The History and Future of Places: Part 3 – After empire, places of faith and pilgrimage
-
Email
-
Facebook
-
Linkedin
-
Twitter
-
Whatsapp
02 March 2020
After about 200 CE the Roman empire began to decline. The reasons for this included corrupt emperors, widespread decadence, internal power struggles, overdependence on slave labour and administrative inefficiency. Furthermore, a series of assaults by Saxons, Vandals and Goths pushed back imperial frontiers. The invaders eventually reached Rome in 476, at which point the capital of the empire was moved to Constantinople. What happened to places during and after this period of decline is open to debate; between about 300 CE and 1000 CE there are few descriptions and little evidence of how people lived.
One view is that the decline of imperial control opened the way for decentralisation, and this led to a period of local independence and creativity. A more conventional view is that literacy and learning plummeted as government and administration collapsed, and that populations declined dramatically because of violence, starvation and disease (a devastating plague in 540 may have wiped out one-third of Europe’s population).
By the end of the 5th century, the population of Rome had dropped to about 30,000 people, living in the ruins of a once great civilization. Elsewhere places were disaggregated, the infrastructure built by the Romans crumbled and towns and villages were abandoned or became barely self-sustaining. The countryside was taken over by waves of immigrant invaders – Goths, Huns, Saxons or Vikings, depending on the specific region of Europe.
Those new immigrants left remarkably little evidence of placemaking except for the legacy of place names, which have filtered through into the names of today’s towns and cities. Otherwise, the primary impact of the Dark Ages was one of taking places apart or allowing them to decay, of “place-unmaking” rather than placemaking.
Religion and the Places of the Middle Ages
From the 10th century some measure of stability was re-established. Christianity, which had developed as an organized religion in the last centuries of the Roman Empire and then slowly spread across Western Europe, was increasingly adopted by the rulers of regional kingdoms.
With stability came the possibility of making places that might endure. From the 11th to the 15th century, Christianity dominated the character of how places were made. Villages and towns were built around churches or cathedrals, which were often magnificent structures with pointed arches, stained glass windows, ornate decorations, flying buttresses, and spires pointing heavenward. They were physical demonstrations of the narrative that religion and faith were the most important aspects of existence.
“From the 11th to the 15th century, Christianity dominated the character of how places were made. Villages and towns were built around churches or cathedrals, which were often magnificent structures. They were physical demonstrations of the narrative that religion and faith were the most important aspects of existence.”
Medieval understanding of the wider world was likewise structured around religion. The Hereford Mappa Mundi, made in 1300, and the largest medieval map known to exist, places Jerusalem at its centre – a reflection of its central importance to Christianity.
Everyday life was permeated by religion, for prince and peasant alike. It set the rhythms of the day, the week and the year; it was the foundation of education; nuns and monks ran hospitals and tended to the poor and destitute. Everyone contributed in some way to the building of churches, if not with money then by providing their labour.
This was, however, also a time when kingdoms jostled for power and control of territory. Wherever there was a threat of attack by a marauding army, places were built with security in mind: villages on hilltops that offered some degree of defence; towns surrounded by walls or protected by a castle.
Perhaps this generated a sense of security in the thousands of small villages producing food, or perhaps technological advances in the use of mills were responsible, but whatever the reason, increased agricultural productivity bred economic prosperity. This led to the development of trading networks across much of Western Europe – especially for wool, tin, lead, wine and timber. This trade generated the wealth necessary for the construction of churches, and for making the places where those churches were located.
With economic growth came population growth: in the 11th and 12th centuries the population of Europe doubled. Much of that growth was accommodated by rebuilding towns that had decayed during the Dark Ages, or by constructing new towns. The former often had an organic maze of streets following routes of old tracks and paths; the latter often roughly planned with a loose grid pattern of streets, a market square, and a castle wherever defence was a priority.
In both cases, streets would have been crowded with a variety of buildings – some substantial with workshops or stores at ground level and residences above, others little more than shacks, and all constructed with whatever materials were locally available (often limestone, sandstone, or timber and wattle). The result was that places, even if they were centrally planned – for instance as defensive settlements – were as diverse as the regions in which they were located. This diversity has now come to be regarded as a major amenity, and many medieval places, with their picturesque combinations of church, castle, distinctive architecture, and maze-like streets most easily travelled on foot, have been pedestrianized and become popular tourist attractions.
Medieval place experiences were not entirely local. Travel was dangerous and roads were little more than grassy, muddy tracks used by pack animals and that could only be travelled on foot or horseback. Nonetheless, clerics and merchants regularly travelled between towns and countries. A few million devout Christians took part in Crusades to Jerusalem while many others made pilgrimages to nearby shrines or more distant places of veneration such as Canterbury or Santiago de Compostela. In short, knowledge was shared throughout the places of the Christian world – including the principles for the layout of Gothic churches and abbeys, such as their orientation and the arrangements of altar, nave, choir, and transept. Indeed, the masons responsible for the construction of churches were often itinerant, adapting standard design requirements to specific sites, and using mostly local building materials. This was done with remarkable skill, and the consequence was buildings that shared many elements but nonetheless enhanced, rather than diminished, the identities of the places in which they were located.
“Knowledge was shared throughout the places of the Christian world. The masons responsible for the construction of churches were often itinerant. The consequence of this was buildings that shared many elements but nonetheless enhanced, rather than diminished, the identities of the places in which they were located.”
In spite of the remarkable solidity and scale of medieval churches and castles (many of which have survived to the present day), there seems to have been a sense at the time that medieval places were just stepping stones to heaven, that religion was not a whole solution to life’s problems. This became especially apparent with the plagues of the 14th century, when the Black Death killed more than 30 percent of the population of Europe.
Neither faith, nor churches, nor castles were able to protect people and places from epidemics. Many villages were abandoned because almost everyone died, and in towns as well as the countryside the resulting shortage of labour weakened the authority of the Church. This was exacerbated by the fact that the secular ideas of classical Greece and Rome had begun to infiltrate medieval thinking in Western Europe.
The character of medieval places began to shift. While religion remained important and great churches and cathedrals continued to be built for several centuries, trade and manufacturing began to play increasingly important roles in politics and daily life. Self-governing guilds of professional craftsmen formed in prosperous cities, market halls were constructed, some almost as large as cathedrals, and a sense of secular community and cooperation began to develop.
A new phase of placemaking was emerging.
- Next week: The Age of Enlightenment
- Read Professor Relph’s blog Place, Placeness, Placenessless
