Modern Man
Modernity is defined as the period during which the exploration of the individual and the rationalisation of the social order occurred. The origins of modernity lie, according to one school of thought, in the Italian Renaissance. Jacob Burckhardt, a member of this camp, posits that the Italian Peninsula, lacking the enforcement offered by either the Church or an absolute monarchy, was in a state of political turmoil. Tyrants took over their small principalities with through bloodshed and, despite attempts to legitimise their claims to the seat of local power, were often overtaken in the same manner. With this perpetual state of political flux, the lay Italian was bound to abandon the political sphere, retreating to the safety of their private lives. It is this retreat, Burckhardt offers, which condoned the rational and introspective man to arise.
Opponents to this Renaissance theory include the Medievalists. Richard Southern, a Medievalist, argues that the origins to modernity lie (roughly) in the period between 972 and 1204, during which a series of seemingly negligible events occurred that, despite their appearance, were of great importance to the development of Western Europe as a forerunner of rationality and introspective thought. Burckhardt, in the second chapter of his treatise, explains that the individual arose from a wish to preserve one’s life from the dangers of political life. In such isolation as a retreat to the private life provided, the Italian was able to focus on one’s work rather than the dangers to one’s life.1 Southern refutes this claim by arguing that the political situation was, in the Middle Ages, not as cohesive as Burckhardt supposes. The kings were losing their iron grip to their subordinate powers.2 The Papacy, too, endured a loosening grasp on legal proceedings, with suits being solved in a less superstitious way than before.3 In his fourth chapter, Burckhardt argues that the Italian view of the world changed from one of unrealistic beauty and overwhelming power to a rational view, in which man had control over nature because man understood nature.4
Burckhardt, too, posits the spirit of exploration solely belonged to the Italians who sought to understand not only the world they knew, but that which they did not know. Southern responds to this claim by revealing the shift in mentality as explicated by the change of epic to romance. Southern implicates the change in narrative as evidence of spirit of journeying arising in the psyche of the mediaeval man; life was no longer understood to be a test of endurance as the epic implies. Life became a collection of memories garnered through exploration.5 Southern’s argument, though more subtle than Burckhardt’s, reveals the true origins of modernity by unmasking the psychological underpinnings of introspection and rationalism.
Burckhardt affirms that mediaeval men saw themselves as part of a larger whole rather than as individuals. This attitude, he states, was largely erased from the masses during the Renaissance due to a retreat from political life.6 The political situation during the Italian Renaissance was a constant battle for legitimacy and power amongst the tyrants who ruled. The job security of a Renaissance political prince was non-existent; he could be deposed as soon as he usurped another. It was safer, then, to occupy oneself with one’s work rather than to participate in the political sphere. With the pressure of an active political life alleviated, the commoner began focusing on oneself. This forced, acute awareness of self against the chaotic whole, Burckhardt asserts, is what galvanised the introspection necessary to develop modern individualism.7 Southern instead points to the multiple series of divisions between secular and religious spheres, as well as those within each of those realms. By 1215 the courts had laid the groundwork for rational trial and law (rather than an appeal to the supernatural), and with it a yearning to understand the individual soul.8 Rather than argue9 that an absence of religious overtone in the courtroom led to worldly, logical appeals in court proceedings, Southern argues that with the rationalisation of religious practises came, in trials typically overseen by the Church, rational legal proceedings. Rather than ask the heavens for a sign the defendant was guilty or otherwise, the practise of giving worldly trials with worldly consequences arose.10
The restructuring of the legal system was one indication of the awakening of the individual. There was, besides the change in legal proceedings, a shift in the social hierarchy. In the tenth century, the divisions between serf and freemen and between freemen and noblemen changed.11 Serfdom became more heavily determined by the status of one’s birth by the thirteenth century, a status that was predetermined by the status of one’s father.12 Not only did the legal code regarding serfdom change to make the station more absolute and static, but the public conception of it changed. Serfs were referred to as “serfs of the serfs of God;” they were understood by the Church to be the Lord’s freemen, whilst freemen were the Lord’s serfs. Being a serf was revered as a divine opportunity, a chance to gain humility and exhibit the impoverished state of monks and other holy men.13 Serfs’ lives were determined by those for whom they worked, their will irrelevant.
Because of this lack of will, there were few laws in existence concerning the serfs. There was nothing for serfs to decide; the absolute dominion of serfs’ leaders made it so. Freemen, however, as people capable of controlling their lives to a greater extent, had to endure the abundant legislations and codes in place for their rank. The greater one’s station, the greater the amount of codes of conduct one must follow. Reason, as what begets law, is what the mediaeval man yearned for, not the tumultuousness associated with serfdom.14 Through modifications in both policy and order, leanings towards a more rational and individual lifestyle developed.
The Renaissance man’s spirit of exploration originates in the aristocracy of the Middle Ages. Nature, to the Renaissance man, was a thing to be explored, understood, and controlled, but the willingness to explore was not exclusive to him.15 The mediaeval man, towards the late Middle Ages, believed the journey to be of greater importance than the destination. During the Middle Ages there was a transition from the heroic epic, in which the protagonist seeks to obtain from nature something it takes or keeps from him, to the romance. A romantic hero, gifted in one way or another, is given a quest upon which he must perform various tasks. Along the way, the hero is changed dramatically by the events occurring on the way to his goal; the hero before the journey is lost, but the hero who arrives at the end of the tale emerges wiser and worthy of whatever galvanised him to venture on the quest in the first place. Reading into these stories one may glean that the authors — and, by extension, the contemporary readers — found the world to be a place to explore and understand rather than one to endure and fear.
