A World Lit Only by Fire (4 page)

And yet …

The crafty but benevolent pagan gods—whose caprice and intransigence existed only in the imagination of Christian theologians
eager to discredit them—survived all this. Imperial Rome having yielded to barbarians, and then barbarism to Christianity,
Christianity was in turn infiltrated, and to a considerable extent subverted, by the paganism it was supposed to destroy.
Medieval men simply could not bear to part with Thor, Hermes, Zeus, Juno, Cronus, Saturn, and their peers. Idol worship addressed
needs the Church could not meet. Its rituals, myths, legends, marvels, and miracles were peculiarly suited to people who,
living in the trackless fen and impenetrable forest, were always vulnerable to random disaster. Moreover, its creeds had never
held, as the Augustinians did, that procreation was evil; pagans celebrating Aphrodite, Eros, Hymen, Cupid, and Venus could
rejoice in lust. Thus the allegiance of converts was divided. Few saw any inconsistency or double-dealing in it. Hedging bets
seemed only sensible. After all, it was just possible that Rome
had
fallen because the pagan deities had turned away from the city whose emperors no longer recognized them. What harm could
come from paying token tribute to their ancient dignity? If people went to Mass and followed the commandments, there would
be no retaliation from new worshipers of the savior, with their commitments to humility, mercy, tenderness, and kindness.
The old genies, on the other hand, had never forgiven anyone anything, and as the Greeks had noted, the dice of the gods were
always loaded.

So Christian churches were built on the foundations of pagan temples, and the names of biblical saints were given to groves
which had been considered sacred centuries before the birth of Jesus. Pagan holidays still enjoyed wide popularity; therefore
the Church expropriated them. Pentecost supplanted the Floralia, All Souls’ Day replaced a festival for the dead, the feast
of the purification of Isis and the Roman Lupercalia were transformed into the Feast of the Nativity. The Saturnalia, when
even slaves had enjoyed great liberty, became Christmas; the resurrection of Attis, Easter. There was a lot of legerdemain
in this. No one then knew the year Christ was born—it was probably 5
B.C
.—let alone the date. Sometime in
A.D
. 336 Roman Christians first observed his birthday. The Eastern Roman Empire picked January 6 as the day, but later in the
same century December 25 was adopted, apparently at random. The date of his resurrection was also unrecorded. The early Christians,
believing that their lord’s return was imminent, celebrated Easter every Sunday. After three hundred years their descendants
became reconciled to a delay. In an attempt to link Easter with the Passion, it was sheduled on Passover, the Jewish feast
observing the Exodus from Egypt in the thirteenth century
B.C
. Finally, in
A.D
. 325, after long and bitter controversy, the First Council of Nicaea settled on the first Sunday after the full moon following
the spring equinox. The decision had no historical validity, but neither did the event, and it comforted those who cherished
traditional holidays.

As mass baptisms swelled its congregations, the Church further indulged the converts by condoning ancient rites, or attempting
to transform them, in the hope—never realized—that they would die out. Fertility rituals and augury were sanctioned; so
was the sacrifice of cattle. After the pagan sacrifice of humans was replaced by Christianity’s symbolic Mass, the ceremonial
performance of the sacraments became of paramount importance. Christian priests, like the pagan priests before them, also
blessed harvests and homes. They even asked omnipotent God to spare communities from fire, plague, and enemy invasions. This
was tempting fate, however, and medieval fate never resisted temptation for long. In time the flames, diseases, and invaders
came anyway, invariably followed by outbreaks of anticlericalism, or even backsliding into such extravagant sects as the flagellants,
who appeared recurrently in the wake of the Black Death. Nevertheless the traffic in holy relics, to which supernatural powers
were attributed, never slackened, and Christian miracle stories continued to attribute pagan qualities to saints.

Neither Jesus nor his disciples had mentioned sainthood. The designation of saints emerged during the second and third centuries
after Christ, with the Roman persecution of Christians. The survivors of the catacombs believed those who had been martyred
had been received directly into heaven and, being there, could intercede for the living. They revered them as saints, but
they never venerated idols of them. All the early Christians had despised idolatry, reserving special scorn for sculptures
representing pagan gods. Typically, Clement of Alexandria (
A.D
. 150?–220?), a theologian and teacher, declared that it was sacrilege to adulate that which is created, rather than the creator.
However, as the number of saints grew, so did the medieval yearning to give them identity; worshipers wanted pictures of them,
images of the Madonna, and replicas of Christ on the cross. Statues of Horus, the Egyptian sky god, and Isis, the goddess
of royalty, were rechristened Jesus and Mary. Craftsmen turned out other images and pictures to meet the demands of Christians
who kissed them, prostrated themselves before them, and adorned them with flowers. Incense was introduced in Christian church
services around 500, followed by the burning of candles. Each medieval community, in times of crisis, evoked the supposed
potency of its patron saint, or of the relics it possessed.

Augustine deplored the adoration of saints, but priests and parishioners alike believed that the devil could be driven away
by invoking their powers, or by making the sign of the cross. Medieval astrologers and magicians flourished. Clearly all this
met a deep human need, but thoughtful men were troubled. Reaction came in the eighth century. Leo III, the deeply pious Byzantine
emperor, believed it his imperial duty to defend true Christianity against all who would desecrate it. To him the adoption
of pagan ways was sacrilege, and he was particularly offended by the veneration of relics and religious pictures during the
celebration of Mass. After citing Deuteronomy 4:16—which forbids worship of any “graven image” or “the similitude of any
figure, the likeness of male or female”—he issued a draconian edict in 726. On his orders, soldiers were to remove all icons
and representations of Jesus and Mary from churches. All murals, frescoes, and mosaics were to be plastered over.

