The Rudolf Steiner Archive

History of the Middle Ages Up to the Great Inventions and Discoveries IV

[ 1 ] It is a common prejudice that human development proceeds in a regular, successive manner, and that the unfolding of historical events never involves any leaps. Gradual and successive progress is said to be development. This is linked to another prejudice: for it is also said of nature that it makes no leaps. This is repeated time and again, but it is incorrect both for nature and for history. Nowhere in nature do we see a seamless progression when it comes to momentous advances. Its course is not gradual; rather, small processes give rise to significant consequences—the most important events, after all, occur through leaps. One could cite many instances where nature progresses in such a way that we can observe forms transforming directly into their opposites.

[ 2 ] This is particularly important in history because we have two such significant events there that, although they develop gradually and then subside, nevertheless represent a sudden leap forward. First, the establishment of the free cities at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and second, the great inventions and discoveries at the end of the Middle Ages. History moves forward more rapidly by

[ 3 ] the turn of the 11th to the 12th century. New forms of society developed from old ones; as a result of many people leaving their homes and settling in cities, such cities—with new living conditions, social orders, rights, and constitutions—emerged throughout Germany, France, England, Scotland, and as far as Russia and Italy. Then, at the end of the Middle Ages, we find the great discoveries—the sea voyages to India, America, and so on—and the invention of the printing press, which changed the world. All of this shows us the radical transformation brought about by the emergence of the new scientific spirit, by Copernicus.

[ 4 ] This marks two turning points, and if one is to make sense of the Middle Ages, these two events must be placed in the proper context. One might say that everything points toward these major events. They appear to be sudden leaps; but such an event builds up slowly, only to then burst forth with avalanche-like force and sweep forward. As we examine them further, it will gradually become clear how these two events were foreshadowed in the lives of the Germanic peoples. We will see through what circumstances the Frankish people in particular were granted that power, that influence over the shaping of European affairs. To do so, one must understand the character of this people, the necessary transformation of social conditions, and the powerful impact of Christianity in the 4th century. These two factors signify the change in the lives of the Germanic peoples. They determine the development of the Middle Ages. It would be pointless to continue tracing all these migrations of the Germanic peoples, to see how Odoacer dethroned the last Western Roman emperor, how the Goths were driven out of Italy by Emperor Justinian, or how the Lombards took possession of northern Italy—we see the same patterns playing out over and over again.

[ 5 ] In southern regions, where the Germanic peoples encountered well-established political and economic conditions, the distinctive characteristics of these peoples disappeared; they lost all significance. We hear nothing more of the Goths, Gepids, and so on; they have vanished, leaving only their names. In contrast, the Franks had arrived in a region where conditions were not yet stable and were still free, where no serious property rights had yet been established. This political configuration made the Franks the dominant people.

[ 6 ] Now we must examine how this entity—which we refer to as the Merovingian Kingdom—developed within the Frankish Empire. It was, in fact, nothing more than the many small kingdoms that formed in the most natural way. The Merovingians emerged victorious after overcoming those who were originally their equals. All these kingdoms had come into being in the following way: a small tribe would migrate into the area, subjugate the inhabitants, and divide up the land so that all members received free holdings of varying sizes. Thus, all such territories were founded on land ownership. The most powerful received the largest territory. A large number of people were needed to cultivate this land; they were drawn from the local population, and in some cases, prisoners of war were also put to work. It was solely through this distinction between smaller and larger landholdings that the balance of power emerged. The largest landowner was, in fact, the king. His power was based on land ownership; that is the defining characteristic. Legal relationships emerged from these power dynamics, and it is interesting to observe how legal relationships developed on this basis. However, among the ancient Germanic tribes we find their customary laws, which had developed in ancient times into which we no longer have any insight. Among the smaller tribes, all the people gathered to administer justice; later, the tribesmen met only on March 1 to discuss their affairs. However, the large landowner was not accountable to the others for what he did on his land. We do find a conservative adherence to the old legal customs among the various tribes. We find them preserved for a long time especially among the Saxons, Thuringians, Frisians, and also among the Cherusci, whose tribe survived longer than is generally believed. The situation was different where large-scale landownership developed, because the owner, being unrestricted within his territory, also became unaccountable. He had the power to exercise jurisdiction and police authority. From this lack of accountability, a new legal status emerged. If someone else committed an offense, they were held accountable; if the unaccountable person committed the same offense, it was regarded as lawful. What was unlawful for those without power was lawful for those in power. He had the ability to transform power into law.

