The Fourth and the Fourteenth Centuries

Abstract

EVERY CIVILIZATION of which we know anything has met at least one, and usually more than one, major crisis in its history. After centuries of relatively calm and continuous development, cracks appear in the value system and the social structure; cracks that are too wide to be spanned by the bridge of tradition and too deep to be filled by the rubble of rejected utopias and patchwork reforms. In such a crisis there are only two possible outcomes-drastic reorganization or even more drastic disorganization. Our own civilization seems to be in the midst of such a crisis. A historian may find some comfort, and perhaps even some enlightenment in considering earlier crises in the history of civilizations.' In this essay I want to discuss two periods of crisis-the fourth and the fourteenth centuries in Western Europe. I need hardly say that my centuries are very flexible chronological units; much that happened before 300 A.D. contributed to the crisis of the fourth century, and much that happened after 1400 was a continuation of the crisis of the fourteenth century. Nor do I mean to imply that only the history of Western Europe is relevant for our purposes. We could certainly learn as much from the crises that have periodically shaken Chinese civilization. But I know very little about Chinese history and I do know something about European history. Moreover, the two periods that I have selected seem to me to display most of the problems that occur in crises in any civilization. One final explanation: when I say Western Europe, I mean very nearly what is meant by the phrase as it is used today. In discussing the fourth-century crisis I am excluding the eastern part of the Roman Empire, which certainly shared in the crisis but solved it in a very different way, and North