Christopher Dawson and the Demise of Christendom

September 2003 · Historically Speaking 23 Christopher Dawson and the Demise of Christendom James Hitchcock The English historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1971) is perhaps thoughtofprimarilyas a medievaUst. However, byfarthe largestbodyofbiswork dealt with the 19th and 20th centuries. As much as he was a historian, he was even more a cultural critic searching for historical answers to the crises of modern times. He remained a relentless critic ofindustriaUsm, urbanism, and acquisitive capitaUsm, aU the forms of materiaUsm which he beUeved were at the root of modern disorders. To these he opposed the CathoUc idea of a universal spiritual society and, without ideaUzing the Middle Ages, beUeved that this universal society had come closest to reaUzation duringthe 13th century . He identified reUgion as the heart of every culture and considered religion and art more important than economics . Few historians have ranged over the entire panorama ofhistory as boldly as he. His best-known and most widely read book, TheMakingof Europe(1937), dealtwith what modern people caU the DarkAges. But, while acknowledging the material decline which foUowed the fall of Rome, Dawson insistedthatthecenturiesafter400wereamong the mostspirituaUyrich inWesternhistory. The barbarians who toppled the Roman Empire were the material out ofwhich the Church constructed a new synthesis. The barbarians were not savages, according to Dawson, but had a society which was tribal as opposed to urban and national; its essence was kinship, its natural virtues were loyalty, love offreedom, and self-respect. The conversion of the barbarians made medieval civiUzation possible. The new barbarian kingdoms provided the sword, but everything else in society came from the Church. The violence of the barbarians was held in check only by the threat of God's superior wrath. Itwas impossible, according to Dawson, to convey to the barbarians the high traditions oflearned Christianity, and theywere convertedless bybeingtaughtnew doctrines than by being introduced to new powers. The saint stood in dramatic contrast to the warrior. Monasticism was the vital center ofDark Age Christianity as, paradoxically, the new civiUzationwas builtbypeoplewhowere successful precisely because they did not seek temporal power. Although sometimes overcome by the barbarian invasions, the monaslncreasing exclusionfrom culture was theprice Christianity hadtopay for its disunity, as it came to be viewed as the cause ofcivic strife rather than as the spiritual basis ofsociety. teries remained virtually the sole oases of peace in a war-torn world. Further, they assumed a role ofcultural leadership entirely foreign to their original conception. Dawson believed that the Middle Ages should be called the age offaith not because faith was then perfectly Uved but because it was the onlyperiod ofWestern historywhen aU aspects ofUfe were consciously oriented toward Christian beliefs. Of course, it was also an age ofcontradictions—cruelty and charity, beauty and squalor, spiritual vitaUty and material barbarism. Medieval poUtical unity came not from the dream ofuniversal empire or from the new territorial monarchies, but from feudalism . The rule of law disappeared and was replaced by personal loyalties. Dawson thought that nothing could be more different from Christianity than this system based chivalry, a fusion of Christianity with the northern barbarian traditions. The Crusades sought to tame or redirect warlike impulses and manifested, in Dawson'sjudgment, both thehighestand thelowestaspects ofmedieval civiUzation. The Church itself transcended national boundaries, and in some ways the state was viewed almostas a departmentofthe Church, charged with the specific task ofmamtaining order. A "theocratic papacy" defeated the "theocratic empire." Fromabout1075 to1300Europein factwas akind oftheocracyunder adominantspiritualpower,andthe great struggle was not between church and state but between two ideas ofuniversal order. PoUtical authority was in effectconferred by the Church, and the divine rightofkings was therefore balanced byconditions imposed by the Church, which amounted to a kind ofconstitutional monar^ chy. The Church became the greatlaw-giver and the papacythé first"state" to applylawto government. The new urban classes had no defined place in the feudal order and thereforefounded voluntary associations, such ás guilds, under reUgious auspices. From this came the practice ofself-government, one of the Middle Ages' greatest achievements. For Dawson, the most important elements ofa civiUzationwere spiritual and intellectual , and he regarded scholastic philosophyas the highest achievement oftheMiddle Ages. In the ancient world the powers of nature had first been divinized, then (in the otherworldly reUgions ofthe East) rejected. YetChristianityretained...