Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Any leaping that was done was to escape being bludgeoned by mercenary armies, leaping from buildings infected by plague, or leaping from fiefs owned by various lords and abbots and running to hide in the relative freedom of the nearest city. Intellectually, academia was stratified in the rigid confines of monasteries and the monks' adherence to scholasticism.

Oh, dear. Yes, that's the cliched version available from a pop-culture vendor near you. Actually, the degree of serfdom, war, plague, famine and instability was no worse and at times rather better than in the tumultuous 16th century, an age of chaos and incessant wars punctuated by pestilence, tyranny and starvation. Compared to the filth and squalor of Elizabethan London, Edward I's London was a clean (if smaller) place with functioning sewers and well-frequented public baths.

Never mind that scholasticism was hardly an unfruitful or straitjacketed endeavor, and it's something akin to Lewis' "chronological snobbery" to deny the intellect of men like Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus; the era 1100-1400 also saw Gothic architecture, the windmill, the mouldboard plow, the horse-collar, glass windows, Francis Bacon, the chimney, the hammer-mill, liquor, the astrolabe, the blast furnace, Peter Abelard, the wheelbarrow, the university, Albertus Magnus, trade guilds, crop rotation, eyeglasses, Giotto, the artesian well, the navigational quadrant and carrack that made Columbus & co possible, polyphonic harmony, the mechanical clock, lager beer and Parliament arise in Europe. Oh, and Protestantism too if one counts Wycliffe and Hus (not to mention Francis, Dominic and a whole new version of Catholicism, sadly squelched by the Avignon popes).

In other words, not at all stagnant, and hardly the Monty Python "plague village."

I think it's rather a hidden premise to take the position that intellectual life only counts if it's "humanist;" I would say rather that it became the fashion for authors and poets, like artists and architects, to emulate Classical models. Not unrelated, however, is the fact that the late 15th to early 17th century was also notable as an age of handwaving mystical woo-woo from alchemy to numerology to astrology, and, of course, witch-hunts (not really a medieval phenomenon). You see, the rigorous logic of the scholastic age made it far more an "age of reason" than the anything goes, wildly undisciplined Renaissance.

French historians usually place the Enlightenment between the death of Louis XIV (1715) and the French Revolution.

Well they would, wouldn't they?

Frankly,* the French contributed little between Descartes, Pascal and Fermat (all dead by 1715) and Lavoisier (executed in the Terror). Voltaire was merely the Oscar Wilde of rococo Paris, and Rousseau a charlatan whose influence has been wholly pernicious. "Reason" was just a buzzword, a fad for the fashionable (and put firmly in its place at century's end by Hume and Kant).

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*Pun intended. Forgive me.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Oh, dear. Yes, that's the cliched version available from a pop-culture vendor near you. Actually, the degree of serfdom, war, plague, famine and instability was no worse and at times rather better than in the tumultuous 16th century, an age of chaos and incessant wars punctuated by pestilence, tyranny and starvation. Compared to the filth and squalor of Elizabethan London, Edward I's London was a clean (if smaller) place with functioning sewers and well-frequented public baths.

I will have to simply disagree with your assessment and forgo any flippant remarks, however necessary I would consider them; in fact, regarding the 14th century, I would say you haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. The French historian Michelet commented, "No epoch was more naturally mad." Every credible historian I've ever read has described the century as an unmitigated disaster economically, physically and spiritually -- one of the worst centuries Europe has ever struggled through until the mass slaughters of WWI and WWII in the 20th century.

A Little Ice Age descended upon Europe in the 14th century (that was to last until circa 1700), driving out settlements in Greenland, Iceland and Northern Scandinavia, and reducing growing seasons throughout Europe. By 1315, rains had become so torrential that crops failures were the norm and famines commenced. Oh yes, and the Black Death, the single greatest pandemic, wiped out a quarter to a third of the population, with intermittent bouts of the plague recurring throughout the remaining decades of the century. In towns of the Holy Roman Empire, France and Spain the great Jewish pogroms commenced: 900 burned alive in Strasbourg, and in Cologne over 1000 butchered (many burned to death in a synagogue) as the most appalling examples.

