A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance

Manchester gives the history of the explorer Ferdinand Magellan: “He was an explorer, a man whose destiny it was to venture into the unknown; what he found, therefore, was new. He had some idea of its worth but lacked accurate standards by which to measure it” (32). He was killed during a battle on a voyage in which he completed the encirclement of the earth. Magellan’s efforts had proved that the world was round.

After discussing the ease with which exploration could spread disease—or bring it back from discovered lands—Manchester discusses what he calls “one of the age’s most unpleasant characteristics: man’s inhumanity to man” (35). He gives specific attention to the monk Tomás de Torquemada, who was at the head of the Spanish inquisition and who sanctioned the torture of heretics and criminals until they confessed their crimes. It was not only fallen Christians who were persecuted however: “Blacks and Jews suffered most, but any minority was considered fair game for tyrants” (35).

Manchester relates the power of the religious leaders: “At any given moment the most dangerous enemy in Europe was the reigning Pope” (37). During Magellan’s lifetime, Manchester calls the five ruling Popes the “least Christian of men” (37). It was a period of great corruption, the pardoning of crimes for money, a market for forged Papal decrees, and more. The selling of indulgences, known as "simony" (37), introduced an era in which sinners could buy their way out of purgatory as they paid for forgiveness of their sins. Corruption quickly grew as money, as well as the commissions that priests could earn for these indulgences, entered the structure of the church in this new way. Nepotism was common, as was the proposed abandoning of celibacy for members of the clergy and cloisters.

The popes could only be challenged by families with great wealth and lineages: “Undisciplined by piety, most of these popes are nonetheless remembered for their consummate skills in the brutal politics of the era” (42).When the challenges grew too vociferous, however, the popes resorted to torturing and executing their most vocal critics: “What was the world like—and to them it was the only world, round which the sun orbited each day—when ruled by such men?” (45).

Given the amount of conflict and violence in Europe, towns were built with defense in mind, not with logical structures like roads to consider merchant traffic:

[T]owns were not common in Europe. In the early 1500s one could hike through the woods for days without encountering a settlement of any size. Between 80 and 90 percent of the population lived in villages of fewer than a hundred people, fifteen or twenty miles apart, surrounded by endless woodlands (51).

The peasants lived in cramped quarters that allowed for only the necessities.

By comparison, knights and powerful merchants lived in relative splendor, in spacious houses as they dined on great banquets: “The everyday dinner of a man of rank ran from fifteen to twenty dishes” (52). Peasants and farmers lived on two meals a day if they were fortunate enough to. Manchester estimates that in order to survive one year of famine, a farmer had to have three successive bountiful harvests to provide for his family’s existence. People were small then, so food went further, as did beer and wine: “The average man stood a few inches over five feet and weighed about 135 pounds” (55). Life expectancy was below 30 years for more than half the population.

Manchester gives examples of the significance of different types of clothing: ”Each man knew his place, believed it had been foreordained in heaven, and was aware that what he wore must reflect it” (55). Lepers were required to wear gray coats and red hats. Prostitutes had scarlet skirts. Anyone sentenced to public penitence for a time wore white robes. Every Jew wore a yellow circle on the breast of their clothes.

Changes began around the late 1400s: “Learning, like etiquette, was being rediscovered” (56). The mathematical symbols + and - came back into use, and table manners slowly began to improve: “Napkins were unknown; guests were warned not to clean their teeth on the tablecloth. Guests in homes were also reminded that they should blow their noses with the hand that held the knife, not the one holding the food” (57). The only truly bad form during the Dark Ages was the breaking of Church-established rules. Because the Bible did not speak of mathematical practices or dinner time etiquette, these things were seen as trivial and useless.

Manchester considers the punishments assigned to various religious crimes as wildly creative, “awesome” (58) rites. For instance, a drunken baron stole the chalice from a local church. As penance, society exiled him. No one was allowed to associate with him, sell to him, or buy any goods he might try to sell. Finally, he was allowed to purchase his salvation at an exorbitant price. After donating his entire fortune to the Church, 60 monks beat him until his bones and mind were broken beyond recovery.

