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ANCIENTS IN THE MODERN WORLD
Ancient Greeks and Romans are constant participants in modern discussions of vital issues. What do they have to offer? Can they really help? These are the questions explored in this blog.
David Potter, Professor of Greek and Latin in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, is the author of several books on ancient history and regular contributor to discussions of the ancient world in various media.
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Did the Catholic Church save the Classical Culture?
(Post date: Tues., August 25, 2009)
Gibbon knew more than people give him credit for, and I fear that Josh Levin will have him rolling in his grave. Levin writes:
But for America's intangible qualities to get preserved—our shared history, our ideals, our passions—someone needs to do the preserving. Edward Gibbon argued that the intro-duction of Christianity doomed Rome: "[T]he last remains of the military spirit were buried in the cloister." There's a stronger case to be made that the Christians kept Rome from being erased from our collective memory—that the Catholic Church was the one entity that maintained Roman hierarchies, Roman thought, and the Latin language as the rest of the continent descended into illiteracy (http://www.slate.com/id/2224050/).
Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire really is an excellent book (although the field has, believe it or not, moved on a bit in the last few hundred years). The first volume was an instant “bestseller” in London when it first appeared during the summer of 1776, and Gibbon became a celebrity. When he published volume 1, he had planned a work that would end with the Saxon conquest of Britain and a few “General Considerations on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.” This work was finished in 1781. In 1788, he brought out three more volumes of his history, carrying the story of the Roman Empire down to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
In the course of writing volume 1-3, Gibbon came to understand that Roman history did not end with the disintegration of the western empire into a series of Germanic successor states (which still used Latin as an official language of government). Nor, at the same time, did the continent of Europe descend into darkness or illiteracy. Gibbon realized this, and he realized that the history of civilization could not be reduced to simplistic sound bites.
What can we learn from the western Middle Ages about the role of a church in the preser-vation of culture? To be very, very afraid. Lets face it, if the Catholic Church had been a particularly good steward of classical culture, we would have a great deal more Latin literature than we do. There is a lot more Greek literature surviving from antiquity because the surviving Roman Empire had Greek as its primary language, and took a lot better care of it’s past.
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