From foreword by Tom Hanks: “A great work of nonfiction is an enlightening, educational, and entertaining record, a story of the never-ending audaciousness of human nature—of our instinct to either fight, flee, or fix.”
Dark Ages roughly A.D. 400-1000
“Nevertheless, if value judgments are made, it is undeniable that most of what is known about the period is unlovely. After the extant fragments have been fitted together, the portrait which emerges is a melange of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness.”
After fall of Roman Empire, bricklaying disappeared so except for cathedrals no stone buildings in Northern Europe for ten centuries
Very little iron so no agricultural tools or horse harnesses; handwork for peasants
Wilderness infested by boars, bears, wolves, outlaws—inspiring fairy tales and lawlessness
“One consequence of medieval peril was that people huddled closely together in communal homes. They married fellow villagers and were so insular that local dialects were often incomprehensible to men living only a few miles away.”
“Despite their bloodthirstiness—a taste which may have been acquired from the Huns, Goths, Franks, and Saxons—all were devout Christians. It was a paradox: the Church had replaced imperial Rome as the fixer of European frontiers, but missionaries found teaching pagans the lessons of Jesus to be an almost hopeless task. Yet converting them was easy. As quickly as the barbaric tribes had overrun the empire, Catholicism’s overrunning of the tribesmen was even quicker.”
“Medieval Christians, knowing the other cheek would be bloodied, did not turn it.”
Death was standard penalty for hundreds of offenses, especially property ones
“Soldiers of Christ swung their swords freely. And the victims were not always pagans. Every flourishing religion has been intermittently watered by the blood of its own faithful, but none has seen more spectacular internecine butchery than Christianity.”
Medieval Christianity had more in common with paganism than worshipers would acknowledge; Paul and John “profoundly influenced” by Neoplatonism
Slowly over medieval millennium the Church’s influence over aristocracy increased and solidified, though paganism survived
“Idol worship addressed needs the Church could not meet. Its rituals, myths, legends, marvels, and miracles were peculiarly suited to people who, living in the trackless fen and impenetrable forest, were always vulnerable to random disaster.”
Medieval astrologers and magicians flourished; uneasy blend of sacred and pagan
Medieval world: “If their society was diverse and colorful, it was also anarchic, formless, and appallingly unjust.”
Time between Roman Empire and Europe as a distinct unit: “The interregnum was the worst of times for the imaginative, the cerebral, and the unfortunate, but the strong, the healthy, the shrewd, the handsome, the beautiful—and the lucky—flourished.“
“Royalty was invested with glory, swathed in mystique, and clothed with magical powers. … Because the first medieval rulers had been barbarians, most of what followed derived from their customs.”
Hereditary monarchy largely a medieval innovation
Lack of ego/identity for peasants; Fewer than one percent of Christendom were “wellborn” so had no surnames; usually just nicknames since they rarely left their birthplace
Rival popes excommunicating each other during Great Schism of 1378-1417 while peasants unaware
“The folk were baptized, shriven, attended mass, received the host at communion, married, and received the last rites never dreaming that they should be informed about great events, let alone have ant voice in them. Their anonymity approached the absolute. So did their mute acceptance of it.”
Renaissance believed to have begun in early 1400s
“Like all people at all times, they were confronted each day by the present, which always arrives in a promiscuous rush, with the significant, the trivial, the profound, and the fatuous all tangled together.”
