by David D. Horowitz.
“In first place and still champion is…!” How seemingly glamorous—to be a champion!
Yet, “first” can also imply “pioneer,” and pioneers’ lives are rarely glamorous. Nor are many pioneers famous for their efforts. Indeed, their work is often forgotten. For example, while millions of United States citizens revere the First Amendment to the Constitution few understand the amendment, as part of the Bill of Rights, wasn’t adopted until 1791, four years after the original Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Few understand debates about ratification were often fierce and that only patient negotiation ensured passage; few now know names of the representatives who debated, negotiated, and voted. And few have read more than snippets by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosophers who influenced Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers. And these days only history buffs knowledgably discuss Martin Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses,” which helped spark the Reformation and ultimately fed the flames culminating in late eighteenth-century revolutionary fervor.
Martin Luther, though, was hardly Christian history’s first important theological dissident. All Europeans did not in the year A.D. 500 kneel down to uniformly acknowledge papal power and stay there until Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in A.D. 1517. Islam emerged in the early seventh century and spread deeply into Spain and even parts of France by the early eighth century, and its further spread was halted only by Charles Martel’s army in 732. Jews lived in various parts of Europe throughout the Middle Ages and were often subject to discrimination, special taxes, and violent “pogroms.” Witchcraft in various forms survived into the Middle Ages and was sometimes harshly suppressed.
And, beginning in the early twelfth century, various dissident Christian movements represented nascent discontent with papal theocracy. These dissident movements played a critically important role in world history. They were not merely politicalized contests for the papacy, as was the Western Schism (1378-1418), when as many as three claimants vied for papal status. Rather, I refer to theologically divergent Christian groups such as the Waldensians, Almaricians, Hussites, Taborites, Beguines, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Wycliffites, and many others. Some, like the Cathari of southwestern France, diverged so significantly from mainstream Catholic tenets they established their own clergy and were deemed heretics—prompting the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1244) in southwestern France, which yielded the Inquisition.
Apart from the undercurrent of discontent with papal authority, pioneering scholars, monks, and sometimes kings worked to translate ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts—and more recent Arabic texts—found in monasteries and Arabic libraries. King Alfonso X of Castile (1221-1284), in particular, sponsored numerous such translations and helped make north-central Spain the most literate region of Christian Europe during the high Middle Ages. Toledo was a hotbed of translation, and Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187) was a particularly prolific translator. Before him Adelard of Bath (1080-1152) traveled widely in Europe and Asia Minor to rescue and translate manuscripts, including Euclid’s Geometry. Raymond of Toledo, Hermannus Alemannus, and many other scholars merit mention and acknowledgment. Concurrently, troubadours helped popularize chivalric ideals through poetry, song, and performance, and some troubadours were political activists and satirists.
Many medieval thinkers and artists risked their lives to seek manuscripts and propagate their views. Some posed the first serious challenges to papal theocracy since the fifth century A.D. To be sure, their views varied, and historians sometimes present divergent accounts of their efforts, as first-hand physical evidence can be skimpy. Nevertheless, their story is remarkable—and essential to understanding world and American history. They were pioneers, although few today can distinguish the Reformation from the Renaissance, much less list which scholars helped translate Greek and Arabic texts into Latin or Castilian. Without these pioneers’ efforts, though, we might not have our First Amendment. And dare I ask: do we still have our First Amendment? Let us remember the courage of the first medieval dissidents and fearlessly assert our views. The freedom allowing such assertion is our country’s first and finest principle.