Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by theMiddle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles ofpopular culture.[1][2] Since the 17th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, includingRomanticism, theGothic Revival, thePre-Raphaelite andArts and Crafts movements, andneo-medievalism (a term often used interchangeably withmedievalism). Historians have attempted to conceptualize the history of non-European countries in terms of medievalisms, but the approach has been controversial among scholars of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.[3]
_en_1718_-_P208_-_Mus%25C3%25A9e_Carnavalet_-_2.jpg)
In the 1330s,Petrarch expressed the view that European culture had stagnated and drifted into what he called the"Dark Ages", since thefall of Rome in the fifth century, owing to among other things, the loss of many classical Latin texts and to the corruption of the language in contemporary discourse.[4] Scholars of theRenaissance believed that they lived in a new age that broke free of the decline described by Petrarch. HistoriansLeonardo Bruni andFlavio Biondo developed athree tier outline of history composed ofAncient, Medieval, andModern.[5] The Latin termmedia tempestas (middle time) first appears in 1469.[6] The termmedium aevum (Middle Ages) is first recorded in 1604.[6] "Medieval" first appears in the nineteenth century and is an Anglicised form ofmedium aevum.[7]
During theReformations of the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants generally followed the critical views expressed by Renaissance Humanists, but for additional reasons. They saw classical antiquity as a golden time, not only because of Latin literature, but because it was the early beginnings of Christianity. The intervening 1000 year Middle Age was a time of darkness, not only because of lack of secular Latin literature, but because of corruption within the Church such as Popes who ruled as kings, pagan superstitions withsaints' relics, celibate priesthood, and institutionalized moral hypocrisy.[8] Most Protestant historians did not date the beginnings of the modern era from the Renaissance, but later, from the beginnings of the Reformation.[9]
In theAge of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Middle Ages was seen as an "Age of Faith" when religion reigned, and thus as a period contrary to reason and contrary to the spirit of the Enlightenment.[10] For them the Middle Ages was barbaric and priest-ridden. They referred to "these dark times", "the centuries of ignorance", and "the uncouth centuries".[11] The Protestant critique of the Medieval Church was taken into Enlightenment thinking by works includingEdward Gibbon'sDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89).[12]Voltaire was particularly energetic in attacking the religiously dominated Middle Ages as a period of social stagnation and decline, condemningFeudalism,Scholasticism,The Crusades,The Inquisition and theCatholic Church in general.[11]
The Gothic Revival was anarchitectural movement which began in the 1740s inEngland.[13] Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms in contrast to theclassical styles prevalent at the time.[14] In England, the epicentre of this revival, it was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" orAnglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convertAugustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism.[13] He went on to produce important Gothic buildings such as Cathedrals atBirmingham andSouthwark and theBritish Houses of Parliament in the 1840s.[15] Large numbers of existing English churches had features such ascrosses,screens andstained glass (removed at the Reformation), restored or added, and most new Anglican and Catholic churches were built in the Gothic style.[16]Viollet-le-Duc was a leading figure in the movement in France, restoring the entire walled city ofCarcassonne as well asNotre-Dame andSainte Chapelle in Paris.[15] In AmericaRalph Adams Cram was a leading force in American Gothic, with his most ambitious project theCathedral of St. John the Divine in New York (one of the largest cathedrals in the world), as well asCollegiate Gothic buildings atPrinceton Graduate College.[15] On a wider level the woodenCarpenter Gothic churches and houses were built in large numbers across North America in this period.[17]