No significant European inventions except waterwheels in 800s and windmills in 1100s
By 1500: “No startling new ideas had appeared, no new territories outside Europe had been explored. Everything was as it had been for as long as the oldest European could remember. The center of the Ptolemaic universe was the known world—Europe, with the Holy Land and North Africa on its fringes. The sun moved round it every day. Heaven was above the immovable earth, somewhere in the overarching sky; hell seethed far beneath their feet. Kings ruled at the pleasure of the Almighty; all others did what they were told to do. Jesus, the son of God, had been crucified and resurrected, and his reappearance was imminent, or at any rate inevitable. Every human being adored him (the Jews and the Muslims being invisible). During the 1,436 years since the death of Saint Peter the Apostle, 211 popes had succeeded him, all chosen by God and all infallible. The Church was indivisible, the afterlife a certainty; all knowledge was already known. And nothing would ever change. The mighty storm was swiftly approaching, but Europeans were not only unaware of it; they were convinced that such a phenomenon could not exist. Shackled in ignorance, disciplined by fear, and sheathed in superstition, they trudged into the sixteenth century in the clumsy, hunched, pigeon-toed gait of rickets victims, their vacant faces, pocked by smallpox, turned blindly toward the future they thought they knew—gullible, pitiful innocents who were about to be swept up in the most powerful, incomprehensible irresistible vortex since Alaric had led his Visigoths and Huns across the Alps, fallen on Rome, and extinguished the lamps of learning a thousand years before.”
“When the cartographers of the Middle Ages came to the end of the world as they knew it, they wrote: Beware: Dragons Lurk Beyond Here. They were right, though the menacing dimension was not on maps, but on the calendar. It was time, not space. There the fiercest threats to their medieval mind-set waited in ambush.”
Magellan born in Portugal but renounced it for Seville; sailed under colors of Castile and Aragon
King Carlos I of Spain (also elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) commissioned Magellan to claim Spice Islands in Indonesia from Portugal; reward would be two of the islands and five percent of all profits
“Death is always a misfortune, at least to the man who has to do the dying.”
Possible/likely that Magellan’s true but unspoken motive but was circumnavigation
Spices made valuable preservatives that could disguise odor and taste of spoiled meat, hence imperial motivations
“At any given moment the most dangerous enemy in Europe was the reigning pope. … Ruthless in their pursuit of political power and personal gain, they were medieval despots who used their holy office for blackmail and extortion.”
Lots of “recreational homicide” and betrayals; “If such slaughters were remarkable, so was the alacrity with which the Eternal City forgot them.”
“Iniquitous regimes do not perpetuate themselves in disciplined societies, nor does a strong, pure, holy institution, supported by centuries of selflessness and integrity, abruptly find itself wallowing in corruption. Vice, no less than virtue, arises from precedents.”
“Over the thirteen centuries since Christianity’s rise to power the Church had lost its way because the wrong criteria had insinuated themselves into its sanctuaries, turning piety into blasphemy, supplanting worship with scandal, and substituting the pursuit of secular power for eternal grace.”
“Philanthropy, one of the Church’s most admirable virtues, had become another source of vitiation. Donations poured in from the faithful, and the unspent wealth was passed up to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, where it accumulated and led to dissipation, debauchery, and—because spendthrifts are always running out of funds—demands for still more money.”
Europe covered with forests
73 million people in Europe in 1500; 20 million in Germany and surrounding states (aka the Holy Roman Empire, 15 in France, 13 million in Italy, 8 in Spain, 4.5 in England/Wales
In 1500 the three largest cities were Paris, Naples, and Venice at 150k each
Germany’s First Reich from mid-1400s a cultural nation of 300 different states; Second Reich a nation-state by Otto con Bismarck from 1870-1918; Third Reich Hitler’s Nazi Germany
No correctional institutions, just maiming, the lash, execution
Town wall first line of defense, donjon/keep last refuge
Rise of merchants a sign of fading feudal past and dominance of knights
80-90% of population lives in villages of less than 100 people, 15-20 miles apart
Average of three years of harvest for every one of famine; dinner at 10am and supper at 5pm; lots of black bread, soup, beer or wine
Average height a few inches over 5 feet, 135 pounds weight; over 6 feet a giant
Clothing served as uniform and designated status; different colors/symbols for lepers, prostitutes, penitents, heretics, Jews
“Each man knew his place, believed it had been foreordained in heaven, and was aware that what he wore must reflect it.”
