Classical Knowledge

Spread of Classical Knowledge

Rebranded as the Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire prevailed in the East after the fifth century. The Byzantine culture was a mix of Greek and Roman, and it remained a custodian of both ancient learned traditions until the Empire's decline in the fifteenth century.

Fig. 2 Byzantine Emperor Justinian

An additional custodian of ancient learnings was the Islamic Empire, particularly in the Iberian peninsula (modern-day Spain). There, Muslim scientists and philosophers built upon Greek and Roman learned traditions and produced innovative work in the emerging field of medicine. For example, Islamic physician Avicenna wrote a medical encyclopedia, a standard text at most medieval European universities, grounded in ancient philosophical and scientific sources.

How did classical knowledge spread back to Europe?

Three significant factors prompted the cultural exchange that enabled classical knowledge to reenter Europe:

• an agricultural revolution,
• a commercial revolution, and
• the Crusades.

Agricultural Revolution of the Eleventh Century

After short summers and bad harvests, the weather suddenly improved between 800 and 1300. Longer, warmer summers increased food yields, creating more financial security and a market economy where people could sell their surplus goods. In light of these more favorable conditions, agricultural innovations to increase surplus and efficiency developed. More food meant that the population grew and, with it, a demand for increased trade. People began to return to urban centers to meet these demands, sparking a commercial revolution.

Commercial Revolution of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

More food stimulated population growth, stimulating demand for trade specialization and more goods. Towns and cities, especially along the Mediterranean, rose to meet this demand and flourished. Venice, for example, established trade routes between Europe and many of the world's cultural centers in the late tenth century, including Constantinople, Alexandria, and the Islamic strongholds in North Africa and Tunis. This vigorous trade caused the Italian city-states to reach population sizes not seen in other regions until much later.

The Crusades

The Crusades also stimulated the commercial revolution. Many Italian city-states financed Crusaders and received profits from the spoils of war. Plunder was also a lucrative form of cultural exchange resulting from the wars. Italian merchants often accompanied Crusaders on campaigns to identify treasures to bring back to Europe, including holy relics and ancient texts. When Crusaders sacked the city of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, they transferred a vast amount of preserved classical knowledge to Europe.

Unfortunately, the Byzantine Empire never fully recovered from the crushing blow dealt by the Crusades, and its power waned soon after.

Fig. 3 the Second Crusade

Classical Knowledge Renaissance of the Twelfth Century

Because of the commercial revolution and the Crusades, twelfth-century Europe saw what is often called a renaissance of learning and culture by historians. Charles Homer Haskins first brought forward this argument in 1928. He stated that,

Haskins gave credit for this Renaissance to the educational system developed within the Catholic Church, which directly led to the establishment of the first universities by the late twelfth century. From monastic schools rose urban cathedrals and bishop academies, which brought flocks of scholars and masters to urban centers such as Bologna and Paris to seek the newly translated classical texts and implement them in medicine, law, and philosophy. Finally, the universities rose from the Cathedral and Bishop schools as hallowed institutions of higher learning and scholarly study.

Historian Richard Southern built upon Haskins' work to argue that the twelfth century saw an emergence of a civilizing process for medieval Europeans. Access to classical knowledge allowed the rise of new respect for the humanities and focused less on warfare and violence and more on cultivating the learned individual.

Historians also argue that the twelfth century saw an emergence of individualism previously attributed to the sixteenth century with the rise of humanism. The rediscovery of Aristotle's works brought an understanding of the individual as a political power source. This line of thinking would profoundly impact the development of political science as a study and a practice.

Importance and Impacts of the Spread of Classical Knowledge

The reentry of classical texts into Medieval Europe shaped its course in many different ways. It prompted interest in academic learning and the rise of universities, established new approaches to the practice of law and politics, and combined ancient philosophy with contemporary theological thought to produce innovative new philosophical developments.

Fig. 4 Gravestone of Bartoluzzo de'Preti

Education

The return of classical knowledge to Europe prompted an unprecedented interest in pursuing scholarly study. So many people flocked to Cathedral schools in cities such as Bologna, Paris, and Oxford that they began to organize themselves as guilds to regulate curriculum, the number of students, and teacher salaries. When conflicts arose between the students and surrounding townsfolk, kings issued them charters granting formal protections and land in which to build the universities that we know today.

Scholasticism

Classical knowledge also inspired learned men such as Peter Abelard to develop a new form of teaching called scholasticism, which uses two or more opposing viewpoints to uncover the truth through debate. Today's universities still employ this technique. Scholasticism was immensely popular in the medieval world, inspiring such important thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, whose thoughts on the relationship between faith and reason profoundly shaped Catholic Church doctrine.

Fig. 5 St Thomas Aquinas

Scholasticism resurrected teachings from the Greek paideia. Paideia is a Greek term for the education needed to produce an ideal state member. These consisted of the following subjects:

• The Quadrivium ("Four ways") was considered the foundation for the study of theology and philosophy:
  • arithmetic
  • music
  • geometry
  • astronomy
• The Trivium ("Three ways") was taught as preparatory subjects before the quadrivium and is considered the foundation of both classical and modern education. The study of law has roots in the Trivium:
  • grammar
  • logic
  • rhetoric

Law

Historians argue that a growing interest in pursuing rationalism, a trait entrenched in Roman law, developed due to the spread of Classical knowledge in Europe during the twelfth century. The development of Roman Law supplemented the early medieval practice of customary law that arose from barbarian societies to make it more logical and autocratic. The University of Bologna, established by royal charter in 1158, was the center for studying Roman Law. From there, legal reform spread throughout Europe. Napoleonic law was based on Roman Law and is still present in Continental European legal systems today.

Philosophy and Theology

In the medieval imagination, philosophy and theology were the same, as most philosophers were clergy. Using the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Tertullian and prominent theologians such as Augustine of Hippo, these twelfth-century theologian-philosophers tackled questions relating to the relationship between faith and reason.

Some scholars used logic to analyze church doctrine, as Peter Abelard did with his controversial work Sic et Non (Yes and No). He believed that logical analysis could point out and correct contradictions made by past masters of theological discourse. Unfortunately, his experiment backfired because it embarrassed the Church by pointing out its inner contradictions. As a result, the Church condemned Abelard and ordered the book to be burnt.

This episode showcases the conflict the established Church dealt with concerning the availability of classical knowledge in this period. It wrestled with what new ideas to accept and what ideas were potentially harmful to its position as a spiritual and political European leader. This conflict would only worsen with the development of humanistic thought in the sixteenth century, which was the forerunner of the philosophical and theological developments that created the Protestant Reformation.