What the Middle Ages

Meant to Europe
G.K. Chesterton

On March 27, 1936, Chesterton gave a talk on BBC radio to the schools
in Great Britain. What follows is the text of his broadcast as it appeared
in the April 1, 1936 issue of The Listener.

I have undertaken to speak on the Middle Ages. I am going to be in-

humanly impartial and try to leave out anything controversial and say
nothing that would not be admitted by historians of practically all schools.
But I want to say one word to start with. I want to be fair to you and I also
want you to be fair to me. Do not be so biased as to assume that I am bi-
ased. You see, I have one disadvantage; that the very word "mediaeval" is
used as a term of abuse. People have called poison gas mediaeval; though
it is more modern than telephones. But that is because they simply say
"mediaeval" about anything they don't like. At least take mediaevalism
on its own merits, as you do the great cultures of Hellas or China, on
which two distinguished men have addressed you. When you are annoyed
with your aunt, you don't hiss the word "Hellenic" at her, but you may
call her "mediaeval," merely meaning that she is old; though Hellas is
much older. Or they will say: "Mr. Chesterton, with his mediaeval mind,
thinks Lincoln has a fine cathedral." They will not say: "Mr. Leigh Ash-
ton, with his Mongolian mind, thinks Confucius was a great man." You
allow that he may think Confucius was great because he was; allow that I
may think cathedrals are great because they are. Or again, there is all that
talk about "bringing back the Middle Ages." You would not think he
wanted you all to grow pigtails because he praised China; there is no
probability of you all rushing to the oracle of Delphi or worshipping D i -
ana, or anything so beautiful; but people have got a muddled idea that any
praise of anything mediaeval means that I want you all to learn the long
bow or practise falconry. Shall we drop the use of this slang word, and
agree to be as fair to our fathers as i f they were Greeks or Chinamen?

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The Middle Ages is a term used rather loosely of the long transition
between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the commercial and mate-
rial expansion of today, starting roughly with the geographical expansion
that discovered America. Now the first thing that strikes me about it, from
a fairly wide reading without claim to scholarship, is that the Roman Em-
pire ended very slowly; or that nobody knew exactly when it did end. We
are used to sensational things happening, in the newspapers i f nowhere
else; and we think vaguely of people reading a headline, "Fall of Rome."
But Rome never fell in that sense. There were already local chiefs and
little kings everywhere under the Empire; these gradually grew out of feu-
dalism into great nations; but even then the Empire reasserted itself as the
Holy Roman Empire in the very middle of the Middle Ages. Picture that
clearlythe background of the big cosmopolitan Empire only slowly
changing; because that is the clue to many mediaeval things, good and
bad. Thus, as an example of what we should call good, it meant that the
world was much more international then and is much more national now.
We forget that fact, precisely because we are so very national now. You
and I are English, and I hope patriotic, but it goes beyond that; millions of
us cannot imagine anything that is not English; and so with most modern
nations.
That is rather pecuHar to modern nations; they are just broad enough
to be narrow; they are just big enough to seem like the world when they
aren't. A man living in the middle of Germany or America or Russia is in
a world which shuts out the world. There was fierce local patriotism in the
Greek cities, but they all knew they were Greek cities; so there was in the
Catholic Republics of mediaeval Italy or modern South America; but they
all knew they were Catholic Republics. In the Middle Ages there were
two things, the little local unit a man loved and sometimes fought for, and
the great civilisation of the Empire and the Church to which he belonged.
But we live in a third thing: the Imperial nation, big enough to seem uni-
versal and make us merely national. The reason why modern wars are so
huge and horrible, and last so long, is that each State really thinks it repre-
sents the fundamental principles of the Universe. The Middle Ages had
endless local feuds; but they took a more universal view of the Universe.
There was a man that rode through his city-gate shaking his spear and
shouting of his coming conquests; his town was at war with Perugia,
which was rather like a war between Richmond and Kew. But peace was
made and the man turned to other interests; for his name was Francis of
Assisi. As a modern patriot, he might have been as good a man and gone

