- 'The age of the gloom'. Victors and vanquished: the triumph of Christianity and the "annihilation" of classical art
Imagine that we live in the eleventh century and that we are the kings of a European territory not too extensive. We can be the Arab kings of Zaragoza or the French who govern some territory in southern Italy ... What would be the reason for us to invest our time and our wealth in science and culture? Why do we fill our court with mathematicians, translators, astronomers and musicians? Will it be a whim, a desire to show our sophistication? Or the certainty that knowledge is good for our interests and those of our subjects?
"A mixture of the two things. In the eleventh century there was already the idea that information was necessary to govern, but there was also a sense of prestige through culture. It is an idea that has lasted until our time but can that is being lost ... Think of the Hauteville dynasty in Sicily. They were Normans, they had arrived in Italy because there were no opportunities for them in France. The Crusades had been the opportunity that opened for them to earn a new life, but they got stuck in Sicily, since they were great warriors, they conquered power on the island and expelled the Muslims, but, in the first generations, they didn't know how to do anything other than war between them, it was their way of life, then when Already they felt more stable in power, the Hauteville believed that they should justify themselves and began to endorse the culture of Sicily. In a very short time, they went from being little more than some looters of cattle to being what s kings of the wisest court in Europe. "
The speaker is Violet Moller, English historian and journalist, author of The Route of Knowledge (Taurus). His book threads the thread of the survival of the Greco-Roman culture throughout the Middle Ages, from refuge to refuge. From Alexandria to Baghdad, from Baghdad to Cordoba and Toledo, from Toledo to Salerno and Palermo in Sicily and from Sicily to Venice, so until 1500, the time when Christian Europe was filled with universities and knowledge became The center of our society.
The path of knowledge can be explained in a simple way. Each chapter refers to one of these shelters: it explains what political and economic conditions allowed for its splendor and intellectual exceptionality and lists who went to each city, what knowledge it brought and which ones it received . Galen appears by Alexandria, Gerardo de Crémona, by Toledo, Ishaq ibn Hunayn, by Baghdad, Leoniceno, by Venice ...
What is the common denominator among the seven cases exposed? First, trade. " Knowledge always goes after commerce , it takes advantage of the mercantile roads. In fact, many of the schoolchildren who transmit the knowledge are merchants, the same people. And, although they do not have that intellectual vocation, they are cosmopolitan, curious, tolerant ... "Moller explains. "Do you know why the dwarfing of culture takes place in the Middle Ages? Because, when the Empire falls, the State can no longer guarantee the security of trade and, without trade, the cultural exchange ends."
Trade is also the reason why the map of the route of knowledge is that of the Silk Road and the Mediterranean, the navigable sea through which a freight channel between East and West always survived. Silks, spices, paper , steel, oil, preserves ...
One fact: the best gifted library in the Christian world during the Middle Ages was that of the Abbey of Chartres. I kept 400 books. Baghdad's had 400,000.
The other factor that unites the seven cities portrayed by Moller is tolerance for diversity, an exception in time when monotheism became strong in Europe and the Middle East.
Why that religious tolerance? Was it a wonderful extravagance that turned out to work unexpectedly well or was there a historical logic behind it? "Religious tolerance was a pragmatic solution. At least for the Arabs," Moller explains. "The Arab Empire grew so fast and reached such an immense extent (from the Himalayas to the Atlantic) that its leaders understood that it was impossible to impose a culture and religion on all its inhabitants. So they settled for putting a small tax on the non-Muslim population and benefit from their culture. "
By the way: the Arab conquerors who arrived in Mesopotamia felt rougher, less wise than their colonized. Something similar can be said of the Normans in Sicily regarding their islander, Muslim or educated subjects among Muslims. And, when the Umayyad settled down in Córdoba, they also nurtured the culture of the Mozarabic and Jewish population. Thus, the story of Paulo Álvaro Cordubense, a Cordovan Christian scholar who complained that the intellectuals of his community preferred to write in Arabic, is told in the pages of The Route of Knowledge .
The Cordoba chapter is the most attractive for a Spanish reader. For starters, because his political circumstance seems taken from a story. Year 750: Abderramán, grandson of the Umayyad caliph of Baghdad Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, is caught in a dynastic struggle. His side is the loser and all his cousins are executed. He miraculously flees, swims across the Euphrates and wanders all over North Africa to Morocco, where the situation on the other side of the strait is reported. The Arabs have conquered ancient Hispania but their domain of the territory is still anarchic. Abderramán arms an army, takes him to the European coast, wins in all battles and unifies al-Andalus. From that moment, its purpose will be to create a new caliphate whose capital competed with Baghdad in political power, sophistication and intellectual prestige : Córdoba.
"I would say that the scientific achievements of Baghdad were somewhat superior to those of Cordoba, but not much. And the rivalry did not mean that the two cities turned their backs. For the young educated Cordoba people it was usual to plan a kind of sabbatical year that consisted of traveling to Baghdad. And the arrival in Córdoba of Ziryab , a Persian singer who came to al-Andalus to teach refinements to the Cordoba people, had a lot of impact. He brought the toothpaste, taught how to use cutlery, how to have good manners, how seduce women ... "
There is another pattern that is repeated often: the moments of cultural splendor of these seven cities were ephemeral : they ended suddenly, in a traumatic way.
"In the case of Alexandria, this did not happen. We have in mind the somewhat dramatic idea of the fire of the Library of Alexandria and the defeat of knowledge before its enemies ... Well, the fires were real, but they were not the cause of the demise of the Library, "says Moller. "Actually, I am sure that the Library disappeared due to negligence and abandonment."
Instead, Baghdad, Cordoba and Sicily lost their moment from one moment to another. One day a king fell and his successor was no longer as a friend of knowledge. "The problem, almost always, was political. You have to think that the current political stability did not exist in the Middle Ages," Moller ends.
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