Interpreting Early Modern Europe

C. Scott Dixon, Beat Kümin, C. Scott Dixon, Beat Kümin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000497373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Interpreting Early Modern Europe is a comprehensive collection of essays on the historiography of the early modern period (circa 1450-1800).

Concerned with the principles, priorities, theories, and narratives behind the writing of early modern history, the book places particular emphasis on developments in recent scholarship. Each chapter, written by a prominent historian caught up in the debates, is devoted to the varieties of interpretation relating to a specific theme or field considered integral to understanding the age, providing readers with a 'behind-the-scenes' look at how historians have worked, and still work, within these fields. At one level the emphasis is historiographical, with the essays engaged in a direct dialogue with the influential theories, methods, assumptions, and conclusions in each of the fields. At another level the contributions emphasise the historical dimensions of interpretation, providing readers with surveys of the component parts that make up the modern narratives.

Supported by extensive bibliographies, primary materials, and appendices with extracts from key secondary debates, Interpreting Early Modern Europe provides a systematic exploration of how historians have shaped the study of the early modern past. It is essential reading for students of early modern history.

For a comprehensive overview of the history of early modern Europe see the partnering volume The European World 3ed Edited by Beat Kumin - https://www.routledge.com/The-European-World-15001800-An-Introduction-to-Early-Modern-History/Kuminah2/p/book/9781138119154.

1 Medieval and modern

Euan Cameron

The frontiers between epochs of human history, even within one continent and in one reasonably continuous cultural space, are notoriously hard to pin down, and very easy to criticise or to argue away. Yet history cannot function without periodisation. The exercise of historical analysis and synthesis requires that one discern, discover, and to some degree ‘invent’, the meaningful movements, phases, and landmark processes that make human history intelligible. The expression ‘early modern’ as applied to the history of Europe (usually understood to stretch from c. 1500 to c. 1800) is one of those useful and questionable constructions. The term, and its German equivalent Frühneuzeit, came into normal use from the 1950s and 1960s onwards (for more detail see Withington 2010). It entered currency among social and linguistic historians, as a more neutral term than the ‘Renaissance and Reformation’ label that had been most widely used up to that point. It defined a period of time, rather than assigning all of European history to one or other of a supposedly hegemonic set of ‘movements’. Among its more distinguished early users were G. N. Clark, J. H. Hexter, Norman F. Cantor, and the historian of science A. C. Crombie (Clark 1957; Crombie 1959; Hexter 1961; Cantor and Werthman 1967). Yet the phrase ‘early modern’ raises conceptual problems of its own. It is as though we were defining this period in history both with reference to the Middle Ages and to the period that followed it. ‘Early Modern’ Europe is tending towards ‘modernity’, but has not got there yet. The shackles of the medieval world have been discarded, but the full freedom of modernity has not been attained. While most present-day historians who use the term will by no means share these Whiggish assumptions, it is important to be aware of the potential that our labels have to insinuate ideas into our history, even ideas that we do not consciously intend or embrace.

How the early moderns defined historical periods

Historians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe had their own ideas about how to divide history into periods. Their systems of historical time are largely forgotten today except by specialists; yet they form an important corrective to any tendency we might feel to assume that our schemes of periodisation are self-evident. Some historians such as Hartmann Schedel (1493) and Sebastian Franck (1531) still divided world history into the seven ages of the world first identified from Scripture by Augustine of Hippo (d. 429). Into the sixteenth century, many Christian historians borrowed their sense of periods of time from the Babylonian Talmud, where two tractates divided the world’s time into three: the first two thousand years without the law, the second two thousand the time of the law of Moses, and the final epoch the time of the Messiah (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a–b; see www.halakhah.com/pdf/nezikin/Sanhedrin.pdf; and as cited in Carion 1550, sig. *vi^v –vii^r). Some religious visionaries remained attracted by another threefold system, the one associated with Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) who divided world history into the three ages of the Father, the Son, and the incoming Age of the Spirit. Some of the most widely used textbooks of history, including that of Johannes Sleidan, arranged ancient history according to the system of four ‘great monarchies’, traditionally construed out of the second and seventh chapters of the biblical book of Daniel (Sleidanus 1557). Since the last of these ‘monarchies’ was mostly agreed to have been the Roman Empire, German historians since Otto of Freising in the mid-twelfth century had postulated that the Roman Empire was ‘transferred’ to the Franks and then to the Germans – as even Martin Luther agreed. Luther also supposed that the end of the world was relatively near, certainly within a century or so. One of the curious ironies of the ‘early modern’ was that many of its sharpest minds were apocalyptists, who believed themselves to be living in the last age of the world (Millenarianism and Messianism 2001). The idea that they were ‘early’ anything, let alone ‘early modern’, would have seemed absurd to people who held these views: they were living in the latter days of the created order (see Appendix 1.1).

