Ideas

by Peter Watson

  24. The wheelbarrow (the ‘wooden ox’), by means of which loads of 300 lb could be carried along narrow, winding paths, was invented in the third century.

  25. Gunpowder was in fact only one of several advances in military techniques which were to have a marked effect on world history. The Chinese also perfected a selection technique for its forces–giving recruits a series of tests (shooting ability, eyesight) and assigning them to specialised units on that basis. New weapons were invented, including repeating crossbows, a type of tank, and a paraffin flame-thrower operated by a piston to ensure a continuous jet of flame. A treatise on military matters, General Principles of the Classicon War (Wujinzong yao), discussed new theories about siege warfare. Gernet, Op. cit., page 310. Published in 1044, this treatise also contains the first mention of the formula for gunpowder (the first reference in Europe is by Roger Bacon, in 1267).

  26. Gernet, Op. cit., page 311.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid., page 312.

  29. David Battie (editor), Sotheby’s Concise Encyclopaedia of Porcelain, London: Conran Octopus, 1990, pages 15ff.

  30. Gernet, Op. cit., page 320. See also: Hucker, Op. cit., page 204.

  31. Gavin Menzies, The Year That Changed the World: 1421, London: Bantam Press, 2002. Its thesis, that the Chinese circumnavigated the world and discovered America, has been heavily challenged.

  32. Gernet, Op. cit., pages 326–327.

  33. This was probably born in the great estuary of the Yangtze, 10 to 20 kilometres wide at its mouth, and which stretched inland for 150 kilometres. Here the transition from river to ocean is imperceptible. Gernet, Op. cit., page 327.

  34. Taoist experiments initiated the compass (see Chapter20). The idea of the experiment was also introduced ahead of Europe though it was not sustained. See Hucker, Op. cit., page 204. Chinese maps were also better than European maps at this time, using an early idea of both latitude and longitude. European maps were held back by religious concepts. Gernet, Op. cit., page 328. As Joseph Needham has pointed out, the Song were a pivotal people in Chinese history, and not least in naval affairs. The greater foreign trade promoted by the Song encouraged the rise of its navy, and the associated inventions and innovations. However, despite her prominence as a sea power, China always remained primarily a land empire. Politically and militarily, she faced her greatest threats from inner Asia and she always raised more financial support from agricultural taxes than she did from taxes on international commerce. This basic truth never altered, says Lo Jung-Pang, and helps to explain why, although the Chinese were so ingenious, it was ultimately others who took greatest advantage of her many inventions. Lo Jung-Pang, ‘The rise of China as a sea power’, in Liu and Golas (editors), Op. cit., pages 20–27.

  35. Yong Yap et al., Op. cit., page 43.

  36. F. W. Mote, Imperial China, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999, page 127.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Ibid., page 128.

  39. This meant that very poor families might have to save for two to three generations until they could afford to send a favoured son to a private academy.

  40. For this and other aspects of the examination system in Song China, see: John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pages 104–105, and passim.

  41. See Frye, Op. cit., page 164 for details about Chang’an.

  42. Chaffee, Op. cit., page 104.

  43. Fairbanks, Op. cit., page 95.

  44. Chaffee, Op. cit., page 134. See Hucker, Op. cit., pages 315–321, where he says later dynasties fell back on the sponsorship system.

  45. C. K. Young, Religion in Chinese Society, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1961, page 216.

  46. Gernet, Op. cit., page 215. See Frye, Op. cit., pages 195–196, for the organisation of Sogdian society, especially the absence of a priestly hierarchy.

  47. Gernet, Op. cit., page 216.

  48. Hucker, Op. cit., page 210, says Kumarajiva’s translation of The Lotus Sutra is the single most influential book in east Asian Buddhism. See also Gernet, Op. cit., page 218, and Frye, Op. cit., pages 145–147, for Buddhist complexes between India and China.

  49. Gernet, Op. cit., page 221.

  50. Young, Op. cit., pages 119–120.

  51. Gernet, Op. cit., page 226.

  52. See Frye, Op. cit., for archaeological discoveries at Dunhuang.

  53. In 1900, a Daoist known as Wang took up residence at the site of the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas, at Dunhuang in Gansu, an important monastic centre along the Silk Road. In the course of Wang’s exploration he noticed a gap in the plaster of one of the caves and, when he tapped it, he found it was hollow behind. This was how he discovered the so-called Library Cave, which contained 13,500 paper scrolls, from which daily life in eighth-century Dunhuang has since been recreated. These scrolls show that, in a town of 15,000, there were thirteen monasteries and that one in ten of the population was directly linked to these establishments, either as monks or nuns or as workpeople. Hansen, Op. cit., pages 245–251.

  54. Gernet, Op. cit., page 295.

  55. Hansen, Op. cit., page 198.

  56. Mote, Op. cit., page 339.

  57. See Hucker, Op. cit., page 370, for a portrait of Zhu Xi.

  58. Lixue: alternatively, li-hsueh, see Ibid., page 365. Yong Yap et al., Op. cit., page 198.

  59. Mote, Op. cit., page 342.

  60. Yong Yap, et al., Op. cit. page 198.

  61. Ibid., page 208.

  62. Ibid., page 170. Wilkinson, Op. cit., page 686.

  63. Yong Yap et al., Op. cit., page 171.

  64. Ibid. Wilkinson, Op. cit., page 679.

  65. Yong Yap et al., page 171. In the eleventh century, the emperor Song Huizong sent officials all over the country in search of rocks, strangeness of shape and texture being most sought-after, in particular limestone that had been turned into fantastic shapes by water, which were witness to the awe-inspiring forces of nature. These forces of life had to be lived with and the perfect garden was a reminder of that. See Hucker, Op. cit., page 260 for the role of grottoes and cliffs.

  66. Yong Yap et al., Op. cit., page 172.

  67. Gernet, Op. cit., page 341.

  68. Mote, Op. cit., page 151.

  69. Ibid.

  70. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, London: Eyre Methuen, 1973, pages 164ff and 179ff.

  71. Mote, Op. cit., page 152. And see Hucker, Op. cit., page 263 for the difference between ‘clerical script’ and ‘cursive script’.

  72. Mote, Op. cit., page 326.

  73. Ibid., but see also: Robert P. Hymes, ‘The elite of Fy-Chou, Chiang-hsi’, in his Northern and Southern Sung, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986. See also: Nathan Sivin, Science and Technology in East Asia, New York: Science History Publications, 1987, xv–xxi.

  74. Abu-Lughod, Op. cit., page 4.

  CHAPTER 15: THE IDEA OF EUROPE

  1. Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997, page 3.

  2. Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982, page 82.

  3. The argument was also developed in Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism, volume 2, 15–18th Centuries, The Wheels of Commerce, London: Collins, 1982, pages 68ff.

  4. Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communication and Commerce, AD 300–900, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001, page 794.

  5. Ibid., pages 704–708.

  6. Ibid., page 344.

  7. Ibid., page 789.

  8. Ibid., page 790. Recent underwater excavations have supported this argument. See: Dalya Alberge, ‘Shipwrecks cast new light on the Dark Ages’, The (London) Times, 9 June 2004, page 8.

  9. McCormack, Op. cit., page 796.

  10. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, O
p. cit., page 4.

  11. Ibid., page 3.

  12. Ibid., page 19.

  13. Ibid., page 357.

  14. Ibid., page 34.

  15. Ibid., page 360.

  16. Needham, The Great Titration, Op. cit., page 121.

  17. Ibid., page 150. But Frye, Op. cit., pages 194–195, says nearby Sogdiana was very different, with a thriving merchant class.

  18. Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science in Islam, China and the West, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993, page 120.

  19. Ibid., page 129.

  20. Ibid., page 189.

  21. Douglas North and Robert Thomas, The Rise of the Western World, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973, page 33.

  22. Ibid., pages 34–35.

  23. Ibid., page 41.

  24. Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700 (third edition), London and New York: Routledge, 2003, page 141.

  25. Ibid., pages 160–161.

  26. Ibid., page 180. See also: J. R. S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, page 103.

  27. Anthony Pagden (editor), The Idea of Europe, Cambridge, England, and Washington: Cambridge University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002, page 81.

  28. Ibid., page 84.

  29. R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, volume 1, Foundations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995, page 1.

  30. Pagden (editor), Op. cit., pages 83–84.

  31. Southern, Op. cit., page 2.

  32. Ibid., page 3.

  33. Ibid., pages 4–5.

  34. Ibid., page 5.

  35. Ibid., pages 5–6.

  36. Herbert Musurillo SJ, Symbolism and the Christian Imagination, Dublin: Helicon, 1962, page 152.

  37. Ibid. See Moynahan, The Faith, Op. cit., pages 206ff, for general events around the year AD 1000.

  38. Southern, Op. cit., page 6.

  39. Ibid., page 11.

  40. Ibid.41. Ibid., pages 189–190.

  42. Southern, Op. cit., pages 205–206. See also: Moynahan, Op. cit., page 242.

  43. D. A. Callus (editor), Robert Grosseteste, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955, page 98.

  44. Ibid., page 106.

  45. Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual: 1050–1200, London: SPCK, 1972, pages 161ff. See also Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind, Op. cit., page 335. Robert Pasnau, Aquinas on Human Nature, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

  46. Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, Op. cit., page 177.

  47. Ibid., page 181.

  48. Ibid., page 188. See also: Joseph Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450, London: Routledge, 1996, pages 132–133, who emphasises that Aquinas did not accord total autonomy to the secular world.

  49. Tarnas, Op. cit., page 191.

  50. Robert Benson and Giles Constable (editors), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982, page 45.

  51. Ibid., page 56.

  52. Ibid., page 61.

  53. Ibid., pages 65–66.

  54. Ibid., pages 150–151. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 229, for the range of views about Jerusalem.

  55. Morris, Op. cit., page 23.

  56. Ibid., pages 26–27.

  57. Ibid., page 28. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 216.

  58. Morris, Op. cit., page 27.

  59. Ibid., page 31.

  60. Musurillo SJ, Op. cit., page 135.

  61. Morris, Op. cit., page 34.

  62. Benson and Constable (editors), Op. cit., page 67.

  63. Ibid., page 71.

  64. Ibid. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 302, for Lateran IV and transubstantiation. This question of intention was matched by a keen interest in the twelfth century in psychology. For example, two lovers in Chrétien de Troyes’ Cliges spend several pages debating their feelings for one another. Many theological works–for the first time–examined whatever affectus or affectio influenced someone’s actions. Psychology was understood as the ‘Godward movement of the soul’. Morris, Op. cit., page 76.

  65. Georges Duby (editor), Arthur Goldhamer (translator), A History of Private Life, volume II, Revelations of the Medieval World, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988, pages 272–273.

  66. Ibid., page 512.

  67. Ibid., page 538.

  68. Benson and Constable (editors), Op. cit., page 281.

  69. Morris, Op. cit., page 79.

  70. Ibid., page 84.

  71. Ibid., page 85.

  72. See Musurillo SJ, Op. cit., chapters 10 and 11, for a somewhat different view, and the gradual escape of the Christian imagination from St Augustine’s influence, as revealed through poetry.

  73. Morris, Op. cit., page 88.

  74. Illuminated manuscripts show the same naturalism and interest in individual character.

  75. Morris, Op. cit., page 90.

  76. Ibid., pages 134ff.

  77. Christopher Brooke, The Age of the Cloister, Stroud, England: Sutton Publishing, 2003, page 110.

  78. Ibid., page 10.

  79. Ibid., page 18.

  80. Ibid., pages 126ff.

  81. Ibid., page 211.

  82. Morris, Op. cit., page 283. The speed of canonisation also reflected this change. See: Moynahan, Op. cit., page 247.

  83. Ibid., page 158.

  CHAPTER 16: ‘HALF-WAY BETWEEN GOD AND MAN’: THE TECHNIQUES OF PAPAL THOUGHT-CONTROL

  1. Cantor, Op. cit., pages 269ff.

  2. Ibid., pages 258–259.

  3. Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001, page 23.

  4. Ibid., page 23.

  5. Ibid., page 24. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 216, for other measures, including celibacy for all clerics above deacon.

  6. Grant, Op. cit., page 24.

  7. David Knowles and Dimitri Obolensky, The Christian Centuries, volume 2, The Middle Ages, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969, pages 336–337.

  8. Ibid., Op. cit., page 337.

  9. Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978, page 23.

  10. Ibid., page 27.

  11. Ibid., page 29.

  12. Ibid., page 31. For Ambrose, see Canning, Op. cit., page 34.

  13. Bendix, Op. cit., page 32. No less important to the developing notion of king-hood, and its relation to the papacy, was the notorious ‘Donation of Constantine’, now generally agreed to have been a forgery produced by sources very close to the pope himself. ‘It is impossible,’ says Walter Ullmann, ‘to exaggerate the influence which this fabrication had upon medieval Europe generally and on the papacy specifically.’ This idea, based on the Legenda Sancti Silvestri, a novelistic best-seller of the fifth century, alleged that Constantine had been cured of leprosy by the pope, Sylvester, and in contrition had prostrated himself before His Holiness, divesting himself of his imperial emblems–including his crown–and had performed the office of strator, or groom, and had led the papal horse for a short distance. The message could not be plainer. Walter Ullmann, A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages, London: Penguin Books, 1965, page 59.

  14. Cantor, Op. cit., pages 178–179. Charlemagne was subjected to a bizarre–but revealing–encounter in Rome in800. The pope of the time, Leo III, was unsuccessful and unpopular. So unpopular that he had been beaten up by a Roman mob, charged with ‘moral turpitude’ and forced to seek Charlemagne’s protection. When the emperor arrived in Rome for the trial of Leo, when he purged himself of the charges against him, Charlemagne went to visit the tomb of St Peter, on Christmas day 800, to pray. As he rose from his prayers, Leo suddenly stepped forward and placed the crown on the king’s head. This was a crude attempt to reassert the right of the papacy to award the imperial title and Charlemagne was not at all pleased–he sa
id he would never have entered the church had he known what the pope intended. Cantor, Op. cit., page 181. See also Canning, Op. cit., page 66, for a discussion of Carolingian theocratic ideas.