A Crisis of the Middle Ages? Deconstructing and Constructing European Identities in a Globalised World
By Michael Borgolte
Paper given at the University of Leeds as part of the The Making of Medieval History project (2012)
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Detail of the globe from The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1533
Introduction: In a globalizing world the Middle Ages run the risk of losing their position in the order of history. The period of national histories seems to come to an end and also the interest in European history seems to wane. Nevertheless there are fascinating new perspectives for the making of Medieval History in comparison with other cultures and for the analyses of the connections between all of them.
Introduction: There can be no doubt that the historian’s activity is not going to cease any time soon, for every new human generation is looking for its origins and its place in an ever-changing world. In Europe, historians are faced with two parallel developments, both of which seem unstoppable, despite some delaying factors: that is Europeanization and globalisation. While it may be premature to predict an end of national history, our conception of history is bound to change dramatically, and this change will affect our understanding of the Middle Ages. It is no exaggeration to speak of a crisis of the Middle Ages in our historical consciousness, to the same extent than some scholars have referred to a crisis of our modernity in an age of “multiple modernities”.
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In this context, I should like to distinguish between three ways of telling the history of the Middle Ages. There is, first, the history of medieval Europe as a specific and clearly identifiable entity. Secondly, there is the history of Europe as a diverse body during the Middle Ages; and third there is the history of a millennium or so in which different worlds co-existed, including one that linked Europe to Asia and to North Africa. In the first case, Europe is akin to Latin civilisation, the areas under the influence of the Roman-Catholic Church, the Occident or the West. Although these forms of identification have attracted due criticism on part of some historians, they are still the dominant paradigms of medieval history.
In a recent survey, a German historian (Egon Boshof) could still refer without caveat to the uniform culture of the Latin West, which he saw as built on a consensus about fundamental Christian values, while another colleague (Verena Postel) drew a line between the so-called origins of Europe and the present, and emphasised the abiding differences between Europe and the East: ‘Europe’, she wrote, ‘that was the medieval world, as opposed to Byzantium and the Islamic world’. Yet attempts such as these to ascribe an unchanging identity to Europe, which can be traced down to the Middle Ages, are hardly original. Europe has many fathers, it would seem, as it was deemed in some quarters to have been created by the Franks and, more specifically, Charlemagne and the dynasty that bears his name, while by contrast a British historian (Robert Bartlett) has dated the ‘Making of Europe’ back to the Crusades and the expansion of Latin Christianity during the Central Middle Ages. The thesis of the birth of Europe out of the Middle Ages has, however, been advanced with particular emphasis by none other than the French historian Jacques Le Goff, probably the world’s most distinguished medievalist, who sees the Middle Ages as the most significant legacy of the past for today’s and tomorrow’s Europe.
A Crisis of the Middle Ages? Deconstructing and Constructing European Identities in a Globalised World
By Michael Borgolte
Paper given at the University of Leeds as part of the The Making of Medieval History project (2012)
Introduction: In a globalizing world the Middle Ages run the risk of losing their position in the order of history. The period of national histories seems to come to an end and also the interest in European history seems to wane. Nevertheless there are fascinating new perspectives for the making of Medieval History in comparison with other cultures and for the analyses of the connections between all of them.
Introduction: There can be no doubt that the historian’s activity is not going to cease any time soon, for every new human generation is looking for its origins and its place in an ever-changing world. In Europe, historians are faced with two parallel developments, both of which seem unstoppable, despite some delaying factors: that is Europeanization and globalisation. While it may be premature to predict an end of national history, our conception of history is bound to change dramatically, and this change will affect our understanding of the Middle Ages. It is no exaggeration to speak of a crisis of the Middle Ages in our historical consciousness, to the same extent than some scholars have referred to a crisis of our modernity in an age of “multiple modernities”.
In this context, I should like to distinguish between three ways of telling the history of the Middle Ages. There is, first, the history of medieval Europe as a specific and clearly identifiable entity. Secondly, there is the history of Europe as a diverse body during the Middle Ages; and third there is the history of a millennium or so in which different worlds co-existed, including one that linked Europe to Asia and to North Africa. In the first case, Europe is akin to Latin civilisation, the areas under the influence of the Roman-Catholic Church, the Occident or the West. Although these forms of identification have attracted due criticism on part of some historians, they are still the dominant paradigms of medieval history.
In a recent survey, a German historian (Egon Boshof) could still refer without caveat to the uniform culture of the Latin West, which he saw as built on a consensus about fundamental Christian values, while another colleague (Verena Postel) drew a line between the so-called origins of Europe and the present, and emphasised the abiding differences between Europe and the East: ‘Europe’, she wrote, ‘that was the medieval world, as opposed to Byzantium and the Islamic world’. Yet attempts such as these to ascribe an unchanging identity to Europe, which can be traced down to the Middle Ages, are hardly original. Europe has many fathers, it would seem, as it was deemed in some quarters to have been created by the Franks and, more specifically, Charlemagne and the dynasty that bears his name, while by contrast a British historian (Robert Bartlett) has dated the ‘Making of Europe’ back to the Crusades and the expansion of Latin Christianity during the Central Middle Ages. The thesis of the birth of Europe out of the Middle Ages has, however, been advanced with particular emphasis by none other than the French historian Jacques Le Goff, probably the world’s most distinguished medievalist, who sees the Middle Ages as the most significant legacy of the past for today’s and tomorrow’s Europe.
Click here to read this article from the University of Leeds
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