Lessons from the Middle Ages

Sustainability and the so-called 'Dark Ages'

The Middle Ages: a period in which people were ridden with plague, had their teeth pulled out without anesthesia, kings waged war continually, streets had open sewers, and everything was bleak and vile. When we hear the words ‘The Dark Ages’, we think of big cathedrals made with money extorted from poor peasants. Basically, a beacon of beauty in a stinking city. There is nothing positive about the Middle Ages, but now we live in a great, modern era.

However, this great modern era is confronted with rising sea levels (as a Dutchwoman, this problem will literally stare me in the face in a couple years), ocean acidification, an epidemic of Parkinson’s disease due to pesticides, deforestation, and a whole crop of politicians who like denying the aforementioned issues. Calling the Middle Ages ‘dark’ sounds rather hypocritical when we seem to be ushering in our own environmental dark age.

MEDIEVAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Maybe people would be more interested in the medieval era if they knew that medieval farmers, peasants, fishers, and land-owners were working in sync with the countryside, instead of exhausting it. Because, even though I will not contradict the fact that there were cathedral-building authorities who exploited those with lesser incomes, I will advocate that examining medieval environmental practices will make these ‘Dark Ages’ seem less ‘dark’ than we think. In fact, people in these ‘Dark Ages’ were so good at sustainability that Professor Annette Kehnel, chair of medieval history at the University of Manheim, renames the ‘Middle Ages’ the ‘Green Ages’.

Twenty-first century Western society is highly individualistic. ‘Be you, because everyone else is taken’. ‘Be yourself’. ‘You only live once’. That, together with the popularization of social media, has brought on a flood of narcissism: we do not see ourselves as part of a community.

The quote ‘every man for himself’ has become a lifestyle.

This individualism leads to loneliness and isolation, but it also affects the way we deal with the world around us and the earth beneath our feet.

With temperatures increasing and thousands of animals being slaughtered per day in mega and giga-stalls, it comes as no surprise that the way we treat the earth, and ourselves, is becoming immoral and dangerous. We are consumerists, treating our resources, and our fellow humans, as commodities for our use. We exploit the earth. Due to this consumerism, we are extremely dependent on large supermarkets. Were these supermarkets to collapse, most of us would find ourselves in deep trouble. These grocery stores are also contributing to climate change: CBC news has reported that the Environmental Investigation Agency measured the number of hydrofluorocarbons, refrigerants that are used to keep food cold or frozen, in supermarkets, and that the Agency discovered that ‘a single supermarket emits 875 pounds (400 kilograms) of HFCs a year, equivalent to carbon emissions from 300 cars.’ If this is in the USA, the results for the rest of the world are, most likely, dystopian.

Sharing Communities

In the Middle Ages, sharing was seen as not a choice, but as a way of life. Today, we are homo economicus, but, as Kehnel argues, in the Middle Ages, we were homo cooperans.

In Benedictine monasteries, monks did not ‘own’, but they ‘used’, which probably sounds complicated to us modern folks who have been trained to think in the Communist versus Capitalist dichotomy. There is a binary in modern, popular, political-economic thinking: we focus on Marxism, or Capitalism, and this binary makes us squabble, leading us with no concrete solutions to our economic and environmental problems. In the Augustinian monastery, ‘everything was possessed in common’, and yet, food and clothing was distributed to each person’s individual needs. Everything may be managed commonly, and yet individual needs are catered to. Kehnel argues that the Augustinian and Benedictine monasteries balanced both individual well-being and the well-being of the group. We can learn from this now.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Again, I would like to stress that I am not advocating for Marxism or Communism. I’m a politically nuanced young woman, and the past years I’ve come across far too members of my generation who subscribed to far-left or far-right politics. As a humanist, I would never advocate for these ideologies.

Successful Communities

The ultimate goal of the monastery was to be self-sustaining. These communities had their own herb gardens, workshops, and arable fields. The Cistercians employed ‘lay brothers’: men who were something in between a monk and a non-secular man, and they managed the monasteries’ economies. In turn for these services, they were provided for. The Cistercians, Kehnel argues, were so successful, and produced goods of such excellent quality, that those outside the monastery system wanted to get their hands on these goods!

Naturally, of course, the monasteries were not ‘fully’ self-sustaining: they needed to trade and work with medieval markets. However, these communities are a lot more self-sustaining than we, as individuals, are today. We depend on chain-store supermarkets, and not a small, local, greengrocer. Even if we are fortunate enough to be in the proximity of a local butcher, greengrocer, or baker, we cannot depend on them, because they are small. A medieval monastery, by contrast, was far from small.

What we can learn from the medieval monastery is that, even though complete self-sustainability is too idealistic, a measure of it can be achieved. The monasteries may have denied ‘property’ to its tenants, but it catered for its inhabitants’ personal needs. Whilst I do not advocate for denying people property (that is a Communist idea), I do think that the idea in itself can be modified to modernity. Perhaps, instead of needing to buy a lot of something, because of some trend or hype, we buy what we truly need, what is good for our bodies and emotions. Instead of fast-fashion, try a capsule wardrobe. Instead of mass-buying mass-produced junk food, buy food that we know is good for us. This is a modern, less stern approach.

A way to combat our complete dependence on supermarkets is to try living in communities. I am not saying we should all wear the same itchy wool clothes and whip ourselves (whipping for penance and itchy wool clothes is something from the Middle Ages that should stay in the Middle Ages). But what if our governments would provide housing for communal living, in which groups of people would come together to live together, try to produce some of their own food, and own a few (not all) things communally? We could restore some of our independence by constructing systems of mutual dependency. Being self-sustaining is not only good for the planet, but can save us from nasty situations: it would be a good idea to be self-reliable for three days (minimum!) in case of international terrorism, such as the hacking of payment systems and electricity.

Recycling

Lastly, I would like to mention how recycling was not an opportunity or choice in the Middle Ages, but a practice that was deeply ingrained in its culture. Kehnel describes how there were a myriad of jobs dedicated to recycling (or mending). Frankfurt (city in Germany) is an excellent example. From cobblers to clothes, pots, or knives, these ‘recyclers’ were mobile, travelling from market to market where people could give them utilities to mend. This seems to have disappeared from society. The kinds of recycling we tend to focus on are thrift shopping. But we need to do more. What if society truly focused on recycling, with a focus on household objects as well as waste? Not only would it save a lot of money, but the environmental costs of discarding stuff would be greatly lessened. Recycling, in the Middle Ages, was not an ‘option’: it was a day-to-day practice.

In this spirit, I would like to state that the solutions to our environmental and sustainability issues do not only lie in the present, or the future, but also in the past. Practices from the past can be modernized, adapted, and tailored to our own contemporary needs, in order to solve contemporary problems. By incorporating the idea of more self-sustaining communities in our societies, we may become less individualistic, less isolated. And thus, not only are we healing our earth, but also ourselves.

SOURCES USED

‘’The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability’’ by Annette Kehnel

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/hfc-climate-supermarkets-1.6726627

Maryse Kluck