In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to theGothic novel, often dealing with dark themes in human nature against medieval backdrops and with elements of the supernatural.[18] Beginning withThe Castle of Otranto (1764) byHorace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, it also includedMary Shelley'sFrankenstein (1818) andJohn Polidori'sThe Vampyre (1819), which helped found the modern horror genre.[19] This helped create thedark romanticism or American Gothic of authors likeEdgar Allan Poe in works including "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) andNathaniel Hawthorne in "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) and "The Birth-Mark" (1843).[20] This in turn influenced American novelists likeHerman Melville in works such asMoby-Dick (1851).[21] Early Victorian Gothic novels includedEmily Brontë'sWuthering Heights (1847) andCharlotte Brontë'sJane Eyre (1847).[22] The genre was revived and modernised toward the end of the century with works likeRobert Louis Stevenson'sStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886),Oscar Wilde'sThe Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) andBram Stoker'sDracula (1897).[23]
Main article:Anglo-Saxonism in the 19th century
The development of philology through the 17th-19th centuries as a subject of study in northwest Europe and England saw increased interest in tracing the roots of languages and cultures including English, German, Icelandic and Dutch. Antiquaries of the time believed that languages and cultures were intertwined, andOld English texts, especiallyBeowulf, were claimed by antiquarians from each linguistic-cultural group as 'their' oldest poem.[24]
In England, Rebecca Brackmann argues that an increased interest in Old English and imagined Anglo-Saxon culture was a result of, and in turn fuelled, political upheaval in the 17th and 18th centuries.[25] In the United States, Anglo-Saxon mythologies persisted, withThomas Jefferson proposing thatHengist and Horsa were shown on theGreat Seal of the United States.[26]
Romanticism was a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the eighteenth century inWestern Europe, and gained strength during and after theIndustrial andFrench Revolutions.[27] It was partly a revolt against the political norms of the Age of Enlightenment which rationalised nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature.[27] Romanticism has been seen as "the revival of the life and thought of the Middle Ages",[28] reaching beyondrational andClassicist models to elevate medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl and industrialism, embracing the exotic, unfamiliar and distant.[28][29]
The name "Romanticism" itself was derived from the medieval genrechivalric romance. This movement contributed to the strong influence of such romances, disproportionate to their actual showing among medieval literature, on the image of Middle Ages, such that a knight, a distressed damsel, and a dragon is used to conjure up the time pictorially.[30] The Romantic interest in the medieval can particularly be seen in the illustrations of English poetWilliam Blake and theOssian cycle published by Scottish poetJames Macpherson in 1762, which inspired bothGoethe'sGötz von Berlichingen (1773), and the youngWalter Scott. The latter'sWaverley Novels, includingIvanhoe (1819) andQuentin Durward (1823) helped popularise, and shape views of, the medieval era.[31] The same impulse manifested itself in the translation of medievalnational epics into modern vernacular languages, includingNibelungenlied (1782) in Germany,[32]The Lay of the Cid (1799) in Spain,[33]Beowulf (1833) in England,[34]The Song of Roland (1837) in France,[35] which were widely read and highly influential on subsequent literary and artistic work.[36]
The nameNazarene was adopted by a group of early nineteenth-centuryGerman Romanticpainters who reacted againstNeoclassicism and hoped to return to art which embodied spiritual values. They sought inspiration in artists of theLate Middle Ages and theearly Renaissance, rejecting what they saw as the superficial virtuosity of later art.[37] The name Nazarene came from a term of derision used against them for their affectation of a biblical manner of clothing and hair style.[37]