“The distinction between devotion and superstition has always been unclear, but there was little blurring here. Although they called themselves Christians, medieval Europeans were ignorant of the Gospels. The Bible existed only in a language they could not read. The mumbled incantations at Mass were meaningless to them. They believed in sorcery, witchcraft, hobgoblins, werewolves, amulets, and black magic, and were thus indistinguishable from pagans.”
“At any moment, under any circumstances, a person could be removed from the world of the senses to a realm of magic creatures and occult powers. Every natural object possessed supernatural qualities. Books interpreting dreams were highly popular.”
Witchcraft/superstitions accepted as manifestations of Satan; “The Prince of Darkness, it taught, was as real as the Holy Trinity. Certainly belief in him was useful; prelates agreed that when it came to keeping the masses on the straight and narrow, fear of the devil was a stronger force than the love of God.”
Travel was slow, expensive, uncomfortable, perilous; slowest for coaches, faster walking, fastest horses
Due to arranged marriages and divorce forbidden, adultery among aristocracy was “considered almost obligatory”
Contemporary account: “Sodomy was frequent, prostitution was general, and adultery was almost universal.”
“In an ideal world, genius should not require the largess of wicked pontiffs, venal cardinals, and wanton contessas. But these men of genius did not live in such a world, and neither has anyone else. In art the end has to justify the means, because artists, like beggars, have no choice.”
“It is incontestable that the Continent’s most powerful rulers in the early sixteenth century were responsible for great crimes. It is equally true that had this outraged the painters and sculptors of their time we would have lost a heritage beyond price. Botticelli pocketed thousands of tainted ducats from Lorenzo de’ Medici and gave the world The Birth of Venus. In both temperament and accomplishments Pope Julius Il was closer to Genghis Khan than Saint Peter, but because that troubled neither Raphael nor Michelangelo, they endowed us with the Transfiguration, David, the Pietà, and The Last Judgment. They took their money, ran to their studios, and gave to the world masterpieces which have enriched civilization for five hundred years.”
Mikolaj Kopernik (Copernicus) determined earth was moving rather than center of universe; published in 1514 and initially supported by humanist Pope Leo X but after death denounced by Bible-quoting Martin Luther, John Calvin
Andreas Osiander of Nuremberg agreed to publish Copernicus but only with disclaimer that it was a hypothesis; Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno asserted it as fact and was burned at the stake, then Copernicus was banned until 1828
“Da Vinci, like Copernicus, threatened the certitude that knowledge had been forever fixed by God, the rigid mind-set which left no role for curiosity or innovation. Leonardo’s cosmology, based on what he called saper vedere (knowing how to see) was, in effect, a blunt instrument assaulting the fatuity which had, among other things, permitted a mafia of profane popes to desecrate Christianity.”
“Medieval minds retained the orbs and maces of authority, yet they could not cope with men like Copernicus and Leonardo.”
In 1513 at 61 Leonardo da Vinci sought patronage from Vatican but denied due to negative reputation (human dissections and other unchurchy research); Frances I of France invited him as official artist
“Before the dense, overarching, suffocating medieval night could be broken, the darkness had to be pierced by the bright shaft of learning—by literature, and people who could read and understand it.”
Chinese designed wooden typography before 1066 for money; Muslims introduced paper manufacturing as early as 900s
Johannes Gutenberg Gensfleisch introduced movable type with Bible in 1458; “Gutenberg had built a bonfire in Mainz, and printers throughout Christendom flocked to kindle their torches from it.”
Vast majority of books made in 1500s were in Latin because it was still the language of international communication
Niccolò Machiavelli was a devout Christian and Florentine whose The Prince (1513) “reveals profound insight into human nature and an acute grasp of political reality in the scene he saw”; mistakenly interpreted as cynical and immoral
“The reawakening—the establishing of new ties with the gems of antiquity—was one of the great triumphs of the Renaissance. Its first seeds had been sown early in the fourteenth century, with the rediscovery of Latin classics; then the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 gave impetus to the revival of Greek learning.”