In one significant area – perhaps only one – the historians of the Reformation era anticipated and maybe contributed to their successors’ sense of the flow of time. Protestant historians of Christianity believed that the centuries of the world could be divided up into phases, depending on how remote they had become from the pristine inspiration of the early Church. In the centuries since Pentecost the Church had progressively deviated from its apostolic roots, in consecutive phases, some thought, of 500 or maybe of 300 years, until a dramatic transformation, usually assigned to around the year 1500, had revealed the Gospel once again and confounded the power of Antichrist (Cameron 2019). The putative ‘rediscovery’ of the Scriptures and the Gospel in the Reformation amounted, in the eyes of those who lived through it, to a major transformative moment in history. Yet once again, the reformers did not suppose that their epiphany moment was destined to lead to something beyond itself, such as freedom of conscience, the secular state, or the secularisation of society as a whole. They believed that it represented the rediscovery of something very ancient, and that it prepared the way for the end of history.

Excerpt 1.1: Melanchthon’s funeral oration for Luther (1546)

Bryan, William Jennings and Halsey, Francis W., eds. (1906). The World’s Famous Orations. 10 vols. New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Company, vol. VII.

GOD has always preserved a proportion of His servants upon the earth, and now, through Martin Luther, a more splendid period of light and truth has appeared. Solon, Themistocles, Scipio, Augustus, and others, who either established or ruled over mighty empires, were indeed truly great men, but far, far inferior to our illustrious leaders, Isaiah, John the Baptist, Paul, Augustine, and Luther, and it becomes us to study this distinction. What, then, are those great and important things which Luther has disclosed to our view, and which render his life so remarkable; for many are exclaiming against him as a disturber of the Church and a promoter of inexplicable controversies? Luther explained the true and important doctrine of penitence, which was involved in the profoundest darkness. He showed in what it consists and where refuge and consolation could be obtained under a sense of divine displeasure. He illustrated the statements of Paul respecting justification by faith, and showed the distinction between the law and the Gospel, civil and spiritual justification. He pointed out the true principle of prayer, and exterminated that heathenish absurdity from the Church that God was not to be invoked if the mind entertained the least doubt upon an academic question. He admonished men to pray, in the exercise of faith and a good conscience, to the only Mediator and Son of God, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us, and not to images or deceased saints according to the shocking practise of the ignorant multitude. He also pointed out other services acceptable to God, was singularly exemplary himself in all the duties of life, and separated the puerilities of human rites and ceremonies – which prevent instead of promoting genuine worship – from those services which are essential to obedience.…

The removal of such a character from among us, of one who was endowed with the greatest intellectual capacity, well instructed and long experienced in the knowledge of Christian truth, adorned with numerous excellences and with virtues of the most heroic cast, chosen by divine Providence to reform the Church of God, and cherishing for all of us a truly paternal affection, – the removal, I say, of such a man demands and justifies our tears. We resemble orphans bereft of an excellent and faithful father; but, while it is necessary to submit to the will of Heaven, let us not permit the memory of his virtues and his good offices to perish.

He was an important instrument, in the hands of God, of public utility; let us diligently study the truth he taught, imitating in our humble situations his fear of God, his faith, the intensity of his devotions, the integrity of his ministerial character, his purity, his careful avoidance of seditious counsel, his ardent thirst of knowledge. And as we frequently meditate upon the pious examples of those illustrious guides of the Church, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and Paul, whose histories are transmitted to us, so let us frequently reflect upon the doctrine and course of life which distinguished our departed friend. [vol. VII, 44–49]

Defining ‘medieval’

The term and the idea of a ‘medieval’ period in human history derive from the laments and the criticisms of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian humanists. It is claimed that Petrarch, visiting Rome in 1341, was so moved by the sight of the ruins of the great metropolis that he abandoned the idea of writing biographies of famous men throughout known history; the ‘barbarians’ who came after the fall of Rome were of no interest (Mommsen 1942). In the hands of Italian historians of the fifteenth century such as Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo, there developed the idea of a ‘middle time’ between the decline of ancient Roman culture and the rebirth, or resurgence, which several of them detected in their own age (McLaughlin 1988; Ianziti 2012, 310). Initially, the early humanists characterised the ‘middle time’ specifically either by the decline of republican values, or (more typically) by the decline of literary elegance in Latin. They blamed this decline on, among other things, the loss of many of the works of the great forensic orator and essayist Cicero until their rediscovery in the early fifteenth century. Some referred to the post-antique age as one of ‘darkness’, meaning not that it was unknown, but that it was uncultured. By the time of late seventeenth-century textbook historians such as Georgius Hornius and Christoph Cellarius, the idea of a division of history into ancient, medieval and modern had become established: the latter of these incorporated the scheme into the titles and volume divisions of his work (Hornius 1666, 183; Lukacs 1968, 15; Cellarius 1702) (see Excerpt 1.2).

