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Founders of the Middle Ages
1928. The chapters of this book were delivered as lectures before the Lowell Institute of Boston in January and February 1928. The aim of the book is to make clear the importance of certain great men and of certain great movements in thought and culture during the early Christian centuries. Church and Pagan The Problem; Church and Pagan The Solution; St. Ambrose the Mystic; St. Jerome the Humanist; Boethius, the First of the Scholastics; The New Poetry; New Education; St. Augustine and Dante.
- GenresHistoryPhilosophy
365 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1957
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 9, 2020
There is something wholly admirable in the Anglo-American scholars of a hundred years ago, of whom E.K. Rand is one. His Founders of the Middle Ages looks at the transition from Roman classicism to early Christianity, particularly in how so many of the early Christian authors were so familiar with authors like Plato, Virgil, and Cicero-- even incorporating selections from their thought and writings.
Unless you know Latin and Greek, you will have difficulties understanding much of the text. Fortunately, it is easy to understand the drift of Rand's writing even if you have "little Latin and less Greek."
Unless you know Latin and Greek, you will have difficulties understanding much of the text. Fortunately, it is easy to understand the drift of Rand's writing even if you have "little Latin and less Greek."
August 25, 2016
27 “Gregory’s literary style is formed on the simplest models. Here is a man educated in the old training, who deliberately threw it away.”
Rand’s droll procedure is first to establish that each of these founders in fact enjoyed a thoroughly classical education: they were trained by classical methods and steeped in classical culture. Having reaped the benefits, they then affected to turn against it, which pious hypocrisy vastly amuses Rand. It is obviously an approach with some drawbacks, but Rand’s sardonically cheerful wit mitigates the more sour conclusions that might be drawn. Obviously, once he had the advantage of the training, once he had inextricably absorbed the benefit, Gregory could afford to turn on it. Rand’s argument is that we should read his dismissals lightly, considering them little more than necessary affectations.
37 “Of all the ancient philosophies, Christianity is most nearly allied to Platonism, though it is not that.”
53 “Dr. More well remarks that not the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus, but the Christian philosophy of the great Alexandrians and Cappadocians is the real heir of the Academy.” Rand hastens to include Cicero, and in fact makes, throughout the book, Cicero the real mediator of the Platonic tradition to the Church. It is a Latin approach seeking a European goal (Founders of the Western Middle Ages). It is no wonder he sets Cicero over Plotinus when his founders are Gregory, Ambrose, Jerome, Boethius, and Augustine. He was, after all, a professor of Latin.
63 “For from the first to the last the principle written is clear that, while Christian faith finds much in Pagan belief and Pagan morals to avoid, it may, or rather it must, draw freely from it sustenance on the thought, the poetry, and the inspiration of the past.”
There is his thesis: we must not overplay Christian protestations and invective against Pagan culture. They had to draw on it because they were in the midst of it and had to draw on something. In fact, they were well-trained in it, and the protestations the Christian fathers made must be weighed and evaluated carefully, rather than simply taken at face value. Or:
64 “Thus were the foundations of Christian humanism laid.”
93 “An intellectual Christian like Ambrose rejected such science precisely as he rejected the history of the Olympians, not because it was Pagan and wrong, but because it was stale and untrue.”
144 “This carefulness on the part of Boethius led to the creation of a new vocabulary for philosophy, worked out step by step in the Middle Ages and appearing in something like the final form in St. Thomas Aquinas.”
145 “By helping to create a new philosophical idiom, Boethius performed a valuable service to the development of thought in the Middle Ages.”
149 “For with both Cicero and Boethius, it is Aristotle that is harmonized with Plato and not vice versa.” And, one might add, Plotinus. And therefore, the early Middle Ages.
155 “But, most important of all, he illustrated, in these brief tractates, the application of logical method, as well as the new vocabulary, to theological problems, on the understanding that fides, the ultimate truth, may be supported by the free effort of human reason.”
Exactly what Rand means by ‘supported’ is somewhat ambiguous, but that in some sense it is true is clear enough. This is his case for Boethius: carefulness with words that leads to a new philosophical idiom which can be used to support the Christian faith. Boethius, in other words, sets up Aquinas.
181 “No poetry, and no religion, that is not also art will long survive.”