[ 7 ] Now consider that, in this way, the Franks—particularly in the northwest—were able to further expand their power and conquer large territories. In an era marked by constant warfare, the less powerful were dependent on the protection of the powerful. This gave rise to the feudal system, which led to the selection of the most powerful. A system emerged whereby certain rights were transferred through contracts. Large estates, the royal domains, acquired special legal status, which could be transferred by the king or the owner to others. Along with the land, jurisdiction and police authority were also transferred. Royal law and the law of the minor vassals emerged. As a result of this realignment, we see a powerful bureaucracy develop, based not on a salary but on land ownership. Such lords of the manor served as supreme judges. At first, when they still had to take the rights of powerful tribes into account, they were obliged to respect ancient rights. But gradually this relationship evolved into an absolute judicial authority, so that subsequently, in the Frankish Kingdom, a kind of bureaucratic nobility formed alongside the monarchy, which grew to become a rival to the monarchy. At first it was dependent; then it became powerful and a rival. Thus, as early as the 6th century in the Frankish Kingdom, the rivalry between the monarchy and the bureaucratic nobility had to develop ever more strongly, and the latter attained the greatest significance.

[ 8 ] The original ruling dynasty, the Merovingians—who emerged from the ranks of the large landowners—was succeeded by the Carolingians, who originally belonged to the bureaucratic nobility. They served as the mayors of the palace (majordomos) for the first ruling dynasty, which was overthrown by rivalry among the civil service nobility. Essentially, therefore, it was large-scale landownership that established the balance of power here, and the most powerful moral force, the Church, had to establish its rule through this indirect route of large-scale landownership.

[ 9 ] What is characteristic of the Franconian Church is that, at first, it was nothing more than a collection of large estates: we see dioceses and abbeys emerging, and vassals who, just as they would otherwise have sought the protection of large landowners, placed themselves under the protection of the Church in order to receive fiefs from it. Thus, alongside secular landowners, ecclesiastical landowners emerged. This is the reason why we perceive so little depth and scholarship, and why what we find of a spiritual nature in Christianity there is essentially due to foreign influences. It was not within the Frankish people, but through members of the Anglo-Saxon, and especially the Celtic, tribes on the British Isles, that this powerful current was created, which then flowed eastward. On the British Isles, eminent scholars and devout monks worked in serious contemplation. Here, genuine work was truly done, as we can see in detail in the revival of Platonism and its synthesis with Christianity. We see mysticism, dogmatism, but also enthusiasm and inspired pathos emanating from here. From here came the first missionaries: Columbanus, Gallus, and Winfrid-Boniface, the missionary to the Germans. And these first missionaries, because they had nothing but the spiritual essence of Christianity in mind, were not inclined to adapt to the circumstances of the Frankish tribe. They were the driving force and also exerted their main influence—especially Boniface—among the Eastern Germanic peoples. — That is why, during this period, a growing influence from Rome took hold in the Frankish Empire. — We must now examine what had previously shaped this development. Here we have two heterogeneous elements adapting to one another: the rugged strength of the Germanic peoples and the spiritual teachings of Christianity. It seems remarkable how these tribes adapted to Christianity and how Christianity itself transformed to adapt to Germanic culture. These missionaries worked differently from the Frankish kings, who spread Christianity by force of arms. It was not forced upon their souls as something foreign: places of worship, sacred customs, traditions, and individuals were spared—so spared, in fact, that old institutions were used to convey the new message. It is interesting how the old became the outward form, while the new became the soul. We have a description of the life of Jesus from that time, from the Saxon tradition: They took the figure of Jesus, but all the details were overlaid with Germanic elements; Jesus appears as a German duke, and his interactions with the disciples resemble a popular assembly. This is how the life of Jesus is portrayed in the Heliand.

[ 10 ] Ancient heroes were transformed into saints, and festivals and religious customs were transformed into Christian ones. Much of what people today consider to be uniquely Christian actually originated from pagan customs. In the Frankish Kingdom, on the other hand, we must recognize that the Franks viewed Christianity as nothing more than a means of consolidating their power structures: a Frankish law code begins with a reference to Christ, who loves the Franks above all other peoples.

[ 11 ] These are examples of how these two world-historical currents intertwine. At a time when British missionaries were promoting the moral influence of Christianity, the influence of the Roman Church also grew significantly. Building on the groundwork laid here, the Frankish kings sought to align themselves with the papacy. The Lombards had occupied Italy and were a particular source of concern for the Bishop of Rome. They were Arian Christians. This led the Bishop of Rome to first turn to the Franks for help, while at the same time offering his influence to them. Thus, the Frankish king became the Pope’s protector, and the Pope anointed the king; consequently, the Frankish kings derived their special status and the particular splendor of their dignity from this consecration by the Pope. This reinforced what the Franks had come to see in Christianity. All of this took place primarily in the 7th century. Through this alliance between the papacy and Frankish rule, the later coronation of Charlemagne was slowly set in motion. Thus, we see powerful social and intellectual changes taking place. But that alone would not have led to the event that I described as one of the most important—a material revolution: the founding of cities. For something was missing from Frankish-Christian culture, even though competence, spirit, and depth were present.

