Introduction to Medieval Philosophy, Part 3

The “Dark Ages” and the Early Middle Ages

St. Anselm and (not-St.) Peter Abelard with Heloise

The “Dark Ages”

History is written by the victors, and that’s why we refer to the “Middle Ages” as middle: for English and German Protestant historians, these hundreds of years stretching between antiquity and the Reformation were just a long, grey, undifferentiated wilderness of cold logic-chopping and mass idolatry—something “in the middle” between the worldly glories of ancient Greece and Rome, and the evangelical fervor of the Reformers. It’s a silly picture having nothing to do with reality.

So too with the phrase “dark ages,” which used to be quite common, but is now frowned upon by serious historians. True, these were rough times, with brutal men and poor living conditions, and a European map split into countless tiny political islands. But they were also a time of great, though largely hidden, promise: the age of the foundation of thousands of Benedictine monasteries, bastions of Christian learning, preservers of classical wisdom, beacons of holiness, fortresses of social stability. These monasteries were to become the backbone of European society.

Monastic culture was spiritually rich beyond belief.¹ The monks did far more than copy manuscripts; they commented, collected, annotated, distilled, digested all the sources at their disposal, and passed them on improved to their successors. They developed architecture, music, and all the arts and sciences. Most of all, at their best, they lived lives of devotion to God and longing for heaven which indelibly stamped the whole of medieval culture with a sort of “consecration in truth.”

The young boy Thomas from the town of Aquino, for example, was sent by his parents to the nearby Benedictine abbey of Montecassino to receive a thorough classical education (a foundation that evidently served him well) and a training in monastic piety (which he also got, and carried with him for the rest of his life, in his Dominican vocation). In fact, the very last writing of Thomas Aquinas was a short letter dictated en route to the Council of Lyons, affectionately addressed to the Abbot of Montecassino, whose community was struggling with a difficult passage in St. Gregory the Great and asked for his help. Shortly after that, Thomas died at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova. On his deathbed, at the prompting of the monks, he briefly commented on the Song of Songs, a book he regarded as the high-point of the Old Testament. In this, he showed himself a perfect child of the monastic world that reared him.

The monks were noted above all for lectio divina, the loving, patient attention to the word of God, the daily practice of pondering Scripture until it becomes second nature and opens up its secrets. We must never forget that medieval philosophy took place in a context saturated with the word of God. The ultimate attainment for the medieval student was to become a Magister in sacra pagina, a Master of the Sacred Page. Someone who had this degree was officially judged capable of commenting insightfully on any book of Scripture, drawing generously upon the Fathers of the Church, the monastic writers, pagan authors, and any other sources that could illuminate the text and its levels of meaning.