Enrique Requero

Were the Middle Ages irrational?

Word count: 5,199

There remains in the popular mindset of the West an idea that the Middle Ages were an obscure, backward and religiously fanatical period in European history. And yet, many of the institutions and ideas that are held to be the foundations of Western culture and learning, such as parliamentary democracy, university education and health care have their root in that period. The millennium from the end of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance and Enlightenment is labelled the Dark Ages. Europe, it is claimed, was trapped in a period of darkness in which for centuries the minds and hearts of Europeans were tyrannized by superstitious Catholic Christianity. It was an age of vicious violence and cultural stagnation. It essentially was an age of irrationality. The denigration of the Middle Ages as an irrational and dark period was started with sixteenth-century humanists like Giorgio Vasari, who championed Roman and Greek culture and, for their own purposes, cast aside medieval scholarship as barbaric. For instance, in the introduction to his Live of the Artists (1550 Vasari described how the state of the arts had declined with the transition from the classical period to the Middle Ages, touching bottom with Gothic art. Vasari was one of the first to coin the term renaissance when he wrote about how after the decline of the arts in the Middle Ages, these were now reviving in the Italy of this time. Humanists also ignored how what they knew about classical culture had been made available to them. Thomas Cahill has described the incredible work carried out by Irish monks after the fall of Rome. These monks preserved and copied plenty of classical works and then completed a missionary task of transmitting all this old learning to the new tribes which settled in Europe.1 Nonetheless, the negative ideas about the Middle Ages that emerged in the Renaissance were given continuity by Protestant writers of the post-Reformation centuries, who desired not to give an ounce of credit to Catholics and thus argued that nothing worthy of admiration had been taught in universities before the Reformation.2 A fine example of these were English Whig

1 2

Cahill (1995), pp.1-9. Hannam (2009), p.8.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

historians, strongly criticised by Herbert Butterfield3 and who defended a vision of history in which civilization triumphed through Protestantism, free markets and the British Empire.4 Eighteenth-century French rationalists called for rational men to throw off the yoke which religion had forced upon them. They made use of the Dark Ages narrative to show how mankind was moving forward despite the opposition of the Church and the absolutist monarchs. By the twentieth-century, popular historians have come to base their works on previous popular histories. Negative understandings of the Middle Ages are given continuity through films and TV shows, and are deeply seated in the public subconscious. If any evidence of reason in the Middle Ages is discovered, we rush to label it as early-renaissance to preserve the bad reputation of the period.5 However, the more the Dark Ages thesis is studied, the more it unravels. Most historians now identify a movement for change in Europe from the 1100s which they refer to as the twelve-century renaissance. Calling it a renaissance implies that it was a process of moving away from a previous medieval tradition which historians are still able to label as irrational. Ironically however, some historians also talk of a Carolingian Renaissance!6 It would seem that the Middle Ages were after all just a succession of renaissances! Twelvecentury Bernard of Chartres said that he and his contemporaries were like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.7 He did not see his predecessors as obscure and irrational. If there was a twelve-century renaissance at all, it was because new developments at the time rested on foundations laid in the previous centuries. Among the issues we have studied in the Crime and Punishment module, negative assumptions about the Middle Ages and the practices of the period are frequently made by some of the authors read. Halsall, for example, characterizes the Middle Ages solely by the apparent extreme levels of violence (and darkness) that abounded in this time in history. He talks of this period as dark because it separated the light of Roman civilization and the light of the humanists later on.8 Thus, while he recounts plenty evidence of violence and irrationality in the Middle Ages, he seems to ignore that it was the Romans who invented violence as a public spectacle in the coliseums and settled political arguments in a Julius Caesar-like manner, or that it was in the Age of Reason that beliefs in witchcraft peaked. When studying different understandings of law, crime and punishment that have emerged throughout history, it is necessary to bear in mind that these understandings are determined by
3 4

