Birth of Europe, The
Jacques Le Goff
Number of quotes: 28
Book ID: 199 Page: 5
Section: 1A
It is true that in Charlemagne’s time, people did speak of a Christian empire. However, it was only with the aggressive Christianity of the eleventh century, what is known as the Gregorian reform, introduced by the great religious order of Cluny, and with the ideology of the crusades that the term Christendom came to designate the territory that was to become the core of Europe.. . . .
However, Christendom was but one long and very important episode in a history that began before Christianity and still continued after it began to wane.
3G
Quote ID: 4487
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 199 Page: 10
Section: 2E5
(1) The Greek heritage The bequests from the Greeks to the Middle Ages included the following: the figure of the hero, who, as we shall see, once Christianized, became either a martyr or a saint;
Quote ID: 4488
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 10
Section: 1A
(2) The Roman heritage This was richer by far, for medieval Europe emerged directly from the Roman Empire.
Quote ID: 4489
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 199 Page: 11
Section: 2C
The attitude of warriors and peasants alike toward soft town-dwellers was one of hostility tinged with an element of envy. Those town-dwellers, for their part, meanwhile despised the uncouth peasants, the more so because Christianization had begun in the towns, and the countryside remained pagan for considerably longer. “Pagan” and “peasant” are both terms derived from the Latin paganus.
Quote ID: 4490
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 199 Page: 14/15
Section: 1A
This happened in the course of the Christianization of the Roman Empire, which, as is well known, came about between the so-called Edict of Milan of 313, in which Emperor Constantine recognized the Christian religion, and the adoption of Christianity as the official religion by Theodosius I, who died in 395.
Quote ID: 4492
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 199 Page: 22
Section: 2C
But it was Christianization that, above all, brought uniformity to the West in the Early Middle Ages. In the first place, this whole area was governed by bishops whose power was increasing, in particular in the administration of towns. From the seventh century on, a higher ranking group emerged among the bishops: these figures were called archbishops.
Quote ID: 4493
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 23
Section: 3A1
The Christian West was divided into territories in the main based on the ancient Roman administrative divisions. They were known as dioceses.
Quote ID: 4494
Time Periods: 357
Book ID: 199 Page: 23
Section: 3A1,4B
Like bishops, many saints belonged to the upper Romano-barbarian strata of society. The leaders of the new Christian society came from aristocratic families. The aristocracy was educated and it ensured that government fell to the new, Christian, elite.
Quote ID: 4495
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 199 Page: 24
Section: 2E2,4B
Monastic life deeply influenced European mores. It taught Christian society to organize its use of time. By both day and night, the monks themselves would gather together at regular intervals and at special times (the eight monastic or canonical hours) to recite prayers. From the monks, Christians also learned to pay attention to their regimen.
Quote ID: 4496
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 199 Page: 24
Section: 2E4
Christianity also introduced profound changes to the calendar. It gave the Christian era a new starting point when, in 532, the monk Dionysius the Little made the birth of Christ the new beginning of history. In point of fact, however, Dionysius made a mistake in his calculations, so the birth of Christ, which marks the beginning of the Christian era, was probably in 4 BC.
Quote ID: 4497
Time Periods: 056
Book ID: 199 Page: 25
Section: 2E4
In the West, the seventh century witnessed an innovation the impact of which was widely felt, namely the introduction of church bells and the construction of bell-towers or campaniles. In the hands of the monks, the passing of the hours remained imprecise, but now bells announcing each hour could be heard both in the towns and in the countryside. This audible measuring of time was an innovation of capital importance.
Quote ID: 4498
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 25
Section: 4B
Christianity’s remodeling of space was no less important than its remodeling of the measurement of time; and in both cases, the changes affected the whole of western Europe. Their organization led to new diocese divisions,
Quote ID: 4499
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 199 Page: 27
Section: 4B
The first, which was of an economic nature, was the above-mentioned ruralization of a world that had been strongly urbanized under the Romans. Roads fell into disrepair, along with workshops, warehouses and irrigation systems, and agriculture declined. It was a technological regression in which the use of stone as a major building material diminished and wood made a comeback.
Quote ID: 4500
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 27
Section: 4B
The monetary economy shrank and bartering took its place. Long-distance trading almost disappeared, except for the indispensable commodities such as salt.
Quote ID: 4502
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 27
Section: 4B
Recently, historians have tended somewhat to discount the decline of the towns. But in truth the only one that continued to flourish to any degree were centers where bishops and the occasional barbarian chieftain resided, such as Tours, Reims, Lyon, Toulouse, Seville, Mainz, Milan, and Ravenna.
Quote ID: 4503
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 28
Section: 3D2
We should not be misled by the presence of these laws, for they were of an extremely rudimentary nature even in the case of the edict produced by the last true heir to the Roman tradition in the West, the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great. The Salic law of the Franks, written in Latin under Clovis, was particularly basic.. . . .
Rudimentary though it was, this barbarian legislation resting upon the ruins of Roman law did ensure that the Europe of the Early Middle Ages continued to be based on law.
