Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen

by Johan Huizinga

This classic study of art, life, and thought in France and the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ranks as one of the most perceptive analyses of the medieval period. A brilliantly creative work that established the reputation of Dutch historian John Huizinga (1872-1945), the book argues that the era of diminishing chivalry reflected the spirit of an age and that its figures and events were neither a prelude to the Renaissance nor harbingers of a coming culture, but a consummation of the old.
Among other topics, the author examines the violent tenor of medieval life, the idea of chivalry, the conventions of love, religious life, the vision of death, the symbolism that pervaded medieval life, and aesthetic sentiment. We view the late Middle Ages through the psychology and thought of artists, theologians, poets, court chroniclers, princes, and statesmen of the period, witnessing the splendor and simplicity of medieval life, its courtesy and cruelty, its idyllic vision of life, despair and mysticism, religious, artistic, and practical life, and much more.
Long regarded as a landmark of historical scholarship, The Waning of the Middle Ages is also a remarkable work of literature. Of its author, the New York Times said, "Professor Huizinga has dressed his imposing and variegated assemblage of facts in the colorful garments characteristic of novels, and he parades them from his first page to the last in a vivid style."
An international success following its original publication in 1919 and subsequently translated into several languages, The Waning of the Middle Ages will not only serve as an invaluable reference for students and scholars of medieval history but will also appeal to general readers and anyone fascinated by life during the Middle Ages.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, Art, European History, France

398 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Johan Huizinga was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.

Reviews

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ceea ce frapează, înainte de orice, la Johan Huizinga (1872 - 1945) este eclectismul uimitor al preocupărilor. Titlurile cărților publicate spun totul: Amurgul Evului Mediu (1919), Erasmus (1924), Homo ludens (1939).

În fața acestei curiozități multiple, cititorul rămîne perplex. Să acceptăm că Erasmus ține de sfîrșitul Evului Mediu, prezentat în prima lui carte, dar cum legăm Homo ludens de istoria sensibilității medievale? L-am studiat în Facultate la două disciplne diferite, Amurgul Evului Mediu la cursul de Istorie medievală apuseană (cu neuitatul profesor Gostar), Homo ludens la Istoria logicii și Retorică. Unii savanți creează opere centripete, ca să spun așa, în care adîncesc cîteva probleme (cum cerea Constantin Noica), alții sar de la un domeniu la altul și propun o operă centrifugă. Neîndoielnic, Huizinga a făcut parte din categoria polimaților, a indivizilor care suferă de nobilul viciu al curiozității.

Istoricii de școală i-au reproșat lipsa interesului față de latura economică a istoriei. Nu l-au interesat nici considerațiile de ordin politic. Nu i-a plăcut să vorbească despre înșiruirea evenimentelor și despre relația (rareori cauzală) dintre ele. Determinismul istoric nu l-a atras. S-a bazat pe intuiție (fantezie și invenție) - și Amurgul Evului Mediu arată în modul cel mai elocvent că a avut o intuiție ieșită din comun. E una dintre cele mai bune cărți pe care le-am citit. Johan Huizinga a intuit că se poate scrie despre Evul Mediu altfel decît o făceau savanții tradiționaliști. În fond, cartea lui prefigurează o mutație importantă în istoriografie. Istoricii de la Annales (Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch etc.) i-au preluat impulsul și au propus o istorie a emoțiilor și mentalităților. Au părăsit istoria evenimențială, dominată de principi, regi, intrigi politice și războaie de o sută de ani.

Pentru cititorii de acum un veac, cuprinsul volumului a fost, cu siguranță, surprinzător. Autorul prezenta, pornind de la un caz particular (curtea burgundă), aspecte ignorate de ceilalți medieviști. În Amurgul Evului Mediu, Huizinga scrie despre iubirea curtenească, despre farmecul ademenitor al culorilor, despre simbolism și decăderea lui (într-un capitol foarte prețuit de Umberto Eco), despre trăirile religioase la limita morbidului, despre fascinația relicvelor sau a eșafodului, să zicem. Cititorul afla astfel că monahii l-au fiert la propriu pe Thoma de Aquino, imediat după moarte, că misticii aveau obiceiuri culinare cel puțin ciudate, că, de pildă, germanul Heinrich Suso sau Seuse (circa 1300 - 1366), beatificat în 1831 de către papa Grigore al XVI-lea, mînca întotdeauna după prescripții liturgice:

„[Seuse] obișnuia, cînd mînca un măr, să-l taie în patru: trei părți le mînca în numele Sfintei Treimi, iar a patra o mînca [în numele pruncului Iisus]; de aceea această a patra parte o mînca necurățată, deoarece copiii mănîncă merele cu coajă... Băutura o sorbea din cinci înghițituri, în onoarea celor cinci răni ale Domnului, dar pentru că din coasta lui Iisus a curs sînge și apă, a cincea înghițitură o sorbea dublu”.

Într-o notă probabil ironică (dar la obiect), Huizinga face adaos amununtul că numitul John Tiptoft, conte de Worcester (1427 - 1470), condamnat la moarte chiar în vremea Războiului celor două Roze, l-a rugat pe călău să-l decapiteze din trei lovituri, în cinstea Sfintei Treimi. Astfel de amănunte miraculoase găsim peste tot.

Amurgul Evului Mediu ar putea fi rezumat în chipul următor: întortocheatul formalism al curților medievale, cavalerismul erotic, explozia culorilor, rătăcirile religioase au fost un răspuns la violența teribilă a unei epoci. Veacul de Mijloc a fost dominat de pesimism, dansuri macabre, epuizare artistică și melancolie (o descoperim, de exemplu, într-un poem scris de Lorenzo Magnificul). E o imagine exagerată, dar nu lipsită de oarece temei...

[Jan-Maat]

Bought this by mistake thinking it was a book by Burckhardt, which was obviously pretty stupid as it clearly says Huizinga on the cover. But The Waning of the Middle Ages had been on my mind to read for some time which is what I use in place of a reading wish list, the fallibility of human memory helps by winnowing down the near infinite possibilities of reading to something more humanly achievable so I surrendered to the serendipity.

The book is an attempt to create a portrait of the age, specifically of the culture of the higher levels of society in Northern France and the Low Countries (there is a lot of focus on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy). So it is about what it was like to be alive then - how did people see the world, how did people behave, what was important to them, how did people express themselves and so on.

By it's very nature this kind of study is always going to be unsuccessful. Just as at some level a study of your culture based on a handful of memoirs, works of art and news reports will not capture the full experience and perception that you participate in as part of your culture.

If you want a story, a narrative history that can pretend to tell you how things actually happened then this is not the book for you. On the other hand for all it's shortcomings if you are interested the idea of trying to understand how people in a distant time experienced their world then this is still a book well worth reading.

Not that this is a dull journey of discovery, much of the exploration is through anecdote: the punch-up in a cathedral involving a bishop that led to a court case that rattled on for over a decade, people taking advantage of pilgrimages to engage in crafty extra-marital sex perhaps not precisely want Weber had in mind when he was thinking of the close relationship between sex and religion and my favourite - the noblewoman who kissed a sleeping troubadour and then said that she did not kiss the man only the lips that produced such beautiful songs.

Huizinga comes across as being very interested in Mentalitie and is an early practitioner of that approach. I'm sure that in many ways his work has been superseded and its limited focus on the world between Rhine and Seine is apparent but it remains readable and full of autumnal flavours.

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neîndoielnic, acest volum marchează istoriografia. Într-un fel s-a scris pînă la el și în alt fel după. Prin Amurgul Evului Mediu, polimatul Johan Huizinga descoperă, înainte de așa-numita Școală a Analelor, un nou continent: mentalitățile colective, emoțiile.