Butterfield (1931). Hannam, p.8. 5 Ibid., pp.3-4. 6 Bartlett (1986), p.72. 7 Salisbury (1159), p.167. 8 Halsall (1998), pp.1-5.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

the culture in which they originate. Thus, if it is claimed that medieval understandings of law, crime and punishment were inherently irrational (referring to different theories that have been made about realities like the ordeals, dealt with below), it is because it is assumed that the whole cultural context in which they were brought forth was irrational as well. But was it really? If the whole culture was irrational, how can the medieval foundations of Western culture mentioned above be explained? Can rationality evolve from irrationality? Moreover, when we call some of the practices of the time irrational, what do we really mean by that? Does irrational mean unempirical, inefficient or immoral? A vast body of studies on rationality has been under development since the last decades of the twentieth-century. This has involved mainly social scientists, philosophers and anthropologists, but now an increasing number of historians are engaging in the debate.9 Most academics agree that logical consistency and coherence are the distinctive features of rationality.10 DAvray defines rationality as the type of thinking which involves some general principles and strives for internal consistency, where the key causes of the idea or action are different from the reasons the person or people would give for it, even to themselves. 11 The mentioning of people reflects the main focus of scholarly studies of rationality, which has been the study of the concept of rationality, its features and its use for the academic analysis of different cultures. Tambiah shows how although there are a myriad of different positions adopted by scholars of the subject they could all be divided into two main groups which he calls the unifiers and the relativizers.12 This division highlights the different understandings of rationality and the subsequent possibilities each of these groups offer for the study of relations between cultures. Philosophers like Alasdair McIntyre and Peter Winch are prominent among the unifiers, and they see rationality according to the above mentioned notion, which refers to rationality as logical rules constrained by consistency, coherence and non-contradiction. The unifiers maintain that there is a single rationality common to all human beings and that therefore, it is possible to make trans-cultural and comparative judgements to assess the degrees of rationality and irrationality manifested in different systems of beliefs. For unifiers, it is also possible to grade these systems as superior or inferior to each other. Unifiers also accept as feasible the translation of cultures, that is, the translation of another peoples conceptions into the

dAvray, Rationalities in History (2010), p.1. Tambiah (1990), p.117. 11 dAvray, Medieval Religious Rationalities (2010), p.2. 12 Tambiah, p.115.
10

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

categories of ones own language.13 Unifiers would argue that it is the translation of cultures what in fact also allows for the case of relativism to be stated. Relativizers, led by Wittgenstein, Hacking and others, deny the existence of a single rationality and argue instead for multiple rationalities, which they also refer to as different language games, forms of life or styles of reasoning.14 For them it is difficult to carry out satisfying trans-cultural judgements because there is always too high a risk of making categorical mistakes, which are essentially defined as faulty judgements of other systems of belief and the misrepresentation of their concepts with the categories of our own culture. Most of the scholarship on rationality is aimed at its practical use for the study of different cultures which co-exist in time and in the global space. DAvray explains how the increasing application of these studies to history is made evident by the emergence of publications like the Journal of Global History, whose aim is the development of a metanarrative. This narrative will produce a global history disengaged from national, regional, ethnic and religious traditions and will allow for deeper understandings of cultural diversities and the state of the human condition.15 The growth in historical scholarship dealing with rationality suggests that the position of the unifiers is gaining the upper hand. The more academics work in this field, the greater will be the numbers accepting a universal rationality on which to solidly base studies. Nonetheless, even when the position of the unifiers is accepted, there is still a certain danger of falling into the categorical mistakes of which the relativizers talk about. Hence, more and more scholars propose with their studies different ways of avoiding this problem. Therefore, and coming back to the central topic of this essay, those who term the Middle Ages as rational or irrational, do so within the context of the theses defended by the unifiers (for a relativizer it would be pointless to compare different cultures using the same categories), although they could at the same time be getting it wrong and falling into categorical mistakes. Following dAvrays position, I would propose here that studies on rationality do not only allow historians to compose meta-narratives comparing from a neutral point of view different sets of themes present in co-existing (in the world, in the same period of time) cultures, but that these studies also allow for a meta-analysis which makes chronological comparisons between

13 14

Ibid., p.121. Ibid., pp.115-6. 15 dAvray, Rationalities in History, p.6.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

