Sydney
6 April 2003

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Peace ... harmony

Rugby league scores a try in a GPS college

Passing the baton

Peaceful action for peace

Catholic Weekly takes a holiday over Easter

Tissue project wins archbishop’s grant

A voice for the disabled

Faith centre moves

Younger set is 50

Fr Chris is guest

Ecumenical Stations of the Cross in wetlands

US move welcomed on partial birth abortion

Project Compassion 2003 - Leyte farmers can face better future

Editorial - Victims of war

Letters - Ash Wednesday

Conversation - Fr Patrick Byrne, Rome-based head of Children’s Mission: Big project or small, ‘it must be for kids’

Voice of Youth - Renaissance of thinking about the Middle Ages

Celebrate Love? Live it to the ‘max’

Heading off conflict before it hits crisis point

Crucifixion story wouldn’t go away

New home for new breed of priest

Christian Brothers spread social justice net

Luke’s Story wins award

300 at social justice forum

Music lets Andrew ‘share my faith’ ...

Voice of Youth - Renaissance of thinking about the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is the most misunderstood period in the history of mankind.

This time encompassed about the 1000 years between the eventual fall of glorious Rome and the ‘enlightened’ Renaissance. It was the time of lords and castles, knights and armour, bishops and abbots.

The very term ‘Middle Ages’ was coined by people who hated it.

Thinking it was the low point between two ‘highs’ (Rome and the Renaissance), they therefore called it the middle period, but I often wonder if the people who actually lived in it thought so.

As a student of medieval history at the University of Sydney, I am often confronted by friends who have studied the topic as part of their high school education.

When I mention the Middle Ages they screw up their faces and, with an air of superiority, state that we are lucky the Renaissance came when it did.

Historians, however, have long been terming different periods of the Middle Ages as ‘renaissance’. We now have the Irish renaissance (500-700AD), the Caroliginian Renaissance (700-800AD) and the ‘Renaissance of the 12th Century’ to name a few. Therefore, people went from renaissance to renaissance, which cannot but sound a little suspicious.

A fellow student once told me that the highest level of learning in the medieval world was equal to that of a Year 9 student.

If St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theological, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, the castle of Gillard and Notre Dame Cathedral are all a Year 9 standard, then today’s students have a lot of catching up to do.

Even an average student in the 1300s at least knew the Bible off by heart.

Thankfully, most people who eventually really study the Middle Ages leave these misconceptions behind.

Nevertheless, in the lecture hall, the misconceptions of the Middle Ages run through a deeper vein.

Professors seem to see the characters of medieval times as mere scholarly abstractions, rather than real people who actually once existed.

The Church of the Middle Ages is spoken of as if it was a compulsory club, and being a medieval monk or priest as just an alternative path to power.

I remember in my first year being told that the Pope didn’t ‘become’ leader of the Church until the 1300s.

These misconceptions come from one simple fact. Only a Catholic has any chance of totally understanding the medieval period.

Unlike some of my friends, I can fully empathise with why so much money went into cathedral building and why so many people went on pilgrimages.

I can see the legacy they had, and the legacy they continued.

People still go to Holy Mass at San Damiano now as they did then.

Hopefully the biased teaching syllabuses at schools and the bad press the medieval period receives will disappear.

Historians and teachers have a lot to answer for.

Because of them ‘medieval’ is a byword for gross cruelty, famine, war and intellectual backwardness.

To paraphrase the French historian, Regine Pernoud, in this period of Nazi concentration camps, uncountable abortions, drug injecting rooms, terrorism and internet pornography, who could not be horrified bya time when Fra Angelico was painting, St Dominic was preaching, St Louis IX led France and Chartres Cathedral was being built.

Daniel Hill is a 3rd year student at Sydney Uni and is a resident of St John’s College.