The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga
"The Waning of the Middle Ages" by Johan Huizinga is a seminal work that explores the cultural and emotional landscape of France and the Netherlands during the 14th and 15th centuries. With a focus on the paradoxical nature of medieval life, Huizinga delves into the coexistence of violence and passion, joy and grief, underscoring how these extremes shaped the era's social fabric. The text illustrates the rigid formalism that governed emotional expression, demonstrating how ceremonies surrounding birth, marriage, and death served to regulate the fervent passions of the time.
Huizinga emphasizes the influence of chivalry, presenting it as a crucial framework that provided a sense of order and purpose amid the chaos of medieval society. The ideals of chivalry, deeply intertwined with religious and erotic elements, reflect a culture struggling to elevate love and virtue against a backdrop of inherent brutality. Moreover, the work addresses the pervasive preoccupation with death, revealing how themes of decay and mortality permeated medieval consciousness, often exacerbated by a diluted religious fervor. Despite the superficiality that sometimes characterized piety, traces of genuine spirituality remained, suggesting a complex relationship between faith and the everyday lives of individuals. This rich tapestry of medieval existence offers a compelling lens through which to understand the twilight of an era marked by profound contradictions.
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The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga
First published: 1919
Type of work: Cultural history
Critical Evaluation:
Johan Huizinga taught at the University of Leiden from 1915 until it was closed during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES, subtitled A STUDY OF THE FORMS OF LIFE, THOUGHT AND ART IN FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS IN THE XIVTH AND XVTH CENTURIES, which was first published in 1919 and translated into English in 1924, became a classic of scholarship during the author’s lifetime. Three other works of Huizinga have been translated into English: ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM, IN THE SHADOW OF TOMORROW, and HOMO LUDENS: A STUDY OF THE PLAY ELEMENT IN CULTURE.
In his Preface to THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES, Johan Huizinga suggests that the decay of a culture may be as suggestive as the birth of a new era. The twilight of a civilization, he observes, may present more distinctly than earlier periods, in all its forms of life, the heart and mind and soul—the spirit—of an age. Huizinga focuses his study on France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a time and place where the tone of life had not yet been altered by the humanism flourishing in Italy. The quality of life which he delineates, though it is limited to two countries and two centuries, captures the essence of medievalism.
Life in the Middle Ages was violent, passionate, and paradoxical. Everyday existence oscillated between grief and joy, cruelty and tenderness. Religious processions in the fifteenth century attracted crowds of people who reacted to the ceremonies with tears of devotion. On the other hand, the common people responded with appalling enthusiasm and excitement to the brutal punishments which the law devised for terrible crimes. The quality of mercy was often conspicuously lacking. For example, in Paris in the early fifteenth century, a noble brigand, about to be executed, was not allowed the privilege of confession. The treasurer of the Regent, disregarding the pleas of the doomed man, climbed the ladder behind him, beat him with a stick, and thrashed the hangman for exhorting the victim to think of his salvation. The same paradoxical emotional responses are reflected in the medieval attitude toward the sick, the poor, and the insane, who are regarded with either deep compassion or cruel derision.
The emotional violence that makes up an integral part of the spirit of the Middle Ages was, to a certain extent, responsible for another significant medieval element: formalism. All emotions, Huizinga points out, needed a rigid framework of conventions; otherwise the feverish passions of the day would have made havoc of existence. Birth, marriage, and death became, in effect, ceremonious spectacles. Outside these spheres a deeply felt desire for beauty and order shaped a solemn and decorous form for every important event. The sinner who humbled himself, the condemned prisoner who repented, and the religious person who sacrificed himself made up part of what might be called the public spectacle. Thus public life almost presented the appearance of a perpetual moral drama. These and other conventions, such as those which dignified the intimate relationships of love and friendship, helped to mask or at least partially to obscure the barbaric cruelty and crudeness that were so close to the surface of medieval life.
Another institution which contributed to this attempt to elevate life was chivalry. Huizinga takes issue with those modern historians who minimize the significance of chivalry by seeing it only as a very special product of medieval civilization which had a minor influence on the political and social development of the era. To know the spirit of the Middle Ages, he maintains, one cannot ignore the illusions of the age. For nobility and feudalism had a significant influence on the mind of the age long after they had ceased to be significant factors in the state and in society. Chivalry was regarded as the basis of the whole hierarchic social system designed by God, and its ideals reflected in theory the ideals of the class appointed by God to direct human society. Though the chroniclers who recorded the history of the time write more of selfishness and cruelty than of these ideals, they continue, in the main, to regard chivalry as the stay of the world. For it was through this concept that they were able to explain to their own satisfaction the confusing course of politics and history. Since they were unable to conceive of the prospect of social and economic evolution, they read the events of their time as a spectacle which celebrated the honor of princes and the virtues of knights, as in a noble, heroic, and edifying game. The extravagant views which comprise chivalry, as Huizinga indicates, were a response to the needs of a civilization struggling to escape the chaos of barbarism. The ferocious soul of the Middle Ages could be tamed only if it were directed by impossible ideals.
As an institution ordained by God, chivalry contained the religious qualities of compassion, fidelity, and justice; but its primary aesthetic value was derived from the role of love in the life of the knight. Furthermore, the religious traits which comprise such an important part of the chivalrous ideal were erotic as well as religious. In life, as well as in art and literature, love continually sought a refined romantic expression. The knight who served his lady desired to show the quality of his love in ways which suggested the ideals of Christianity. His sensuality was sublimated into the desire to sacrifice himself and suffer for the sake of his love.
The more cruel and coarse an age is, Huizinga states, the greater the need to formalize love as a reflection of a sublime life. In the Middle Ages love had to be elevated into a rite. The overflowing violence of passion demanded it. Literature, social ritual, and conversation, by regulating and refining erotic life, presented the appearance of a virtuous life of courtly love. In reality, however, the sexual life of the higher classes was surprisingly rude. One encounters in the chronicle examples of extreme indecency along with descriptions of a formalism that borders on prudery. The literary work which helped to shape the aristocratic conception of love in the latter part of the Middle Ages and which reflects its dual nature is the ROMAN DE LA ROSE. It was begun before 1240 by Guillaume de Lorris and completed before 1280 by Jean Chopinel, two writers whose attitudes toward love were quite different. The result is a juxtaposition of the courtly conception of love and a daring sensual cynicism.
One element of medieval life which was not sublimated or masked in any way was the concept of death. As the age approached its own end, its mind was obsessed with the perishable nature of all things. Sermons and woodcuts nourished this idea through three themes: the ubisunt motif, the decay of beauty theme, and the dance of death. In the latter two may be found the macabre element which is at the heart of the late medieval vision of death. These themes reflect an attitude which is essentially narrow and selfish; they are designed primarily to intensify the shudder of fear which the individual experiences when he contemplates the brute physical facts of his own impending dissolution. The medieval mind, Huizinga asserts, felt the divine depth of unselfish sorrow only in connection with the Passion of Christ. The emotional response to death was stiffened by the imagery of skeletons and worms.
The religious life at the end of the Middle Ages deteriorated as a result of the saturation of the religious atmosphere. The proliferation of saints, festivals, and holy days; the tendency to blend the holy and the profane; the conversion of the mysteries of religion into everyday terms—these things drained Christianity of much of its force. When religion lost some of the awe which it had commanded, the result was often superficial piety or contempt. Nevertheless, Huizinga observes, one still finds, even in the midst of debauchery or complacency, evidence that a truly religious current remained and could, on occasion, be aroused.