The Age of Faith

by Will Durant

  * Our sole authority here is the Historia Ecclesiastica (v, 20) of Theodoret of Antioch; the tale may be a pious fraud.

  * Jerome’s translation was mostly direct, from the original Hebrew or Greek; at times, how-ever, he translated from the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, or Theodotion. His translation, revised in 1592 and 1907, is still the standard Latin text of the Bible for the Roman Catholic world. The “Douai Bible” is the English version of this Vulgate.

  * Copt is a Europeanized form of the Arabic Kibt, which is a corruption of the Greek Aigyptos, Egyptian.

  * St. Nicholas, in the fourth century, modestly filled the episcopal see of Myra in Lycia, never dreaming that he was to be the patron saint of Russia, of thieves and boys and girls, and at last, in his Dutch name as Santa Claus, to enter into the Christmas mythology of half the Christian world.

  * We cannot find in the extant works or reliable traditions of Augustine the words often attributed to him on this occasion—“Roma locuta est, causa finita” (Rome has spoken, the case is finished).

  * Cf. the theme line of Dante’s Paradiso (iii, 85): “La sua voluntate é nostra pace” (His will is our peace).

  * The Salic Law (xiv) equates the denarius as one-fortieth of a solidus, which then contained one sixth of an ounce of gold, or $5.83 in the United States of America in 1946. The medieval scarcity of gold and currency gave to the sums mentioned in the text a much greater purchasing or punishing power than they would have today.

  * Chlodwig, Ludwig, Clovis, Louis are one name.

  * A purple cloak had long been the distinguishing garment of the emperor; to “assume the purple” was already a synonym for acquiring the throne.

  * San Paolo fuori le mura was destroyed by fire in 1823, but was restored on the old lines in 1854–70. Its perfect proportions and stately colonnades make it one of the noblest creations of mankind.

  * In 558 an earthquake caused half the central dome to crash into the church. The dead Isidore’s son Isidore rebuilt the dome, strengthening its supports, and raising it twenty-five feet higher than before. Cracks in these supports suggest that the dome now lives a precarious life.

  † The Turks, after capturing Constantinople in 1453, covered the mosaics of St. Sophia with plaster, abhorring the “graven images” as idolatry; but in recent years the Turkish government has permitted a corps of workers from the Byzantine Institute of Boston, Massachusetts, to uncover these unsurpassed examples of the mosaic art. The Turkish conquerors almost atoned by adding four graceful minarets, completely harmonious with the domical design.

  * Miniature is from minium, an Iberian word for the cinnabar that Rome imported from Spain; hence it came to mean vermilion—a favorite color in book illumination.

  * A squinch is a diagonal arch mediating between the upper corner of a polygonal structure and the rim of a superimposed circular or elliptical dome. Creswell thinks this device was invented by the Persians.50

  * Ceramic luster is an overglaze of silver, copper, and manganese, fired in a muffle kiln to shield it from direct flame, and simulating the effect of gold or silver on pottery or glass.

  * The rediscovery of Arabia by modern Europeans illustrates the internationalism of science in the nineteenth century. It began in 1761–4, when Carsten Niebuhr traveled through the peninsula under the auspices of the Danish government; his published account (1772) was the first comprehensive description of Arabia. In 1807 Domingo Badia y Leblich, a Spaniard disguised as a Moor, visited Mecca, and gave the first accurate account of the pilgrimage ritual. In 1814–15 Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817), a Swiss disguised as a Moslem, spent several months in Mecca and Medina; his learned reports were corroborated by later travelers. In 1853 Richard Burton, an Englishman dressed as an Afghan pilgrim, visited Medina and Mecca, and described his perilous journey in two absorbing volumes. In 1869–70 J. Halévy, a French Jew, explored the sites, and recorded the rock inscriptions, of the ancient Minaean, Sabaean, and Himyarite kingdoms. In 1875 Charles Montagu Doughty, an Englishman, traveled from Damascus in the pilgrimage caravan, and recorded his vicissitudes in Arabia Deserta (1888), one of the peaks of English prose. In 1882–8 E. Glaser, an Austrian, in three arduous expeditions, copied 1032 inscriptions, which are now our chief source for the history of pre-Islamic Arabia.

  * The term Semitic is due to the legendary derivation of the peoples so called from Shem, son of Noah (Gen. x, 1). No clear definition of Semite can be given. In general the populations of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, and the Arab populations of Africa, may be called Semitic in the sense that they use Semitic languages; the ancient peoples of Asia Minor, Armenia, and the Caucasus, and the peoples of Persia, North India, most of Europe, and all of the Europeanized Americas may be called “Indo-European” as using Indo-Germanic tongues.

  † Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Everyman Library edition, IV, 322. It was one of the major achievements of Gibbon that he recognized the importance of Islam in medieval history, and recorded its political career with remarkable erudition, accuracy, and eloquence.

  * The nomad women, says Doughty, “wash their babies in camel urine, and think thus to help them from insects; … and in this water both men and women comb their long hair.”4

  * Preferable spellings of Mohammed and Koran would be Muhammad and Qur’ân; but it would be pedantry to insist upon them.

  * A river bed or valley usually dry in summer.

  * It was later sold to Muawiyah for 40,000 dirhems ($3200), is still preserved by the Ottoman Turks, and is sometimes used as a national standard.40

  * In the following sketch certain passages from the Islamic traditions will be used in elucidation of the Koran, but will be specified as such, usually in the text, always in the notes.

  * The term and policy were later extended to the Persians as also having a sacred book, the Avesta.

  * Mutassim (833–42), Wathiq (842–7), Mutawakkil (847–61), Muntasir (861–2), Mustain (862–6), Mutazz (866–9), Muhtadi (869–70), and Mutamid (870–92), who, shortly before his death, returned the royal seat to Baghdad.

  * The dinar (from the Roman denarius) contained 65 grams of gold, or .135 of an ounce, and would be equal to $4.72 ½ in terms of the price of gold in the United States of America in 1947; we shall roughly reckon it at $4.75. The dirhem (from the Greek drachma) contained forty-three grams of silver, worth some eight cents. As the purity of the coinage varied, our equivalents will be only approximate.

  * Mosque is from the Arabic masjid, from sajada, to bow down, adore. In the Near East masjid is pronounced musjid; in North Africa, musghid—whence the French and English forms of the word.

  * The oldest known form of the horseshoe arch appears in a cave temple at Nasik, India, c. second century B.C.;86 it was used in a Christian church at Nisibis in Mesopotamia in A.D. 359.

  † The Great Mosque of Damascus suffered by fire in 1069, was restored, was burnt almost to the ground by Timur in 1400, was rebuilt, and was severely injured by fire in 1894; since then plaster and whitewash have replaced the medieval decoration. On one wall of the mosque may still be seen the inscription that had overhung the lintel of the Christian church, and which the Moslems never erased: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth forever.”88

  * Every writer on Islamic science must record his debt to George Sarton for his Introduction to the History of Science. That monumental work is not only one of the noblest achievements in the history of scholarship; it also performs an inestimable service in revealing the wealth and scope of Moslem culture. Scholars everywhere must hope that every facility will be provided for the completion of this work.

  * Alcohol is an Arabic word, but not an Arabian product. It is first mentioned in an Italian work of the ninth or tenth century.35 To the Moslems al-kohl was a powder for painting the eyebrows.

  * It was restored to the Kaaba in 951 by order of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mansur.

  * The above translations, wor
thy of Edward FitzGerald, are from three books by R. A. Nicholson, listed in the Bibliography. These volumes, each of them of fascinating interest, have done much to reveal to Western students the variety and beauty of Moslem poetry.

  * This section is particularly indebted to the Survey of Persian Art edited by Arthur Upham Pope, and especially to the chapters written by himself. His devoted work in this field, like that of James H. Breasted on Egypt, is an enduring monument of meticulous scholarship and discriminating philanthropy.

  * In 1925 Reza Khan, afterwards Shah of Persia, authorized Arthur Upham Pope to enter the mosques of Persia, which had been closed to non-Moslems, in order to photograph the interiors. The result was an epochal revelation of the technical and artistic excellence of Persian architecture.

  * From Baldaq, the medieval Latin name for Baghdad.

  * By this term we shall mean the Moslem population—partly Arab, mostly Berber—of western North Africa and Spain.

  * A little jug of Saracen enameled glass was bought by the Rothschilds for $13,650.17

  * Cf. the first lines of Descartes’ Discourse on Method: “Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that even those most difficult to please in other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.”

  * Santayana, in The Life of Reason, adopted the same principle.

  * A minority of scholars holds that Jehuda did not commit his Mishna to writing, and that it was orally transmitted till the eighth century. For the majority opinion, cf. G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Cambridge, Mass., 1932, Vol. I, p. 151; and W. O. Oesterley and G. H. Box, Short Survey of the Literature of Rabbinical and Medieval Judaism, London, 1920, p. 83.

  * The Babylonian Talmud runs to 2947 folio leaves, or some 6000 pages of 400 words each. The Mishna is divided into six sedarim (orders), each of these into masechtoth (tractates) totaling sixty-three, each of these into perakim (chapters), each of these into mishnayoth (teachings). Modern editions of the Talmud usually include: (1) the commentary of Rashi (1040-1105), which appears on the interior margins of the text; and (2) tosaphoth (additions), discussions of the Talmud by French and German rabbis of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which appear on the exterior margins of the text. Many editions add the Tosefta or Supplement—remnants of the oral law omitted from the Mishna of Jehuda Hanasi.

  This chapter will also quote from the Midrash (exposition), addresses allegedly given by tannaim or amoraim, but assembled and committed to writing between the fourth and the twelfth century, and expounding in popular style various books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Some of the major Midrashim: Genesis Rabbah, on Genesis; Wayyikrah Rabbah, on Leviticus; five Megilloth (scrolls)—on Esther, the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesiasticus; the Mechilta, on Exodus; the Sifra, on Leviticus; the Sifre, on Numbers and Deuteronomy; the Pesikta, homilies on passages from the Bible.12

  * Catholic theologians interpret it as symbolically describing the union of Christ with the Church as His chosen bride.

