One of the features of the central Middle Ages was a sense people had that they were living in times that were distinct from the past. The many changes they were experiencing were often interpreted as signs that the end of the world was approaching. Different thinkers held different views about the nature of those changes. Some thought all was going from bad to worse; others were far more optimistic about the perfectibility of society in readiness for what might be the final stage of its history. The awareness that there was a difference between past and present led more and more people to think about the role of human beings in the course of history and their own particular role in the new present. But excitement about present opportunities was commonly tempered by deference to the past. The statement of Bernard of Chartres (d. C. U30) that he and his contemporaries could see further than the ancients because they were dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants expresses well the ambivalence between reverence for the riches of the past and recognition of the real achievements of the present. Also, concentration on the human condition should not be confused with twenty-first-century ideas about people’s unique individuality. In the central medieval period there was a strong concept of a normative form of nature that sets out what human beings should be. For Christian thinkers the concept of being human was intrinsically wrapped up with theological values and the institutional norms that were being promulgated by a rapidly developing hierarchical Church. The human being that people set out to discover
Within themselves was their true, unique self, which would bring them closer to God. In historical terms this was the personality of each individual in his or her relationship to God, operating within explicit constraints of communal civic and religious ties, rather than the relatively unrestrained individual free agent of our own century. The creative tension between individual personalities and their intimate identification with their communities is, in fact, one of the particularly interesting aspects of this period. On the intellectual front it moulded the range and the nature of academic achievement; culturally, it influenced what was produced for people’s amusement and erudition.
World History