However, the pilgrimage, just short of execution, is Manchester’s example of the greatest of penances: “In instances in which pilgrims had offended God and man, their journeys were actually a substitute for prison terms” (59). A man could be commanded to shave his head, abandon his family, and set out barefoot for a destination as far as away as Jerusalem. Pilgrimages could take up to 12 years.

A Count pronouncing a sentence “could have asked, although he didn’t, what all this misery had to do with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact it had nothing to do with them” (60). The teachings of Jesus existed in the Bible, and the Bible had been written in a language that medieval Europeans could not read:

They believed in sorcery, witchcraft, hobgoblins, werewolves, amulets, and black magic, and were thus indistinguishable from pagans. If a lady died, the instant her breath stopped servants ran through the manor house, emptying every container of water to prevent her soul from drowning(61).

Nothing in the New Testament supported such rites and superstitions, as they were carried over from paganism: “Scholars as eminent as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More accepted the existence of witchcraft” (62).

Manchester examines the realities of Robin Hood, The Pied Piper of Hamlin, and Lancelot du Lac: “The more we study these remote centuries, the unlikelier such legends become” (66). He states that there is no evidence that Robin Hood was more than a common thief. The Pied Piper was a child murderer and rapist. And Lancelot, the famed lover of Guinevere, probably did not even share the same century with her.

Images of courtly, transcendental love such as that of Lancelot and Guinevere in the Arthurian fables were not matched to the reality of most couples of the time: “Typically, news of an imminent marriage spread when the pregnancy of the bride-elect began to show. If she had been particularly user-friendly, raising genuine doubts about the child’s paternity, those who had enjoyed her favors drew straws” (66). The tradition of arranged marriage was crumbling: “Females could marry—legally, with or without parental consent—when they reached their 12th birthday. The age for males was 14. (67). Manchester states that if a young woman was not married before the age of 21, she was seen as past her prime and no longer a prospect for suitors. This led many young women to seek pregnancy as a way to ensure marriage.

A young woman who did not want to marry had to give one of two reasons: “It was her desire to enter a convent, or, at the far end of the spectrum, to join the world’s oldest profession. Harlotry not only paid well; it was frequently prestigious” (68). There was also a profitable market for erotica, particularly for salacious books with sexual illustrations in them. Both among the peasants and the nobles, “lubricity flourished in all its various forms” (71). Manchester asks why it is that as the end of the medieval age drew nearer, European morals declined:“Divorce, which might have brought the problem under control, was rejected by all authorities” (73). But all of the possible reasons given by historians come later. During the early 16th century, Manchester refers to “a tradition of aristocratic promiscuity that would continue in the centuries ahead” (74).

Rome was the capital of Christendom, but it was also the city most obviously besieged with sexual sin. As an example of the bizarre depths of carnality into which the culture could be plunged, Manchester relates the story of the Borgias. The notorious family of incredible influence ascended to various positions of power by sexual stratagems, cold-blooded murders, and endless shows of force.

Italian arts flourished amidst the increased degeneracy of each new papacy. Manchester sees it as “a paradox that painters and sculptors frequently thrive amidst chaos” (86). But the chaos of the papacy was well suited to the support of artists. Each ruler of the church was interested in taking credit for immortal artistic masterpieces, so they looked for artist geniuses and then hired them to create art. This way, no one else could employ their talents: “It is incontestable that the Continent’s most powerful rulers in the early sixteenth century were responsible for great crimes. It is equally true that had hit outraged the painters and sculptors of their time we would have lost a heritage beyond price” (88).

The science of astronomy found itself under indictment. In 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus showed his friends a manuscript in which he posited that the earth orbited the sun and was not the center of the universe, as had previously been believed. His work was not known widely until after his death. Powerful men such as Martin Luther and John Calvin condemned his assertions: “This fool wishes to reverse the entire scheme of astrology; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth” (89). Later, a philosopher named Giordano Bruno decreed that Copernicus had been right. He was then burned at the stake, and Catholics were forbidden from reading the writings of Copernicus: “The ban was not lifted until 1828” (91).

