Marxist Medievalist: Archive

The three civilizations of the Mediterranean during the Early Middle Ages

In the Early Middle Ages, three different civilizations shared the Mediterranean Sea: the falling Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium; the rising Islamic regions in Iberia, Northern Africa, Palestine, Arabia; and the Frankish kingdom of the Carolingean.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire

To medieval thought, there was no “Byzantine Empire”: the territory and its citzens considered it as the Roman Empire, being Constantinople the bastion of the Eternal Rome of Constantine. It’s interesting to observe that, even as the official language was Latin, the current language of its population was mostly greek. The citzens of Byzantium considered themselves as Romanoi.

The splendor happened between the 5th and 6th centuries, times when the Byzantine Empire experienced conditions of wealth and expansion to all Eastern Mediterranean, Italy and South Iberian Peninsula.

After the 7th century, the expansion was over and the fall of the empire begun. Damascus and Jerusalem were lost to the Persian Empire, in 613-614. After that, the expansion of Islam, that conquered Syria and Egypt. Slavs and Bulgarians gained part of their territories, Normands conquered Sicily and Calabria.

From the 9th century until the 10th, the Roman Emperors took back their expansion, even conquering Crete, Chipre and momentarily Syria, Palestine and Bulgaria. But after the 11th century, again, the fall increases. The internal structures of power, such as taxing and military, weakened. The external pressures of different powers, such as the Turks sultanates and Bulgarian Empire, made Byzantium’s territories shrink. The Eastern Roman Empire at the 11th century was only a shadow of its former self.

I personally think that the weakening of the Eastern Roman Empire was the main cause to the phenomenon of the Crusades (the first being in 1095-1099). People mostly think the causes to the Crusades at the Western Europe, in France or England. As their internal economic, social, political and cultural of course matters in the historical events of the Crusades, I think that this large military expeditions wouldn’t happen if the Eastern Roman Empire wasn’t falling, and the Christianity (great mark of identity through all Middle Ages) wasn’t threatened.

[And by saying that I don’t mean to justify the violence made by christians against muslims. I just intent to insert the movement in the geo-political context of the Early Middle Ages]

(Main Source: BASCHET, Jérôme. A Civilização Feudal)

Jun 3, 20137 notes

#byzantine empire #geopolitics #request

What discussion about marxism and/or medievalism do you want to be featured here?

Jun 3, 20131 note

#question #middle ages #marxism

Jun 1, 201377,807 notes

#of course #this belongs here #monty python #politics

“Let us assume for the sake of argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx’s individual theses. Even if this were to be proved, every serious ‘orthodox’ Marxist would still be able to accept all such modern findings without reservation and hence dismiss all of Marx’s theses in toto – without having to renounce his orthodoxy for a single moment. Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders.” —LUKACS, Georgy. What is Orthodox Marxism? In: History and Class Consciousness.

May 29, 2013

#marxism #lukacs #method #always good to remember

“While the chaotic battles among the dominant feudal nobility were filling the Middle Ages with sound and fury, the quiet labours of the oppressed classes all over Western Europe were undermining the feudal system and creating a state of affairs in which there was less and less room for the feudal lords. True, in the countryside, the feudality might still assert itself, torturing the serfs, flourishing on their sweat, riding down their crops, ravishing their wives and daughters. But cities were rising everywhere: in Italy, in Southern France, and on the Rhine, the old Roman municipalities were emerging from their ashes; elsewhere, and particularly in central Germany, they were new creations. In all cases, they were ringed by protective walls and moats, fortresses far stronger than the castles of the nobility because they could be taken only by large armies. Behind these walls and moats, medieval craft production, guild-bound and petty though it was, developed; capital accumulation began; the need for trade with other cities and with the rest of the world arose; and, gradually, with the need there also arose the means of protecting this trade.” —ENGELS, Friedrich. In: The Decline of Feudalism and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie (1884 manuscript)