different periods within the same culture, as if different cultures altogether were being compared.16 To some extent, the European Middle Ages and Modernity could be considered as different cultures, but this should only be for the sake of the technicalities involved in the study of rationality in the former. Considering our medieval past as an altogether different culture while studying it, would force us to pay special attention so as not to fall into the categorical mistakes which can be frequently made when comparing cultures that are truly different. A recurrent categorical mistake in this respect is the all-too-frequent tendency of some nowadays who conclude that the Middle Ages were irrational, following studies which analyse and judge practices of the period using terms and notions belonging to the twenty-first-century. Nevertheless, considering European Medieval culture as different from ours could only be taken this far. This is because a proof of the rationality that was present in European culture between the fifth and sixteenth centuries is the fact that modern Western culture is indeed very medieval. A significant sector of modern Western culture can be traced back to the Middle Ages. If the one is not a consequence of the other, the undeniable continuity between the two would demand an explanation. In his two most recent works (published September 2010) David L. dAvray deals with some of the matters which concern this essay. In Rationalities in History he uses Max Webers social theories to propose a more empirical and categorical-mistake-free way of doing analytical/comparative history. Medieval Religious Rationalities is presented as a companion volume which seeks to apply the Weberian approach proposed in the first book to examine more scientifically some of the assumptions made about rationality in the Middle Ages. DAvray makes use of the four ideal-types of rationality which Max Weber proposed in his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society). For the purpose of his work to compare the development of Western economy and societies with that of other cultures , Weber proposed the distinction of four different types of rationality to be used when judging cultural practices which are alien to us due their separation in time or space. The first he calls purpose or instrumental rationality, which is used by actors to rationally pursue and calculate the attainment of specific ends through the assessment of expectations related to the expected behaviour of external agents or objects. The second type of rationality is labelled value/belief and assesses actions insofar as they are prompted by internal movements in the actor which relate to his or her alliance to a certain system of beliefs or moral values. The third type he calls affectual and

16

Ibid.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

explains actions by referring to the passions or emotions undergone by the actor. Traditional rationality is the last of Webers ideal-types and refers to habits acquired by the actor through life in society. DAvray points out that the last of the two ideal-types could be considered as modes of thinking which may not be seen as rational but which are not irrational either because they can be explained rationally.17 To illustrate this, he mentions the blood feud case recorded by Gregory of Tours and which we studied in one of our first seminars. In it, many years after an extremely violent family feud had been settled between two men, one of them invites the other for dinner. They seem to be enjoying each others company when at one point the host jokingly reminds his guest that all the wealth he (the host) enjoys is at the expense of having killed the guests relatives. Infuriated by the remark and fearing he would be called a woman if he did not react to it, the guest strikes a deathly blow to his host. Although it could be said that this clearly is an example of medieval irrational violence, using the Weberian ideal-types the judgement of it could be made more precise by allowing for a middle ground between the realms of rationality and irrationality: Weber may have considered this action irrational in terms of value or instrumental rationality, but probably not in terms of affectual rationality. Taking into account the extreme passions of anger the guest was made to go through by the host, it is not that difficult to explain why that reaction followed. Both Weber and dAvray maintain that a certain degree of interaction between the different ideal-types is possible when trying to provide a rational explanation for any given event in history. DAvray, nonetheless, mainly concentrates on the interaction between instrumental and value rationalities to reassess some known medieval irrational events, but also to reassess the whole period using newly found evidence from the council that was put in charge of materialising the conclusions reached at the Council of Trent. The Scottish philosopher Alasdair McIntyre proposes in his work Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, the theory of the rationality of traditions, which could be useful to help prevent the student of other periods in history from making categorical mistakes. McIntyres work is also more relevant for the contents of our course and this essay because he very closely links, in a relationship of dependence, the concepts of justice and rationality. He refers mainly to different and conflicting conceptions of justice that are present in Western culture as the result of centuries

17

DAvray, Medieval Religious Rationalities, p.6

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

of interactions between different traditions within it and argues that these conceptions of justice typically associate to different and incompatible conceptions of practical rationality.18 In each of the traditions he analyses Classical, Augustinian, Aristotelian-Thomistic, Scottish Rationalistic , ideas of justice and practical rationality are used for intellectual enquiry and are at the same time related to overall views of human life, its place in nature and the specific historical contexts in which these traditions develop.19 Thus, the conceptions of rational enquiry which are embodied in each tradition, determine the way in which the standards of rational justification emerge from and as part of a history in which they are proved correct by the way in which they overcome the limitations of and provide remedies for the defects of their predecessors within the history of the same tradition.20 So, in other words, what the traditions of rational enquiry do is to allow for the people who belong to these to solve rationally the epistemological crises which emerge within all cultures. Epistemological crises take place when cultures have to deal with internal incoherences21 and require a certain level of inner rationality within that given culture to solve them. Hence, when in the Fourth Lateran Council we see Western Christendom dealing with internal incoherences such as the practice of ordeals or the way some aspects of the faith were lived on a day-to-day basis, we should conclude that a certain level of rationality was present in the culture of the time. This rationality provided thinkers with the intellectual tools needed to ponder on these incoherences over the centuries until a definite definition of them was finally achieved in 1215. Had the medieval culture been completely irrational, these incoherences would not even have been spotted in the first place. In contrast with this, evidence of lesser degrees of rationality can be identified in other cultures by their incapacity for self-criticism. For instance, in the sixteenth-century debate in the Spanish Empire over the human rights of Native Americans, those who supported slavery backed up their position by arguing that Indians were less rational and thus less human than Europeans because the Indians had failed to grasp the irrationality and inhumanity of some of their cultural practices, such as human sacrifice. Although this issue is more related to questions of natural law (and the capacity of all humans to know it, and a systematic enslavement of the peoples of less rational cultures does not necessarily follow), it is clear that had the cultures of