Copernicus had been curious, but Leonardo da Vinci’s insatiable quest for knowledge was much greater:“Leonardo questioned everything. Rather than accept the world God had created, a Christians had always done, he probed endlessly into what human ingenuity could achieve by struggling against it” (93). Leonardo’s inventions and plans are too numerous for Manchester to list, but it is clear that everyone was in awe of his intellect, and this would have consequences: “Leonardo was capable of marvels, men whispered, but his inspiration was anything but divine” (94). In 1513, the smear campaign against Leonardo reached its height, and he was unable to gain the support or patronage of Pope Leo X. Rather, Leonardo was told that his future research would be restricted. Leonardo went to France to serve as the “first painter and engineer to the king” (94). Despite his learning, he was not seen as an asset to his native Italy, but as a pariah.

From 1457 to 1458, Johannes Gutenberg Gensfleisch published the Bible on the world’s first printing press: “The invention of printing was denounced by, among others, politicians and ecclesiastics who feared it as an instrument which could spread subversive ideas” (96).

Manchester provides a summary of the first readers and their numbers. He estimates that over half of Europe’s population was illiterate, and among women it may have been as high as “89 percent” (97). Some of the statistics about literacy among the different classes and professions are problematic. Because Latin was the Church’s preferred tongue, literacy was based on whether someone knew Latin. People who could read in their native tongue but not Latin—the language of the elites—were still often classified as illiterate.

As the presses continued to print, “the yearning for literacy spread like a fever. It was persistence, and the number of schools, which rose” (98). People who wanted to learn to read had three options: “popular education, apprenticeship, and the courses of study at traditional schools and universities” (98). Popular, or public, education was not standardized and sometimes failed to resemble schooling at all. Volunteers often staffed the schools. The students would help each other, as well as the teacher, as they all tried to learn to read together. There were fewer apprentices, and there were trades in which learning to read was not required or useful: “But the better crafts went beyond that, teaching accounting, mathematics, and the writing of commercial letters” (99).

In 1516, the Fifth Lateran Council took strong measure against the literacy boom. It “forbade the printing of any new volume without the Vatican’s imprimatur” (99). The decree was ineffective, however, and Manchester compares it to the 20th century encyclicals of the popes that rejected birth control.

The growing intelligence of the populace had an effect on its relationship to the Church: “The days when the Church’s critics could be silenced by intimidating naive peasants, or by putting the torch to defiant apostates, were ending” (102). Manchester attempts to recreate the emergence of Universities. Oxford had colleges dating to the 1200s. Cambridge was instituted a century later. But the universities were undisciplined and did not resemble modern colleges. For instance, Manchester points out that 90 percent of students did not board on campus: “In those centuries students who yearned for genuine learning had to become autodidacts” (103).

For Manchester, one of the key triumphs of the Renaissance was the “establishing of new ties with the gems of antiquities” (104). During a trip to Rome, several Byzantine scholars found that the original Greek texts of many masterpieces—thought to have been destroyed at least 1000 years prior—had survived. This discovery ushered in a new era of traveling scholars who searched through Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and more as they searched for other literary treasures thought to be lost: “The implications reached far beyond scholarship, leading to the redefinition of knowledge itself” (104). Soon students would be able to engage with ideas that had existed before the Dark Ages and its constricted mindset. Hence, Manchester points out, it was this new appraisal of ancient knowledge that showed that the Dark Ages had been less wise than the more primitive, chronologically speaking, eras before them: “The Christian faith was not repudiated, but the new concept of the cultivated man was the Renaissance homo universale: the universal man: creator, artist, scholar, and encyclopedic genius in the spirit of the ancient paideia” (105). In ancient Greece, "paideia" referred to the education of the populace.

