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What is Manchester's thesis about thinking in the Middle Ages in A World Lit Only By Fire?
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Manchester's thesis in A World Lit Only By Fire argues that the Middle Ages were a period of intellectual stagnation and backwardness, dominated by the Church's restrictive doctrines. He describes the era as lacking cultural and technological development, with "darkness" prevailing after the fall of the Roman Empire. Manchester views the medieval period as unenlightened, chaotic, and dominated by superstition, contrasting it sharply with the Renaissance, which he sees as a break from this "Dark Ages."
In many ways, Manchester's thesis about the Middle Ages is a statement of the traditional view of the era, one that really began during the Renaissance itself. That is, in short, that the period was backward, one in which, as Manchester writes, "intellectual life had vanished from Europe." In the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire, Manchester claims, "darkness descended" upon Europe, not to be lifted "until forty medieval generations had suffered, wrought their pathetic destinies, and passed on." Needless to say, this is not a view held by many medieval historians, a fact that Manchester acknowledges in his introduction.
Manchester asks rhetorically in his first chapter, "The Medieval Mind," whether the medieval world was a civilization and argues that, because the era did not witness a "relatively high level of cultural and technological development," the answer must be no. The "enlightened Romans," who had been "teachers" and...
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"lawgivers," were replaced by the barbaric tendencies of the Middle Ages. The period was thus "the worst of times" for the "imaginative" and the "cerebral."
The foundation of medieval thought, Manchester writes, was the Church, which was primarily informed by the writings of St. Augustine. His strictures against sexuality—and indeed against any of the human passions that he associated with the "city of man"—were the foundation of Church doctrine. Manchester generally portrays Church thinking as diametrically opposed to the paganism of "barbarian" cultures and of classical Rome. He claims that even the famous schism that occurred in the Church, one which saw two popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome, was not terribly upsetting to people because "there was no room in the medieval mind for doubt."
In short, Manchester portrays the "medieval mind" as ignorant, superstitious, and unenlightened. He condenses almost a millennium of European history into a "medieval" period that he views as essentially stagnant and devoid of intellectual development. In so doing, he ignores the scholarly production of the era and denies that the period had an intellectual history in order to idealize the Renaissance as a complete break from an unenlightened past.
Hi Ish,
As the title of the book suggests, A World Lit Only By Fire portrays the Middle Ages as a barbaric and brutal period of history.
For Manchester, this was an era dominated by chaos, violence and stagnation. At the heart of Manchester's thesis is the centrality of the Church. This was a powerful and pervasive organisation, plagued by immorality and corruption. It failed to provide proper leadership for the people of Medieval Europe and was also responsible for halting scientific advancement.
In essence, Manchester believed that this period deserved to be known as the 'Dark Ages'.