THE "DARK" AGES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 355, 12 April 1946, Page 18

THE "DARK" AGES

Sir.-It appears from your issue of March 29 that Mr. Tyndall maintains his view that the Middle Ages was a period of cultural blackout until Europe’s happy awakening about the year 1400. I do not wish to discuss his views in detail-practically every sentence in his letter 1s open to devastating criticismand I understand that they will not distort the spirited episodes that are being broadcast to schools. Nevertheless I feel that they call for qa firm protest. It is true that there were movements in human affairs conveniently, though not very accurately, called the Renaissance and the Reformation. It is true also that the modern world differs radically from mediaeval times, and that in their exuberance and self-confidence the men of the Renaissance blackguarded the previous age injterms echoed by Mr. Tyndall. But such vilification is not history. All who have studied the matter would agree that the cultural achievements of the Middle Ages form a magnificent heritage, and that they were the foundation on which modern progress -if it be progress-was: built. Mr. Tyndall asks for names and in addition to Dante perhaps he may be satisfied with Giotto and Cimabue, Grosseteste and St. Thomas Aquinas, Chaucer and Alcuin. The fact is, however, that ir wide fields of artistic expression the Middle Ages did not seek out and glorify the individual. No one can name the man who designed Gloucester Cathedral, or the stained glass windows of Chartres, or the pageantry of a mediaeval festival. But art is none the less vital because it springs from the life and tradition of a community. Mr. Tyndall should know that in the view of some scholars the Renaissance had a baleful influence. over. the course of Western art; for it divorced art from the people end handed it over as the preserve of a specialised élite. As for the Church and education: Mr. Tyndall has no business to quote as a gerieral opinion an interpretation which, to say the least, is only one view among several, or to ignore the fact that the Church provided a continuous. educationa tradition bridging the darkest of the Middle Ages. In short it is time that we stopped dismissing an epoch with crude and selfconfident generalisations. Those who have lived through two world wars and who now contemplate the problems of peace would do well to approach the culture of the Middle Ages with a certain humility and openness of mind.

F. L. W.

WOOD

(Wellington).