Interestingly enough, Rand’s somewhat chatty but witty and curious lectures are still being cited and consulted nearly ninety years on.
213 “Yet his purpose is not to supersede Pagan culture, but to include it. The culture which Prudentius embodied in his hymns, and which he passed on to the coming generations, could not dispense with the ancient authors who had contributed to its making.”
It was not possible, and poetry is an obvious place to see it. And if you consider that Justin Martyr wrote dialogues and apologies, like Plato, that Origen wrote On First Principles, that besides the Homilies and Commentaries, the literary genres employed by the Church Fathers had long antecedent with which there was more than passing familiarity, it is hard to object.
250 “There will be different effects from different men and moments of the period of Foundation. There will be a powerful effect from the master-mind of Gregory. But the ultimate victory will be that of the party of Lactantius and Cassidorus, advocates of Christian humanism in which the old education is vitally embedded in the new.”
Gregory being an example of higher hypocrisy regarding his rejection of the Pagan learning he appropriated, and Lactantius and Cassidorus being less so, or not at all.
268 “Augustine’s feeling about the ancient culture, if I may run on with this topic for a moment, is at once like, and unlike, that of Jerome. . . . They both show an inevitable reaction against Paganism after their conversion, but in a different way. With Jerome, whose agile temperament plunged readily into extremes, the reaction both took a more violent form and more quickly cleared away. With Augustine, it was slower in coming and more lasting in effect. . . . The tendency to open himself to the immediate inspiration, to give himself to the needs of the present, and to put away the past, increased with his years.”
One of the great drolleries of this book is Rand’s play on the situation he lived, with progressive education seeking to throw out the classics—that which he himself taught. Rand is constantly poking fun, both at his objects and at his subjects.
280 “The views of any mediaeval authors about the Classics were formed, not only by what authoritative Churchmen of the time might say, but by what was transmitted from the past under the sanction of a Lactantius, an Ambrose, a Jerome, an Augustine, a Boethius. . . . the Pagan authors were immovably fixed in Christian education.”
Rand’s droll procedure is first to establish that each of these founders in fact enjoyed a thoroughly classical education: they were trained by classical methods and steeped in classical culture. Having reaped the benefits, they then affected to turn against it, which pious hypocrisy vastly amuses Rand. It is obviously an approach with some drawbacks, but Rand’s sardonically cheerful wit mitigates the more sour conclusions that might be drawn. Obviously, once he had the advantage of the training, once he had inextricably absorbed the benefit, Gregory could afford to turn on it. Rand’s argument is that we should read his dismissals lightly, considering them little more than necessary affectations.
37 “Of all the ancient philosophies, Christianity is most nearly allied to Platonism, though it is not that.”
53 “Dr. More well remarks that not the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus, but the Christian philosophy of the great Alexandrians and Cappadocians is the real heir of the Academy.” Rand hastens to include Cicero, and in fact makes, throughout the book, Cicero the real mediator of the Platonic tradition to the Church. It is a Latin approach seeking a European goal (Founders of the Western Middle Ages). It is no wonder he sets Cicero over Plotinus when his founders are Gregory, Ambrose, Jerome, Boethius, and Augustine. He was, after all, a professor of Latin.
63 “For from the first to the last the principle written is clear that, while Christian faith finds much in Pagan belief and Pagan morals to avoid, it may, or rather it must, draw freely from it sustenance on the thought, the poetry, and the inspiration of the past.”
There is his thesis: we must not overplay Christian protestations and invective against Pagan culture. They had to draw on it because they were in the midst of it and had to draw on something. In fact, they were well-trained in it, and the protestations the Christian fathers made must be weighed and evaluated carefully, rather than simply taken at face value. Or:
64 “Thus were the foundations of Christian humanism laid.”
93 “An intellectual Christian like Ambrose rejected such science precisely as he rejected the history of the Olympians, not because it was Pagan and wrong, but because it was stale and untrue.”
144 “This carefulness on the part of Boethius led to the creation of a new vocabulary for philosophy, worked out step by step in the Middle Ages and appearing in something like the final form in St. Thomas Aquinas.”
145 “By helping to create a new philosophical idiom, Boethius performed a valuable service to the development of thought in the Middle Ages.”
149 “For with both Cicero and Boethius, it is Aristotle that is harmonized with Plato and not vice versa.” And, one might add, Plotinus. And therefore, the early Middle Ages.