[ 12 ] What is referred to as science—as purely external science—did not exist. We have traced only a material and a moral movement. What science there was had remained at the same level as it had been at the time of contact with Christianity. And just as the Frankish peoples had no interest in improving their simple agriculture and did not think to develop it scientifically, so too did the Church seek only to expand its moral influence. Primitive agriculture presented no particular difficulties that would have led, as in Egypt, to the development of physics, geometry, and technology. Everything here was simpler, more primitive; just as the existing monetary economy had once again been replaced by a subsistence economy.

[ 13 ] European culture thus needed a new direction, and one cannot understand it without recognizing this shift. From the Far East—the very region from which Christianity once originated—this new culture arrived in Asia via the Arabs. The religion founded there by Muhammad is, in its religious essence, simpler than Christianity. The inner essence of Islam is based essentially on simple monotheistic ideas, which are limited to a fundamental divine being whose nature and form are not specifically investigated or fathomed, but to whose will one submits and in whom one believes. Therefore, this religion is designed to inspire an immense trust in this will, which leads to fatalism and passive resignation. Consequently, it was possible for these tribes, within a few generations, to extend Arab rule over Syria, Mesopotamia, and North Africa as far as the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain, so that by the turn of the 7th to the 8th century, the Moors had already established their rule there and replaced Visigothic culture with their own.

[ 14 ] Thus, something entirely new and different flowed into European culture. In the realm of the spiritual and religious, this Arab culture had only a simple essence, one that instilled certain powers in the soul but did not give rise to many ideas, nor did it particularly engage the mind. This spirit was not preoccupied with reflections on dogmas, angels, demons, and so on. But while the spirit was not preoccupied with these things, it was preoccupied with what the Christian-Germanic tribes lacked at that time: external scientific rigor. Here we find all those sciences—such as medicine, chemistry, and mathematical thinking—further developed. The practical spirit, which had been brought from Asia to Spain, now found expression in seafaring and the like. It was brought over at a time when a spirit devoid of science had established its dominion there. The Moorish cities became centers of serious, scientific work: we see there a culture that anyone who knows it cannot help but admire, of which Humboldt said: “This breadth, this intensity, this acuity of knowledge is without precedent in cultural history.” These Moorish scholars were full of foresight and profundity and did not merely adopt Greek science, as the Germanic peoples did, but developed it further. Aristotle also lived on among them, but among the Arabs, the true Aristotle—as the father of science—was revered with great foresight. It is interesting to see how what had been pioneered in Greece—the Alexandrian culture—lived on there, and in doing so we have touched upon one of the most remarkable currents in human intellectual life. The Arabs laid the foundations for objective science. From there, it initially flowed into the Anglo-Saxon monasteries in England and Ireland, where the ancient, vigorous Celtic spirit still thrived. It was remarkable to observe the lively exchange that developed between them and Spain, and how, wherever there was depth of thought and intellectual capacity, science was revitalized through the mediation of the Arabs.

[ 15 ] And it is a remarkable phenomenon when we consider further that the Arabs, who initially took possession of all of Spain, were soon outwardly defeated in the Battle of Poitiers in 732 by the Franks under Charles Martel; thus, outwardly, the physical strength of the Franks triumphed over the physical strength of the Moors. But the intellectual power of the Arabs remains invincible, and just as Greek culture once conquered Rome, so too does Arab culture conquer the West, in the face of the victorious Germanic peoples. Now, as the science needed to broaden the horizons of trade and global commerce emerges, and as urban culture takes shape, we see that it is Arab influences that are making their mark here—entirely new elements flowing in and attempting to adapt to the old ones.

[ 16 ] We see this confusion—which could well have befallen anyone who observed these conflicting currents of the Middle Ages with an open mind—expressed by Walther von der Vogelweide. The poet saw how the Germanic peoples strove for external power, and saw a countervailing current emanating from Christianity. — For I ask you to note that Christianity only later took on the form that subsequently became associated with it. — In Walther von der Vogelweide, we see what permeated the Middle Ages transformed into emotion in this wistful description:

I pondered anxiously,
Why we are in this world.
No answer came to mind,
How one might acquire three things,
So that none of them would be lost.
The first two are honor and worldly goods,
Which often harm one another;
The third is God’s favor,
The most important of all.
I wished to have them all in one treasure chest.
But alas, that can never be,
For worldly goods and honor
And God’s favor can never find their way
In the same human heart.
They encounter obstacles everywhere:
Infidelity sets snares on every side,
Violence may subdue everything,
So peace and justice are mortally wounded,
And the three will never find protection,
Until these two are restored to health.

[ 17 ] We will then go on to see how difficult it was for the Middle Ages themselves to reconcile these three things in their hearts, and how they gave rise to the great conflicts that tore the Middle Ages apart.