The new batch of universities required professors, who were called humanists. They declared that the humanities were superior to “medicine, law, and theology—especially theology” (106). Between 1498 and 1512, the humanists helped print and produce the works of all of the Greek philosophers and playwrights: “All this ferment led to that rarest of cultural phenomena, an intellectual movement which alters the course of both learning and civilization” (106). The elite academics were suddenly revered and emulated, a stark change from the previous century in which knowledge itself was seen as dangerous.

The humanist who enjoyed the most success and admiration—until his fall from royal grace—was Sir Thomas More, who would serve for a time as lord chancellor of England. More was both a formidable intellect and a brutal man: “It was not an age when men of mild and sweet disposition rose to power; a savage streak was almost a prerequisite for achievement” (109). More believed that heretics should be executed and carried out many of their sentences.

Manchester relates the story of Conradus Celtis, an Arch-humanist who began giving lectures with titles like, “Is there a God?” and “Will the soul live after death?”(111)—questions to which "no" was his answer: “Skepticism, and then sacrilege, became stylish among his colleagues” (111). Manchester explains that “[h]umanism, the Holy See would bitterly learn, led to the greatest threat the Church had ever faced” (112). He then expands it to two threats. Martin Luther identifies the first: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it struggles against the divine word, treat with contempt all that emanates from God” (112). Reason cast doubt on the virgin birth, the sacrament, all of Christ’s miracles, and more.

The second threat came from the Church’s idea of the afterlife: “To true Christians, life on earth was almost irrelevant” (113). When humanism cast doubts on the reality of an afterlife, it simultaneously introduced the idea that people should live for the moment, a subversive idea in Christianity: “Humanism, by its very character, implies a revolt against all Religious authority” (113). Catholics who had committed to intellectualism were caught in the middle of a tragedy: “The doctrine that the Church was perfect, that the very idea of change was heretical, deeply disturbed learned Catholics, leaving them torn between faith and reason” (116).

Erasmus turned to satire as his primary tool. His book The Praise of Folly was a bestseller: “His postulate for the work was that life rewards absurdity at the expense of reason” (122). Manchester gives Erasmus’s opening statement as declaring that “the human race owed its very existence to folly, for without it to man would submit to lifelong monogamy and no woman to the trials of motherhood. Bravery was foolish; so were men who pursued learning” (123). Erasmus targeted many human traits and every office of the clergy. He demonstrated how they are each absurd and illogical, causing him to lose many admirers among the Church leadership. However, he did not stop writing. His next book, Julius exclusus e coelis, was a satire targeting a specific pope: Julius II, who Erasmus saw as a warmonger. It sold even better than Folly had, despite its more incendiary, focused nature. Until his death, everything he wrote was subversive, and the public received his works well: “Erasmus, though he denied it on his deathbed, had sounded the claxon of religious revolution” (127). In part because “[t]he public perception of the priests was in fact appalling” (129).

The new Catholics were more sympathetic to ideas of reason and the concept of curiosity, but this newfound inquisitiveness led them to an awareness of how corrupt the Church officials were. Priests and nuns found it almost impossible to live in celibacy, which led them to be viewed as hypocrites. The selling of indulgences continued. Monks were seen as living lavishly, rather than in an austere, humble fashion. The behaviors of the pontiffs were blamed, as they failed to set a good example.

Manchester cites the selling of indulgences as the source of the people’s greatest displeasure with the Church. If forgiveness could be purchased, then all sins were permissible to anyone who could afford to repent: “Informed Christians deeply resented the gulf between Europe’s hungry masses and Rome’s greed” (132). He compares the lifestyle of the 15th and 16th-century popes to those of the Roman emperors. When a Church leader died, the Church absorbed his assets. The peasants were subject to papal taxes.

These realities were distasteful to the professor and religious reformer Martin Luther, whose brief history Manchester now gives. He calls Luther a formidable intellect, a priest, and a man with a “dark, irrational, half-mad streak of violence” (137). His father hated the Church but believed in Hell. He beat Luther and his six siblings because he believed that that the Church taught that “children were born wicked” (137). Luther was never willing to be a passive victim. He entered the Church and became a monk because he knew it was what his father would hate the most for him.

