The subtitle of Jean Gímpel’s The Medieval Machine was The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. While a full blown industrial revolution may be hyperbole, it certainly is a reversal of previous attitudes held by historians, especially historians like Edward Gibbon who characterized the medieval period as “the triumph of barbarism and religion.” In thus saying, Gibbon merely reasserted what the intellectual elite of his day considered the worst aspects of humanity--folkways and faith. However, as any modern historian can tell you, Gibbon is useful for understanding only his own day and age, and not the subjects on which he wrote. Even though no modern historian takes his claims regarding his subject matter seriously anymore, Gibbon’s attitude that the whole medieval period was characterized by intellectual and technological inertia persists. As Frances and Joseph Gies wrote in Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel, “to the average educated person, the most surprising news about medieval technology may be the fact that there was any” (1).
Such an attitude is understandable, however. Even though Johannes Stradanus in his Nova reperta listed nine great discoveries from the Middle Ages, these discoveries took on a substance much different from the way modern peoples, especially of Gibbon’s generation, understood technological discovery. Modern people have a tendency to attach great scientific and technological discoveries to the work of individuals, such as M. Curie, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, B.F. Skinner or Bill Gates. This was simply not the case in the Middle Ages where we find innovations arising from cooperate initiative instead. Thankfully, twentieth century historians such as Georges Duby, Jacques Le Goff and Lynn White have opened new doors in understanding the “innovative technology of the Middle Ages… as the silent contribution of many hands and minds working together.”
A cursory list of medieval innovation would include “the heavy plow, animal harness, open-field agriculture, the castle, water-powered machinery, the putting-out system, Gothic architecture, Hindu-Arabic numerals, double-entry bookkeeping, the blast furnace, the compass, eyeglasses, the lateen sail, clockwork, firearms, and movable type” (Gies, 3). I would add to this the counterweight trebuchet, innovations in armor and weaponry, the Gokstad-type ship, the pole lathe, important innovations to the vertical and horizontal loom, the spinning wheel, carder and toothed warper, and last, but certainly not least, that all impressive, yet so simple, cam shaft. It is easy for us today to scoff at medieval medicine, but it’s just as easy to scoff at nineteenth century medicine, and odds are that a hundred years from now people will scoff at our medicine. We shouldn’t forget the benefits procured by alchemy, the forefather of modern chemistry, and because calculating the date for Easter was so important, medieval astronomers made tremendous progress in charting the course of the heavens (and contrary to popular belief, no educated medieval would believe that the earth was flat).
There’s plenty of fodder for thought in the Middle Ages for those with a scientific frame of mind. While many discussions will require going beyond artificial timeline constraints, the period of interest is roughly from AD 476 to AD 1500. All view points are welcome, and even necessary. You don’t have to be a degreed historian to contribute (God knows, I’m not even close!)), and you don’t have to know all the answers or ask all the right questions. All you need is an interest in a time of old, very different from our own, but at times, remarkably similar. The first priority is to have fun, then to feed our curiosity, nurture our hobbies, pass on some information and maybe even learn something in the process.
--David
