sábado, 19 de novembro de 2011

Part 2 – Pendulum of History – The End of Efficiency

If we look to the first use of the word “modern” by Cassiodorus in the VI.th century A.D., it is possible to associate it with the perplexity of Cassiodorus about the lost knowledge of Greek language by the roman people. Symbolically it was a final mark of the period of the Hellenistic Culture, that was started by Alexander The Great, although he was macedonian.
So the Greek would be replaced by the Latin as an international language. This moment was more a cultural transition than a political transition. The political changes were greater before, even it was a continuous process.
In a first moment, it seems a paradox that after the falling of the West Roman Empire, the Latin stood as an international language, and before, while the Roman Empire was strong, the international language was the Greek...
At this point (VI.th century) the pendulum of history was between the Greek Period of Culture and the Latin Period, in a certain way. Latin language would stay important. Mainly in the academic environment until Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) who defied the rule which stablished that the Latin was the exclusive language of Science in the Universities, including books.
Of course that was a long period process, it was not an overnight change. The vernacular languages were coming step by step through centuries, but in the universitary environment, vernacular language was not recognized and free in the times of Paré. He was living in the XVIth century and the so latter called “Modern Age” was beginning.
Petrarca (1307-1374) and Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) were some of the first scholars that could be considered “founders” of the Renascence. They saw the historical period before them as a kind of a“dark age”, or a time of ignorance. They thought that times of knowledge were times of Greek and Latin Culture, until the end of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. Bruni was the first to stablish a triple division of History: Ancient, Middle and a New Period. It is interesting to see that, in the contemporary concept, Petrarca and Bruni were also in the “Middle Age”.
Christoph Cellarius (1638-1707) consacrated that periodization of History.
In XVIIIth century the “Illuminists” reinforced the Middle Age as a time of obscurity. They got “light” for them and let “shadows” for that centuries ago. So they did a kind of projection, thinking they were in the era of Reason and the medieval period was a time of ignorance. But, this alleged Reason soon would be shaked by “Terror” after the French Revolution...
The so called “Modern Era” was a time with more slavery than before in Western World, with more things like Inquisition than before...
In a certain way, to be “modern” was to try a comeback to the “ancient times” before the Middle Age...
We are not saying that Middle Age was a paradise, but if we look with attention we could see that each century has its good things and its bad things. Maybe the XXth century was the century with more violence than ever...  

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