As a monk, Luther retained his superstitious belief in werewolves, warlocks, trolls, and more. He also “saw the Devil, running into apparitions of him all the time” (138), which gave him something literal and visceral to fight against, even more so than other monks who believed in the Devil but did not see him. Luther famously posted Ninety-Five Theses—his objections against current practices of the Church—on the church door in Wittenberg.

After, “the sale of indulgences plummeted” (141). Within months, demonstrations either condemning or supporting Luther were taking place all over Europe: “Luther had done the unthinkable—he had flouted the ruler of the universe” (143). He had also “broken the dam of medieval discipline” (143). As more peasants were able to read the gospels, they learned that Christ had been more sympathetic to the oppressed than to the clergy, and he had not preached the enrichment of the pontiffs.

Initially, Pope Leo was not concerned with the theses, but there were strong reactions among many eminent universities, condemning Luther as a heretic. Several professors, Archbishops, and theologians demanded that he be burned at the stake: “Instead, he kept scratching away with his pen” (146). Luther soon published Resolutiones, a brochure that began with an introduction assuring the Church of his allegiance. The remainder of the text aligned with Ninety-Five Theses, condemning the practices of the Church and denying the supremacy of the pope. In Resolutiones, Luther also brought out his most vicious attack yet on the selling of indulgences: “Leo was stunned. Abandon indulgences? Just as his pontificate was approaching bankruptcy?” (146). Leo summoned Luther to appear in Rome.

Luther refused to go and was granted support and sanctuary by Frederick the Wise, a German prince who was fond of him. Frederick asked the advice of Emperor Maximilian, who explained that “handing Luther over to the pontiff could be a political blunder. In his judgment, anticlerical sentiment was increasing throughout Germany” (148). Maximilian also suggested to the pope that he should treat Luther carefully. Leo canceled the demand that Luther be brought to Rome for trial. Instead, he invited him to come and confer with a papal emissary—Cardinal Cajetan—in Augsburg: “Luther had come prepared to discuss an agenda of reform, but the cardinal was an enforcer of ecclesiastical discipline” (149), who saw that the only issue at hand was the severity of the sentence Luther must receive. Luther managed to return to Wittenberg safely, although plans for his arrest while in Augsburg had nearly come to fruition.

On June 27, 1519, Luther appeared in Leipzig before a packed house of theologians, nobles, and theology students. He had been challenged to debate by Dr. Johann Eck, who had written a polemical reply to Luther’s theses. Eck managed to humiliate Luther in the debate, confounding his points. Shortly afterwards, a new emperor is elected: Charles. It is a time of transition for Luther: “Even before Leipzig, Luther had been suffering through what might have been called an identity crisis. Meeting von Miltitz in Altenburg in January 1519, he had appeared anxious to preserve the unity of Christendom, offering to remain mute if his critics would also” (156). He wrote a conciliatory letter to Rome and received a warm invitation from the pope. But Luther’s fury soon reappeared, and he declined Leo’s invitation. Less than a month later he wrote, in a letter: “I am at a loss to know whether the pope is antichrist or his apostle” (157). Soon, he is openly advocating for violent attacks against the papacy, which he refers to the papacy as Satan’s church.

On June 15, 1520, Leo issued a decree that Luther must appear in Rome and publicly denounce his own words. When Luther failed to come, Leo excommunicated him. However, his excommunication was not absolute, as it did not yet mean that his soul was beyond redemption if he would repent:“All Christians were forbidden to speak to him, or even to look at him. In any community contaminated by his presence, religious services were to be suspended” (159). In response, Luther wrote a series of furious pamphlets and remained defiant.

