Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T22:06:15.460Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - “Europe” in the Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2009

William Chester Jordan
Affiliation:
Professor of History Princeton University
Anthony Pagden
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Get access

Summary

In the great thirteenth-century collection of poems and songs known as the Carmina Burana, one of the longer specimens of the versifier's art opens with the phrase “Cum in Orbem Universum,” poetically captured in English as “Song of the Vagrant Order.” The song takes its starting point from the Latin imperative Ite (Go forth) and describes the wandering lives of priests, monks, and deacons who bolt their duties. As the poem continues, the poet characterizes other social groups as travelers, often doing so with a hard and biting sarcastic edge. Besides priests, monks, and deacons, the wanderers include adolescents and soldiers, tall men and short men, and scholars. A description repeated in the song—although not in precisely the same words—identifies the band of vagabonds in territorial terms. At one point the poet describes them as Austrians, Bavarians, Saxons, and Easterners; at another he sings of Bohemians, Germans, Slavs, and Italians:

Give to any folk you meet

Reasons for your questing.

As that men's peculiar ways

Seem in need of testing.

In other words, the poet advises the wanderer to respond to questions about his purpose by an affirmation of the virtues of cosmopolitanism. Individual ways—the ways of Austrians or Italians—have to be tested against the habits, loves, and hatreds of other people.

In this chapter I reflect on the idea of Europe in the High Middle Ages, the period from about 1050 to 1350.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Idea of Europe
From Antiquity to the European Union
, pp. 72 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×