Pentru cititorii de acum un veac, cuprinsul volumului a fost, cu siguranță, surprinzător. Autorul prezenta, pornind de la un caz particular (curtea burgundă), aspecte ignorate de ceilalți medieviști. În Amurgul Evului Mediu, Huizinga scrie despre iubirea curtenească, despre farmecul ademenitor al culorilor, despre simbolism și decăderea lui (într-un capitol foarte prețuit de Umberto Eco), despre trăirile religioase la limita morbidului, despre fascinația relicvelor sau a eșafodului, să zicem. Cititorul afla astfel că monahii l-au fiert la propriu pe Thoma de Aquino, imediat după moarte, că misticii aveau obiceiuri culinare cel puțin ciudate, că, de pildă, germanul Heinrich Suso sau Seuse (circa 1300 - 1366), beatificat în 1831 de către papa Grigore al XVI-lea, mînca întotdeauna după prescripții liturgice:

„[Seuse] obișnuia, cînd mînca un măr, să-l taie în patru: trei părți le mînca în numele Sfintei Treimi, iar a patra o mînca [în numele pruncului Iisus]; de aceea această a patra parte o mînca necurățată, deoarece copiii mănîncă merele cu coajă... Băutura o sorbea din cinci înghițituri, în onoarea celor cinci răni ale Domnului, dar pentru că din coasta lui Iisus a curs sînge și apă, a cincea înghițitură o sorbea dublu”.

Într-o notă probabil ironică (dar la obiect), Huizinga face adaos amununtul că numitul John Tiptoft, conte de Worcester (1427 - 1470), condamnat la moarte chiar în vremea Războiului celor două Roze, l-a rugat pe călău să-l decapiteze din trei lovituri, în cinstea Sfintei Treimi. Astfel de amănunte miraculoase găsim peste tot.

Amurgul Evului Mediu ar putea fi rezumat în chipul următor: întortocheatul formalism al curților medievale, cavalerismul erotic, explozia culorilor, rătăcirile religioase au fost un răspuns la violența teribilă a unei epoci. Veacul de Mijloc a fost dominat de pesimism, dansuri macabre, epuizare artistică și melancolie (o descoperim, de exemplu, într-un poem scris de Lorenzo Magnificul). E o imagine exagerată, dar nu lipsită de oarece temei... (9.10.24, miercuri)

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really difficult book for me to review. This is one of the first books that I ever read concerning medieval history, and it had quite a big impact on me, so Autumn of the Middle Ages is always going to have a special place in my heart. It's a really lovely book, beautifully written, and Huizinga makes genuinely fantastic use of stories and anecdotes. It's also full of some very good insights into medieval culture and it acts as a nice corrective to history books that rely solely on administrative, legal, and economic documentation. It's all very vibrant and very passionate.

That said, I also think that it's kind of wrong. Huizinga presents northern Europe of the later Middle Ages as a dying, ossifying society that's wasting away because it's elaborate culture of symbolism had used itself up. It's a rather attractive thesis, and it gives the book a quiet sadness that almost reads like an elegy, but it's problematic in the sense that Huizinga never adequately explains why the system failed when it did, and he never addresses the possibility that the culture of the era wasn't dying, but slowly transforming into something new. The whole book buys into the idea that cultures are monolithic, that they're born and they die, rather than being constantly evolving entities. And I think that's a pretty problematic way of looking at things.

But with that in mind, I think it's absolutely still worth reading. It's a bit dated and it's far from perfect but it's a real intellectual stimulant and one of the few history books I can see myself reading multiple times just for enjoyment.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

We, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine, were formerly enjoyed. from the first page of the book

4 1/2




Johan Huizinga 1872 – 1945
Dutch historian


Norman Cantor on Huizinga

Norman Cantor, in Inventing the Middle Ages devotes five pages to Huizinga, in his closing chapter called Outriders. The historians he discusses here (Huizinga, Eileen Edna Power, Michael Postan, Carl Erdmann, Theodor Mommsen) are not quite significant enough; or didn’t produce quite enough published work; or were a bit too recent - to fit into an ensemble of Middle Age historians which, in his view, "invented" our own conception of this time period.

Cantor nevertheless has plenty of good things to say about Huizinga and the others. He writes that Huizinga

had no successors, and the approach he adopted has found no significant imitators. The Waning of the Middle Agesis likely to appear on anyone's list of the ten best books ever written on medieval history, and a plausible argument would place it near the top [it's one of the all-time best sellers on the subject] … But Huizinga stands alone and remote from the ongoing dialogues in medieval studies.

the author and his book

Johan Huizinga is often mentioned as a founder of modern cultural history. In the short autobiography that he composed in the last decade of his life, he tells of writing Waning when he was told that his academic job was in jeopardy if he could not come up with a significant publishable book. He retired for the summer to his mother-in-law's farm, sat there in the "hot attic" with some material from the fifteenth century, and wrote the book before the fall called him back to the university.

Huizinga writes in his brief preface to the English edition,

History has always been far more engrossed by problems of origins than by those of decline and fall… in medieval history we have been searching so diligently for the origins of modern culture, that at times it would seem as though what we call the Middle Ages had been little more than the prelude to the Renaissance.

But in history, as in nature, birth and death are equally balanced. The decay of overripe forms of civilization is as suggestive a spectacle as the growth of new ones. And it occasionally happens that a period in which one had, hitherto, been mainly looking for the coming to birth of new things, suddenly reveals itself as an epoch of fading and decay.

The present work deals with the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries regarded as a period of termination … Such a view presented itself to the author whilst endeavoring to arrive at a genuine understanding of the art of the brothers Van Eyck and their contemporaries, that is to say, to grasp its meaning by seeing it in connection with the entire life of their times. Now the common feature of the various manifestations of civilization of that epoch proved to be inherent rather in that which links them to the past than in the germs which they contain of the future. The significance, not of the artists alone, but also of theologians, posts, chroniclers, princes, and statesmen, could be best appreciated by considering them, not as the harbingers of a coming culture, but as perfecting and concluding the old.

Now, viewed thus by the author, it would seem that this thesis is not amenable to simple demonstration by testimony of historical document. When men (and women) write of art, or create art, the writings and creations themselves are always thrusting towards the future, and a historian interested in their connection to the past must oftentimes do his analysis from the distant future, bringing his creative imagination into play to find the connections with a past that was not the concern of the subjects being studied. Thus, quite as much as the book was, in its inception and writing, not the typical heavily researched academic study, it is a work of the historical imagination.



the book itself

"waning" or "autumn"?

Huizinga's book was published in 1919. It's Dutch title was Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen, which translates directly to The Autumn of the Middle Ages (an evocative enough title, to be sure). When it was translated to English in 1924 the title was rendered The Waning of the Middle Ages.

To me, the second title is even more evocative.

Wane: to dim, to decline; to gradually fade away. That word, waning, almost makes me catch by breath. To write of the waning of an era in European history, an era which lasted several centuries, or by some reckonings, a thousand years, and to render the subject of the narrative as the fading away of this immense span of time, of human endeavor, human art - of millions of lives slowly fading into an irrevocable past … well, I love the title. I'll never toss the book, who could throw away that title from their bookshelf?


stuff
Some of the fundamental issues examined in the book are chivalry; the conventions and views of love and heroism; the religious thought of the age and way it affected artistic imagination; the decline of religious symbolism and the dawning of realism; and the ways in which art interacted with everyday life.

Fourteen full page black and white illustrations, all works of art from the period, by Rogier van der Weyden, Jan Van Eyck, and others.