The movement was originally formed in 1809 by six students at theVienna Academy and called the Brotherhood of St. Luke orLukasbund, after thepatron saint of medieval artists.[38] In 1810 four of them,Johann Friedrich Overbeck,Franz Pforr,Ludwig Vogel and Johann Konrad Hottinger moved toRome, where they occupied the abandoned monastery of San Isidoro and were joined byPhilipp Veit,Peter von Cornelius,Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld,Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and a loose grouping of other German artists.[37] They met up with Austrian romantic landscape artistJoseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) who became an unofficial tutor to the group and in 1827 they were joined byJoseph von Führich (1800–76).[37] In Rome the group lived a semi-monastic existence, as a way of re-creating the nature of the medieval artist's workshop. Religious subjects dominated their output and two major commissions for the Casa Bartholdy (1816–17) (later moved to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin) and the Casino Massimo (1817–29), allowed them to attempt a revival of the medieval art offresco painting and gained then international attention.[39] However, by 1830 all except Overbeck had returned to Germany and the group had disbanded. Many Nazareners became influential teachers in German art academies and were a major influence on the later EnglishPre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.[37]
Eventually, medievalism moved from the confines of fiction into the immediate realm of social commentary as a means of critiquing life in theIndustrial Era. An early work of this kind isWilliam Cobbett'sHistory of the Protestant Reformation (1824–6), which was influenced by his reading ofJohn Lingard'sHistory of England (1819–30), among other sources. Cobbett attacked the Reformation as having divided a once-unified and wealthy England into "masters and slaves, a very few enjoying the extreme of luxury, and millions doomed to the extreme of misery", while decrying how "this land of meat and beef was changed, all of a sudden into a land of dry bread and oatmeal porridge".[40] In theVictorian era, the principal representatives of this school wereThomas Carlyle and his discipleJohn Ruskin.[41]
In Carlyle'sPast and Present (1843), whichOliver Elton called the "most remarkable fruit in English literature of the medieval revival",[42] the modern workhouse is contrasted with the medieval monastery. He draws onJocelyn de Brakelond's twelfth-century account ofSamson of Tottington'sabbotcy ofBury St Edmunds Abbey to answer the "Condition-of-England Question", calling for a "Chivalry of Labour" based on cooperation and fraternity rather than competition and "Cash-payment for the sole nexus", and for the leadership of paternalistic "Captains of Industry".[43]
Along with medievalist writersWalter Scott,Robert Southey, andKenelm Henry Digby, Carlyle was among the "important literary influences" onYoung England, a "parliamentary experiment in romanticism which created considerable stir during the eighteen-forties," led byLord John Manners andBenjamin Disraeli.[44] Young England developed contemporaneously with theOxford Movement, which has been defined as "medievalism in religion."[45]
Ruskin connected the quality of a nation's architecture with its spiritual health, comparing the originality and freedom of medieval art with the mechanistic sterility of modernism in such works asModern Painters, Volume II (1846),The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) andThe Stones of Venice (1851–3).[46] At the urging of Carlyle,[47] Ruskin, who identified as both a "violentTory of the old school"[48] and a "Communist of the old school",[49] adapted this thesis to his theory ofpolitical economy inUnto This Last (1860), and to his "Ideal Commonwealth" inTime and Tide (1867), the characteristics of which were derived from the Middle Ages: theguild system, the feudal system, chivalry, and the church.[50]
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group ofEnglishpainters,poets, and critics, founded in 1848 byWilliam Holman Hunt,John Everett Millais andDante Gabriel Rossetti.[51] The three founders were soon joined byWilliam Michael Rossetti,James Collinson,Frederic George Stephens andThomas Woolner to form a seven-member "brotherhood".[52] The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by theMannerist artists who succeededRaphael andMichelangelo.[51] They believed that theClassical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on theacademic teaching of art. Hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, they objected to the influence ofSir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the EnglishRoyal Academy of Arts, believing that his broad technique was a sloppy and formulaic form of academic Mannerism. In contrast, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions ofQuattrocento Italian and Flemish art.[53]
The Arts and Crafts movement was an aesthetic movement, directly influenced by the Gothic Revival and the Pre-Raphaelites, but moving away from aristocratic, nationalist and high Gothic influences to an emphasis on the idealised peasantry and medieval community, particularly of the fourteenth century, often withsocialist political tendencies and reaching its height between about 1880 and 1910.