155 “But, most important of all, he illustrated, in these brief tractates, the application of logical method, as well as the new vocabulary, to theological problems, on the understanding that fides, the ultimate truth, may be supported by the free effort of human reason.”
Exactly what Rand means by ‘supported’ is somewhat ambiguous, but that in some sense it is true is clear enough. This is his case for Boethius: carefulness with words that leads to a new philosophical idiom which can be used to support the Christian faith. Boethius, in other words, sets up Aquinas.
181 “No poetry, and no religion, that is not also art will long survive.”
Interestingly enough, Rand’s somewhat chatty but witty and curious lectures are still being cited and consulted nearly ninety years on.
213 “Yet his purpose is not to supersede Pagan culture, but to include it. The culture which Prudentius embodied in his hymns, and which he passed on to the coming generations, could not dispense with the ancient authors who had contributed to its making.”
It was not possible, and poetry is an obvious place to see it. And if you consider that Justin Martyr wrote dialogues and apologies, like Plato, that Origen wrote On First Principles, that besides the Homilies and Commentaries, the literary genres employed by the Church Fathers had long antecedent with which there was more than passing familiarity, it is hard to object.
250 “There will be different effects from different men and moments of the period of Foundation. There will be a powerful effect from the master-mind of Gregory. But the ultimate victory will be that of the party of Lactantius and Cassidorus, advocates of Christian humanism in which the old education is vitally embedded in the new.”
Gregory being an example of higher hypocrisy regarding his rejection of the Pagan learning he appropriated, and Lactantius and Cassidorus being less so, or not at all.
268 “Augustine’s feeling about the ancient culture, if I may run on with this topic for a moment, is at once like, and unlike, that of Jerome. . . . They both show an inevitable reaction against Paganism after their conversion, but in a different way. With Jerome, whose agile temperament plunged readily into extremes, the reaction both took a more violent form and more quickly cleared away. With Augustine, it was slower in coming and more lasting in effect. . . . The tendency to open himself to the immediate inspiration, to give himself to the needs of the present, and to put away the past, increased with his years.”
One of the great drolleries of this book is Rand’s play on the situation he lived, with progressive education seeking to throw out the classics—that which he himself taught. Rand is constantly poking fun, both at his objects and at his subjects.
280 “The views of any mediaeval authors about the Classics were formed, not only by what authoritative Churchmen of the time might say, but by what was transmitted from the past under the sanction of a Lactantius, an Ambrose, a Jerome, an Augustine, a Boethius. . . . the Pagan authors were immovably fixed in Christian education.”
December 15, 2017
This is one of those books I wish I had run across earlier in my study of the Medieval period. But like Etienne Gilson, who started with Descartes and gradually moved back through the Middle Ages to the Fathers, I seem condemned to a similar anachronistic journey.
Though the book is approaching 90 years old (not my edition!) it remains a definitive book by a distinguished Medieval scholar on par with Henri Pirenne and Charles Homer Haskings. The style is that of those great men who wrote how they likely spoke, with gravity and erudition.
Rand begins by setting the stage of the era, which is the close of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The first chapter The Church and Pagan Culture offers a balanced approach to the relationship between the emerging Christian community as it deals with its new-found position of freedom, then ascendancy.
But the builk of the book is dedicated to brief biographical sketches of the major figues from the transitional era who had a great influence on Medieval philosophy, theology, mysticism and the relationship between Church and state. St. Ambrose The Mystic, St. Jerome The Humanist, Boethius The Scholastic, an interlude on The New Poetry and The New Education followed by a closing chapter on St. Augustine and Dante (two people not often linked, as Rand notes, "Dante...is St. Thomas set to music" (p. 279)).
E.K. Rand's generally favourable biographies of these figures is not hagiographical in the slightest. He allows the personalities of the Saints (sorry Boethius, not yet canonized) to shine through and additionally hints at their later importance by emphasizing their role (mystic, humanist, scholar, theologian) throughout the Middle Ages.
Rand's prose is light and readable and the subject matter as biography makes the reading enjoyable. A fine introduction to the period of the Church Fathers.
Though the book is approaching 90 years old (not my edition!) it remains a definitive book by a distinguished Medieval scholar on par with Henri Pirenne and Charles Homer Haskings. The style is that of those great men who wrote how they likely spoke, with gravity and erudition.