The peasant uprisings and the brutal reprisals that followed in France (the Pastoureaux and the Jacquerie), in Italy (the Ciompi), in Flanders (several Weavers Revolts) and in England (Wat Tyler's Rebellion), were all part and parcel of the desperation of the underclass, criminally overtaxed and underpaid with wages legally kept at pre-Plague levels in England (I refer you to The Ordinance of Laborers in 1349 and Statute of Laborers 1351). The Hundred Years War commenced before the Black Death and outlasted the century, and in its train mercenary armies destroyed France and overran Italy. Assassinations, poisonings, ransoms and murder were career moves for criminal entrepreneurs.

The abandonment of Rome for Avignon and the resultant Papal Schism rent the fabric of Christianity and led to the eventual Reformation with profligate sales of indulgences and selling of benefices outraging reformers and Papal taxation angering the Lords. Even a future pope, Robert of Geneva (nicknamed 'the Butcher' by the Italians who hated him) massacred almost the whole city of Cesena (about 5000 people). And, of course, there was the destruction of the Templars, a new Turkish invasion of the Balkans, Hungary and the besieging of Constantinople (and the Turks under Caliph Bajazet in turn crushed by Tamerlane's Mongol-Turkic invasion). The Danse Macabre and gruesome memento mori festooned Europe by the time the 14th century ended - death ruled.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Never mind that scholasticism was hardly an unfruitful or straitjacketed endeavor, and it's something akin to Lewis' "chronological snobbery" to deny the intellect of men like Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus; the era 1100-1400 also saw Gothic architecture, the windmill, the mouldboard plow, the horse-collar, glass windows, Francis Bacon, the chimney, the hammer-mill, liquor, the astrolabe, the blast furnace, Peter Abelard, the wheelbarrow, the university, Albertus Magnus, trade guilds, crop rotation, eyeglasses, Giotto, the artesian well, the navigational quadrant and carrack that made Columbus & co possible, polyphonic harmony, the mechanical clock, lager beer and Parliament arise in Europe. Oh, and Protestantism too if one counts Wycliffe and Hus (not to mention Francis, Dominic and a whole new version of Catholicism, sadly squelched by the Avignon popes).

Francis Bacon? He died in the 17th century. Perhaps you mean Roger the alchemist?
The windmill, invented in China.
Moldboard plow, also a Chinese invention.
Horse Collar? Chinese.
Glass windows? A Roman invention, and most European windows in the 14th Century were made of flattened horn, not glass.
Hammer Mill? 4th Century China.
The astrolabe? The Greeks have the rights to inventing it, and Medieval Muslim astronomers perfected it. Next.
The wheelbarrow? 100 A.D. China.
Blast furnace? Yawn. Extant in China 100 A.D.
Crop rotation? Two field rotation was being used since 6000 BC in the Middle-east, three field rotation around the time of Charlemagne in Europe.
Artesian wells? Imported from China according to the sources I drilled into.
The mariner's quadrant? Rudimentary quadrants were introduced by the Greeks, and, again, improved by medieval Muslims.
Mechanical clocks? China, circa 723 A.D.
Chimneys? They've been around since Roman times. The first in England was in 1185.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I think it's rather a hidden premise to take the position that intellectual life only counts if it's "humanist;" I would say rather that it became the fashion for authors and poets, like artists and architects, to emulate Classical models. Not unrelated, however, is the fact that the late 15th to early 17th century was also notable as an age of handwaving mystical woo-woo from alchemy to numerology to astrology, and, of course, witch-hunts (not really a medieval phenomenon). You see, the rigorous logic of the scholastic age made it far more an "age of reason" than the anything goes, wildly undisciplined Renaissance.