This made Leo history’s most celebrated iconoclast. It also enraged his subjects. In the Cyclades Islands they rebelled. In
Venice and Ravenna they drove out imperial authorities. In Greece they elected an antiemperor and sent a fleet to capture
Leo. He sank the fleet, but when his troops tried to enforce the edict, they were attacked at church doors by outraged mobs.
Undeterred, in 730 the emperor proclaimed iconoclasm the official policy of the empire. But then the Church intervened. The
lower clergy had opposed image breaking from its outset. They were joined by prelates, then by the patriarch of Constantinople,
and, finally, by a council of bishops called by Pope Gregory II. Enforcing Leo’s edict proved impossible anyway. At his death
in 741 most of the art he had ordered destroyed or covered up was untouched, and forty-six years later, when the Second Council
of Nicaea met, the Church formally abandoned his policy. After all, Rome was also the old imperial stronghold of a romantic
polytheism whose local deities, now renamed for saints, were cloaked in myth and legend. Since the fourth century, Christian
art there had reflected that heritage. The form, construction, and columnar basilican style of the original St. Peter’s basilica,
built between 330 and 360, were all in the pagan tradition. And nearby Santa Maria Maggiore, begun by Pope Sixtus III in 432,
was actually the site of a former pagan temple.

W
AS THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
a civilization, comparable to Rome before it or to the modern era which followed? If by civilization one means a society
which has reached a relatively high level of cultural and technological development, the answer is no. During the Roman millennium
imperial authorities had controlled the destinies of all the lands within the empire—from the Atlantic in the west to the
Caspian Sea in the east, from the Antonine Wall in northern Britain to the upper Nile valley in the south. Enlightened Romans
had served as teachers, lawgivers, builders, and administrators; Romans had reached towering pinnacles of artistic and intellectual
achievement; their city had become the physical and spiritual capital of the Roman Catholic Church.

The age which succeeded it accomplished none of these. Trade on the Mediterranean, once a Roman lake, was perilous; Vandal
pirates, and then Muslim pirates, lay athwart the vital sea routes. Agriculture and transport were inefficient; the population
was never fed adequately. A barter economy yielded to coinage only because the dominant lords, enriched by plunder and conquest,
needed some form of currency to pay for wars, ransoms, their departure on crusades, the knighting of their sons, and their
daughters’ marriages. Royal treasury officials were so deficient in elementary skills that they were dependent upon arithmetic
learned from the Arabs; the name exchequer emerged because they used a checkered cloth as a kind of abacus in doing sums.
If their society was diverse and colorful, it was also anarchic, formless, and appallingly unjust.

Nevertheless it possessed its own structure and peculiar institutions, which evolved almost imperceptibly over the centuries.
Medievalism was born in the decaying ruins of a senile and impotent empire; it died just a Europe was emerging as a distinctive
cultural unit. The interregnum was the worst of times for the imaginative, the cerebral, and the unfortunate, but the strong,
the healthy, the shrewd, the handsome, the beautiful—and the lucky—flourished.

Europe was ruled by a new aristocracy: the noble, and, ultimately, the regal. After the barbarian tribes had overwhelmed the
Roman Empire, men had established themselves as members of the new privileged classes in various ways. Any leader with a large
following of free men was eligible, though some had greater followings, and therefore greater claims, than others. In Italy
some were members of Roman senatorial families, survivors who had intermarried with Goths or Huns; as Ovid had observed, a
barbarian was suitable if he was rich. Others in the particiate were landowners whose huge domains (
latifundia
) were worked by slaves and protected by private armies of
bucellaeii
. In England and France the privileged might be descendants of Angle, Saxon, Frank, Vandal, or Ostrogoth chieftains. Many
German hierarchs belonged to very old families, revered since time immemorial, and therefore acceptable to the other princes
—the
Reichsfürsten-stand
—who had to approve each ennoblement. Because this was a time of incessant warfare, however, most noblemen had risen by
distinguishing themselves in battle. In the early centuries distinction ended with the death of the man who had won it, but
patrilineal descent became increasingly common, creating dynasties.

Titles evolved: duke, from the Latin
dux
, meaning a military commander; earl, from the Anglo-Saxon
eorla
or
cheorl
(as distinguished from
churl
); count or comte, from the Latin
comes
, a companion of a great personage; baron, from the Teutonic
beron
, a warrior; margrave, from the Dutch
markgraaf
; and marquess, marquis,
markis, marques, marqués
, or
marchese
, from the Latin
marca
—literally a frontier, or frontier territory. Serving these, on the lowest rung of the aristocratic ladder, was the knight
(French
chevalier
, German
Ritter
, Italian
cavallo
, Spanish
caballero
, Portuguese
cavalheiro
). Originally the word meant a farm worker of free birth. By the eleventh century knights were cavalrymen living in fortified
mansions, each with his noble seal. All were guided, in theory at least, by an idealistic knightly code and bound by oath
to serve a duke, earl, count, baron, or marquis who, in turn, periodically honored him with gifts: horses, falcons, even weapons.