Excerpt 1.2: Cellarius’s preface on the divisions of the book

Cellarius, Christophorus (1716). Historia universalis breviter ac perspicue exposita in antiquam et medii aevi ac novam divisa, cum notis perpetuis. 5th edition. Jena: J. Bielkius, ‘Proemium’.

This history is divided into three parts. Of those the first is that of ancient affairs, from the beginning of empires to the times of Constantine the Great: this part embraces precisely those memorable things which pagan rulers, entirely estranged from heavenly things, carried out in the world. Then the next part contains the affairs of twelve centuries, for as long as the city of Constantine [Constantinople] was under Christian authority, and for a little after that, explaining the various destinies of both the East and the West. In the third part the last two centuries are explained more fully than was originally intended, because these latest ages are more rich in events than the ones before, and provide us with many memorable things to write about; knowledge of these things is especially necessary both for the conventions of political wisdom as it is now practiced, and also for ecclesiastical affairs, because of the Reformation of sacred things. Neither does the history of literature and learning go unmentioned in these books: especially that part which explains the decline of literature and its suppression over a long enough period; then at last, with the coming of a more fortunate age, its restoration and promotion. This is so that one may recognize by whom something was just barely preserved amongst the barbarians; and who those great heroes were, who denounced barbarity and restored to good letters their former splendor.

It seemed good to give you this prior advice and preface about our three books. You then, kind reader, use them to good effect, look generously on us, and farewell. [20–4]

It is therefore somewhat ironic that the term ‘medieval’ has come to be embraced and universally used by scholars who admire and study the thousand-year period from c. 500 to c. 1500 for its own sake and on its own terms. Since 1932 a scholarly journal entitled Medium Aevum has been published by the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature. It has become conventional to divide the medieval period into three broadly defined epochs: the early Middle Ages, usually reckoned from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to c. 1000; the High Middle Ages, from c. 1000 to c. 1250; and the Later Middle Ages, from c. 1250 to c. 1500. The turning-point of c. 1250 for the ‘Later’ Middle Ages has been debated, but is based on the death of the Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen in that year, followed shortly by a long interregnum in the Empire; and by the beginnings of fragmentation in the thought-world of late medieval scholasticism around this time (Hale, Highfield, and Smalley 1965). The idea of calling this whole era, or even just the earlier part of it, the ‘dark ages’ is now something of a historical fossil, though still deserving of serious rebuttal (Nelson 2007). The continuing use of the term ‘medieval’ as a guild label and as a universally recognised (if not always welcome) qualifier for a period of European history tells us that it must be thought to mean something. The task is to attempt to define some of what that meaning includes. It is vital, in what follows, to appreciate that medieval Europe was in no way static over a thousand years. Generalising about this expanse of time always means describing peoples and cultures on the move. Some would argue that the divisions between early and later medieval history are at least as important as the distinctions between medieval and early modern (Southern 1995–1997).

In terms of Europe’s political structures, the medieval period can be book-ended, if so desired, somewhat neatly between the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when Odoacer deposed Romulus ‘Augustulus’ of Rome in 476, to the fall of the Eastern Empire, when the Ottoman Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453 and defeated Constantine XI Palaiologos in battle. In the East, the political, administrative and cultural traditions of East Rome, later to be known as the Byzantine Empire, persisted throughout the period, despite being whittled away by invaders from the East and, notoriously, being despoiled by the Fourth Crusaders in the early thirteenth century. While historians rightly acknowledge the importance of the Eastern Empire, whose culture was for much of the early Middle Ages more productive and sophisticated than that of the West (Bury 1924–1936, vol IV; Herrin 2008), most of the characterisation of the ‘Middle Ages’ has in practice been drawn from events in Western, Latin Europe. In the West, the prevailing political conditions after the fall of Rome were diffuse, at times even chaotic, as different ethnic groups from the East and the North vied for control of fragments of Western Europe.

Yet within the varied and shifting political environment two political ideas arose to dominate the High Middle Ages. First, the bishopric of Rome gradually aspired to the status of a western patriarch to rival, or even to claim authority over, the patriarchates of the East. From the eighth century a forged text circulated which claimed to report the gift by the emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester II of the regalia of the Empire, and of ill-defined but considerable lands, the supposed foundations of what became the Papal States (Valla 1922, 10–19). While the status and credibility of the papacy would wax and wane over time, the idea of the papacy as a monarchy of more than merely spiritual or ecclesiastical significance would establish itself. In the hands of especially assertive popes (Gregory VII, Innocent III, Boniface VIII) the papacy aspired to more than imperial authority, and indeed claimed to depose and replace emperors (Morris 1989).

Alongside and often in antagonism against this imperial papacy, there arose various manifestations of a revived imperial principle. Later ages would date the revival (or ‘translation’ as medieval historians would refer to it) of the Roman...