“The French refined it to la Renaissance des lettres, and though its leaders embraced more than literature—they sought the reemergence of all the lost learning of the old world, including the flowering of art, esthetics, mathematics, and the beginnings of modern science—the heaviest emphasis was on reverence for classical letters, the poetical and philosophical Hellenic heritage, scholarly purity, and the meticulous translation of the ancient manuscripts retrieved in Athens and Rome.”
“All this ferment led to that rarest of cultural phenomena, an intellectual movement which alters the course of both learning and civilization.”
Humanists of the 16th century, 17th century rationalism, 18th century Enlightenment, Marxism in 19th century, pragmatism and empiricism in the 20th century
Martin Luther: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it struggles against the divine word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
“If you were a believer, you never subjected piety to the test of logic. Intellectuals, however, found logic an irresistible attraction, and therein lay their menace.“
“Belief in a life everlasting lay at the very center of Christianity. To true Christians, life on earth was almost irrelevant. During it they obeyed the precepts of Catholicism to safeguard their future in paradise, disciplined by the fear that if they didn’t, they might lose it. The thought of living for the sheer sake of living, celebrating mortal existence before God took them onto his own, was subversive of the entire structure. Yet that was precisely the prospect humanism offered.”
“Those who translate revolutionary concepts into action are never as acceptable, or even as respectable, as those who expressed themselves indirectly.” (Renaissance artists vs. scholars)
“Reflective men make uncomfortable prosecutors. By nature and by training, they tend to see the other side and give it equal weight.”
Martin Luther a professor of philosophy at Wittenberg and devout Catholic in 1517 when he encountered Pope Leo’s sales of indulgences
Joined the Church as rebellion against anticlerical, abusive, and pagan parents
Conceived of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith while on the toilet
“In Wittenberg, as in many university towns of the time, the church door was customarily used as a bulletin board; an academician with a new religious theory would post it there, thus signifying his readiness to defend it against all challengers.”
Posted 95 Theses the day before All Saints’ Day, which would draw a crowd anyway, and circulated German translation
Luther had challenged pope’s powers as grand magician; coupled with peasants learning more about Christ’s sympathies through fragmentary Gospels created class division as well
144 “Luther was discovering that he had become the voice of millions who suffered doubly from the Renaissance popes; impoverished by highwaymen like Tetzel, they also grieved for their beloved faith, desecrated by rogues in vestments. From this point forward, his wrath and theirs would join, gathering in volume and strength as together they confronted the most powerful symbol of authority Europe had ever known.”
After Theses, back and forth with Rome until Luther summoned by Pope Leo X; declined and got protection from Habsburg emperor Maximilian (anticlerical sentiment was increasing in Germany)
Pope instead ordered Luther to confer with cardinal in Augsburg; Luther expected to discuss reforms but only got discipline of recantation, which he refused and had to flee city
153 “Historians agree that Luther could have been swiftly crushed had the pope moved decisively in his role as Vicar of Christ, the spiritual head of Christendom. Instead he dallied, vacillated, became engrossed in minor matters, and spent too many late evenings with his books. Leo X was no Borgia. In many ways he was more admirable than Martin Luther. Head of the Medici family, a poet and a man of honor, he was a leading patron of the Renaissance, a connoisseur of art, a scholar steeped in classical literature, and a pontiff tolerant enough to chuckle as he read the satires of Erasmus, appreciative that the humanist had observed the gentlemanly rule under which learned men of that time were free to write as they pleased, provided they confined themselves to Latin, leaving the unlettered masses undisturbed.”
