A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

programme was one of renovatio, ‘renewal’, of an effective and centralised
imperial rule to which both Church and state would be subjected. He never had
the power to recreate the autocracy of an efficient Roman emperor, nor would
his clergy have allowed it. They valued their comparative independence too
highly. At the Synod of Frankfurt of 794, over which Charlemagne presided, his
Church leaders criticised the attempts of the eastern emperors to rule the Church
in the tradition of Constantine and Theodosius. They were no readier to accept
the hegemony of the pope. This meant that Charlemagne’s court at Aix-la-
Chapelle could provide a focus for cultural activity without competition from a
powerful Church hierarchy. His initiatives, such as the increased use of written
law codes and administrative documents, stimulated education. It was during
these years that Hrabanus Maurus compiled his collection of classical and
Christian manuscripts at Fulda. Yet this revival of learning depended on
Charlemagne’s personality and determination to create a powerful state. After
his death and the fragmentation of his empire, the revival ceased. When
Eriguena produced his On the Division of Nature in the 86os, it was said that no
one had the learning to understand it. Something more deep-rooted than the
imposition of ‘culture’ from above was needed, and in the ninth century the
European economy was too weak to provide it.
In 967 there was an isolated but significant breakthrough. A monk named
Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) was sent by his abbot to Septimania
in Spain, on the border between Christianity and Islam. Here he was able to
study Aristotle, Ptolemy and other medical, scientific and mathematical authors
from translated texts preserved by Arab scholars. While in the Christian world
the Latin texts of classical authors had gradually vanished or become despised,
Islam had valued ancient learning, and it would now be returned to the west, a
process that was to reach its culmination in the thirteenth century. Gerbert
mastered his sources to such effect that he was able to reintroduce knowledge of
the abacus, the astrolabe, perfected by the Arabs from earlier Greek models, and
the sphere into Christian Europe. There is only limited evidence of their use - as
regards the astrolabe, there is no record of any star chart being made in medieval
Europe, for instance, and there was no European observatory until the late
sixteenth century - but the possibility of a revival of learning was established. In
the twelfth century, Gerard of Cremona translated at least seventy-one, and
probably more, works of astronomy alone from Arabic sources. No monastic
library of the period is known to have had this number of pagan works.
The real upturn of the European economy took place between 1000 and 1300.