The third and last part will be rather historical than critical, being an essay on the taste and literature of the middle age.
1818, Henry Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, third edition, volume II, London: John Murray, published 1822, chapter vi: “History of the Greeks and Saracens.”, page 172, footnote †:
† Several very recent publications contain interesting details on Saracen literature ; Berington’s Literary History of the Middle Ages, Mills’s History of Mohammedanism, chap. vi. Turner’s History ot England, vol. i. Harris’s Philological Arrangements is perhaps a book better known ; and though it has since been much excelled, was one of the first contributions, in our own language, to this department, in which a great deal yet remains for the oriental scholars of Europe. Casiri’s admirable catalogue of Arabic MSS. in the Escurial ought before this to have been followed up by a more accurate examination of their contents than it was possible for him to give. But sound literature and the Escurial ! — what jarring ideas !
There is obviously more than mere coincidence in the simultaneity of the closing of the Mediterranean by Islam and the entry of the Carolingians on the scene. There is the distinct relation of cause and effect between the two. The Frankish Empire was fated to lay the foundations of the Europe of the Middle Ages. But the mission which it fulfilled had as an essential prior condition the overthrow of the traditional world-order. The Carolingians would never have been called upon to play the part they did if historical evolution had not been turned aside from its course and, so to speak, “de-Saxoned” by the Moslem invasion. Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet, would be inconceivable. This is made plain enough by the many contrasts between the Merovingian era, during which the Mediterranean retained its time-honored historical importance, and the Carolingian era, when that influence ceased to make itself felt. These contrasts were in evidence everywhere: in religious sentiment, in political and social institutions, in literature, in language and even in handwriting. From whatever standpoint it is studied, the civilization of the ninth century shows a distinct break with the civilization of antiquity. Nothing would be more fallacious than to see therein a simple continuation of the preceding centuries. The coup d’état of Pepin the Short was considerably more than the substitution of one dynasty for another. It marked a new orientation of the course hitherto followed by history.
[original:Il est impossible de ne voir qu’un jeu du hasard dans la simultanéité de la fermeture de la Méditerranée par l’Islam et de l’entrée en scène des Carolingiens. À envisager les choses de haut, on aperçoit nettement entre l’une et l’autre un rapport de cause à effet. L’Empire franc va jeter les bases de l’Europe du Moyen Âge. Mais la mission qu’il a remplie a eu pour condition essentielle le renversement de l’ordre traditionnel du monde ; rien ne l’y aurait appelé si l’évolution historique n’avait été détournée de son cours et, pour ainsi parler, désaxée par l’invasion musulmane. Sans l’Islam, l’Empire franc n’aurait sans doute jamais existé, et Charlemagne, sans Mahomet, serait inconcevable. Pour se persuader qu’il en fut bien ainsi, il suffit de relever l’opposition que présentent l’une avec l’autre, l’époque mérovingienne, pendant laquelle la Méditerranée conserve sa millénaire importance historique, et l’époque carolingienne, où cette influence cesse de se faire sentir. Partout on observe le même contraste : dans le sentiment religieux, dans la politique, dans la littérature, dans les institutions, dans la langue et jusque dans les caractères de l’écriture. De quelque point de vue qu’on l’examine, la civilisation du ixᵉ siècle atteste une rupture très nette avec la civilisation antérieure. Le coup d’État de Pépin le Bref est bien autre chose que la substitution d’une dynastie à une autre dynastie. Il marque une orientation nouvelle du cours suivi jusqu’alors par l’histoire.]
Climate and disease made Brown’s Late Antiquity a tough time in both hemispheres, perhaps a “Dark Age.” The climatic Middle Ages also have some global coherence, with an early Middle Age running from 900–1275 seeing an optimum in some places, in others quite the reverse, followed by a late Middle Age running to 1550 and encompassing the entering phases of the Little Ice Age.
Very broadly and diffusely, the end of a global classical antiquity was shaped in some measure by a climatic global Dark Age running from roughly AD 400 to AD 900. This reversal was coherent in many parts of the world, but it did not have the reach and consequences of the two Hallstatt minimum/Siberian High epochs that bracketed both classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. Rather than a strong Siberian High at work, these climatic Dark Ages were marked in a cold northern hemisphere by a round of North Atlantic ice rafting, and by ENSO variation in the Pacific tilting toward the El Niño mode, with erratic floods and droughts along the Andean coast.
