry or Avicenna's Treatise on Love despite the fact that "there is no documentary evidence that the work was translated into Latin before 1130" (p.201). The troubadour's sycophantic and adulterous love need not be searched for any further than the story of David and Bethsheba, no need to time-travelling Arab poets.
2) he relies on the literature of (1970s) contemporary feminists to conclude with "contemporary feminism would suggest that it [romantic love] may in some ways have rendered those bonds [marriage] more destructive by making them less visible." (p204) How can I eye-roll in a review?
Please don't lay modern feminism at the feet of the Middle Ages, especially in a chapter on sentimentality that discussed St. Bernard but not Peter Abelard and Heloise. Don't blame the lack of female representation in universities in the Middle Ages without discussing Charlemagne's illeteracy but the education of his daughters, Hildegard von Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich.
Overall, a fabulous book.
February 24, 2019
Gods and kings, morality and sin, cities and migrations, health and sickness, productivity and starvation, protection and war, reason and faith; these are all dichotomies that continually waxed and waned during the medieval period between 300 - 1300 AD that would shape the Western ethos to come. It is through this looking glass that Dr. Francis Oakley sets the stage in The Medieval Experience: Foundations of Western Cultural Singularity.
I've always been interested in the medieval period of western history and find it somewhat mysterious due to the lack of materially written records. It seems to be a historical gap that just isn't given enough study or focus. While I was browsing in an antiquity bookstore, I happened to find a pristine hardcover copy of this book buried deep on a low shelf. Oakley, a graduate of Yale and President Emeritus of Williams College is still highly regarded as a medieval scholar with a number of honorary awards. This particular work was most likely one of his very first as it was written in 1974 and may, perhaps, be dated (in his mind) as his work evolved over the years.
In many ways I would classify this book as a companion to medieval historical study. Oakley's unique approach is an unusual amalgam of the period broken down into six sections--historical, economic, religious, political, rationality and society. I found this personally enjoyable because it wasn't just a timeline of events but a view into specific critical changes in medieval culture over that millennium. I personally believe this book should complement a number of deeper historical texts to act as a guide to the broader cultural transitions emerging each century.
It's clear that the medieval period was in many ways a societal step backwards due to the fragmented categories I noted in the first sentence. Yet, it led to a surprising outcome according to Oakley - European secularism. Would we be where we are today if medieval society had continued without disruption from Constantine the Great and Eastern Roman culture to a more evolved sacral society much like China? An irony of history perhaps.
Yes, many would find this text dry, but, my advice is to keep a laptop or tablet nearby for supplementing sections (or, be an iconoclast and go to the library!)
I've always been interested in the medieval period of western history and find it somewhat mysterious due to the lack of materially written records. It seems to be a historical gap that just isn't given enough study or focus. While I was browsing in an antiquity bookstore, I happened to find a pristine hardcover copy of this book buried deep on a low shelf. Oakley, a graduate of Yale and President Emeritus of Williams College is still highly regarded as a medieval scholar with a number of honorary awards. This particular work was most likely one of his very first as it was written in 1974 and may, perhaps, be dated (in his mind) as his work evolved over the years.
In many ways I would classify this book as a companion to medieval historical study. Oakley's unique approach is an unusual amalgam of the period broken down into six sections--historical, economic, religious, political, rationality and society. I found this personally enjoyable because it wasn't just a timeline of events but a view into specific critical changes in medieval culture over that millennium. I personally believe this book should complement a number of deeper historical texts to act as a guide to the broader cultural transitions emerging each century.
It's clear that the medieval period was in many ways a societal step backwards due to the fragmented categories I noted in the first sentence. Yet, it led to a surprising outcome according to Oakley - European secularism. Would we be where we are today if medieval society had continued without disruption from Constantine the Great and Eastern Roman culture to a more evolved sacral society much like China? An irony of history perhaps.
Yes, many would find this text dry, but, my advice is to keep a laptop or tablet nearby for supplementing sections (or, be an iconoclast and go to the library!)
February 16, 2024
If you’re a Medieval enthusiast and have a fondness for run-on sentences spanning over a dozen lines this is the book for you. Extra bonus of many sentences with double negatives - many within those sleepy sentences.
I read this book about twice as I had to reread many paragraphs to sort out the aforementioned nonsense.
Clearly the author is a fan of (or has read) too many 19th century tomes; and sadly it shows up in this work.
Nevertheless, having written the above, I acknowledge that the author has more than a firm grasp of early to late Medieval Western history; but more importantly offers some unique and important arguments how the era was critical in the development and advancement of Western civilization. Arguably, pacing the rest of the world.
Pity. The book sorely needs an editor to translate the author’s pen into readable English.
Good luck. You’re into a tough slog.
But YMMV.
I read this book about twice as I had to reread many paragraphs to sort out the aforementioned nonsense.
Clearly the author is a fan of (or has read) too many 19th century tomes; and sadly it shows up in this work.
Nevertheless, having written the above, I acknowledge that the author has more than a firm grasp of early to late Medieval Western history; but more importantly offers some unique and important arguments how the era was critical in the development and advancement of Western civilization. Arguably, pacing the rest of the world.
Pity. The book sorely needs an editor to translate the author’s pen into readable English.
Good luck. You’re into a tough slog.
But YMMV.
October 4, 2023
Really excellent. Not another run through medieval history, but a study of key aspects of culture in terms of the before and after. In each case, what came into the medieval world from the ancient world or from outside, how medieval culture transformed these, and what the impact on the modern world was. As a result, we see an evaluation of the Middle Ages as a transforming process that produced and unique and improbable but lasting result.
October 5, 2020
read for a class about medieval history - was a bit dense, but overall pretty informative. it focused on europe, but drew from events occurring in other parts of the world, such as eastern asia.
December 16, 2012
A lot of varied people and events are in this book. All are primary sources from the time period. Had to read this book for a medieval history class but many of the stories were interesting.
February 10, 2014
As most textbooks, good information, but super dry.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews