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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Mysteries
of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of
Catholic Europe by Thomas Cahill |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Guide The best
teachers of history weave together patterns and trends from the past and
connect them to the reality of the student in the modern world. Thomas Cahill
proves himself to be just that kind of teacher on the pages of Mysteries
of the Middle Ages. In this readable book, Cahill shows how certain
individuals in medieval Europe laid a foundation for treating women with
dignity, for scientific analysis, and for realism in art. Readers may find
some of Cahill’s threads a bit stretched, but are likely to tolerate his
opinions, because he presents them with a light touch and with a presentation
style that doesn’t condescend or preclude other points of view. Here’s an
excerpt, pp. 46-49: Anything
new must be received into the old. Buddhism, for instance, was received into
an ancient Indian religious context, so much so that, in its vocabulary and
outlook, it came to be understood as a kind of Reformed Hinduism. Similarly,
the early attempts by Christian intellectuals to come to grips with the new
revelation were largely limited by the mind-set of Greek philosophy. To one
looking backwards from the twenty-first century, Clement of Alexandria seems
as much a Greek philosopher (of negligible importance) as he does a
Christian. His outlook might be more easily adopted by a Stoic of his own day
than by a Christian of ours; and while only a few Christian leaders of our
day would be able to muster much sympathy for the repressive, howling monks
who murdered Hypatia, the sixth—century patriarch
of Alexandria was comfortably at home among their fanatical obsessions, which
amounted to a sort of dumbed—down, if baptized,
version of Plotinus’s anti-carnal philosophy. For all
that, the Christians of late antiquity understood that they were holding
something new by the tail: they may not have been able to make out the full
contours of the fabulous beast, but they had no doubt that it was alive and
scarily larger than themselves. Almost from the moment
the persecutions were past, Christians began to argue heatedly about Christ:
who exactly was he? and how do we explain his role
in the great scheme of things? Their undying disagreements over the nature
and function of this figure were so fierce and unyielding that for us—at so
great a distance from their concerns—they illuminate little about Jesus as we
might come to understand him today, but they do serve to underscore the
obvious fact that he was utterly central to ancient Christianity. The
proposed solution to the quarrels, hammered out by bishops meeting in a
series of councils (called “ecumenical” because they were thought to
represent the whole Christian world), was that Jesus, though human, having
“taken flesh” in the womb of his mother, Mary—was God’s Word incarnate. This Word of God had always
existed, for he was the Second Person of the divine Trinity. The First was
God the Father, and in this guise God had spoken to the prophets of The consequences of such
rarefied, Greek—inspired thinking would shape the subsequent history of
Christianity—and, therefore, of the Western world—like no other theological
statements ever made. It is not surprising that Greek Christians, enamored of
subtlety, would continue to gaze upon this construct and fashion it into the
focus for all their theology and prayer. If Christ was both God and man, did
he have two natures with two separate intellects and wills? If so, how did
these natures communicate with each other? As God, he knew all things; as
man, his knowledge was necessarily limited. In the gospels, Jesus does not
seem always to know what will happen next, so did God keep things from
himself? As man, Jesus was capable of committing sin. Since all human beings
commit sins, what, if anything, stopped Jesus from becoming a Sinner? Such speculations ensured
unending controversies and ever-multiplying theological-political factions
throughout the Greek world. Often enough, the controversies were so strident
that considerable blood would be shed, sometimes spilled by slogan—reciting
mobs of simpleminded monks. But in their secluded monasteries and chapels,
monks and other clerics turned the esoteric into the palpable: the still
point of Christian contemplation became the unapproachable Trinity, and
invocations of the Trinity became essential to liturgical prayer.
“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Deathless,” sang the chanters in their
tripartite prayer as clouds of spiced incense billowed heavenward. “Let all
mortal flesh keep silence / And with fear and trembling stand / Ponder
nothing earthly minded.” Ponder the ineffable and bow before the mystery. For practical, can—do Romans, this was
a bit much. Roman Christians found Greek distinctions tiresome, and the
endless theological disputes occasioned by those distinctions made them
cross-eyed with weariness. Yes, yes, Jesus is both God and man; now let’s
move on. And the liturgies of the East, in their attempts to evoke the
ineffable, certainly put one in mind of eternity, for they seemed just about
endless. How many Kyrie eleisons is that damned deacon going to make us
warble before he brings this litany to a conclusion? For Romans, liturgy
was not a nwstical end in
itself. What the Greeks called the Sacred Liturgy, the Romans called missa (or mass) after the deacon’s last
words, “Ite, missa est” (Go, you are
dismissed). If that sounds to you as if their main interest was in getting
out of church as soon as decently possible, you wouldn’t be so very far from
the truth. Public prayer is not an end in itself, only part of a Christian
life, a caesura of recollection; fortunately, it comes to an end and we are
sent back to our lives. In fact, we come to this prayer not for some
unspeakable spiritual high but to renew ourselves for further work in the
world. We don’t even need always to chant the Eucharistic celebration or
bother ourselves with arranging elaborate processions of vested acolytes or
choke the air with incense. Sometimes, we can even celebrate a short,
stationary, said mass, a low mass,
with just one officiant and a handful of
worshipers—which pared-back arrangement the Greeks thought an abomination.
Such stylistic differences between East and West implied significant
differences in theological perspective. Instead of getting off
on the unutterable Trinity, Roman Christians found their attention drawn to
the most down-to-earth aspect of Trinitarian doctrine: the Infleshing, the Incarnation, the Making of the God-Man.
What, they asked themselves, are the practical consequences—to human
beings—of the Word becoming flesh? From this question will flow, with sonic
notable divagations, the main course of what was to become Western
Christianity. Despite the aspirations of
so many mystical Greeks, human beings are not disembodied spirits. What
should matter to us is not so much the inner life of God—and whatever that may be, the truth is that not one
of us knows squat about it—as the impact of divine revelation on our own
lives. The only point at which we can sensibly connect with the Trinity is
the point at which, as John’s Gospel puts it, “the Word became flesh and
pitched his tent among us.” If God became man and took on our weakness, our
pain, even our death, these things can no longer be the woeful embarrassments
we have always conceived them to be, for they are now shot through with his
grace and elevated by his willing participation in them. If God became man,
lived an earthly life as all of us do— suckled, sweat, shat, wept, slept,
loved, feared, bled, died—but also rose and returned to Heaven, the same
route has been opened to all of us, to all “mortal flesh,” now impregnated
with divinity. Our despised humanity entitles us, for it is now the humanity
of God. How are we to follow such a
path? The four gospels of the New Testament tell us how, for each recounts
the story of Jesus’s earthly pilgrimage from a
somewhat different personal angle—the angle of each writer—and in this story
Jesus shows us the Way, the way to live our lives so that we may reach the
same conclusion his life reached, eternal union with God. ‘~No one has ever
seen God,” states John’s Gospel, for, like Plotiiius’s
One, he—she—it is in himself—herself—itself unknowable. There is nothing you
can assert positively about God (including gender) that is secure from
falsehood. But, says Jesus conclusively in the same gospel, ‘if you know me,
you will also come to know my Father. Henceforth you do know him—for you have
seen him.” The face of the Father-God that we have seen is his ikon, his veritable image in flesh, Jesus. Mysteries
of the Middle Ages is a primer. For me, it was like a return to some
philosophy courses from decades ago. Cahill is like a good teacher and guide:
pointing out patterns, trends, and offering a point of view for
consideration, reflection, and possibly further study. Steve Hopkins,
May 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the June 2007
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Mysteries
of the Middle Ages.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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