I would suggest that astrology was far more en vogue in 13th and 14th century. After all, Dante placed Bonati in Malbolge, the eighth circle of Hell, for practicing such divination, and Chaucer's work is littered with astrological references. Charles V of France wouldn't have a bowel movement without the stars aligning properly over his garderobe. Your dear portly Aquinas made a futile attempt to reconcile astrology and Christianity. But to be fair, Elizabeth I had a court astrologer and Brahe, Kepler and Galileo were all court astrologers. As a fad it lasted several centuries.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Oh, yes, the 14th Century was calamitous, no question about it; but that's after the proto "renaissance" of the 13th-- and, really, the 16th was hardly better. Religious wars and schisms? Sectarian persecution? Mass invasions with attendant slaughters? Epidemics? Famines? The 1500s produced great art, but would have s*cked to live in.

But I find your particular responses interesting, to say the least.

Here goes:

The windmill, invented in China.
The Chinese by about 1300 or so had got from the Persians the panemone, a simple, ungeared vertical-axis windmill, of very limited power and utility The horizontal-axis rotating tower or post-mill, capable of pumping water and grinding grain in useful quantities, developed in the late 12th century in NW France and/or Flanders
Moldboard plow, also a Chinese invention.
Nope. The Chinese invented the iron ploughshare, but the turnplough arose in post-Roman or early Saxon Britain ca. 600
Horse Collar? Chinese.
While the Chinese had developed it by the sixth century, its development in Europe (first, it seems, in Scandinavia) was apparently independent, since it was unknown in the Middle East
Hammer Mill? 4th Century China.
Again, independently invented in medieval Europe
Blast furnace? Yawn. Extant in China 100 A.D.
A bloomery is not a blast furnace. Switzerland ca 1150-1200
Crop rotation? Two field rotation was being used since 6000 BC in the Middle-east, three field rotation around the time of Charlemagne in Europe.
Okay, so ca 800 is a little earlier than my period
Artesian wells? Imported from China according to the sources I drilled into.
Interesting how any technology of the sort might have been imported from China in the early 1100's, when they appeared in Artois (hence the name)
The mariner's quadrant? Rudimentary quadrants were introduced by the Greeks, and, again, improved by medieval Muslims.
A cross-staff is not even remotely a quadrant
Mechanical clocks? China, circa 723 A.D.
Hybrid water-clock with mechanical elements; the Chinese developed the escapement (sill powered by water) around 1100; Europe was little if any behind and using weights.
Chimneys? They've been around since Roman times. The first in England was in 1185.
Roman wall-tubes were not "chimneys;" northern Europe, probably England. 1185 is the date of the oldest surviving chimney, not the first.

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While there is no doubt that ca 1400 China was the most advanced civilization on the planet, that was about to change, in large part because of the Ming revolt. The Polos were lucky to visit when they did! Ming China became reactionary, inward looking, philosophically stagnant (no deviation from Confucianism was tolerated) while at the same time attaining even higher glories in art, architecture, textiles, ceramics and literature (and ever more elaborate etiquette). The tragic exemplar of this trend, which continued largely unabated for 600 years, was the senseless disbandment of the Great Fleet in 1424.

But the extent to which China directly influenced Europe during this period is rather more tenuous; after all there was no direct contact other than the Polos and a handful of missionaries (who rarely came back). Certain things like gunpowder and the trebuchet made their way along the Silk Road (or more likely army-to-army) to Byzantium, but nothing as mundane and non-violent as a plough or a well.

The Islamic world, in the meantime, was going nowhere. Its Abbasid glories were behind it as its own calamitous century saw the Mongol devastation and then the Black Death; what came out was either po-faced Asharist puritanism, or the perfumed, gilded and essentially ornamental sybarism of the Ottomans. From roughly 1300 onward Europe had a greater number of significant scholars than the Islamic world, a trend which would only accelerate with time.

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What I'm trying to get across in all this is that while the period 1430 or so onward saw a huge shift in style and technique in art, architecture and to a lesser extent poetry, European intellectual and technological development in other fields represented rather a continuous development from ca 1100 right through the Middle Ages; one can't really point to any huge acceleration of invention or revolution in thought in Medici Florence, but rather a continuing evolution which saw, e.g., the first masonry dome since the Romans parked atop a Gothic cathedral-- and that represented Brunelleschi at the 'dawn of the Renaissance' figuring out how to execute Neri's engineering concept from the 1360s.