May 29, 20131 note

#marxism #engels #middle ages #feudalism

“In the Middle Ages the citizens in each town were compelled to unite against the landed nobility to save their skins. The extension of trade, the establishment of communications, led the separate towns to get to know other towns, which had asserted the same interests in the struggle with the same antagonist. Out of the many local corporations of burghers there arose only gradually the burgher class. The conditions of life of the individual burghers became, on account of their contradiction to the existing relationships and of the mode of labour determined by these, conditions which were common to them all and independent of each individual. The burghers had created the conditions insofar as they had torn themselves free from feudal ties, and were created by them insofar as they were determined by their antagonism to the feudal system which they found in existence. When the individual towns began to enter into associations, these common conditions developed into class conditions. The same conditions, the same contradiction, the same interests necessarily called forth on the whole similar customs everywhere. The bourgeoisie itself with its conditions, develops only gradually, splits according to the division of labour into various fractions and finally absorbs all propertied classes it finds in existence [1] (while it develops the majority of the earlier propertyless and a part of the hitherto propertied classes into a new class, the proletariat) in the measure to which all property found in existence is transformed into industrial or commercial capital. The separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn achieves an independent existence over against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class, become subsumed under it. This is the same phenomenon as the subjection of the separate individuals to the division of labour and can only be removed by the abolition of private property and of labour itself.” —

MARX, Karl. German Ideology.

[1]:[Marginal note by Marx:] To begin with it absorbs the branches of labour directly belonging to the State and then all ±[more or less] ideological estates.

May 29, 20139 notes

#marxism #middle ages #class struggle #karl marx

“When Europe emerged from the Middle Ages, the rising middle-class of the towns constituted its revolutionary element. It had conquered a recognized position within mediaeval feudal organization, but this position, also, had become too narrow for its expansive power. The development of the middle-class, the bourgeoisie, became incompatible with the maintenance of the feudal system; the feudal system, therefore, had to fall.” —ENGELS, Frederick. History (the role of Religion) in the English middle-class - 1892 English Edition Introduction to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

May 29, 2013

#marxism #middle ages #feudalism #engels

May 17, 2013320 notes

“Feudalism in Western Europe, then, emerged in the 10th century, expanded during the 11th century, and reached its zenith in the late 12th and 13th centuries. […] By the 13th century, European feudalism had produced a unified and developed civilization that registered a tremendous advance on the rudimentary, patchwork communities of the Dark Ages. The indices of this advance were multiple. The first and most fundamental of them was the great jump forward in the agrarian surplus yielded by feudalism. For the new rural relations of production had permitted a striking increase in agricultural productivity. The technical innovations which are the material instruments of this advance were, essentially, the use of the iron-plough for tilling, the stiff-harness for equine traction, the water-mill for mechanical power, marling for soil improvement and the three-field system for crop rotation. The immense significance of these invention for mediaeval agriculture, in which the prior ideological transformations wrought by the Church were of great importance, is indisputable. But they should not be isolated as fetishized and determinant variables in the economic history of the epoch. In fact, it is clear that the simple existence of these improvements was no guarantee of their widespread utilization. Indeed, there is a gap of some two or three centuries between their initial sporadic appearance in the Dark Ages and their constitution into a distinct and prevalent system in the Middle Ages. For it was precisely only the formation and consolidation of new social relations ofproduction which could set them to work on a general scale. It is only after the crystallization of a developed feudalism in the countryside that they could become widely appropriated. It is in the internal dynamic of the mode of production itself, not the advent of a new technology which was one of its material expressions, that the basic motor of agrarian progress must be sought.” —

ANDERSON, Perry. The Feudal Dynamic. In: Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism.

It’s interesting to identify how Anderson, differently from others marxists from the 20th century, doesn’t consider technological advancements as determinants in the constitution of a mode of production. If they are, obviously, part of the transition, the real transformation into the feudal mode of production can be found in the changes inside the social relations - new forms of serfdom and urban developement are both good exemples at the period between the 11th century and the crisis of the 14th century.

May 7, 201320 notes

#marxism #feudalism #middle ages #mode of production

Apr 1, 2013212 notes

Today is Hug a Medievalist's Day!

A revolutionary hug for everyone!

Mar 31, 20131 note

Mar 27, 20131,153 notes

#norse #middle ages #SKJALDBORG!