Eck and a future cardinal named Aleandro are sent throughout Germany to inform the public of Luther’s condemnation and their duty to shun him. They are surprised to find that many German humanists are now writing and thinking in the same style as Luther, and they are met with scorn. Six months later he writes: “All Germany is up in arms against Rome. Papal bulls of excommunication are laughed at. Numbers of people have ceased to receive the sacraments of penance. Martin is pictured with a halo above his head. The people kiss these pictures” (163). Luther states publicly that he despises Rome and is publishing a book in German—the common tongue—against the pope, “in language as violent as if [he] were addressing Antichrist” (164).

Luther began releasing tracts in German that put him, as Manchester puts it, “beyond redemption” (169). Emperor Charles was pressured into calling Luther before "an imperial diet" (169), or a formal trial, on January 27, 1521, in the town of Worms. Before a large assembly, Eck orders him to recant his tracts. Luther asks for a night to think about it. The next morning, he says that he cannot recant, but he is willing to remove anything from them that is “contrary to scripture” (172). On his journey home, Frederick, fearing for Luther’s safety, creates a false ambush and takes Luther to Wartburg Castle, “in the Thuringian Forest, and hidden away from the world under the alias Junker Georg” (173). The emperor rules that all of Luther’s books be banned, but it is of no use: “The monk and the movement he had launched had grown too powerful to be suppressed. The emperor tried mightily, but it would be his dying effort, and medieval Christendom would die with him” (174).

Luther did not enjoy his exile and wished to return to the fight. He began translating the New Testament into German, but his movement was spreading. Many new Christian branches were growing: Anabaptists, Unitarians, Protestants, and more. They were each intolerant of the others and nearly as repressive as the Catholic Church, only at a smaller size.

Manchester states that there was a latent bloodlust in the common medieval Christian. Luther’s boldness gave it an excuse to emerge: “Even as word of his successful defiance spread across Germany, the mayhem had begun” (178). Catholic churches were invaded, desecrated, and burned. Precious relics were destroyed. In the most extreme cases, worshippers found inside Catholic churches were murdered. It was the destroying of idols and holy images that brought Luther back into the public eye. The consequences of his writing weighed on him. Writing of the destruction of idols, he pleaded: “Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women; shall we then prohibit wine and ban women?” (179). But at this point even Luther’s influence was gone: “Nothing was sacred anymore, not even the man who, more than any other, had inspired them” (179).

Luther wrote to Erasmus, asking for support. Erasmus replied, urging Luther to tone down his rhetoric and to hate no one. Publicly, Erasmus continued to defend him. To a cardinal, he wrote that “the better a man was, the less he was Luther’s enemy” (180). He also urged that less ferocity in speech would help quell violence.

The mayhem alienated humanists who had previously supported Luther. Erasmus’s own popularity began to wane as he tried to support Luther while simultaneously distancing himself from the man’s zealotry and fury. The interfaith conflict had grown so extreme that Erasmus began moving from town to town, only to move again each time he saw a new riot in a new church. After finally settling in Basel, he eventually died, “a martyr to everything he had despised in life: fear, malice, excess, ignorance, and barbarism” (186). Because he failed to take last rites, the Church persecuted him even after his death, branding him an excommunicated heretic.

Manchester describes the city-state Geneva, presided over by John Calvin, as a “police-state,” the “anti-Rome,” and of Calvin as a brutal “dictator” (190). Geneva is Manchester’s greatest example of the depths to which the revolt against the Catholic Church could descend. Infractions, even minor, could be punished by torture and death: “A child who struck his parents was summarily beheaded. Abortion was not a political issue because any single woman discovered with child was drowned” (191). Calvin's men could invade houses at any time, to determine whether rules, such as the amount of food that could be administered during a meal, were being followed: “It was a consummate irony of the Reformation that the movement against Rome, which had begun with an affirmation of individual judgment, now repudiated it entirely” (193).

The religious oppression continued: “The Vatican committed its prestige to reaction, repression, and military and political action against rulers who had left the church” (200). This lead to “the Roman Inquisition, reinstituted in 1542 as a political response to the Reformation,” and which Manchester calls “an even crueler reign of terror” (201) than the Spanish Inquisition.