18 19

McIntyre (1988), Introduction. Ibid., pp.349,389-90. 20 Ibid., p.7. 21 Ibid., pp.362-3.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

some Mesoamerican peoples been rational enough, they would have realised the irrationality of some of their customs.22 Although McIntyre shows how different traditions produce different justices and rationalities, he is still faithful to his position as a unifier and argues that communication between the different traditions is possible and that their differing stances can be brought to a compromise rationally.23 Nonetheless, he takes his discourse from here on to one of the things he is most famous for, which is his criticism of the Enlightenment and its repercussions on modern Western culture. The Enlightenment, McIntyre maintains, aimed to provide a set of standards and methods of rational justification by which alternative courses of actions could be termed rational or irrational, just or unjust, enlightened or unenlightened; regardless of the authority of the traditions it sought to displace by the power of reason.24 This new type of rational justification was to appeal to principles undeniable to any rational person, and these principles were essentially those that came to be accepted by the majority of educated people. 25 Nonetheless, ever since the Age of Reason, intellectuals have failed to agree on these principles and for McIntyre the only legacy of the Enlightenment is the provision of an ideal of rational justification which has proved impossible to attain.26 This has led to a wave of intellectual pessimism about rationality and has provoked the advent of widespread relativism in our culture today. This relativism prevents not only the overcoming of epistemological crises, but also undermines the ability to identify the very internal incoherences which lead to these crises.27 McIntyre furthermore argues that the Enlightenment and its consequences have also led to the emergence of liberalism as a tradition of rational enquiry in its own right. In this tradition, we are asked to act as if there were shared standards of rationality accepted by and accessible to all and that intellectual forums such as universities have become institutions committed to upholding a fictitious objectivity.28 This apparent intellectual neutrality is untrue because the

22

One of the most prominent defenders of slavery in the Spanish Empire was Juan Gins de Seplveda. He published a tract entitled Concerning the just cause of the war against the Indians in 1544, arguing Indians were natural slaves because of the irrationality of their culture. He was famously contradicted by the Dominican Bartolom de Las Casas, author of the pro-human rights Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). 23 McIntyre, p.352. 24 Ibid., p.6. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., p.7. 28 Ibid., p.399.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

disagreements between traditions on concepts of justice and rationality remain, ignored and undebated.29 For McIntyre, neutrality is not possible because the person outside all traditions lacks sufficient rational resources for enquiry and a fortiori for enquiry into what tradition is to be rationally preferred (...) to be outside all traditions is to be a stranger to enquiry; is to be in a state of intellectual and moral destitution.30 All this is highly dangerous when applied to history and in particular to the study of rationality in the Middle Ages. If the historian is not aware that he or she is making assertions from the liberal tradition of rational enquiry as defined by McIntyre (which is the most likely thing to happen nowadays in the West), then there is the risk of ignoring the understandings of justice and reason that belonged to the tradition of rational enquiry predominant in the historical context being studied: a categorical mistake of the highest calibre. The developments carried out by scholars on rationality can already be seen reflected in some of the studies concerned with specific aspects of the Middle Ages such as the use of ordeals. Van Caenegem and Colman, for instance, claim that it is essential to place studies on the topic in the context of the socio-judicial structures in which these practices emerged,31 so as not to allow the apparent irrationality of some of the [medieval] methods of proof to cast a pall of irrationality over the whole process.32 A new concern among historians for fairly assessing these traditionally labelled irrational practices within the context in which they were practiced, has led some to come up with opinions which could well be expressed with the Weberian categories proposed by dAvray. Most accept now that although ordeals may have been irrational as judicial modes of proof, the practice in itself could be considered rational if more attention were paid to its function. For van Caenegem, ordeals were rational because they had a useful purpose; they were efficient and reliable for the deliverance of justice in difficult situations in which no other methods of proof were available. Thus, ordeals could be considered a rational means to an end.33 For Peter Brown, if attention is paid to the communities and societies in which ordeals were used, then in medieval societies ordeals were satisfactory solutions to some difficulties.34 For him, ordeals were