Portrait of Giovanni Annolfini Jan van Eyck


The 10-page Bibliography of little use to this reader, almost all books in French, some in Dutch or other Euro languages. The equally long index however is very good. I like perusing an index to see names that are extensively referenced in the narrative. Here I note various Dukes of Burgundy (Charles the Bold, Philip the Good, others); Georges Chastellain (Burgundian chronicler and poet, d. 1475); Eustace Deschamps (French poet, 1346-1406); Jan van Eyck (Netherlandish painter of Bruges, 1390-1441); Jean Froissart (French-speaking author and court historian of the Low Countries, 1337-1405); Jean Gerson (French scholar, reformer, poet and theologian, 1363-1429); Olivier de la Marche (courtier, chronicler, poet of the Duchy of Burgundy, 1425-1502); Louis XI of France, 1423-1483); Jean Molinet (French poet, chronicler and composer, 1435-1507); Louis, duke of Orleans, 1372-1407 (shades of In a Dark Wood Wandering!; René of Anjou (titular King of Sicily, 1409-1480); Francois Villon (French poet, b. 1431, disappeared 1463); and Edmund, Duke of York (1341-1402). Also many references to Roman de la Rose.


tmi?


In this spoiler I've listed the 23 chapters of the book. Following a group of these is (in another spoiler) the sometimes edited status that I submitted at that point in my read. Some of the status comments appear elsewhere in the review.

I The Violent Tenor of Life
II Pessimism and the Ideal of Sublime Life
III The Hierarchic Conception of Society

Good so far. Huizinga's thesis is that by looking at the Middle Ages as a precursor to what followed (economically, politically, artistically), we miss the essence of the end of the Middle Ages, as the people then living saw their own time - and that this view deserves study for its own sake.

IV The Idea of Chivalry
V The Dream of Heroism and of Love
VI Orders of Chivalry and Vows
VII The Political and Military Value of Chivalrous Ideas
VIII Love Formalized

chaps. IV-VIII heavy going through this, seemed like I was reading for a graduate course. I enjoyed VII "The Political and Military Value of Chivalrous Ideas"; also the discussion of the Roman de la Rose in VIII. Interest waxed and waned elsewhere.

IX The Conventions of Love
X The Idyllic Vision of Life
XI The Vision of Death
XII Religious Thought Crystallizing into Images

Most interesting recent chapters: Vision of Death (“No other age has laid so much stress as the expiring Middle Ages on the thought of death.”), Religious Thought Crystallizing Into Images (Key points: the astonishing multiplication of religious orders, saints, relics, feast days, special offices; and the way in which the sacred permeates the profane so thoroughly that the distinction between the two is nigh lost.

XIII Types of Religious Life
XIV Religious Sensibility and Religious Imagination
XV Symbolism in its Decline
XVI The Effects of Realism
XVII Religious Thought beyond the Limits of Imagination
XVIII The Forms of Thought and Practical Life

Six chapters exploring the interrelations between religion, religious thought, and the underlying modes of thinking and perceiving in the Middle Ages. Way more interesting than expected. Book now cluttered with underlining and notes. The Church in the Middle Ages tolerated many religious extravagances, provided they did not lead up to novelties of a revolutionary sort, in morals or in doctrine. Many examples.

XIX Art and Life

Objects of pure art and articles of luxury and curiosity were equally admired. Long after the Middle Ages the collections of princes contained works of art mixed up indiscriminately with knick-knacks made of shells and of hair, wax statues of celebrated dwarfs … Time the destroyer has made it easy for us to separate pure art from all these geegaws and bizarre trappings … This separation … did not exist for the men of that time.

XX The Aesthetic Sentiment

One … means at least satisfied deeper aesthetic instincts: beauty (as) the sensations of light and splendor … This tendency to explain beauty by light sprang from a strong predilection of the medieval mind … when men of the Middle Ages attempt to express aesthetic enjoyment, their emotions are caused by sensations of luminous brightness or of lively movement.

XXI Verbal and Plastic Expression Compared. I
XXII Verbal and Plastic Expression Compared. II
XXIII The Advent of the New Form

Didn't write a status for the last three chapters. Generally I found these somewhat difficult, particularly XXI.
Some quotes:

from XXI

Nor should the art of the brothers Van Eyck be called Renaissance. Both in form and in idea it is a product of the waning Middle Ages. If certain historians of art have discovered Renaissance elements in it, it is because they have confounded, very wrongly, realism and Renaissance. Now this scrupulous realism, this aspiration to render exactly all natural details, is the characteristic feature of the expiring Middle Ages. It is the same tendency which we encountered in all the fields of thought of the epoch, a sign of decline and not of rejuvenation. The triumph of the Renaissance was to consist in replacing this meticulous realism by breadth and simplicity.

from XXII
"For the spirit of the epoch nothing heightened so much the acrid flavor of sad and sensitive love as the addition of an element of profanation."

And yet here we are still dealing with the representation of scenes borrowed from reality. When the whole had to be created by the unaided imagination, the art of the period cannot avoid the ridiculous… It is impossible to imagine anything more awkward [than the illustrations by Jean Miélot for the Epitre d'Othéa à Hector]. The Greek gods have large wings outside their ermine mantles… Saturn devouring his children, Midas awarding the prize, are simply ridiculous and devoid of all charm… we have come to the limit of the creative faculty of these artists. Easily masters of their craft, so long as observation of reality is their guide, their mastery fails at once when imaginative creation of new motifs is called for.
Imagination, both literary and artistic, had been led into a blind alley by allegory.

from XXIII
Huizinga's conclusion is given in the main review.



first and last words

Huizinga writes (in front of the opening quote, far above)

To the world when it was half a thousand years younger, the outlines of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us. The contrast between suffering and joy, between adversity and happiness, appeared more striking... Every event, every action, was still embodied in expressive and solemn forms, which raised them to the dignity of a ritual. For it was not merely the great facts of birth, marriage and death which, by the sacredness of the sacrament, were raised to the rank of mysteries; incidents of less importance, like a journey, a task, a visit, were equally attended by a thousand formalities: benedictions, ceremonies, formulae.

Calamities and indigence were more afflicting than at present; it was more difficult to guard against them, and to find solace. Illness and death presented a more striking contrast; the cold and darkness of winter were more real evils. Honours and riches were relished with greater avidity and contrasted more vividly with surrounding misery.

and a book later, he concludes

The fifteenth century in France and the Netherlands is still medieval at heart. The diapason of life had not yet changed. Scholastic thought, with symbolism and strong formalism, the thoroughly dualistic conception of life and the world still dominated. The two poles of the mind continued to be chivalry and hierarchy. Profound pessimism spread a general gloom over life. The gothic principle prevailed in art. But all these forms and modes were on the wane. A high and strong culture is declining, but at the same time and in the same sphere new things are being born. The tide is turning, the tone of life is about to change.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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[Sense of History]

This is a classic, of course. But I found it hard to read and appreciate. The subtitle is correct: this is no overview of political, political, or military facts (also no economic ones), but rather an excursion in the various aspects of late-medieval attitudes of mind. The focus is not on philosophy and religion, but on the "ideals of the mind", let's say mental history: the knight-ideal, the codes of honour, courtly love, the sense of reality, and so on. I think it is a bit too one-sided based on narrative sources and it focuses more on France than the Low Countries.

Of course, as always with Huizinga, this is wonderfully written. But the effect is largely lost because of the abundance of examples, most of which are peppered with quotes in old French, and thus difficult to read. As far as I can discern, Huizinga's views seem rather speculative, in this sense that he is trying to reconstruct the late-medieval society in Western Europa through the instrument of historical imagination. That gives this views a very personal, but also quite subjective flavour. In short: this book should now be read rather as a literary document than a work of science. I don't mean this in a denigrating way, it's just a factual statement.

[Miglė · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mačiau, kad visi giria autoriaus stilių, bet sako, kad per daug pavyzdžių prikišta ir citatų iš Viduramžių prancūzų literatūros, o man kaip tik pavyzdžiai labiausiai patiko: tos bendros autoriaus įžvalgos kelia norą ginčytis, o pavyzdžiai - tikras džiaugsmas tiems, kas nori aprėpti daugiau tuometinio gyvenimo, bet neturi prabangos kapstytis po archyvus.