Leo X was superficial, spendthrift, lacked judgment, waited 3 years after Theses to issue ultimatum
Vatican’s “systemic looting” of German taxpayers, industries, and noblemen inspired increased anticlericism; “rather than kindle an uprising” there the Curia exempted Germany from the Inquisition
Luther’s Theses were based on theological differences, but with his later tracts written in nascent German for common people, conflict became about Roman imperialism and economic extortion
Von Miltitz, spokesman for the pope, offered Luther reconciliation through letter to pope denying malice; he wrote a bridge-burner
At trial in Worms in January 1521, with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V presiding, Luther refused to recant or repudiate his writings (“Here I stand. I can do no other.”)
Though guaranteed safety on trip home with safe-conduct from pope, Frederick the Wise disguised his soldiers as highwaymen and staged false ambush to shepherd Luther away to castle under false name
Charles V ordered Luther’s writings eradicated and got Pope Leo to switch allegiance to Spain in coming war with France, but left — allowing Lutheran movement to flourish; “The monk and the movement he had launched had grown too powerful to be suppressed. The emperor tried mightily, but it would be his dying effort, and medieval Christendom would die with him.”
Lutheran movement swept Northern Europe (Spain, Italy, Ireland excepted); upon renouncing allegiance to Rome, German nobility reclaimed church wealth and land
“The various diets and councils which met throughout the century to discuss tolerance—and eventually granted it, accepting the historic schism—were discussing the rights of rulers, not the ruled. Religious freedom for the individual lay centuries away. It did not even exist as an abstraction.”
Protestant divisions appeared quickly but shared principles: “renunciation of papal rule; replacing Latin with common tongues; the abandonment of celibacy, pilgrimages, adoration of the Virgin and the saints; and, of course, condemnation of the old clergy.”
Free will/predestination a major sticking point; Luther a determinist but John Calvin et al Reformed
“New sects formed, each with its own views of worship, each as intolerant of the others as it was of Rome, each as repressive as Catholicism. … In the spirit of the time, they celebrated their spiritual rebirths violently. Tirades led to recriminations, then to public executions.”
Luther wrote to Erasmus as an admirer for support to which he replied: “Old institutions cannot be uprooted in an instant. Quiet argument may do more than wholesale condemnation. Avoid all appearance of sedition. Keep cool. Do not get angry. Do not hate anybody.” Both men misjudged each other
“Intuition, though it fuels action, is volatile and therefore dangerous.”
“The Martinians, as Luther’s followers called themselves, accepted what was coming to be known as the Zwickau Dogma, named after the town in which it originated. The dogmatists held that God spoke directly to simple men in simple language, that they instinctively understood him, and that the true Christian spurned literature, even reading and writing.”
“Intolerance, contempt for learning, the burning of religious art, the rejection of classical culture as pagan, and the adoption of primitive papal tactics—book burning, excommunication, even death at the stake—alienated humanists who had at first defended Luther”
Post-Reformation Protestant city-states (Calvin’s Geneva) became theocratic police states: “It was a consummate irony of the Reformation that the movement against Rome, which had begun with an affirmation of individual judgment, now repudiated it entirely.”
Pope Leo died in 1521 at 46 with fever; unknown Dutch reformer Adrian of Utrecht elected as Adrian VI to break 3-way tie; attempted reforms but thwarted and died a year later; Leo’s cousin elected as Clement VII
Charles V’s troops of mercenaries sacked and plundered Rome in 1527
William Tyndale a 34 year old English clergyman who made English translation of New Testament; had to find printer in France and was later executed by Henry VIII
Henry VIII vehemently anti-Protestant; requested honorific from Pope and got Defender of the Faith, which remains today
Henry VIII requested papal dispensation to divorce based on precedent of marrying his brother’s widow against scripture; Pope Clement had to defer to Charles V since surrounded by Holy Roman Empire and Charles V was nephew of Henry’s wife Catherine
Anne Boleyn pregnant so Henry declared Catherine a divorcée, crowned Anne, pushed through anti-Catholic legislation; Pope excommmunicated him
Anne Boleyn birthed a daughter (future Elizabeth I) and deformed stillborn boy so executed
Magellan’s lack of tact or guile cost him support of Portugal’s Manuel I, so went to Spain’s Carlos I, soon to be Charles V Holy Roman Emperor
“History is not a random sequence of unrelated events. Everything affects, and is affected by, everything else. This is never clear in the present. Only time can sort out events. It is then, in perspective, that patterns emerge.”