  † Cf. the ancient Chinese belief that the operation and continuance of the universe depends upon the moral law; Heracleitus’ comparison of planetary deviations to sins; and Plato’s divine archetypal “ideas.” The theory goes back to Prov. viii, 22. Jesus accepted the eternity of the Law (Luke xvii, 7; Matt, v, 18). The Moslems, not to be outdone, taught the eternity of the Koran.

  ‡ No official Jewish council has ever accepted this Talmudic view of the Talmud. Modern Reformed Judaism rejects it.

  * The valley of Hinnom was a rubbish heap outside of Jerusalem, where fires were kept constantly burning to prevent pestilence. Sheol was conceived as a subterranean region of darkness that received all the dead.

  * From Qera, Aramaic for text; from qara, to read; cf. Quran.

  * Sepharad is the name applied in the Book of Obadiah (i, 20) to a region, presumably Asia Minor, to which some Jews were deported by Nebuchadrezzar (597 B.C.); the word was later applied to Spain. The Jews of Germany were loosely called Ashkenazim through their supposed derivation from Ashkenaz, grandson of Japheth (Gen. x, 3).

  * A mark was half a pound of silver, with a purchasing power probably fifty times as great as that amount today ($5.40).

  * This ceremony of bar mizvah (“son of command”…i.e., heir to responsibilities) cannot be traced beyond the fourteenth century,102 but is probably older.

  * The Cathedral of Lincoln still shows the relics of a shrine once raised therein to “Little Hugh,” and accompanies them with the following notice: “There are many incidents of the story which tend to throw doubt upon it; and the existence of similar stories in England and elsewhere points to their origin in the fanatical hatred of the Jews in the Middle Ages, and the common superstition, now wholly discredited, that ritual murder was a feature of Jewish Paschal rites. Attempts were made as early as the thirteenth century by the Church to protect the Jews against the hatred of the populace, and against these particular accusations.”

  * These propositions, formulated by Avicenna, were adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas, and were adapted by Spinoza to the idea of a self-existing substance.

  * A source for Aquinas’ doctrine of matter as the “principle of individuation”?

  * In 669 the army of the Orient “theme” demanded that the Empire should have three simultaneous emperors, to accord with the Trinity.33

  * A time-ingrown mistranslation of phis, which means reverent, faithful, kind, gentle, and much besides.

  * Many English towns have kept Anglo-Saxon suffixes—tun (town), ham (home), wick (house or creek), thorp (village), burh (borough, burg).

  * Leofric, in the legend, agreed to relieve the town of a burdensome tax if she would ride naked through the streets. All the world knows the rest of the story.

  * Viking is from Old Norse vik, a creek or fjord; vik appears in this sense in Narvik, Schleswig, Reykjavik, Berwick, Wicklow, etc. Vikingr meant one who raided the country adjoining the fjords. “Viking civilization” will here be used as meaning the culture of the Scandinavian peoples in the “Viking Age”—A.D. 700-1100.

  * The word first occurs in a tenth-century fragment, where it means a great-grandmother; by some prank of time it came to mean the technical laws of Norwegian prosody, and was so used by Snorri Sturluson when (1222) he wrote under that title a treatise on Norse mythology and the poetic art; this we know as the Prose or Younger Edda.

  * Lorenzo Valla, in 1440, so definitely exposed the frauds in the “False Decretals” that all parties now agree that the disputed documents arc forgeries.26

  * The Roman Catholic Church regards Leo VIII as antipope, and attributes no validity to his actions or decrees.

  * Yellow, white, blue, red, green, black, and violet received respectively the names of or (gold), argent (silver), azure, gules, vert, sable, and purpure. Azure blue was a color adopted from the East, hence one of its names, ultramarine; gules were trimmings of fur—usually dyed red—worn by Crusaders around the wrists and neck (Latin gula, throat). In the thirteenth century these heraldic emblems or blazons (i.e., shields) were used by abbeys, towns, and nations as well as by families. Over their heraldic emblems or banners old families usually placed a laconic motto—En bonne foi, Ni plus ni moins, etc.38

  * Fief, Latin feudum, is from the old German or Gothic faihu, cattle; it is kin to the Latin pecus, and, like it, acquired the secondary meaning of goods or money.

  * Gold spurs were the sign of a knight, silver spurs of a squire; to “win his spurs” (of gold) meant to attain to knighthood.

  * From the Spanish cruzada—“marked with the cross.”

  * Some feudal mansions hung their shields, or displayed their coats of arms, above their portals as a sign of readiness to provide hospitality; hence such later roadhouse signs as “The Red Eagle,” “The Golden Lion,” “The Gray Bear.”

  * It may have originated in Europe; cf. Speculum, April, 1940, p.
146.

  * This may be taken as the birth date of the Hanseatic League, though that name was not used till 1370.

  * “In this year,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1125, “King Henry bade that all the mint-men” (counterfeiters) “in England … should lose each of them the right hand, and their testicles beneath.”31