Štai keli:

• Kai kurie keliaujantys pamokslininkai buvo tikros žvaigždės, kai pasklisdavo gandas, kad koks garsesnis atkeliauja į miestą, minios rinkdavosi dar iš vakaro, kad gautų gerą vietą. Dažnai pamokslininkai smerkdavo žmogiškus turtus ir skatindavo juos deginti ten pat sukurtame lauže, tai žmonės, ateidami klausyti, specialiai pasiimdavo kokių gerai degančių turtų, kokį drabužį kailinį, ar smailą kepurę, kad galėtų dalyvauti ir ekstatiškai giedoti, turtams pleškant!

• Žmonės labai trokšo aistringai visur dalyvauti, o tų pramogų daug nebuvo, bet kai jau būdavo, tai nepamažindavo. Štai Paryžiuje vienu metu buvo rengiamos aklųjų kautynės - keturi akli žmonės bus aprengti šarvais ir kausis tarpusavyje, o laimėtojas gaus paršiuką! Keturias dienas prieš kautynes po Paryžių vaikščiojo procesija su keturiais šarvuotais kovotojais ir paršiuku, vėliavomis ir šaukliu, kuris skelbė apie artėjančią pramogą.

• Ką daryti, kai nevalia pernelyg mėgautis dalykais, bet norisi? Susieti estetiką su dorybėmis! Tuomet galima ir gražios muzikos klausytis, jei ji šlovina Viešpatį, ir paveikslus su menkai prisidengusiom poniom žiūrėti, jei jos simbolizuoja dieviškas dorybes, ir po kriokliu palįsti, jei galvoji, kad krioklys taip pila vandenį, kaip Jėzus pila savo meilę žmonėms. Pliusas - malonumas tampa dorybingas. Minusas - visas pasaulis persipildo įmantrios, bet gana bukai į save nurodančios simbolikos, gal žmogus imi jau kiek ir pavargti nuo tų septynetų visur, bet nėr kur dėtis.

• Dabar žmonės dažnai Viduramžius sieja su seksualinio gyvenimo suvaržymais, bet tuo metu, sako autorius (ir ne tik šis), kur kas didesnis tabu buvo puikybė. Bet kai esi kilmingas, labai sunku nerodyti savo turtų ir šlovės, nes reikia ir mužikus suvaldyti, ir draugų pagarbą pelnyti, ir priešams baimės įvaryti. Vienas geras būdas išspręsti šį sudėtingą klausimą - būti turtingu, bet nuolatos kitus pamokyti apie dorybes visokias. Tarnams paskaityti iš Biblijos, pietus surengti su tinkamu patiekalų skaičium (žr. viršuj), melstis labai daug etc. Galima tik įsivaizduoti, mauni kokiam durniui batus, o jis tau pamokėlę apie tarnystę skaito.

• Kai kurie kilmingieji rinkosi kitą būdą išvengti puikybės - nusižeminimą, kas kartais išsiversdavo į tokį cirką, kad juokinga skaityti. Vienas norėjo, kad po mirties jo kūnas būtų palaidotas po bažnyčios slenksčiu, idant visi prasčiokai jį praeidami mindytų. Kitas norėjo perspjauti aną ir reikalavo, kad jo kūną po mirties pririštų prie arklio ar tai vežimo ir vilktų gatvėmis iki bažnyčios, ant tiek jis nevertas. Kažkaip visi labai gudrūs buvo po mirties nusižeminti. Dar kiti bodėjosi dvaro manieromis ir idealizavo paprastų kaimiečių gyvenimą, kaip tyrai jie myli, kaip paprastai gyvena arti gamtos, kaip vat tose paprastose sielose nėra mums, išprusėliams, būdingų problemų. Tai jie ten eidavo prie šaltinėlio pasikirkint, pamatę kaimiečius, lenkdavosi jiems, o kaimiečiai turbūt norėdavo facepalminti, bet neturėjo laiko, nes reikėjo dirbti, kad galėtų aniems duoklę išmokėti.

• Šiaip žmonių tikėjimas buvo nuoširdus, ir toks nuoširdus, kad dvasininkams reikėjo nuolat laužyti galvą, kaip čia viską pasukus, kad pamaldumas neperaugtų į profanaciją ir stabmeldystę. Pavyzdžiui, matydami šventųjų atvaizdus, žmonės melsdavosi šventiesiems - Bažnyčia sakė, ok, jei melsitės ne jiems patiems, o prašysite jų užtarimo. Žmonės neprieštaravo, bet vis tiek eidavo gydytis prie stebklingų paveikslų, o rožinį naudojo kaip nuo piktos akies saugantį amuletą. Dar kunigai vis stengėsi pasergėti žmones, kad nustotų šv. Juozapą per kalėdinius vaidinimus vaizduoti kaip kaimo durnelį, kuriam Marija įstatė ragus. O procesijos išvis buvo problema ir dvasininkai vis susirašinėjo, ką daryti, kad žmonės nebesirinktų ten prisigerti ir nusipirkti nepadorių paveiksliukų, bet vis tiek sueitų iš aplinkinių vietovių ir miestas gautų pinigų. Dalis problemų išsisprendė, kai kažkas sugalvojo, kad galima melstis angelui sargui - taip ir nestabmeldžiaujama, ir pats dievas netrukdomas dėl kažkokių smulkmenų.

• Paskutinis epizodas: toks Roberter labai žavisi Chastellainu, baisiai nori pradėti susirašinėjimą su juo ir prašo draugo, Chastellaino pažįstamo, tarpininkauti. Idėja paeina, Chastellainas atrašo savo gerbėjui, o tas eilėmis išreiškia savo džiaugsmą, gavus pirmąjį Chastellaino atsakymą: "Sužavėtas, sujaudintas esu, apimtas malonumo, mano kūnas tyso ant žemės ekstazėje, silpnas protas per daug sutrikęs, kad kelio ieškotų, kad rastų vietą ir palankią išeitį iš ankštos perėjos, kurion esu įspraustas, sugautas tinklais, kuriuos tikra meilė nuaudė". Na, jie toliau susirašinėja kurį laiką, ir Chastellainą pradeda užknisti Roberter gražbyliavimai, tuomet jis jam siunčia tokį laišką: "Robertet apipylė mane iš savo debesies perlais, kurie, susitelkę tame debesyje lyg krušos ledai, padarė mano drabužį spindintį; bet kokia iš to nauda mano tamsiam kūnui po drabužiu, kuris apgauna žmones?" ir toliau sako, kad jei Robertet nebaigs išsidirbinėti, jis mesiantis jo laiškus ugnin neskaitęs.

Jau ir pati pavargau gražbyliauti, bet siūlau paskaityti, labai smagi knyga, ir išmoninga, ir tie perlai, ak, tie perlai!

[Xander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably the worst book I've read in the past years. Huizinga's work on fourteenth and fifteenth century Burgundy is usually hailed by academics and lay people alike as a cornerstone in Medieval history.

Frankly, the book lacks structure, focus and conciseness. It basically reads like one long summation of all sorts of irrelevant and uninteresting details, punctuated by short, clear and insightful passages. The style is clearly outdated (already when Huizinga wrote this book) and leaves readers to grapple with archaic and incomprehensible sentences. Also, Huizinga never introduces topics or persons - he simply writes down what he wants and that's that. This makes for very difficult reading.

Finally, Huizinga's approach to history is very idealistic, almost Hegelian or Platonist. I don't buy any of it. One of the main takeaways of this book is that during the fifteenth century mystical ideas (mainly theological ideas) lost their meaning in their realizations in everyday life. People lived according to certain conventions and rituals, which were forms of lost ideas (i.e. empty, meaningless).

This idealistic approach to life and history smells Hegelian - and I don't buy Hegel. At all. Marx was right in turning Hegel around and starting from materialism. Or, to paraphrase Bill Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid." Huizinga explicitly rejects economic and political-military factors as driving forces of history. According to him, these factors can play a role but are insufficient in explaining historical developments. Ideas and their concrete manifestations are what counts.

But for all his pompous writing, Huizinga isn't even able to describe clearly what these ideas were (an exception is his treatment of the idea of chivalry) and even less clearly how these ideas manifested themselves in everyday life. He seems to randomly mention some examples of this and that, based on source so and so, and then jump to the next thing. His general thesis seems to be that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Burgundian high culture became more and more artificial and cut off from its theological-historical sources.

So, apart from the literary drawbacks mentioned above we end up with a rather not so interesting, not so original thesis. A thesis that is mostly ridiculous anyway (sorry, I don't buy Platonist-Hegelian idealism). So yeah, this was definitely not my cup of tea - I honestly don't understand all the fuss about this book.

[icaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

La malinconica ferocia di un mondo al tramonto. Ideali, canzoni d'amore, tornei dove sovrani veri giocano con i simboli di un passato immaginato.
Un grande libro, un intramontabile classico della storiografia del primo Novecento. Si legge come un romanzo perchè in ogni parola risuona l'amore dell'autore per il passato fiammeggiante di un paese scomparso dai libri di storia

[Caroline]

First of all, edition. I listened to the first version in English, originally published in 1924, and then read the newer, complete version, published in 1996 (Univ of Chicago Press) . I did it twice, because I kept spacing out listening, so I missed the thread, and much of the material. The complete version is much better, in my novice opinion. The progression of ideas makes more sense. The first version jumbled the order of the chapters, was incomplete, and according to the later translators, was not accurate in many cases. Quotations below are from the 1996 edition.

Now we have come to the point from which we intend to view the culture of late medieval times: the point of the beautification of aristocratic life with the forms of the ideal—the artistic lights of chivalric romanticism spread over life, with the world costumed in the garb of the round table. The tension between the forms of life and reality is extremely high; the light is false and overdone.

Huizinga then proceeds to establish, in his opinion, the falsity, superficiality, and decay of virtually all aspects of culture of France and the Netherlands in his window of analysis. He supports his argument with extensive examples from the documents, literature, and artwork of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His themes include the particularization and focus on details, lack of attention to context or commonalities that are not physically visible, adherence to prescribed forms and tropes, insistence on fitting everything into hierarchies, the importance on the visual and surface as opposed to what lies within, and dividing everything into either the ideal or the sinful. The result, he says, is primitive thought, unable to advance into the complexity and non-sinful delight in life in literature, art and philosophy that would develop during the northern Renaissance.

Huizinga does allow for the genius of the van Eyck brothers. Luckily a year or so ago I had snagged a used book enhanced with gorgeous tipped-in plates of their work, titled Flemish painting from the van Eycks to Metsys by Leo Van Puyvelde. Autumn itself includes a generous section of plates in black and white, but if you can get some supplemental color illustrations it will enhance his discussion of the arts.



I read this adjacent to some related works that make for interesting contrasts and similarities: Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and Lucien Febvre’s The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais . Bakhtin ranges far from Dostoevsky, returning to carnival (see his Rabelais and His World ), discussing Menippean satire and emphasizing the polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky’s writing: Bakhtin finds Dostoevsky’s great strength in his books' assemblage of characters who each have their own powerful and equal voice and point of view (polyphony). This came to mind when Huizinga discusses the carnival in a much more pejorative way, and notes the resistance to newfangled polyphonic church music during the late Middle Ages.



The connection to Lebvre’s book was not only in the overlap between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, but also in their author’s style. Both were born in the 1870s and presumably trained in similar environments; both present an elaborate, dense, erudite thicket to the reader. A sample from Huizinga’s critique of the excess of symbolism in the late Middle Ages:

Symbolic thought causes the continuous transfusion of the feeling for God’s majesty and for eternity into everything that can be perceived and thought. It never allows the fire of the mystic life to be extinguished. It permeates the idea of anything with heightened aesthetic and ethical value. Just try to imagine the enjoyment of seeing every jewel sparkle with the splendor of its symbolic value, of the moment when the identity of roses with virginity is more than just poetic Sunday dress, the time when identification points to the essence of both. It is a true polyphony of thought. In a completely thought-out symbolism, each element reverberates in a harmonious musical chord of symbols. Symbolic thinking yields to that intoxication of thought, leads to that pre-intellectual obscuring of the definition of things, that muting of rational thought, which lifts the intensity of the feeling for life to its very peak.

As he discusses at length regarding The Romance of the Rose.



Or

Art, too, tries to leave nothing unformed, unpresented, or undecorated. The flamboyant Gothic is like an endless organ postlude; it breaks down all forms by this self-analyzing process; every detail finds its continuous elaboration, each line its counterline. It is an unrestrainedly wild overgrowth of the idea by the form; ornate detail attacks every surface and line. The horror vacui, which may perhaps be identified as a characteristic of end periods of intellectual development, dominates in this art.

So, I wouldn’t take Huizinga’s disdainful treatment of the period as my only source of information, but he is thorough and the Baroque style gives some idea of the very elaboration he is railing against.

[Darrick Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huizinga's work is a classic look at the literary and artistic culture of fifteenth century Burgundy and France. His thesis is basically that the literature and art of the ages reveals that a culture in decay, ripened to the point where its cultural "forms" (an idea he never defines exactly) have overgrown the ideas they were meant to convey. Huizinga believed that the boundary between what we call the Renaissance and the Middle Ages was porous, something that scholars today seem to accept for the most part. However, his work was pioneering at the time, and it still concludes many gems of insight for those willing to work through this classic book. He did have a few ideas about modernity and knowledge that will seem outdated, and he can be fairly dismissive of the achievments of the period at times. But all in all, the book is well worth one's time for those interested in this period of European history, and a must read for serious students of that era.

[Skrivena stranica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ne uzimajte ovoga autora ako želite naučiti nešto o srednjem vijeku, radije uzmite Le Goffa koji je puno sistematičniji i jasniji. Ovaj autor po meni ne razumije srednji vijek uopće. Dovoljno mi je bilo to kako vjeruje da su zanesenost ljepotom srednjovjekovni ljudi uvijek zamijenjivali religijskim zanosom (tj. on kaže da ono što oni nazivaju religijskim zanosom nije drugo nego zanesenost ljepotom), a kao netko tko je osjetio i religijski zanos i zanesenost ljepotom, znam da govori gluposti. Moram i spomenuti da je posebna vrsta zanesenosti kad se ta dva zanosa spoje.
Uglavnom, preskočite ovoga autora ako vas zanima srednji vijek, bio je ovo gubitak vremena.

[Victor Sonkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very knowledgeable (through probably somewhat dated; not that it matters for the subject) history of culture in France (mostly) in the 15th century (mostly; not too much about the 14th century, which was my primary interest). Some of the ideas are very interesting, some of the examples wonderful; still, the otherworldly status of the book during the Perestroika years is inexplicable.

[Elizabeth Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not nearly enough of a historian to rate this book as overall correct or incorrect. My understanding of the study of history is to take many interpretations of learned historians into account and weigh them with the evidence. Is this source a bit dated? Of course it is -- it is nearly a hundred years old. But Huizinga's voice is lively and engaging. His erudition is great enough that he is allowed to have some sweeping opinions. He gives a very interesting perspective on this era and region of history and he is nothing of not thought-provoking. I am merely a general reader of history, but I found this very dense book to be still thoroughly enjoyable. If this period of history interests you, Huizinga will give you much to consider.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mid way through my cursory reading of European history I felt myself overwhelmed with names, dates and wars. This book is a bit of a break from that. It's an important book in that Huizinga fleshes out the mentality late medieval Burgundy on the brink of the Renaissance as shown through its chronicles, religious expression, art, poetry and emerging literature. One has to slow down to read and appreciate Huizina; at least I had to. The language requires savoring as well as the time to digest complex thoughts. By focusing on a chronologically and geographically narrow period in history Huizinga is able to deeply explore how societies move forward from epoch to epoch.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Still an impressive work of historical imagination, but unfortunately very outdated. See my more extensive review, in my Sense-of-History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Amauri Caetano Campos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Decadent, nostalgic and beautiful. This book has changed my view on the Middle Ages.

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johan Huizinga mărturisește, în prefața Amurgului evului mediu, că lucrarea sa dorea la început să reconstituie epoca medievală tîrzie (secolele 14-15), printr-o incursiune în arta fraților Van Eyck și a urmașilor lor, numind-o Secolul Burgundiei. Cum se întîmplă de obicei (spre norocul cititorilor 😊), granițele inițiale ale cercetării au fost mult depășite, ajungînd să acopere nu numai societatea burgundă ci întreaga Franță (și în unele locuri Țările de Jos), nu numai pictura lui van Eyck ci și însemnările istorice ale lui Froissart şi Chastellain, poezia lui Eustache Deschamps sau scrierile teologice ale lui Jean Gerson și Dionisie Cartusianul. Rezultatul? O lucrare monumentală, complexă, impresionantă prin considerațiile de o precizie impecabilă în domenii diverse ca istoria, literatura, teologia, sociologia, arta.

Premisa autorului e dublă: pe de o parte să combată imaginea noastră stereotipă asupra unui ev mediu primitiv și obscurantist, iar pe de alta să demonstreze că nu există o graniță clară între Evul Mediu și Renaștere, fiecare dintre epoci conținînd elemente din cealaltă.

Lumea medievală ne este prezentată cu multiplele ei fațete, economică, socială, religioasă, morală, sentimentală, artistică si literară, fațete care se influențează și se justifică reciproc pentru a crea imaginea unei epoci tumultoase, pestrițe, „aprigi” și contradictorii.

O lume extravertită, în care formele exterioare erau precise și asurzitoare, cu văicărelile procesiunilor leproșilor și a infirmilor, cu dangătul neîncetat al clopotelor cu semnificații clare pentru contemporani, cu predicile înspăimântătoare ale călugărilor, cu execuțiile transformate în spectacole morale, cu înmormîntările persoanelor publice jelite violent și sincer de popor, și cu sentințele implacabile care nu recunoșteau nici răspunderea parțială, nici failibilitatea judecătorului, nici partea de vină a societății în fărădelegea săvîrșită de individ, avînd două extreme: pedeapsa sau iertarea.

Din acest punct de vedere, sfîrșitul Evului Mediu este „epoca de uluitoare înflorire a justiției crude și a cruzimii justițiare”, care duce adesea la „extreme necreștine”: în Franța și în Anglia, i se refuză condamnatului la moarte mîntuirea sufletului prin împărtășanie și spovedanie, în ciuda poruncilor papei. Un nobil condamnat la spînzurătoare este ciomăgit de un mare vistiernic, care-l brutalizează și pe călău pentru că-i ceruse condamnatului să se spovedească.

Călăul, speriat, se pripește; funia se rupe, bietul răufăcător cade, își frînge picioarele și coastele, dar trebuie să se urce iarăși pe scară.

Sentimentul de nesiguranță, atît printre oamenii de rînd cît și printre nobili, cauzat de frica de justiție, de iad, de diavol și de vrăjitoare era contracarat de năzuința spre o viață mai frumoasă, către care au existat mereu trei căi: cea religioasă, care renunța la lume, pe ideea că viața frumoasă se obține prin mîntuire numai pe celălalt tărîm; cea socială, care voia să îndrepte și să împlinească lumea (tendință aproape necunoscută în Evul Mediu, care considera că „lumea era atît de bună și atît de rea cît putea ea să fie, adică toate rînduielile, fiind vrerea lui Dumnezeu, erau bune; vinovate de mizeria lumii erau doar păcatele oamenilor”; cea culturală, care a continuat cele trei visuri tematice – eroismul, înțelepciunea și tema bucolică, moștenite din Antichitate. Civilizația de la sfîrșitul Evului Mediu a idealizat așadar viața aristocratică, „deghizată în hainele Mesei Rotunde” artificializînd-o, transformînd-o într-un spectacol, într-o estetică a relațiilor sociale care se apropia de arta pură.

În viața medievală ideea cavalerismului domina în război și în politică, dragostea era stilizată, redusă la forme convenționale, iar imaginea idilică a vieții contrasta cu spectrul morții.

Dar idealul cavaleresc era un fals, căci „adevăratele mobiluri care îndemnau oamenii la acțiune și determinau soarta statelor și a comunităților se aflau în afara cavalerismului.” Pastorala, care se transformase din specie literară în ideal curtenesc, se amesteca uneori amuzant cu romantismul cavaleresc (un turnir s-a desfășurat în costume ciobănești). În fine, formele artificiale ale dragostei – fidelitatea cavalerească, voluptatea rafinată din Le Roman de la Rose, dulcegăria facilă a pastoralei, erau atacate atît de Biserică și de moraliști, cît și de femei, care-i reproșau egocentrismul masculin.

Nici moartea nu era ferită de exagerări, deși ori poate tocmai pentru că omul era îndemnat să mediteze mereu la cele Patru extreme (moartea, judecata de apoi, iadul și raiul): exista de pildă obiceiul tăierii și fierberii cadavrelor oamenilor importanți care muriseră departe de casă, oasele curățate fiind trimise acasă într-un cufăr pentru ceremonia înmormântării, organele și carnea fiartă urmînd să fie îngropate acolo unde avusese loc decesul.

Gîndirea religioasă din epoca de sfîrșit a Evului Mediu nu cunoaște decît cele două extreme: să se tînguie de caracterul trecător al celor omenești, de sfîrșitul puterii, slavei și plăcerii, de ofilirea frumuseții, și să jubileze pentru mîntuirea sufletului întru veșnică fericire. Tot ce se află între aceste extreme rămîne neexprimat. În reprezentarea plastică a dansului macabru și în scheletul înfiorător, emoția vie încremenește.

Gîndirea medievală, atît în viața practică cît și în teologie, transformă noțiunile în entități și le ierarhizează, ceea ce-l face pe autor s-o numească „formalistă", dat fiind că reprezentările apar în forme plastice imuabile: regulile fixe de diferențiere a păcatelor capitale și banale (în dreptul primitiv germanic, sentința nu ținea cont de lipsa de intenție, în timp ce tentativa de fărădelege nu era pedepsită); importanța onoarei (un nobil acuzat de omor se refugiază într-o biserică iar sora lui călugăriță îl roagă să se lase ucis în luptă, pentru a nu fi executat, spre rușinea familiei sale); mobilul răzbunării (nu mînie sau ură, ci spălarea onoarei familiei jignite); repararea nedreptății prin ispășiri simbolice (cruci comemora¬tive, uși zidite, ceremonii pu¬blice de pocăință, parastase, capele etc.); credința în efectul cuvîntului rostit (formulele descîntecelor și farmecelor).

