¶12 The true Middle Ages, for us, extend from the reign of Charlemagne to the beginning of the 14th century; at this latter date begins a new decadence which, through various stages, will go on accentuating itself down to us.1 There lies the true starting point of the modern crisis: it is the beginning of the disintegration of ‘Christendom’, with which the Western civilisation of the Middle Ages was essentially identified; it is, at the same time as the end of the feudal regime, quite closely connected with that same ‘Christendom’, the origin of the constitution of ‘nationalities’.2 The modern epoch must therefore be traced back nearly two centuries earlier than is ordinarily done; the Renaissance and the Reformation are above all resultant phenomena, and they were only rendered possible by the prior decadence;3 but, far from being a rectification, they marked a much deeper fall, because they consummated the definitive rupture with the traditional spirit, the one in the domain of the sciences and the arts, the other in the religious domain itself, which was nevertheless the one where such a rupture might have seemed the most difficult to conceive.4
←
→

Summary

For Guénon, the true Middle Ages extend from the reign of Charlemagne to the beginning of the 14th century. At this latter date begins a new decadence that accentuates itself down to us. This is the true starting point of the modern crisis: the beginning of the disintegration of Christendom, with which Western medieval civilisation was essentially identified, and the origin of the constitution of nationalities. The modern epoch must be traced back nearly two centuries earlier than is ordinarily done. The Renaissance and Reformation are resultant phenomena, made possible by the prior decadence. Far from being a rectification, they marked a much deeper fall, consummating the definitive rupture with the traditional spirit.

General notes

  1. vrai moyen âge … Charlemagne … début XIVe siècle — Rendered as 'true Middle Ages … Charlemagne … beginning of the 14th century'. Guénon redefines the boundaries of the Middle Ages in relation to conventional periodisation (which generally begins in the 5th century with the fall of Rome and ends at the end of the 15th century with the Renaissance). For him, the true Middle Ages, as a traditional and ordered civilisation, begin with the coronation of Charlemagne (800 CE), which unified Christian Europe under a double imperial and pontifical authority. It ends at the beginning of the 14th century, with the beginning of the decline of Christendom (crisis of the papacy (Babylonian Captivity, Great Schism), rise of nationalisms, weakening of the Empire, first attacks on feudalism). What came after (14th and 15th centuries) is already a phase of decadence, which announces the Renaissance. Guénon thus refuses to see the Renaissance as a 'rectification' (contrary to conventional historiography). ↩︎
  2. désagrégation de la « Chrétienté » … constitution des « nationalités » — Rendered as 'disintegration of 'Christendom' … constitution of 'nationalities''. Guénon identifies the deep cause of the modern crisis not in intellectual events (Renaissance, Reformation) but in a political and social transformation: the dissolution of the medieval Christian order (the unity of the 'respublica christiana') and the emergence of sovereign nation-states. Medieval 'Christendom' was a hierarchical society, founded on the spiritual authority of the pope and the cooperation of kings and lords within a feudal framework. 'Nationality' (the nation as an autonomous political entity) is a modern idea that breaks this unity and prepares the way for individualism, centralism, militarism and wars of religion and then of nations. Guénon sees in this process a decline, not a progress. ↩︎
  3. Renaissance et Réforme comme résultantes — Rendered as 'Renaissance and Reformation as resultant phenomena'. Guénon reverses the usual causality of modern history. It is not the Renaissance and the Reformation that caused the fall of the Middle Ages; it is the fall of the Middle Ages (the disintegration of Christendom) that made the Renaissance and the Reformation possible. These are consequences, not causes. The Renaissance is a cultural manifestation (literature, art, science) which, far from 'reviving' antiquity, took from it its most external and profane aspects; the Reformation was a religious rupture, but it would not have taken hold if spiritual authority had not already been weakened. The prior decadence is therefore the key factor, which conventional histories ignore. ↩︎
  4. rupture définitive avec l'esprit traditionnel — Rendered as 'definitive rupture with the traditional spirit'. Guénon judges the Renaissance and the Reformation severely. The Renaissance introduced the cult of the individual, the return to ancient paganism (in an aesthetic and literary form), the secularisation of the sciences and the arts (separation from metaphysics and theology). The Reformation broke the unity of Christendom and substituted for the authority of the Church free enquiry and religious subjectivism. These two movements, seemingly different, converge towards the same goal: the negation of every transcendent spiritual authority, the affirmation of the autonomy of human reason and the individual. They consummated the rupture that prior decadence had prepared. For Guénon, this is the point of no return of modernity. ↩︎