29 30

Ibid., p.2. Ibid., p.367. 31 Colman (1974), p.575. 32 RC van Caenegem (1990), p.268. 33 Ibid., p.269. 34 Quoted in Bartlett (1986), p.35.

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

rational because they were an efficient instrument of consensus, for reassuring and peacekeeping in communities.35 Bartlett, like Brown, agrees that ordeals could be seen as rational if they are assessed in terms of instrumental rationality. Nonetheless, he disagrees with Brown in seeing them as therapeutic devices to promote social consensus.36 In Bartletts view, ordeals were intrusive methods used by lords to solve hard cases as well as highlighting their rule-making role (they were the ones who determined when ordeals were to be used). Ordeals were mostly used in criminal cases dealing with out-sworn, foreigners and the unfree. None of these were part of the community. Moreover, the interpretation of ordeals frequently gave way to disputes among different factions in the community, and they were many a time used by order of the lord against social consensus, to force agreement and thus ensure peace.37 All these historians could be seen as assessing the practice of ordeals in terms of the instrumental rationality proposed by dAvray. Furthermore, his suggestion of an interplay between instrumental and value rationality can also be identified in the works of these historians because, while they all explain the possible practical efficiency which ordeals granted, they all also highlight the belief in immanent justice which was widespread in medieval society (a belief that divine intervention was continuous and could be invoked automatically with the ordeals).38 At the same time, however, many in the Middle Ages challenged this belief in immanent justice, which was mainly popular, because it contradicted the values in which European medieval culture was based. While some historians try and understand the possible rationality behind ordeals using dAvrays interplay between value and instrumental rationalities, the suppression of the practice is often explained in a way that falls more in line with McIntyres rationality of traditions and the epistemological crises which each tradition has to face from time to time. The disappearance of ordeals is usually explained in the context of the so called twelfthcentury renaissance, a part of which was a revolution of legal practices. 39 Many have explained this revolution in terms of an adaptation to social changes. Seemingly a significant increase of the population invalidated the efficiency of the methods of proof such as the ordeal which were dependent on their application in close-knit social contexts.40 A major factor in the abolition of the practice was also the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 which actively prohibited it but which
35 36

Ibid. Ibid., p.37. 37 Ibid., pp.38-9 38 Peters (1985), p.42. 39 Peters, p.40. 40 Quoting Brown in Bartlett, p.35.

10

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

also further developed practices such as the sacramental confession, which theoretically invalidated the ordeal (how could guilt be miraculously demonstrated on someone who had been given absolution for his/her sins?).41 The increase in the practice of confession not just as a sacrament but also as a mode of proof the Queen of Proofs42 prompted a shift from accusatorial to inquisitive system of criminal justice which was followed by developments in legal structures and practices, with the emergence of the Inquisition, juries in England and an increased reliance on the practice of torture to extract confessions. Bartlett argues that, although social changes played their part in bringing about the abolition of the use of ordeals, the ban imposed on them was ultimately due to the opposition to them by European intellectual elites. Apart from the obvious mistrust of the infallibility of the practice, which had often led to the condemnation of innocents,43 intellectuals also opposed ordeals because they were not sanctioned by canon law. By 1150, Canon law and theology had become academic disciplines which were studied by an increasing number of students in the new universities emerging throughout Europe. The establishment of universities came accompanied by the development of scholastic thought. This philosophical trend produced more rigorous metaphysics and refined abstract speculation, intensifying the divisions between different categories of events. A harder line was drawn between natural and supernatural events, but also within the supernatural, establishing a distinction between miracles and sacraments. 44 Hence, ordeals were dismissed because they were considered faulty miracles. They were faulty because miracles were free acts of God and thus could not be ordained by ritual procedures like the ordeals, to procure them.45 They were also considered faulty because they were irrational in the sense that they moved men not to use their reason to solve hard cases but rather to get God to do it for them. This attitude directly opposed the value which scholastics gave to reason. They believed reason was a capacity granted by God to humans, who were created in his image and likeness, and which was what set them apart from other animals. Therefore, reason had to be used to the utmost and no one should tempt God when the resources of human reason are not yet exhausted.46 Opposition to ordeals did not start in the twelfth-century. All the arguments used by scholastics had already been put forward by others, as early as the Carolingian period. Agobard,

41 42

Peters, p.46. Ibid. 43 Bartlett, pp.76-7. 44 Ibid., pp.83-8. 45 Ibid. 46 Peter the Chanter, quoted in Bartlett p.90.