Quote ID: 4504
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 199 Page: 31
Section: 3A4C,4B
Charlemagne’s most significant victory was won in the southeast. He was fighting against the king of the Lombards, who was a convert to Christianity. But as the latter persisted in harassing the pope’s possessions in Italy, including those in Rome, the pope himself had invited Charlemagne to take action against the Lombards.
Quote ID: 4505
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 32
Section: 3F
In the Frankish sovereigns, the popes sought and found a strong secular arm to protect them against their enemies, in particular the Lombards. The Frankish sovereigns’ reward for their partnership in this alliance was the consecration of Pepin and his sons.In the second stage of the alliance, the papacy seems to have had in mind an undertaking of a “European” nature: it wanted to restore the extreme Christian West as an empire centered on the Franks.
Quote ID: 4506
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 32
Section: 3G
From a territorial point of view, Charlemagne’s Europe was very restricted. It included neither the British Isles, which in the hands of the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish, remained independent, the Iberian peninsula, which was mostly under Muslim control, southern Italy and Sicily, likewise in the hands of the Saracens, nor, finally, Scandinavia, which was still pagan.
Quote ID: 4507
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 34
Section: 3A4C
Under the government of bishops and the secular clergy, and as the monks pursued their activities, the ninth century witnessed the unification of a Europe of warriors and a Europe of peasants. In accordance with the Frankish model, all the subjects of Charlemagne’s empire depended directly upon the sovereign and were warriors. They were all in duty bound to do military service. Every free man was a potential warrior who, either directly or serving in a contingent of men provided by his overlord, had to take part annually in the sovereign’s military campaigns from the spring to the autumn, the period when the horses could be sure of finding pasture.Out of the 46 years of Charlemagne’s reign, only two, 790 and 807, were free of military campaigns.
Quote ID: 4508
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 35
Section: 3A4C,4B
The domination of a minority of militaristic landlords made Europe a world of warriors. But it was also a world in which the majority of inhabitants were peasants. The social statuses of these peasants varied. There were still slaves, for Christianity had done nothing to improve their lot.
Quote ID: 4509
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 40
Section: 3G
In the mid-tenth century, Charlemagne’s dream of imperial unity was taken up by Otto I, the king of Germany, who was the son of Henry I and Saint Matilda. He had been crowned in 936, in Aix-la-Chapelle, and had then annexed various territories in Germany and won a number of victories over invaders, including a famous one at Lechfeld, over the Hungarians, in 955. In 962, he was crowned emperor in Rome, by Pope John XII.. . . .
The name given to this empire of his was the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. This conveyed first the sacred nature of the empire and secondly that it was the Roman Empire’s successor, with Rome as its capital.
Quote ID: 4510
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 41
Section: 3G
Otto I’s son, Otto II, consolidated the structures of the empire and his son Otto III, who was crowned in Rome immediately after his father’s death in 983, was hailed as the bringer of a brilliant future for the whole of Christendom. The gifts and brilliance of this 13-year-old emperor, who died at the age of 21, in 1002, earned him the description of a mirabilia mundi, one of the world’s wonders.
Quote ID: 4511
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 76
Section: 2D2
The Rise of the Cult of the Virgin Mary. . . .
not until the eleventh century did she acquire a place of central importance in the beliefs and practices of western Christianity. Between the mid eleventh century and the mid-twelfth, the cult of the Virgin lay at the heart of Church reform.
. . . .
She acted as the almost exclusive intermediary between human beings and her son.
. . . .
In fact, she was such a key figure in procuring the salvation of human beings that she was said even to offer her protection in shocking or scandalous circumstances. She protected criminals and sinners whose crimes and sins seemed inexcusable. She pleaded for them and Christ acceded to his mother’s intercessions, however exorbitant they might be.
Quote ID: 4512
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 77
Section: 3D2
The Virgin thus seems to me to have acquired a quite exceptional status, almost becoming a fourth element in the Trinity.
Quote ID: 4513
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 199 Page: 77
Section: 2D2
A twelfth-century prayer, the Ave Maria, acquired a status comparable to that of “Our Father.” The subsequent more or less constant inclusion of this prayer, from 1215 on, in the penances assigned to sinners making their annual confession, made the cult of Mary a part of the fundamental piety of Christians.
Quote ID: 4514
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 199 Page: 79
Section: 2D2
The cult of the Virgin Mary had led to a feminization of piety and this was combined with what I have called its “dolorization.” In the historical evolution of the image of God, Christ had for many years been represented, in the tradition of the heroes of antiquity, as the conqueror of death, a Christ triumphant. Now he was replaced by a suffering Christ, a Christ in pain.. . . .
Images of not only the crucifixion but also the deposition and the entombment prepared the way for the meditations on death that fueled the fourteenth-century human fascination with the macabre. A Europe of corpses and, slightly later, skulls encompassed the whole of Christendom.
Quote ID: 4515
Time Periods: 67
Book ID: 199 Page: 85
Section: 3A2A
In the meantime, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) had imposed an antiheretical oath upon the Christian princes. It had also condemned Jews to be distinguishable by a sign, usually a red disk, sewn on to their clothes. This constituted the birth in Europe of the future yellow star. Most secular governments chose to ignore that decision, although in 1269, at the end of his life, Saint Louis was obligated, apparently against his will to observe.
Quote ID: 4516
Time Periods: 7
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