The movement was inspired by the writings ofCarlyle and Ruskin and was spearheaded by the work ofWilliam Morris, a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and a former apprentice to Gothic-revival architect G. E. Street. He focused on the fine arts of textiles, wood and metal work and interior design.[54] Morris also produced medieval and ancient themed poetry, beside socialist tracts and the medievalUtopiaNews From Nowhere (1890).[54] Morris formedMorris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861, which produced and sold furnishings and furniture, often with medieval themes, to the emerging middle classes.[55]
The first Arts and Crafts exhibition in the United States was held in Boston in 1897 and local societies spread across the country, dedicated to preserving and perfecting disappearing craft and beautifying house interiors.[56] Whereas the Gothic revival had tended to emulate ecclesiastical and military architecture, the arts and crafts movement looked to rustic and vernacular medieval housing.[57] The creation of aesthetically pleasing and affordable furnishings proved highly influential on subsequent artistic and architectural developments.[58]
By the nineteenth century real and pseudo-medieval symbols were a currency of Europeanmonarchical state propaganda. German emperors dressed up in and proudly displayed medieval costumes in public, and they rebuilt the great medieval castle and spiritual home of theTeutonic Order at Marienburg.[59]Ludwig II of Bavaria built a fairy-tale castle atNeuschwanstein and decorated it with scenes fromWagner's operas, another major Romantic image maker of the Middle Ages.[60] The same imagery would be used inNazi Germany in the mid-twentieth century to promote German national identity with plans for extensive building in the medieval style and attempts to revive the virtues of theTeutonic knights,Charlemagne and theRound Table.[61]
In England, the Middle Ages were trumpeted as the birthplace of democracy because of theMagna Carta of 1215.[62] In the reign ofQueen Victoria there was considerable interest in things medieval, particularly among the ruling classes. The notoriousEglinton Tournament of 1839 attempted to revive the medieval grandeur of the monarchy and aristocracy.[63] Medieval fancy dress became common in this period at royal and aristocraticmasquerades andballs, and individuals and families were painted in medieval costume.[64] These trends inspired a nineteenth-century genre of medieval poetry that includedIdylls of the King (1842) byAlfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson and "The Sword of Kingship" (1866) by Thomas Westwood, which recast specifically modern themes in the medieval settings of Arthurian romance.[65][66]
Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism) is aneologism that was first popularized by the Italian medievalistUmberto Eco in his 1973 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages".[67] The term has no clear definition but has since been used to describe the intersection between popular fantasy andmedieval history as can be seen incomputer games such asMMORPGs,films andtelevision,neo-medieval music, and popularliterature.[68] It is in this area—the study of the intersection between contemporary representation and past inspiration(s)—thatmedievalism andneomedievalism tend to be used interchangeably.[69]Neomedievalism has also been used as a term describing thepost-modern study of medieval history[70] and as a term for a trend in moderninternational relations, first discussed in 1977 byHedley Bull, who argued that society was moving towards a form of "neomedievalism" in which individual notions of rights and a growing sense of a "world common good" were underminingnationalsovereignty.[71]
Depictions of the Middle Ages can be found in different cultural media, including advertising.[72]
Film has been one of the most significant creators of images of the Middle Ages since the early twentieth century. The first medieval film was also one of the earliest films ever made, aboutJeanne d'Arc in 1900, while the first to deal withRobin Hood dates to as early as 1908.[73] Influential European films, often with a nationalist agenda, included the GermanNibelungenlied (1924),Eisenstein'sAlexander Nevsky (1938) andBergman'sThe Seventh Seal (1957), while in France there were many Joan of Arc sequels.[74]Hollywood adopted the medieval as a major genre, issuing periodic remakes of theKing Arthur,William Wallace andRobin Hood stories, adapting to the screen such historical romantic novels asIvanhoe (1952—byMGM), and producingepics in the vein ofEl Cid (1961).[75] More recent revivals of these genres includeRobin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991),The 13th Warrior (1999) andThe Kingdom of Heaven (2005).[76]
