On the Death of the Medieval Idea

by James Doone

James Doone explores how the medieval synthesis of Roman order, Germanic heroism, and Christian spirituality once crowned Europe’s zenith, only to be fractured by schism, rationalism, and the rise of materialist modernity — leaving a Faustian civilisation adrift, longing for the vanished harmony of throne and altar.

Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature.

— Albertus Magnus, a 13th-century Dominican friar

The Middle Ages (500-1450), also called by us the medieval era, was a time when European man and his civilisation reached its zenith, the perfect blend of classical Rome and Christianity into a synergy of Romanness, Germanic warrior spirit, and Christian spirituality, blended together to reach its apotheosis in Europe and among European man — the golden age of Faustian culture. Father Seraphim Rose (1934-1982), a wildly beloved monastic and a man many call a saint, spoke in his lectures, collectively known as Orthodox Survival Course (which can be found in book format online for free, or on YouTube), that with the split between the true Church of Christ, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the heterodox Church of Rome (RCC) in 1054 with the Great Schism, there was ushered in a new theology, new spirituality, and new ideas into the Roman West — brewed from the Roman plant of rationalism, logicism, legalism and a proto-humanism; compared with the philosophical and mystical East. In the West, the medieval idea was that of a collegium of dynastic potentates (nations) under the spiritual headship of the Pope of Rome, and the Church Universal binding the different monarchical nations under the same spiritual cloth. The idea of universal and the idea of local blended together in perfect harmony.

After the fall of the city of Augustus and the Pax Romana, Europe fell to the dominion of the Germanic tribes who set up kingdoms on the ruins of the former Roman Empire, and after their conversion to the cross and the creed of Nicaea, the early Middle Ages began in earnest. Charlemagne, possessing his massive and great empire, took his armies to the corners of Europe and famously converted the Saxons at the point of the sword, not a Christian custom. It was at this time that the death cries of paganism, such as the warlike religion of the Norse raiders and their Viking gods of Odin and Thor, the Pagani with their Jupiter and Neptune, faded into the books of history with the supremacy of the Ichthus. However, eminent historians like the great Gibbon (author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) were wrong in their view that Christianity brought down the Roman Imperium. It did not, for if it did, then how would they explain the conquering warrior nations such as medieval France, Spain or the German lands? And warrior kings like Richard the Lionheart or Frederick Barbarossa?

Though since the decline of Christianity in the West, there has been a rise in Neo-Paganism among some members of the Right, this is folly, in due part to them trying to resurrect a facet of the ancient world, a world we no longer live in, for who consults the augurs before travelling? Who consults the mystics before battle? We live not in an age of magic and mystery but in a mechanical age of science and naturalism — for good or ill, so trying to be sons of Mars in 2024 is impossible. Plus, who desires to see the return of blood feuds and human sacrifice in the sacred groves? Madness. It is easy to be a Nietzschean when one is strong, but when one needs medical help or care, all of a sudden the Übermensch idea suddenly reverts to Christian charity. Evola knew this well. But there is something vitalist in the spirit of the pagans, a spiritual energy that sagging Europe would benefit from as a medicine for her civilisation — yet energy combined with truth equals ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY.

Elegance of language must give way before simplicity in preaching sound doctrine.

— Girolamo Savonarola.

The perfect example was the conflict between the pro-papal Guelfs and the pro-German Emperors Ghibellines, and this strife covered northern Italy during the 1200s and 1300s. The peak of this struggle was during the reign of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190) and his attempts to assert imperial dominion over Italy. He was opposed by some of the Tuscan and Lombardian communes, and the merchant class were opposed to his design and were pro-papacy, and the aristocrats were pro-Imperium. In the end, the Holy Roman Empire declined and withered and the papacy became all powerful, and the autonomy of the Italian principalities, republics, dukedoms etc. became a de facto state of affairs in Italy until the Risorgimento. The medieval idea was the great chain of being, that of society being divided into natural classes, with the peasantry at the bottom — the farmers and workers, then the priestly class of monks and priests, the warrior class of soldiers and knights, then the nobility of the barons and finally at the head the monarch, though that is the temporal chain but there is a spiritual chain — that of priest, bishop, cardinal and then pope. The increase of trade and banking in the late 1300s began to give rise to a middle class of merchants, entrepreneurs, bankers and moneymen. As they controlled the coin, they controlled nations, though the monarch could, if he chose, wield the arm of his nobles and knights.

Feudalism, the word itself is deemed negative, was in fact the natural outgrowing of a farming and agricultural society, where the host of the populace farm the land, and the warriors defend it, naturally in exchange for food, wine, olive oil etc. from the farmers and shepherds. The king, the sovereign power, appointed the lords who ruled over fiefs, who themselves then appointed knights, and the chain of being went right down to the lowliest serf. Inequality is the natural order. It is the way of man, and any society that does not accept this and work within this structure will throw the balance of the world off its axis. Hence the world is sick due to its rebellion against the harmony of nature; I think here also of the Japanese custom of familial, social and community harmony or Wa (和).

When the Renaissance came, the moneymen became even more powerful and so on. So the old idea of the hierarchy of natural states was undone by the power and influence of coin.

I wish that death had spared me until your library had been complete.

— Lorenzo de’ Medici

Another blast to the imperial idea was the destruction of the united fabric of Western Christendom with the advent of the individualist and subjective Protestant Revolution in the early 1500s. Luther, Calvin and others introduced new ideas into the Christian world that were totally de novo, and this brought sectarianism and denominationalism into the once united house of Christendom. Charles V could not stop the tide, though if he only had Luther executed, then maybe he could have. With the coming of the Enlightenment, the literati of Europe and America, such as Locke, Hume, Paine, Jefferson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mirabeau, Robespierre and others, began to doubt the claims of religion and traditional governance and began to look ad fontes to the classical world and saw the republicanism of Rome and Ancient Greece and they, full of egalitarian ideas and mindful of their power, wanted a more republican-style system and the French Revolution (1789) brought that about and now in the modern world republicanism is the norm — fair to say, most monarchies are in fact crowned republics, and some republics are uncrowned monarchies. The medieval idea cannot live in the current zeitgeist of the modern West, for the modern West lives under the aegis of rationalism, scientism, materialism, atheism, secularism, egalitarianism, empiricism, and more ideological schools of thought that are to the contrary of monarchy, Church, priesthoods, divines, magic, spirituality, angels, dogma, etc.

Modern man is sick to the gills with the false ideas of modernity. Modern man is too sick for magic, yet he cries out for it.

We have vestiges of the old order still extant in our world. We have cardinals giving mass in cathedrals, many of which are nothing more than ruins to be gazed at by tourists, as if they were looking at Roman ruins like the Coliseum or the Forum of Trajan. We have monarchs that wear crowns and live in palaces but where are the nobles in the field jousting? Where are the knights seeking glory and honour? Where are the clerics demanding obedience to the laws of God? One cannot see it anywhere. All one can see are monarch puppets dancing to the tune of others, nobles who are now just businessmen and knights who are people good at acting on stage. Spengler was right; we are in the winter.

On Earth, God has placed no more than two powers, and as there is in Heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church.

— Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa