“".these ages which have not unjustly been called dark, are the most interesting of all, since they contain the germ of a thousand years of cultural development.”. Christopher Dawson, The Formation of Christendom. The great British Catholic historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) belongs with Arnold Toynbee among the most significant “metahistorians” of the 20th century. In an era of crisis for Western civilization, when Europe was being torn apart by extreme nationalism and the modern totalitarian ideologies, Dawson called forcefully for understanding and reinvigorating of the spiritual, moral, and intellectual foundations of Europes unity as a civilization. Dawson is attentive to all aspects of history including the political, economic, artistic, and geographical. But in a time of growing secularization, Dawson is particularly notable for highlighting the central importance of religion for an understanding of the human culture complex. His classic text The Making of Europe takes the unusual focus of “the dark ages” (i.e. the early middle ages) as a formative period for European civilization. Dawson had a profound interest in epochs of “cultural fusion” which are on full display in this early medieval era. There is on the one hand the process of fusion between the classical Greco-Roman tradition and Christianity; and there is a gradual integration of the Roman and Germanic cultures, as well as others such as the Slavic and Celtic. In this course, we examine the section of this text called “The Foundations” which deals with the cultural traditions that will interact and determine the subsequent course of Europe during the Middle Ages- the Greco-Roman classical tradition, the Roman imperial tradition, the Roman Catholic Church, and the barbarian invaders. In doing so we hope this survey will shed light on the foundations of Europe, which is, in turn, the historical basis of Western civilization. Note- the image of Sainte Chapelle for the course comes from Pixabay (ian kelsall) and states it is free for commercial use.