Rand begins by setting the stage of the era, which is the close of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The first chapter The Church and Pagan Culture offers a balanced approach to the relationship between the emerging Christian community as it deals with its new-found position of freedom, then ascendancy.
But the builk of the book is dedicated to brief biographical sketches of the major figues from the transitional era who had a great influence on Medieval philosophy, theology, mysticism and the relationship between Church and state. St. Ambrose The Mystic, St. Jerome The Humanist, Boethius The Scholastic, an interlude on The New Poetry and The New Education followed by a closing chapter on St. Augustine and Dante (two people not often linked, as Rand notes, "Dante...is St. Thomas set to music" (p. 279)).
E.K. Rand's generally favourable biographies of these figures is not hagiographical in the slightest. He allows the personalities of the Saints (sorry Boethius, not yet canonized) to shine through and additionally hints at their later importance by emphasizing their role (mystic, humanist, scholar, theologian) throughout the Middle Ages.
Rand's prose is light and readable and the subject matter as biography makes the reading enjoyable. A fine introduction to the period of the Church Fathers.
March 9, 2012
I think this would have been a five star work if I'd heard it in its original format (lectures), though of course then it wouldn't be being rated on Goodreads...
Having said that, this is still an interesting and engaging survey of the "Founders of the Middle Ages," which means exactly what it says. There isn't much Dante, Aquinas, Bernard or Crusades here. Instead this is really a book about the late Classical period, focusing especially on Jerome, Boethius, Ambrose, Christian poets and Christian educators, and the relationship between Christianity and Classical culture. If Christianity was divided over how to receive Classical culture (especially Plato and Homer), with some Christians wanting to reject it completely (Tertullian) and some wanting to embrace what is good in it, to the point of baptizing Plato (Clement and Origen), Rand argues that the Middle Ages was built on the foundation laid by the latter of those two groups. In each chapter, he highlights how Christians in the later Roman Empire adopted Classical schemes, tropes, and ideas and gave them a uniquely Christian spin.
I couldn't help but think about the modern Christian situation, and the example that seemed most useful was that of Thomas Jefferson. From a Christian's perspective, he wrote a mix of good things (the Declaration of Independence) and some bad things (the Jefferson Bible), and Christians seem not to be able to agree on whether he should be embraced or rejected, or some balance of the two.
Anyway, this was a useful and interesting book, though there's not much information on the Middle Ages proper, this is really more of a "late antiquity" book than anything...
Having said that, this is still an interesting and engaging survey of the "Founders of the Middle Ages," which means exactly what it says. There isn't much Dante, Aquinas, Bernard or Crusades here. Instead this is really a book about the late Classical period, focusing especially on Jerome, Boethius, Ambrose, Christian poets and Christian educators, and the relationship between Christianity and Classical culture. If Christianity was divided over how to receive Classical culture (especially Plato and Homer), with some Christians wanting to reject it completely (Tertullian) and some wanting to embrace what is good in it, to the point of baptizing Plato (Clement and Origen), Rand argues that the Middle Ages was built on the foundation laid by the latter of those two groups. In each chapter, he highlights how Christians in the later Roman Empire adopted Classical schemes, tropes, and ideas and gave them a uniquely Christian spin.
I couldn't help but think about the modern Christian situation, and the example that seemed most useful was that of Thomas Jefferson. From a Christian's perspective, he wrote a mix of good things (the Declaration of Independence) and some bad things (the Jefferson Bible), and Christians seem not to be able to agree on whether he should be embraced or rejected, or some balance of the two.
Anyway, this was a useful and interesting book, though there's not much information on the Middle Ages proper, this is really more of a "late antiquity" book than anything...
June 12, 2020
One of the first books to make me grateful for Dover Press editions. Explores the beginnings of the Middles Ages. The cover said E. K. Rand, not the spelled out first names.
June 27, 2015
Lovely little series of lectures given by a Harvard professor of Classics in 1928. It is brilliant. After a lifetime of study he seems to have captured a sense of the early Middle Ages/late Roman empire. The transitions of cultures and the shifting frame of reference from the Classical to the Medieval world are examined with precision and a witty urbanity that is rare in academics.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews