THE LATIN MIDDLE AGES

The “Latin Middle Ages”, as here understood, comprise what was left over from the Western Roman Empire at its collapse, and those areas that were subsequently Christianized from Rome. They are, conventionally and also here, approximately subdivided in the “early”, “central”, “high” and “late Middle Ages” – 500 to 750, 750 to 1050, 1050 to 1300, and 1300 to 1400. From the perspective of scientific thought, the first period is one of modest survival of the Latin handbook popularizations, and the beginning of “barbarian historiography”; the second, beginning with the establishment of Charlemagne's empire, brought a first revival, concentrated around the cathedral schools – soon interrupted by Vikings and Magyars, with a new take-off after these had been pacified around 950. The third at first brought a culmination of the Latin tradition that had been established around the cathedral schools, centred on dialectic and a revival of legal studies, and at the same tide called for the import of knowledge from the Islamic world – much of it Greek works known by name from the handbooks, but at the same time concentrated on “medico-astrological naturalism”. Enthusiasm for these new treasures, and the prospect of future employment in the ecclesiastical and lay administration, made the schools and the population of teachers and students grow to the point where these could establish guilds, “universities”, for mutual protection shortly after 1300. The new learning became involved in social struggles dressed up as religious enthusiasm and heterodox theology. This led to struggle between ecclesiastical authorities aiming at control and universities trying to protect intellectual autonomy. After 1250, universities had thereby developed into full-fledged institutions of learning, producing the style known as scholasticism and dominated by Aristotelian thought. After 1300, climate deterioration, soil exhaustion and wars resulted in impoverishment also of the Church, which had financed most of what went on in and around the universities. In the longer run, this led to withering of scholastic thought; at first, however, the highly specialized thinkers produced a new style (the via moderna), still formally Aristotelian but concentrated on probing its own intellectual tools. Five short text examples represent the early and central Middle Ages, and four longer the new learning of the 12th century. The 13th century is represented by texts on political thought, astrology, ecclesiastical control, the use of Hindu-Arabic numerals (serving astronomical calculation), and an attempt to create a substitute for Arabic algebra. From the 14th century come a text on the rhetoric of scholarly preaching, a second-order commentary to Galen, an investigation of logical theory of language, a creation of an arithmetic for ratios emulating that for ordinary numbers, and a discussion of whether it might be the earth that has a daily rotation and not the whole universe.