Threads of collapse of medieval world: religious revolution, fall of Constantinople to Muhammad II in 1453, humanist discovery of classical civilization, growth of commerce and expansion of middle class, strengthening monarchies and nation-states, science and Copernican view, exploration and global discovery
Jerome Wolf, 1575: “No attack on Christianity is more dangerous than the infinite size and depth of the universe.”
Portugal and Spain had contributed little to western civilization until explorers, which they yielded almost all; “Within thirty years—a single generation—a few hundred small ships weighing anchor in Lisbon, Palos, and Sanlúcar discovered more of the world than had all mankind in all the millennia since the beginning of time.”
Iberian interest in finding route to India and spices that didn’t go through bottleneck of Middle East; in 1497 Vasco da Gama first to arrive there via Cape of Good Hope
“For more than a century the economic consequences of this commercial revolution—for that is what it amounted to—were more spectacular than the discoveries of Columbus and his successors in what was coming to be known as the New World.”
Based on anecdata Magellan believed a strait to the Pacific was a lot farther north than it really was; 1519 expedition searched Brazilian coast to no avail
Magellan resolute as captain and intentionally provoked revolts; Spaniard sailors and officers distrustful of Portuguese
Finally reached Strait of Magellan; low on supplies but continued on, with one ship lost and another mutinied and returned to Europe
Previous explorers could always return to Europe but once into the Pacific he had no fallback yet vastly underestimated understanding of true width of ocean
Six months to cross Pacific; landed at Guam on death’s door for provisions just in time
Magellan acquired slave Enrique in Malaya in 1512 and had circumnavigated with him since; first proof of spherical earth
Magellan sought to curry favor with converted local tribe by fighting their enemies, but his ego, religious fervor, and poor planning led him and troops into a slaughter
Only one ship of the original five returned, with 18 emaciated sailors out of 265 three years previous
Captain Juan Sebastian del Cano had led mutiny against Magellan but was now canonized for returning home and given credit for circumnavigation by Charles V
Expedition logs by Francisco Albo and remaining survivors eventually exposed truth
“The most barefaced lies die hard when influence and prejudice have a vested interest in them.”
Disagreement about date with Portuguese at Cape Verde Islands eventually revealed expedition had gained 24 hours in westward circumnavigation – proved Copernicus right
“Magellan was not there to savor the moment, but it was his finest. In many ways it was the crowning triumph of the age, the final, decisive blow to the dead past. Those with the most to lose ignored their defeat, denied the discovery, and denounced those who endorsed it as heretics.”
Circumnavigation and confusion of dates reported to pope, who rejected obvious conclusion due to conflict with scripture
“Patristic mulishness could not diminish the glory of the armada’s achievement. The power of the medieval mind was forever broken. Medieval certitude had been weakened by the Renaissance. Nationalism, humanism, rising literacy, the new horizons of trade—all these had challenged blind, ritualistic allegiance to the assumptions of a thousand years.”
“Europe was no longer the world, and the world was no longer the center of the universe. Since the earth was revolving daily, heaven and hell could not be located where they had been thought to be, and in rational minds there was a growing skepticism that either of them existed.”
“The specter of skepticism haunts shrines and altars. Worshipers want to believe, and most of the time they persuade themselves that they do. But suppressing doubt is hard. Secular society makes it harder. Hardest of all is the sense of loss, the knowledge that the serenity of medieval faith, and the certitude of everlasting glory, are forever gone.”