While the folklore that fantasy drew on for its magic and monsters was not exclusively medieval, elves, dragons, and unicorns, among many other creatures, were drawn from medieval folklore andromance. Earlier writers in the genre, such asGeorge MacDonald inThe Princess and the Goblin (1872),William Morris inThe Well at the World's End (1896) andLord Dunsany inThe King of Elfland's Daughter (1924), set their tales infantasy worlds clearly derived from medieval sources, though often filtered through later views.[77] In the first half of the twentieth centurypulp fiction writers likeRobert E. Howard andClark Ashton Smith helped popularise thesword and sorcery branch of fantasy, which often utilised prehistoric and non-European settings beside elements of the medieval.[78] In contrast, authors such asE. R. Eddison and particularlyJ. R. R. Tolkien, set the type forhigh fantasy, normally based in apseudo-medieval setting, mixed with elements of medieval folklore.[79] Other fantasy writers have emulated such elements, and films,role-playing andcomputer games also took up this tradition.[80] Modern fantasy writers have taken elements of the medieval from these works to produce some of the most commercially successful works of fiction of recent years, sometimes pointing to the absurdities of the genre, as inTerry Pratchett'sDiscworld novels, or mixing it with the modern world as inJ. K. Rowling'sHarry Potter books.[81]
In the second half of the twentieth century interest in the medieval was increasingly expressed through form of re-enactment, includingcombat reenactment, re-creating historical conflict, armour, arms and skill, as well asliving history which re-creates the social and cultural life of the past, in areas such as clothing, food and crafts. The movement has led to the creation of medieval markets andRenaissance fairs, from the late 1980s, particularly in Germany and the United States of America.[82]
Leslie J. Workman, Kathleen Verduin and David Metzger noted in their introduction toStudies in Medievalism IX "Medievalism and the Academy, Vol I" (1997) their sense that medievalism had been perceived by some medievalists as a "poor and somewhat whimsical relation of (presumably more serious)medieval studies".[83] InThe Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2016), editorLouise D'Arcens noted that some of the earliest medievalism scholarship (that is, study of the phenomenon of medievalism) was by Victorian specialists including Alice Chandler (with her monographA Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth Century England (London: Taylor and Francis, 1971), and Florence Boos, with her edited volumeHistory and Community: Essays in Victorian Medievalism (London: Garland Publishing, 1992)).[2] D'Arcens proposed that the 1970s saw the discipline of medievalism become an academic area of research in its own right, with theInternational Society for the Study of Medievalism formalised in 1979 with the publication of itsStudies In Medievalism journal, organised by Leslie J. Workman.[2] D'Arcens notes that by 2016 medievalism was taught as a subject on "hundreds" of university courses around the world, and there were "at least two" scholarly journals dedicated to medievalism studies:Studies in Medievalism andpostmedieval.[2]
Clare Monagle has argued that political medievalism has caused medieval scholars to repeatedly reconsider whether medievalism is a part of the study of the Middle Ages as a historical period. Monagle explains how in 1977 the International Relations scholarHedley Bull coined the term "New Medievalism" to describe the world as a result of the rising powers ofnon-state actors in society (such as terrorist groups, corporations, or supra-state organizations such as the European Economic Community) which, due to new technologies, boundaries of jurisdiction that cross national borders, and shifts in private wealth challenged the exclusive authority of the state.[84] Monagle explained that in 2007, medieval scholarBruce Holsinger publishedNeomedievalism, Conservativism and theWar on Terror, which identified howGeorge W. Bush's administration relied on medievalising rhetoric to identifyal-Qaeda as "dangerously fluid, elusive, and stateless".[84] Monagle documents howGabrielle Spiegel, then president of theAmerican Historical Society "expressed concern at the idea that scholars of the historical medieval period might consider themselves licensed to in some way to intervene in contemporary medievalism", as to do so "conflates two very different historical periods".[84] Eileen Joy (co-founder and co-editor of thepostmedieval journal),[85] responded to Spiegel that "the idea of a medieval past itself, as something that can be demarcated and cordoned off from other historical time periods, was and is of itself [...] a form of medievalism. Therefore, practising medievalists should absolutely pay heed to the use and abuse of the Middle Ages in contemporary discourse".[84]
Medievalism topics are now annual features at the major medieval conferences theInternational Medieval Congress hosted at the University of Leeds, UK, and theInternational Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan.[2]
