Balance

Three estates, four humors, monastic schedules ... and Icarus: finding the via media in the via mediaevalis.

The title of this newsletter, Via Mediaevalis, is Latin for “the medieval way,” where Latin via, like English “way,” evokes the physical tracks and trails on which we travel and, more importantly, their figurative extensions: “method (of action),” “mode (of thought),” “path (to personal wholeness),” “journey (to fullness of life).”

However, the title is also a play on words: embedded within via mediaevalis is the term via media, a Latin phrase that has been naturalized and now appears in English dictionaries: “a middle way; an intermediate state; a compromise between extremes.” And it turns out that the via media—the way of balance—is essential to the via mediaevalis.

A pilgrim chooses his path. France, fourteenth century.

There is actually some linguistic and historical irony here. The word “medieval” is simply an English rendition of Latin medium aevum, which literally means “middle era.” That’s why the phrase “via media” (middle way) forms part of “via mediaevalis” (middle era). Dating only to the early nineteenth century, “medieval” was an inherently disparaging term—it’s as if the medieval world is best understood as all that stuff between the noble Greco-Roman world and the enlightened modern world.

The irony is that the medieval period was “middle,” but in the best—and for modern folks, most desperately needed—sense of the word: the “via media” sense. Much more than a one-thousand-year bridge between Antiquity and Modernity, medieval civilization had a special affinity for and dedication to balance—in the mind, in the body, in the community, and in the cosmos.

I touched on the theme of balance in previous essays on cosmology, music, and religious politics. Honestly, the theme is difficult to avoid, because it arises naturally from careful reflection on many medieval topics. Balance was integral to labor, thought, art, and belief in the Middle Ages, which inherited this grand aspiration for balance—suggesting stability, cyclicality, equilibrium, moderation, symmetry—from the classical world. It grew into something new and wondrous, nourished by the Christian ideals and rich spirituality of medieval culture.