Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Emergence of a Transformed Europe in the Twelfth Century
- 2 Reason Asserts Itself: The Challenge to Authority in the Early Middle Ages to 1200
- 3 Reason Takes Hold: Aristotle and the Mediveal University
- 4 Reason in Action: Logic in the Faculty of Arts
- 5 Reason in Action: Natural Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts
- 6 Reason in Action: Theology in the Faculty of Theology
- 7 The Assault on the Middle Ages
- Conclusion: The Culture and Spirit of “Poking Around”
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Emergence of a Transformed Europe in the Twelfth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Emergence of a Transformed Europe in the Twelfth Century
- 2 Reason Asserts Itself: The Challenge to Authority in the Early Middle Ages to 1200
- 3 Reason Takes Hold: Aristotle and the Mediveal University
- 4 Reason in Action: Logic in the Faculty of Arts
- 5 Reason in Action: Natural Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts
- 6 Reason in Action: Theology in the Faculty of Theology
- 7 The Assault on the Middle Ages
- Conclusion: The Culture and Spirit of “Poking Around”
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
BY THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES, A NEW CIVILIZATION had emerged in Western Europe. That new civilization was largely a product of the peoples of northern Europe, who had been at the fringes of Roman civilization for many centuries. In the course of a lengthy period of upheaval and transformation, from around 400 to 1000, a new Europe was formed in the West, the product of a fusion of the new, largely Germanic, peoples with the inhabitants of the older Roman civilization.
CENTURIES OF DISSOLUTION: EUROPE AT ITS NADIR
The birth of the new Europe was a lengthy process because Germanic tribes – Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Lombards, Franks, and others – from the fourth to the seventh centuries were constantly at war in the northern part of continental Europe, or in process of migration, as imperial Rome weakened and gradually dissolved in Western Europe. Just when it seemed that the Franks under Charlemagne would bring a much greater degree of stability and peace than had hitherto been known in Europe, the death of Charlemagne in 814 brought further disintegration. The tendency toward central government ended, and the trend toward feudal states accelerated as noble families sought to retain whatever power and land they possessed, and to add whatever they could by fair means or foul.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- God and Reason in the Middle Ages , pp. 17 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001