Shapers and Definers Characteristic of Modernity it

¶ … Shapers and Definers

Characteristic of Modernity

It is true that renaissance was not based in sudden rediscovery of classical civilization but it was a continuation of the use of classical models to test the authority underlying conventional taste and wisdom (Garner, 1990). According to Davies, identity does not stop at a national frontier and that Europe has seen radical changes in tribal boundaries until recently of national homelands. If a peasant of the Middle Ages had been asked where he lived he would probably have replied Christendom. Equally he shows how ubiquitous nationalist inspired historical reconstruction has distorted historical reality.

In addition, in the book, a kingdom of England did exist in 1265, on the ruins of the Plantagenet Empire; but it still had stronger connections with the Continent, in Gascony and Aquitaine, than with Wales or Ireland. Its French speaking Anglo-Norman aristocracy did not yet share a common culture with the English people, and the baronial opposition was led by Continental adventurers like de Montfort. There was no concept of Britishness whatsoever.

The Greek influenced Roman Empire was a predominantly European phenomenon including present day England and France and all the land south of the Danube. Recognizable features of European civilization grew out of Roman law and the Pax Romana. As he says, "Latin lex means "the bond," "that which binds" (Davies, 1996). The same idea underlies that other keystone of Roman legality, the pactum or "contract." Once freely agreed by two parties, whether for commercial, matrimonial or political purposes, the conditions of the contract bind the parties to observe it. As the Romans knew, the rule of law ensures sound government, commercial confidence, and orderly society.

The following Barbarian ages are not as barbaric as they are usually portrayed. The Germanic invaders of the Western Empire adopted Roman law wholesale creating a functional Barbarian-Roman fusion and the Eastern orthodox Empire with its capital of Constantinople survived for a further 13 centuries providing a foundation for Slavonic Christendom. He quotes Salvian of Marseilles, describing Romans of good birth and education taking refuge among Goths and Franks, seeking Roman humanity among the barbarians, because they could no longer support barbarian inhumanity among the Romans.

Davies shows a European civilization being created by the continuity of the Roman and Christian traditions and finding a common identity through a series of Europe wide events, the principal of which were the Moslem invasions. Islamic armies occupied and settled the Iberian Peninsula and reached the Frankish city of Tours by 734. In the east Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and by 1683 they were at the gates of Vienna.

He brings out very well the way in which medieval Europe saw itself as Christian Europe, the alliance of nobles and priests and he traces Christianity from its birth in the Roman Republic through its adoption by Europe's people, bulwark against Islam, domination of medieval life and eventual slide into disrepute in the late Middle Ages, setting the scene for the Enlightenment. As he puts it, the middle Ages, whose religiosity and mysticism were reinforced by exactly the opposite conviction - that men and women were the helpless pawns of Providence, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible workings of their environment and of their nature. Medieval attitudes were dominated by a paralyzing anxiety about human inadequacy, ignorance, impotence - in short the concept of universal sin.

As he says, "The prime quality of the Renaissance has been defined as independence of mind. It is ideal was a person who, by mastering all branches of art and thought, need depend on no outside authority for the formation of knowledge, tastes and beliefs. Such a person was l'uomo universale, the complete man. From this foundation we can recognize the development of a modern Europe. In the middle ages a city dwelling bourgeoisie had already broken away from the feudal relations beyond the city walls but it was the new intellectual climate that generated an explosion of trade, industry and information that was to continue into modern times leading to scientific and technological change at a vertiginous rate and an entirely new kind of life in giant cities.

The prosperous and democratic Europe of today is shown as growing out of the extraordinarily enlightened American Marshall Plan (1948- 1951) and the European Economic Community. The later has grown into a common currency, trade and legal union from its 1951 start as the European Coal and Steel Community and has been largely successful in its implicit aim of preventing European nationalist conflict.