France—the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the Church. Beginning in 1347, the
bubonic plague, or Black Death, struck Western Europe. Responses to the plague
ranged from fanatical anti-intellectual apocalypticism to self-indulgent hedonism.
Some even blamed the plague on intellectuals such as Thomas Aquinas, saying
they provoked divine wrath by explaining God’s ways rationally; others simply
counseled, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Many turned to
superstition or to scapegoating Jews. At the same time, England and France were
involved in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), which brought enormous casu-
alties. Because of the plague and the war, in the years from 1300 to 1450, the pop-
ulation of Western Europe was reduced by half—perhaps by as much as
two-thirds. In 1378, the Great Schism divided the Catholic Church as the Italians
reinstituted the papacy in Rome, while a second pope reigned in Avignon. For over
thirty years, rival popes condemned and excommunicated one another. In 1409, an
attempt to end the schism with a compromise pope led only to a third pope and
thus a third claimant to St. Peter’s universal chair. Finally, in 1417, the church
united around one pope ruling in Rome. But by now the power and prestige of the
papacy had been severely diminished, and a hundred years later, in the Protestant
Reformation, the Western church split decisively.
The philosophy of this later medieval period is commonly viewed in the light
of these social upheavals, and, indeed, there does seem to be some connection.
Thomas had harmonized philosophy and theology in a systematic way reflective
of the relative peacefulness of the thirteenth century. Just as social stability—
particularly in the relationship between church and state—deteriorated in the
centuries following Thomas, so also the philosophies that developed during this
period tended to separate reason and faith. William of Ockham, for example,
held that philosophy and theology were separate realms with separate rules. The
Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola developed a philosophy essentially
excluding faith while using reason to draw from sources both within and outside
Christendom. In Pico’s philosophy, reason and faith were no longer systemati-
cally conjoined: Reason stood supremely alone. Clearly the coherent, rational
Christian synthesis of Thomas had unraveled.
But as Frederick Copleston has pointed out, there are other ways of under-
standing this transition. Instead of seeing late-medieval–early-Renaissance phi-
losophy as destructive to a grand synthesis or as reactive to societal chaos, “one
can see... philosophy being reborn and growing up under the shadow and care
of theology, reaching a more or less adult stage and then tending to go its own
way and assert its independence” (A History of Medieval Philosophy, p. 314).
While acknowledging the disintegration of the peculiarly Thomistic approach to
synthesis, this view sees the late-medieval period as a natural development of
Western European thought.
For discussions of the interaction between Christianity and its surrounding culture,
see A.H. Armstrong and R.A. Markus,Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy(New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1960); E.R. Dodds,Pagan and Christian in an Age of
Anxiety(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); Jaroslav Pelikan,The
Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, five volumes
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971–1989); and R.A. Markus,Christianity
270 CHRISTIANITY ANDMEDIEVALPHILOSOPHY