Aerul superficial al acestui formalism se observă în motivațiile simpliste și generale (burgunzii justifică asasinarea ducelui de Orléans prin rugămintea regelui către ducele Burgundiei de a răzbuna adulterul reginei cu Orléans), în generalizarea cazurilor izolate (moartea a doi studenți la o procesiune interzisă de autorități e comparată cu uciderea pruncilor din Betleem), în superficialitatea, inexactitatea și credulitatea unor cronicari (Monstrelet a uitat ce a vorbit ducele Burgundiei cu prizoniera Ioana d'Arc, deși a fost de față, Thomas Basin, conducătorul procesului de reabilitare a Ioanei d’Arc, greșește locul nașterii ei, ca și data primei ei întîlniri cu delfinul); lipsa unei distincții clare între seriozitate și joc în toate domeniile (în război asediații își bat joc de inamic, ca la Montereau, unde cetățenii stau pe zid, scuturîndu-și de praf scufiile de cîte ori se trage cu tunul), și bineînțeles în credința în diavol și în vrăjitoare (un inchizitor, care mai tîrziu, din păcate prea tîrziu, a înnebunit, zicea că o treime din creștini suferă de vauderie – așa era numită pe atunci vrăjitoria – și că un om acuzat de ea e automat vinovat, căci Dumnezeu nu ar suferi asemenea nedreptate, pretinzînd „că numai din vedere îl poate judeca pe acuzat dacă e implicat în vauderie sau nu”).

În plus, nu exista conștiința plăcerii estetice (care s-a dezvoltat mult mai tîrziu), orice fior artistic fiind transpus fie în emoția religioasa, fie în bucuria de a trăi. Frumusețea era sinonimă cu proporția și strălucirea: sclipirea unui blazon sau a unei picături de rouă în soare, sau a pietrelor scumpe puse din abundență pe veștminte, încîntau egal privirea. Culorile hainelor erau foarte importante: cele obișnuite sînt cenușii, negre și violet. Hainele de sărbătoare și de paradă sînt predominant roșii, iar uniformele albe, și nici o combinație nu e exclusă, de la culorile închis-țipătoare la cele pastelat-pestrițe. Albastrul și verdele au semnificații simbolice, fiind culorile dragostei: verdele pentru îndrăgostire, albastrul pentru credință (cavalerul rătăcitor se îmbrăca în verde, iar fidelitatea era dovedită de îmbrăcămintea albastră). Galbenul și castaniul erau considerate urîte: galbenul simboliza dușmănia, castaniul nefericirea.

Dacă astăzi arta plastica medievală este considerată mai valoroasă decît literatura epocii, atunci era invers, pentru că forma era mult mai importantă decît conținutul, redus la „o nesfîrșit�� vorbărie pe teme răsuflate.” Astfel, pictorul era liber în detalii (veșminte, accesorii, fundal), singura constrîngere fiind subiectul sacru (trebuia respectat cu strictețe codul iconografic), în timp ce poetul are mînă liberă în alegerea temei și căutarea ideilor noi în timp ce „detaliul, fundalul sînt dominate în mare măsură de convenție”.

Scris în 1919, studiul lui Huizinga rămîne unul de referință și o lectură mereu fascinantă.

[Tyrone_Slothrop (ex-MB) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo spirito del franco-borgognone

Giustamente celebrato e ricordato questo saggio sul Medioevo, principalmente per l’interessante scelta di trascurare fatti ed eventi economici o militari e concentrarsi su quella che io ritengo l’impresa più difficile ed affascinante di chi si occupa di storia: ricostruire il pensiero (l’anima?) di uomini tanto lontani da noi nel tempo.

Huizinga riesce egregiamente in questo obiettivo, pianificando un itinerario che copre vari aspetti del pensiero e della vita: la situazione sociale del tempo, il modo di vivere e di pensare, il ruolo della religione nella società e nel pensiero.
Ne risulta un panorama completo e molto originale, in cui l’uomo al crepuscolo del MedioEvo risulta un essere che vive in modo quasi estremo, con veemenza e forte emotività, immerso in crudeltà efferate e sensibilità esagerate (il pianto è una presenza costante in vari eventi sociali), timoroso del peccato e irrefrenabile nei vizi, morboso e generoso.
Il popolo oscilla tra angosce infernali e i divertimenti più infantili.
L’unico limite è (almeno per noi italiani) la riduzione dello sguardo ad una precisa area geografica, quella Borgogna che arrivava fino alle terre nederlandesi, partendo dai territori della futura Savoia e attraversando tutto il continente europeo. Una zona molto rappresentativa, certo, ma con caratteristiche anche peculiari e molto diversa dall’Italia dell’Umanesimo - un ritardo di evoluzione storico e sviluppo sociale riconosciuto comunque anche dallo stesso autore.
Personalmente, poi, ho trovato meno convincenti gli ultimi capitoli in cui Huizinga articola un complesso discorso di confronto tra immagine e parola, in cui arriva ad alcune conclusioni su arte e letteratura non sempre condivisibili: una certa predilezione per il simbolismo di sapore prerazionalista in arte e una discussione poca rigorosa ed eccessivamente "intuizionistica" sulle possibilità espressiva della letteratura (l’autore stesso fu adepto di un movimento antirazionalista e fortemente simbolista).
In queste pagine, forse, si sente il tempo passato dalla stesura del libro ed un eccessivo affidarsi all’intuizione piuttosto che all’analisi accurata delle fonti.

La lettura è sempre piacevole e molto agile e non sembra proprio un testo scritto nel 1919, al punto che si può considerare questo libro come un prodromo della “saggistica d’autore” dove si usano le tecniche della narrativa e della interdisciplinarità per costruire opere per un pubblico vasto e non solo per i professionisti della storia.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Apologies for the grumpy review -- but I'll let it stand. Future readers should read the comment section, which has more value than my current hrrruumphs!)

This book is too long and there is much too much of the author's psycho-social speculation in it - some of it is fairly good, a little of it is quite useless, and very, very little of it is absolutely essential or compelling.

The abundant and detailed evidence collected and adduced throughout this volume, on the other hand, is by far the best part of this book -- though is often surrounded by the aforementioned generalities.

The book should have been 1/3 shorter, and so it is not certain that the editors of the earlier American version (Waning of the Middle Ages) erred (with Huizinga's consent, remember) in presenting a shorter version -- which was itself modeled on the French edition.

I will spend another day or two with this book - but the rating suffers as a result.

That said, this was a revolutionary piece of work, and is justly famous and deserves a reading.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really difficult book for me to review. This is one of the first books that I ever read concerning medieval history, and it had quite a big impact on me, so Autumn of the Middle Ages is always going to have a special place in my heart. It's a really lovely book, beautifully written, and Huizinga makes genuinely fantastic use of stories and anecdotes. It's also full of some very good insights into medieval culture and it acts as a nice corrective to history books that rely solely on administrative, legal, and economic documentation. It's all very vibrant and very passionate.

That said, I also think that it's kind of wrong. Huizinga presents northern Europe of the later Middle Ages as a dying, ossifying society that's wasting away because it's elaborate culture of symbolism had used itself up. It's a rather attractive thesis, and it gives the book a quiet sadness that almost reads like an elegy, but it's problematic in the sense that Huizinga never adequately explains why the system failed when it did, and he never addresses the possibility that the culture of the era wasn't dying, but slowly transforming into something new. The whole book buys into the idea that cultures are monolithic, that they're born and they die, rather than being constantly evolving entities. And I think that's a pretty problematic way of looking at things.

But with that in mind, I think it's absolutely still worth reading. It's a bit dated and it's far from perfect but it's a real intellectual stimulant and one of the few history books I can see myself reading multiple times just for enjoyment.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finish this book, I just could not. In Dutch there is a word perfect to describe my sentiment; woordenbrij; roughly translated as mess of words.

I will not claim that the book is bad or wrong but the style of writing was just not my cup to tea and every chapter I got lost in the words. The problem is that this is a book nearly a hundred years old in a style nearly incomprehensible for a contemporary reader. I am a history major and I still could not immediately place every historical figure or reference Huizinga used and even if I could it is a style I truly detest. If you use an example work it out and compare to others not like Huizinga just adding up ten other examples on a single page from a period stretching over 500 years. It is confusing as hell and was the main reason why I quickly lost track of the point being made.