“

En Lixboa, sobre lo mar
barcas novas mandei lavrar,
ai mia senhor velida!

En Lixboa, sobre lo ler,
barcas novas mandei fazer,
ai mia senhor velida!

Barcas novas mandei lavrar
e no mar as mandei deitar,
ai mia senhor velida!

Barcas novas mandei fazer
e no mar as mandei meter,
ai mia senhor velida!

” —João Zorro

Jan 29, 20132 notes

#medievalismo #trovadorismo

“The current article deals with an analysis of a notarial instrument dated of 1297, at the city of Lisbon, where a violent conflict happened, between inhabitants of Lisbon and foreigners, most of them from the cities of Hermandad de la Marisma. We intend to observe socio-politics aspects in the creation of the document, problematizing the way in which the bourgeoisie of Lisbon uses the commune and its positions to resolve questions related to trade. To do so, we used the concept of class as a process and relationship from E. P. Thompson, seeking to identify, in the event, how the bourgeois used the relative autonomy of the councils for the administration of the city.” —Marconi, Bruno. Blood over coins: a socio-political analysis of a bourgeois conflict at D. Dinis’ Lisbon. (In Portuguese)

Jan 25, 20132 notes

6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes

Now, there are some problems with this article that I’d like to point out. But first, I’d like to say its pourpose is VERY GOOD. Middle Ages are misunderstood since it’s a political struggle over the interpretation of History and how it applies to contemporary perspectives.

Now, let’s see some points:

- In number 6, it seems like the author talks about “barbarians” as if they invaded ruthlessly and destroyed every knowledge of the civilized Roman Empire and Catholic Church protected the Roman books. If there is somehow a little bit of truth in that, we must be careful with some ethnocentrics positions: the so called “barbarians” (I prefer to call them by the area they originated, like “germans”) had their own knowledges, like those in the fields of methalurgy, that can’t be ignored.

- About the number 5 and the cleaning, its variable depending on the space. Cultures from south Europe and mediterranean had more continuity with roman culture (many of these derived from islamic influence!), and public baths continued. Those from North of Europe bathed less, no doubt. We must discuss, too, the threshold of ”nausea” that those people felt, and many of our current hygiene habits are not based on the search for best health of our bodies, but are more into the civilizational process of the West.

- Number 4 about knights… well, it’s quite interesting. Our views on knighthood are based on the romantics of the 19th century (many of them in a critique to the capitalist society). Actually, the most symbolic thing around knights was the use of VIOLENCE. Every signal that is socially related to a knight (armor, shield, horse, sword, spear) is violent. No critiques here to the answer of Cracked.

- About number 3… I think the source about the size of the shoes being related to the size of someone’s penis is not accurate, altho sometimes in medieval iluminated manuscripts it may have this connotation. It’s interesting to say that if the nobilty marriage was, indeed, a political relationship between the upper class struggle for power, in the lower class, however, people were more free to choose who they would marry with (as long as some christians practices standed along). And prostitution was really strong in medieval society.

- In answer number 2: YES! Women were not treated like cattle. There is this portuguese law saying that a man cannot sell any good from his house without consulting his wife. It’s an important matter on how women were not so aparted from society. The center of medieval society, howerver, was the MAN. Women were on the periphery. It doesn’t mean they didn’t have any politic, social or economic power. They acted in the cracks of the system.

- Finnally, number 1: yes, it’s true. People in the Middle Ages didn’t die SO YOUNG as people think, but it depends on dating: some scientific advances on the field of agriculture made life last longer after the 11th century.

Sorry for the English mistakes, people. As I said, it is a blog to train my writting :) I hope this generates discussion!

Jan 18, 20136 notes

#cracked #medievalism #middle ages #society

Jan 8, 201315 notes

#medieval #manuscript #Roman du Chevalier de Cygne #illumination

Jan 6, 2013245 notes

#history #reformation #protestant reformation #cartography #european history #europe

Jan 6, 201392 notes

#history #serbia #serbian history #royalty #stephen constantine #14th century #medieval #middle ages #stephen decanski #uros III #1322 #todayi n history #civil war

Dec 26, 2012

#Lisboa #medieval #história

Dec 25, 201229 notes