11

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

archbishop of Lyons produced a thorough criticism of ordeals in the ninth-century.47 Pope Steven V issued in the 880s the first papal condemnation of the practice.48 The value that intellectuals gave to reason in the twelfth-century can only be explained by the development of scholastics within the universities. These were, in their turn, product of the development of the cathedral schools created throughout Carolingian Europe under the encouragement of the emperor and for the conservation, advancement and transmission of the vast body of knowledge preserved in the monasteries since the times of Cassiodorus Vivarium.49 Culture in the Middle Ages developed in a continuous way and this development was not determined by the artificial historiographical periodisation imposed later by historians. Although this periodisation is artificial, it does reflect however the different traditions and bodies of belief which have emerged along European history. Still, however, cultures are alive and their development involves a myriad of interconnected processes, some of which move forwards, some backwards. This is why it is essential for historians to try and increase their understanding of these processes as they took place in each period, so as to understand better what was in the mind of the agents at the time. There were some practices in the Middle Ages such as the ordeals which were irrational according to most understandings of the term. Nonetheless, the reference to dAvrays work sought to show in this essay that sometimes the rationality of these practices can be explained in alternative ways (their efficiency and practicality) and that human actions are not always determined by the intellect but also by the passions and the will, and that this does not immediately make actions irrational. Even though there were irrational practices in the Middle Ages, this does not mean that the whole period was characterised by an inherent cultural irrationalism. We are far too used to basing our way of thinking and of looking at the Other (by this meaning other contemporary cultures or that of our ancestors) though the lenses imposed upon us by nineteenth-century rationalism. That we look through these lenses is not bad in itself. Neutrality in this field is not possible and one needs to take sides in order to advance through the exchange of ideas, McIntyre says. The danger arises when we forget we are doing so. It is important to realise we are imbued with our own culture, with all its limitations. This can help us avoid bias when looking from the outside. A proof that the Middle Ages were not irrational is that medieval people trusted in the power of reason to self-assess their own culture and purge those practices they considered
47 48

Ibid., p.72. Ibid., p.74 and McAuley (2006), p.478. 49 Crums & Jacob (1926), pp.227-88.

12

Where the Middle Ages irrational?

Enrique Requero

damaging or incoherent with their body of beliefs. Looking at the past with an awareness of the different traditions that interplayed in history will grant us a more accurate understanding of the period we may be looking at. This study will also be more enriching in that we will learn from the good elements of other cultures and it will train us in assessing our own culture, thus helping us to spot the internal incoherences which it is necessary to identify before tackling the epistemological crises which always emerge in cultures.

Bibliography

-G. VASARI, Live of the Artists (1550). -T. CAHILL, How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995). -J. HANNAM, Gods Philosophers. How the Medieval World laid the foundations of Modern Science (2009). -G.C. CRUMP & E.F. JACOB (eds.), The Legacy of the Middle Ages (1926). -S.J. TAMBIAH, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (1990). -D. dAVRAY, Rationalities in History (2010), Medieval Religious Rationalities (2010). -A. McINTYRE, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988). -G. HALSALL, Violence and society: an introductory survey, in G. Halsall (ed.) Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (1998). -R.C. VAN CAENEGEM, Reflexions on rational and irrational methods of proof in medieval Europe, Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 58 (1990), pp.263-279. -R. BARTLETT, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal (1986). -E. PETERS, Torture (1985). -R. COLMAN, Reason and unreason in early medieval law, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4 (1974), pp.571-91. -P. GEARY, Judicial violence and torture in the Carolingian Empire, in R.M. Karras, J.Kaye and E.A. Matter (eds.), Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe (2008). -F. McAULEY, Canon law and the end of the ordeal, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vol 26 3 (2006), pp.473-513. -H. BUTTERFIELD, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). - J. SALISBURY, The Metalogicon (Cambridge University Press 1955, First published in 1159).
13