The End of the World As They Knew It

Books Read This Week: Millenium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom 7/10 (Tom Holland)

I have very much enjoyed Tom Holland's books in the past; Rubicon (on the fall of the Roman republic) and Persian Fire (on the Greek-Persian wars) are among my favourite works of popular history. Millenium is his first venture outside the realm of classical history, and it is something of a disappointment; his first two books had a clear and very certain narrative thread running through them; Millenium just seems to meander from country to country, and decade to decade, occasionally passing by some interesting facts or figures, but it lacks a firm direction. This is a pity, as Millenium discusses a period of history much neglected; it is centered on the period between about 900 and the First Crusade in 1096 (i.e. it concentrates on the end of the first Christian millenium, and the fervor which this excited).

Much of the book focuses on the struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope for supremacy; somewhat surprisingly, Holland seems to favour the papacy. He seems to believe that the triumph of the Pope lead to the separation of church and state, and hence to modern democracy. This is something of a Whiggish interpretation, with two major flaws i) the aim of the papacy was the subordination of the state to the church, not the separation & ii) (rather more crucially) the Pope didn't win. I'm also somewhat puzzled by his affection  for William the Conqueror; or perhaps I should say rather his distaste for Harold Godwinsson. I've always found the Godwinsson a very sympathetic figure; brave, daring and possessing a good sense of humour (in marked contrast to the Normans who wouldn't know a joke if it got up and beat them to death with a battleaxe*). English historians have generally tended to agree; it is a strange thing that despite the fact that William won, and that he got to write all the history books, there has always been a feeling in England that really, Harold was the better man, and that he should have won. It may have something to do with Harold being the last actually English king England ever had; nevertheless it has been over 900 years, and you'd think we'd have gotten over it by now.

I also think that Holland is far more sympathetic to the Church of the middle ages than I can be; possibly I'm just not capable of the moral relativism that's required. It may be true that everyone was a violent, irrational religious bigot with a taste for murdering people who disagreed with them, but as far as I'm concerned the fact that everyone else was doing it (something which Holland maitains, but of which I am not convinced) is no excuse. After all, if all the other global religious leaders were jumping off a cliff, would you do it? (Don't answer that one Gregory VII).

And partly I just find the medieval mind very alien, in a way that (for example) the Roman mind isn't; Holland describes how a starving ill-clad shepherd boy found a gold coin in the mud, and rather than spending the money on food, or shelter, or warm clothes, went to a priest and paid for a mass for his father's soul. And somehow we're supposed to support the church that sees this as praiseworthy behaviour and crucially, actually took the boy's money. It's something I just can't do; I have a similar problem when I visit cathedrals. I find them inspiring and beautiful and stupendous, but there's always a little voice in the back of my mind saying how much better the lives of the artisans who built them would have been if a tiny fraction of the wealth put into building those prayers in stone had gone into social housing, pensions or healthcare.

* Housecarls FTW!