The Middle Ages
The European medieval period — Western Civilization's Gestation and first Age of Expansion, c. 950–1450 CE
Also known as: medieval period, Middle Age, Medieval Europe, Christian Middle Ages, High Middle Ages
The Middle Ages, in Quigley's framework, are the central formative period of Western Civilization: the centuries from roughly 950 to 1450 in which feudalism gestated as the new civilization's instrument of expansion, the manorial-agrarian economy reorganized European life, and the institutional, intellectual, and military forms that would define the West were laid down. Quigley distinguishes 'the early Middle Ages,' in which 'there had been no state and no public authority' (T&H 50), from 'the medieval period' proper, in which Christian theology, the rise of towns, the schoolmen, and the cathedral-and-university culture produced the first European Age of Expansion (1100–1270).
Definition and inner sub-periods
Quigley distinguishes several inner phases of the Middle Ages. The earliest — continuous with the Dark Ages — is one in which 'there had been no state and no public authority' and 'political organization had been the feudal system which was held together by obligations of personal fealty' (T&H 50–51). The 'High Middle Ages' (around 1200 CE) (see WSPS 174) are the apex of feudal-Christian Europe, with the great cathedrals, the codification of customary law, the rise of Aristotelian scholasticism, and the maturation of the manorial-agrarian economy. The late Middle Ages (1270–1440) form, in Quigley's reading, Western Civilization's first Age of Conflict — a period of plague, social violence, and institutional fatigue — to be followed by the Renaissance Age of Expansion after 1440. The 'Christian Middle Ages' (EoC 44) gave the West a teleological cosmology in which 'everything had a purpose and that everything by its very nature sought to achieve its purpose,' modified by the Christian belief 'that things were drawn to seek to fulfill these purposes by the love of God' (EoC 44).
Within the seven-stage cycle
Within Quigley's seven-stage civilizational model the Middle Ages span the late Gestation, Expansion, and first Conflict of Western Civilization. Quigley names the medieval economic form ('manorial-agrarian') as the first of six successive 'economic organizations' through which Western Civilization passes (T&H 52); feudalism, in his analysis, is the corresponding political instrument and the early Western 'instrument of expansion' in the sense of the theory developed in Evolution of Civilizations. The transition from feudalism to manorialism to early commercial capitalism — and the parallel transition from personal fealty to public authority — is the political-economic spine of Quigley's medieval narrative. The closing 'crisis of the fourteenth century' (the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Babylonian Captivity and Great Schism of the papacy) supplies the Conflict stage; out of it the new Age of Expansion of 1440 begins.
Weapons systems and the medieval order
In Weapons Systems and Political Stability Quigley reads the Middle Ages through the lens of weapons-systems theory. He criticizes 'romantic military historians, who often write as if peoples of the past had a free choice as to whether they would use a shock weapon or a missile, and often made that choice on an exclusive basis' — and notes the common but misleading claim 'that the European Middle Ages were dominated by the shock weapons of the medieval knight' (WSPS 61). Quigley's actual picture is more complex: a long oscillation between offensive and defensive dominance, with defensive fortification reaching one of its great peaks 'in the European High Middle Ages (about A.D. 1200)' (WSPS 174). The mounted shock cavalry of the feudal knight is, in his analysis, an instrument of localized political power perfectly matched to a society of dispersed manors and weak central authority — but as soon as offensive weapons (the longbow, crossbow, gunpowder) reasserted themselves the political form they had supported (feudal decentralization) became obsolete and the modern state could form.
Legacy: the substrate of Western modernity
Quigley repeatedly insists that the institutions and the cognitive outlook of Western Civilization are medieval in origin. The 'medieval period made a detailed examination' of the epistemological problem of the relation between concepts and objects of experience, and arrived at an answer 'ignored when post-Renaissance thinkers broke the tradition in philosophy because they felt it necessary to break the tradition in religion' (T&H 1288). The Western state itself, in the lectures gathered in Quigley's Georgetown Old Regime lectures, was constructed out of medieval materials: customary local rights, the dominia of personal property, the Gallican compact between Church and Crown, and the slow accumulation of royal jurisdiction over a thousand years (976–1976). Quigley distinguishes the Middle Ages from the early modern period not by abstract worldview but by the changing weight of these institutional pieces; the Middle Ages are not 'before' modernity but the substrate on which modernity is constructed.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 50 Quigley
In the early Middle Ages when there had been no state and no public authority, political organization had been the feudal system which was held together by obligations of personal fealty.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 52 Quigley
At the beginning, in the early Middle Ages, Western Civilization had an economic system which was almost entirely agricultural, organized in self-sufficient manors, with almost no commerce or industry. To this manorial-agrarian system...
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 44 Quigley
In the Christian Middle Ages this teleological approach was somewhat modified by the belief that, while everything had a purpose, things were drawn to seek to fulfill these purposes by the love of God.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 61 Quigley
Thus we may read in history books that the European Middle Ages were 'dominated' by the shock weapons of the medieval knight... This gives a quite misleading impression of what was...
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 174 Quigley
By 1800 B.C., or even earlier, defensive fortifications (as at Buhen, Nubia, 1900-1700 B.C.) were about as elaborate as those of the European High Middle Ages (about A.D. 1200).
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 1288 Quigley
The medieval period made a detailed examination of this problem, but its answer was ignored when post-Renaissance thinkers broke the tradition in philosophy because they felt it necessary to break the tradition in religion.