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to his grave beUeving that the main purpose of God was the extermination
of Perugians.
That is one result of the slow decUne of the Roman unity, which we
should call good; that the nations were nearer to each other, because they
were nearer to their origin. Another example of the same thing, which we
should call bad, is the fact that the slavery of the old Roman world died
very slowly; and there is the same dispute about when it died. It is enough
to say here that nobody denies, that I know of, that when the Middle Ages
began, the serfs were slaves in the old pagan sense, and that when the
Middle Ages ended, the serfs had somehow become something rather dif-
ferent and more like what we call peasants. Whether it was an economic
evolution, or the slow growth of the Christian conscience (which is pretty
slow in most of us) or anything else, is a matter in dispute; and therefore I
will not dispute it. My point here is merely that it is another example of
antiquity changing slowly, without any definite break.
You will hear two criticisms of mediaevalism; both illustrate this Ro-
man continuity. First, that it accepted authority; true, but curiously
enough, not only Church authority; sometimes pagan authority almost
against Church authority. Thus, Chaucer's Doctor was sceptical about re-
ligion, but satisfied with medical science because it was based on astrol-
ogy. We should hardly rush to Harley Street to consult an astrologer; and
the Church was against astrology; but Aristotle and antiquity were too
strong. Second, that it was not progressive; and I agree that it did not feel
progressive. And that for the same reason, it regretted the great civilisa-
tion which had been international. Do not be frightened; I am not talking
about the League of Nations; but most modern men do look for interna-
tionalism in the future; they looked for it in the past. In fact, they were
progressive in practice though not in theory. The Middle Ages invented
some entirely new things; any architect will tell that Gothic was really a
new invention in engineering. Parliaments arose then; the printing press
was invented then; but it is seldom noted because, as I said, people say
"mediaeval" about things they dislike. I f we ever could conceivably be
bored with newspapers, I suppose we should say: "The Press is a relic of
mediaevalism"; if politicians became unpopular (unthinkable thought), we
should say: "Parliament betrays its base barbaric mediaeval origin." Then
we shall rush to the wireless; and hear no better stuff than this.
The broad historical outline is this. Although there was a slow decline
of Roman civilisation, there was certainly a great birth of mediaeval civil-

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isation. In the thirteenth century it rose to the height of the human mind
in some human minds. There are passages in St. Thomas Aquinas on poH-
tics that are Hke a modern Utopia, only more sane. But all the time, a
bowshot from his monastery, conditions were almost barbarous and often
abominable. We do not know whether their best ideals would ever have
prevailed over their worst realities; very likely not; but anyhow they were
unbalanced by two huge historic facts; the first thwarting their progress
and the second killing it. They both came from the East; the first was the
religion of Mahomet, and the second was the Black Death.
Mohammedanism had the just claim of preaching more equality be-
tween man and man; though less equality between man and woman. It
was a real rival to Christendom; and nobody now realises how real a rival
it was. Most unfortunately, the effect of their equality was to increase our
inequality. We already inherited evils from the old civilisation, like slav-
ery; evils from its decay, like feudalism; we were too much in a military
formation, partly from Rome and partly from war with the barbarians.
Now, as I see it, the blast from the East froze and fixed us in that military
formation. A l l our aristocratic titles are merely military degrees, as in
Duke and Marquis and so on. We might have better developed our own
religion, had we not been at war with a rival religion. A democracy can
organise a war; but an aristocracy cannot at the same time organise a
democracy and a war; the enemy shoots you. There was a permanent
peril. Take the Crusades; I do not mind how much you attack the Cru-
sades as an attack; i f you only remember they were a counter-attack.
Moslems had conquered Spain and Sicily and were turned back at Tours.
Now an invader found wandering in the middle of France cannot pretend
he was an inoffensive villager first disturbed in the neighbourhood of
Mecca. But the Crusades failed; and then, on top of the tragedies, came
that great pestilence trailing behind them; which killed the best priests and
people, left a lower type that had forgotten the best mediaeval ideals; and
brought the Middle Ages to an end.
Seeking a summary, I come back to Gothic building; first, because it
was really a new thing; second, because it was a new way of building
higher than before. Only the spires perhaps, but from the narrowest spire
you may see the broadest landscape. The mediaeval vision was very uni-
versal; do not underrate the mediaeval vision. Do not be cheap about
chivalry; the romance of Dante and Beatrice was new and not the same as
that of Catullus and Lesbia; it is in history what he called it, a New Life.

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Huxley asked the modern world in vain to follow Reason as far as it will
go; do not sneer at the Schoolmen i f they followed it a little further than it
will go. That love and logic were fresh and free; but limited by bad condi-
tions; as the tall churches were often built on islands. Communications
were bad. Communications are now very good and we have this wonder-
ful engine of wireless through which I speak to people I have never seen.
So now I have nothing to do except to pour out poetry as fresh as Dante's
and philosophy as great as the Summa. Only now I can say it to every-
body, I have not got it to say.

Roman bridge at Cangas de Onis, Spain

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