The Twenty-First-Century Renaissance

In lieu of The Medieval Year, today I would like to share some news about Via Mediaevalis and offer some reflections, rooted in medieval culture of course, on the nature of labor. The Via Mediaevalis community has grown rapidly: after only five months our numbers have increased to just about 1500 subscribers. To me this is confirmation of the newsletter’s foundational premise, namely, that “the culture of the Middle Ages is a source of life-changing wisdom, beauty, passion, and interior peace for people and communities of the twenty-first century.” I am sincerely grateful to those who have supported the newsletter by reading, pondering, sharing, and commenting on the posts. Teaching is the great passion of my life, though even for me, lecturing to an empty classroom would be a disorienting, and rather unfulfilling, experience. Likewise, I deeply enjoy writing and believe in its power to do good in the world, yet I would be hesitant indeed to write essays read only by myself (but then again my wife always reads them, and that might be enough to keep me going…).

Since we are approaching this milestone of 1500 members, I decided to activate paid subscriptions. I was originally planning to bring in paid subscriptions at 1000 members, but we reached that number rather quickly, and at the time I didn’t feel like the newsletter was mature enough to complicate its life with business matters. But I suppose the time has come; economic realities must be faced. I won’t dwell upon the typical explanations for building a partial paywall—the simple fact is that producing a newsletter like this requires (among other things) a great deal of time, and since the length of the day is fixed, this time must be borrowed from income-producing activities. I discovered some years ago that when one stops doing an income-producing activity, one’s income diminishes, sometimes in drastic fashion. This is despite the fact that expenses do not diminish, and in fact tend to increase over time. Hence, to make this newsletter sustainable in the long term, I must somehow shift it into the “income-producing activity” category.

I truly believe that important things are happening in the Via Mediaevalis community. I say with all sincerity that if you sign up for a paid subscription, you are helping to ensure that this project can continue. I am dedicated to it, and I will be looking for ways to improve it, but no amount of dedication will suffice if financial pressure reaches the breaking point.

The updated subscription details are as follows:

1. Free subscribers (who continue to play a vital role in this community) will receive one full-length essay on Sunday.

2. Paid subscribers will receive a full-length essay on Sunday and on Tuesday. A paid subscription costs $6 per month or $72 per year.

3. The third post, on Friday, is considered a “bonus” post. It will sometimes go out to all subscribers and sometimes only to paid subscribers. Some weeks will not have a Friday post.

I want to emphasize item number three. In an effort to keep the subscription price as low as possible, and to ensure that I don’t become overburdened during busy portions of the academic year, I am giving myself the option of skipping the shorter Friday post. If you choose to purchase a subscription, you are paying for one additional full-length essay each week. If you receive a third post on Friday, technically you’re getting that one for free.

Over the next week or two, all articles will be sent to all subscribers. The paywall will be implemented gradually, because I don’t want things to change too abruptly. We must respect routines; they are a quiet liturgy of daily life.

If you are unable to purchase a subscription, I completely understand. I lived for years as an itinerant homesteader, and then I dedicated my life to scholarship in a field that is the opposite of lucrative. In other words, I am poor, and have been ever since I left the corporate world in my early twenties. As a case in point, my wife’s annual budget for giving Christmas gifts to her friends and family is about $15, and that includes postage, which means that the gifts themselves must be made by hand from materials found somewhere in the garage or the backyard. “The field of the poor,” as the Scripture saith, “may produce much food.” I want to state emphatically that free subscribers can still offer valuable support to Via Mediaevalis by reading the articles, commenting on them, sharing them via social media, clicking the “like” button (if you like the article), and clicking the “restack” button (if you think other people might like it).

I use this image as the frontispiece of my website, and I discussed it at some length in a previous post:

These figures represent the idealized “three estates” of medieval society, which is divided into those who work, those who fight (and govern), and those who pray (and study, and teach). The elegance of the three estates as a sociological construct might distract us from something rather astonishing: in this conceptual model, one-third of the population performs labor that has no economic value. If you are reading this, you are probably not the sort of person who considers prayer completely worthless. But we all must acknowledge that, except in the case of miracles, human beings cannot eat prayer, cannot grow medicinal herbs in it, cannot make a winter coat from it, and cannot thatch their cottages with it. The same is true, to a large extent, of scholarship in the humanities. In the words of the brilliant Holy Cross sister and English professor Dr. Miriam Joseph Rauh, the practical arts “enable one ... to earn a living. The liberal arts, in contrast, teach one how to live.”

In the great mystery that is human nature, body and spirit are perfectly united, yet at the same time, body and spirit have vastly different needs. Medieval civilization, in its uniquely zealous and Christian way, was fully committed to the grand project of providing for both corporeal needs—food, medicine, clothing, shelter—and spiritual needs, which we might summarize, imperfectly, as the arts of religion (prayer, liturgy, morality), the arts of the senses (painting, sculpture, music, dance), and the arts of the mind (narrative, poetry, philosophy, history). This project, however, is an inherently difficult one, because human beings naturally prioritize the needs of the body. Every community finds some way to compensate the farmer, the physician, the weaver, and the builder because nobody wants to live without food, medicine, clothing, or shelter. The needs of the spirit, in contrast, are immaterial or even theoretical; at times they seem dispensable; their “monetary value” is elusive, disputable, variable. Consequently, they are more easily neglected, and have indeed been grievously neglected in many modern societies.

Philosophy presents the seven liberal arts to Boethius.

Neglect of this nature was not an option in the Middle Ages, because it would have been inimical to the principles and beliefs that underlay the entire edifice of medieval civilization. The basic problem, however, remained: How can a community provide for the material needs of someone whose labor produces immaterial goods? Or to put it more plainly, how can we ensure that the painter, the poet, and the grammarian don’t starve to death? Medieval society accomplished this in various ways, one of which was the system of collaboration called patronage. In this system, those who possess and produce valuable material resources directly support those who possess and produce valuable immaterial resources, and they do so for the benefit of all.

Without deliberate, determined collaboration of this nature, authentic cultural renewal is not possible. The Carolingian Renaissance (eighth and ninth centuries), the Ottonian Renaissance (tenth century), and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance were all animated in part by a commitment to patronage. This tells me that patronage will be crucial to the Twenty-First-Century Renaissance, which is already overdue. I think I know my role in it; I don’t pretend to know yours, but if you are able to offer direct financial support, I hope that the concept of medieval patronage sheds light on the full significance of such support, which in my mind is more than just purchasing a subscription for your own personal enjoyment or edification. It is, rather, a contribution to the restoration of human culture—and to a system of collaboration that, even amidst the hard times and ominous threats of the early Middle Ages, made enduring, uplifting, transformative culture possible.

Instruction in the liberal arts … produces lively, persevering, and refined lovers of truth. Their aim is ardently to desire, constantly to pursue, and eventually lovingly cling to what is called the happy life.
—St. Augustine

We are concerned to restore with diligent zeal the workshops of knowledge which, through the negligence of our ancestors, have been well-nigh deserted. We invite others …, as much as lies in our power, to learn to practice the liberal arts.
—Charlemagne