Gone was the apprehension towards the unknown, for from the unknown one could wrest an even greater solace than possessed before. Evidence exists, too, of an economic stimulus to travel and claim other places. The aristocratic diaspora of the Middle Ages, as a result of the patrilineal primogeniture that arose during the same time, coerced many younger siblings and obscure family members to leave the family homestead for new ground. Rather than endure a life of serving under the eldest son of the head father, these youths ventured off to the distant reaches of the land, merging with other cultures, gaining new identities. This change brought about the surname, which was oft attached to the castle or surroundings of the new home rather than that of the old home of these disseminated aristocrats.16 No longer were these men attached to the place of their origins; they had deemed the place of their dominion their home.
By changing one’s name to match the area of one’s domain, one stakes a claim over that land. It has become an extension of the self. He must be proud, who would alter oneself such; proud of his acquisition, of his prowess. How is it that such pride became acceptable in the Middle Ages, especially if religion was as invasive as Burckhardt claims it to have been? Pride is one of the worst sins; were religion to have been as impeding as Burckhardt claims, it should not have developed as it did amongst the knights and castellans who would become the aristocracy of later years. When one thinks of knights, oft what comes to mind is an image of the noble horseman, pure of heart and willing to go to great lengths to accomplish that which must be done. Loyalty and the strength to sacrifice oneself for the good of the kingdom are characteristics many would attribute to these cavalrymen. However, with the knights of the late Middle Ages arose a new kind of social order. Knights began performing private justices, obtaining their own chains of command. The absence of a monarchy and papacy only unmasks the political violence Burckhardt attributes to the Renaissance. By 1100, major transitions had occurred in Italy that led to the economically fortified citizens’ rise to power. Kings were little more than influential figureheads. Public office became the patrimony of specific families. Vassalage became the formal monad of political action. Private justice and enforcement became more prevalent amongst those who could provide it.17
In short, they began thinking of themselves and their position rather than their position relative to the overall scheme. Rather than only act as their liege dictate, the castellans, much like the powerful and private of the Renaissance, began to ensure that they received gifts alongside their lords, and amassed power of their own without their lord’s permission. The chivalric code with which the knights approached life warped into guideline rather than law. It became no more than a façade, a beautification of the pride knights held in their position.18 Burckhardt attributes a similar sense of pride and glory to his Italians,19 but they get their start from vestiges of the mediaeval man. Burckhardt, too, attaches to the Renaissance man an artistry with which he lives his life. Not only the individual, but their environment and lifestyle change with the transformation of life as something to survive into something of which to make a masterpiece. Burckhardt presents as the name of his first chapter ‘the state as a work of art;’ one can observe this, too, in the lifestyle of the count Fulk Nerra. This count of Anjou, progenitor of the Angevin empire, through laborious and methodical planning and action, managed to obtain for his heirs the heartland of their domain.20 The deliberate nature of Fulk Nerra’s subtle warfare, the sluggish construction and maintenance of his castles, the unwavering dedication to garnering lines of contact and supply; the time and energy the count put into the expansion of his domain is not dissimilar from that put into a well-detailed sculpture or painting.
The sum of Southern’s counterargument to Burckhardt is as follows. The Italian Renaissance cannot be the starting point of modernity. All the arguments Burckhardt conceives, all the advancements Burckhardt points out belong solely to the Renaissance man, had their origins in the Middle Ages. The exploration of the individual was able to occur due to the transition from corporative religious experience to individual religious experience. With this transition of monastic rule came a compounded search for secular knowledge. St Augustine’s treatise reached the masses; to understand and appreciate God to the fullest, one must also understand and appreciate the world. And so an earnest exploration of the sciences began, not just for the sake of religion, but for curiosity’s sake.21 The promise of modernity is that by understanding the past, one might control the future. This can only be accomplished if history is collected, analysed, and understood, an effort that began in the Middle Ages.22 That man might control its destiny was an idea not conceived in the Renaissance, but in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the increasing amounts of art and literature identifying Jesus – the Saviour – not as some abstract being upon whom our souls depend for salvation, but as human, with emotion. The argument of St Anselm against those who argued that Man had no role in its salvation is the epitome of this realisation. No longer were men subject to nature; Man had its place in the universe, but its station was not static.23 The Middle Ages, then, produces the psychology necessary for the Renaissance to exhibit modernity in the fashion Burckhardt offers.
1 Jacob Burckhardt.The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. (New York: Harper, 1958), 52-53.
2 R. W. Southern,The Making of the Middle Ages(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 80-81.
3 Southern,Middle Ages, 98.
4 Burckhardt,Civilisation, 116-120; 139-140.
5 Southern,Middle Ages, 221-222.
6 Burckhardt,Civilisation, 52-53.
7 Burckhardt,Civilisations, 53.
8 Southern,Middle Ages, 96-98.
9 Burckhardt,Civilisations, 52.
10 Southern,Middle Ages, 98.
11 Southern,Middle Ages, 98.
12 Southern,Middle Ages, 100.
13 Southern,Middle Ages, 103.
14 Southern,Middle Ages, 110.
15 Burckhardt,Civilisation, 119-120. SouthernMiddle Ages, 221.
16 Robert Bartlett. The Making of Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
17 Chris Wickham, The Feudal Revolution (Past & Present, 1997), 201.
18 Jan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London: E. Arnold &, 1924), 67-77.
19 Burckhardt, Civilisations, 56-59.
20 Bernard S. Bachrach, The Angevin Strategy of Castle-Building (The American Historical Review: 1983).
21 Southern, Middle Ages, 172.
22 Southern, Middle Ages, 192-193.
23 Southern, Middle Ages, 233-236.