As for the innovative aspect, I have studied authors who built upon the lessons made during this book, the distinctly different mindset of those in the past. The importance of imagination and idealism in both reasoning as justification. This book will take the same place as did Dante's work, I acknowledge the importance of it and the impact but I can't appreciate the original. I prefer reading something else then just keep on reading without truly grasping what is being said.

I am ashamed but will accept my limitations as a scholar and reader.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to balance the merits of this book against its faults. Aesthetically, it is a masterpiece, and anyone who enjoys reading history as literature regardless of its methodological rigor should not fail to read Huizinga's work. Surely one reason this book is so popular among teachers and students is that it masterfully conveys a mood of this particular era, treading a fine line between familiarity and strangeness.

I felt that the earlier chapters of this book aged better than the latter half or so. The main issue is that Huizinga feels the need to pass judgement on many intellectual and cultural elements of late medieval life, weighing in on their authenticity or elegance. His own religious beliefs and artistic preferences, though never stated, seem to exert a strong influence on his readings of the historical milieu. This leads to history that carries a strong bias and is of dubious usefulness. However, one wonders if he manages more profound insights than more cautious and rigorous historians would achieve. Huizinga is always exciting in his passion, depth, and sensitivity.

I think that one may entirely discard his central thesis - that the late medieval period saw a complete articulation and exhaustion of forms of thought that would gradually be replaced in the Renaissance - and still find this book to be a rewarding and provocative study.

[Anna Biller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating view of an extremely dramatic period of history. Anyone who makes a film about the Middle Ages in which the all of characters are not obsessed with God is just making things up! A colorful, charmed, extravagant, genteel world if you were part of the nobility. If not, diminishing levels of hardship, disease, and squalor. Really emphasizes the horrors of a rigid class system. Rampant misogyny that somehow reeks of today; it's when the foundations of thought about women's inferiority became baked into language and law, and yet it was also the age of courtly love, in which women were objects of worship and enjoyed a certain amount of sexual freedom. An era riddled by plague and obsessed with death. Violence ran rampant among the upper classes; if you were a noble, you could basically get away with anything. I'm reading Proust at the same time, and it's interesting to see how the 14th century class system in France, with all of its exquisite tastes and rituals, still remained mostly intact in the late 19th century. Indeed, the late medieval period in Europe was the beginning of the modern era; and although it's so foreign and strange to read about, it also feels oddly familiar. An erudite and penetrating book. For more on this subject I also highly recommend A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman.

[Falleon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Está guapardo, pero fue escrito en 1919 y es denso como tal. Enfréntate a él como te enfrentarías a una comilona claramente por encima de tus posibilidades. Eso sí, no lo hagas si no te mola mucho la historia

[Gregg Wingo · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, I would like to thank Bertrand Russell for inspiring me to read this book. He found Huizinga's reflections on the evolution of Western culture from the Medieval mindset to that of the Renaissance an aid in understanding his own experience of the rise of Modernism and the roots of its rejection in the horror of the Great War (World War I). I found it similarly interesting for my own experience of the transition from the Late Modernism of my childhood to the early Postmodernism of my youth, and the Second Era of Globalization of my maturity.

For example, when reading the following quote I could not help but think about the reactionary forces inherent in the rise of Dominionism and the Tea Party:

"The quattrocento with its serenity makes the impression of a renewed culture, which has shaken off the fetters of medieval thought, until Savonarola reminds us that below the surface the Middle Ages still subsist".

This goes to the heart of the nature of our Postmodernity: Are we a rejection of Modernism and a return to the emotive or are we an evolution in perspective that will retain and build on the logic and lessons of the Enlightenment and its aftermath?

However, this book is also a great text on the culture history of the Late Middle Ages and the Duchy of Burgundy. It analyzes the nature of both the plastic arts and the literary, religion and symbolism, chivalry and politics, and love and pessimism to the Medieval mind. For instance, when reflecting on the pessimism of its poets Huizinga states "Happy are the bachelors, for a man who has an evil wife has a bad time of it, and he who has a good one always fears to lose her. In other words, happiness is feared together with misfortune."

A good read for anyone interested in the Middle Ages and the "curse" of "living in interesting times".

[David Huff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spending time browsing through "Great Books" lists tends to turn up classics like this one, and since my knowledge of the Middle Ages was scant at best, I thought I'd give this older classic (published in 1924) a try. I was pleasantly surprised at Huizinga's writing style, which for the most part was quite interesting and engaging. His history largely covered France and the Netherlands, and dealt with a variety of characteristics of the 14th and 15th centuries; topics such as chivalry, vows, love and romance, death, religious views, the power of symbols, the art and literature of the period, and much more.

There were quite a few quotes, some extensive, in French (fortunately with English footnotes), often from authors either obscure or unknown (at least to me). A familiarity with the Middle Ages may have helped me to grasp the plentiful content of this book more firmly, but I felt it was still a very good introduction to the period. Facts and anecdotes were nicely balanced with deeper philosophical passages. My only complaint, which had nothing to do with Huizinga, was the horribly inconsistently edited and sketchy Kindle edition. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the historical period - but in hardback or paperback.

[Wout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik zou hier ook een review geschreven kunnen hebben...

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Medieval ideals and sentiments in 15th-century Burgundy and France form the basis of this book. Huizinga argues for the late Middle Ages as an era nearing its end—exhaustion and nostalgia its main characteristics. The codes of chivalry, courtly love, death, and piety are some of the topics discussed. These ideals, especially the code of chivalry, are attempts by the Middle Age person to interpret and correct the incomprehensible chaos of life. Especially, with regards to war and politics, which were largely disorderly affairs.

This is not a book of narrative history but more so a cultural history that attempts to resurrect the time it studies. Events and historical figures are not discussed in depth but are introduced through anecdotes supporting the general ideas. The contrasts of life, in the seasons or in the shift between hard-heartedness and mercy—the mingled smell of blood and roses—as Huizinga beautifully puts it, are exemplified in the figure of Mathieu d’Escouchy, chronicler and criminal. He discusses the Burgundian court and its grieving rituals, how these expected extreme heroic outbursts of grief are telling of a larger desire to render life ceremonial.

While this can be seen as partly a romanticized portrait of the late Middle Ages, Huizinga is at times lucid. He recognizes that our assumption of the time as a dark canvas of conspiracy, intrigue, sickness, and death is a consequence of history more often than not finding its source in tragedy and not the joys of everyday life. One may however reproach him for taking hand-picked works of art and literature as reliable representations of real-life sentiment.

This book should perhaps not be read as an objective, reliable history. We find its merit both in Huizinga’s evocative writing and also in the glimpses he gives into the medieval imagination.

[Gabriela Ventura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Levei um ano e meio para terminar esse livro, menos por dificuldades intelectuais do que pelo fato da edição de luxo da (falecida, porém sempre em nossos corações) Cosac Naif é de difícil manuseio.

Johan Huizinga não foi só um grande historiador, mas um escritor talentoso. Os ensaios escorrem pela página com facilidade, e o panorama que ele pinta da mentalidade vigente nas regiões correspondentes França e Países Baixos no século XV praticamente pula da página. Claro que a edição da (RIP) Cosac complementa o texto com reproduções a cores de pinturas, gravuras, iluminuras - para além de paratextos de historiadores mais contemporâneos - a entrevista do Le Goff, por exemplo, é uma maravilha.

Eu estou longe de ser uma medievalista profissional, mas esse livro, imagino, seja pelo conteúdo, seja pela importância historiográfica propriamente dita, é essencial para os interessados em Idade Média.