By assigning consistent values to the currencies of Europe, a simple social hierarchy that had until then consisted primarily of clergy, nobility and peasants saw a merchant class emerge from its ranks that wielded tremendous power. In a strange way, early capitalism actually paved the way for the Enlightenment.
 |
| "It looks like I'll be able to put this lampshade back and buy myself a proper hat." |
The accessibility of this sudden aristocracy led to a widespread obsession over precision and measurement, and the first universities of Europe were created to accommodate this demand. Knowledge became a conduit to a better life. To be a part of this burgeoning market economy required some degree of literacy, at least as far as financial transactions were concerned. It was the only way people knew that they weren't getting screwed.
Merchants and scientists of the High Middle Ages attempted to achieve an objective understanding of reality by conceptualizing its many moving parts both quantifiably and consistently. How much does something weigh? How tall is something? How fast can an emu run? They gave us some of the classics, like four quarts to a gallon and 43,560 square feet to an acre. And who could forget 5,180 feet to a mile? You did, because it's actually 5,280 feet. And do you have any idea how many pecks Peter Piper could possibly pick? Well, it's four pecks to a bushel, so let's see...
This was right around the time when time itself became the common measure of life and labor as clock towers were erected in cities throughout Europe (although time zones wouldn't exist until the nineteenth century, the product of railroad companies). Meanwhile, perspective, as the quantification of three-dimensional space, became an integral component of Western art.
Historians trace the beginning of this movement to the works of Giotto di Bondone, a revolutionary painter with a keen business sense. See if you can pick out the difference between his work (above) and the flat archetypal images that had been the predominant representations in Western art for centuries, Sunday school coloring book stuff like this:
Giotto, badass that he was, depicted his subjects and the three-dimensional worlds that they inhabited in a manner that corresponded more directly with his perception. The stunning realism of his paintings made his work an unparalleled commercial success, and he is said to have had a whole team of notaries looking after his financial interests by 1314.
 |
| Giotto di Bondone, self-portrait, entitled: "What should I do with all this money?" |
Francesco Petrarch (pictured below), considered by some to be the "father of humanism," spoke of this new style as "images bursting from their frames, and the lineaments of breathing faces, so that you expect shortly to hear the sound of their voices. It is here in that the danger lies," he claimed, "for great minds are greatly taken with this." Giotto di Bondone's work moved people... because it offered them a frame of reference for their own reality. This was pretty mind-blowing stuff, which is presumably why Petrarch is dressed the way he is -- you know, to keep his brain in:
 |
| His friends were always asking him if he had to 'leaf' anytime soon. He never did get it. |
By the close of the fourteenth century, the black plague had wiped out nearly half the population of Europe. Many of the survivors, suddenly made wealthy by inheritances from the dead, put their faith in knowledge. Modern science began to take shape, as secular minds began to question the monopoly of truth that had been held by organized religion for over a millennium.
Within a hundred years, great minds did indeed extrapolate upon Giotto's aesthetic innovations with geometric precision. Artists of the Italian Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, were also educated in the emergent sciences and some of their most famous contributions to the canon of Western art (like the Mona Lisa, for example) were commissioned by wealthy merchants and/or motivated by the economic and political power of the Church.
 |
| "Really? Nobody wants to sit on the other side?" |
Meanwhile, scientists and clergy alike were actively engaged in the pseudo-science of alchemy, including such prominent figures as Saint Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, and their complex experiments were often fundamentally driven by the simple desire to turn common metals into gold. The idea was basically to reproduce the nuclear fusion that takes place in stars, but in a dirty cauldron over a fire. You know, easy-peasy.
 |
| "Enough with the puppy-dog tails already! We've learned all that we are going to learn." |
Even before gold was given any kind of a fixed value in international trade, it was a highly coveted commodity that was increasingly rare in Europe. The shortcomings of alchemy and the desire for pretty shiny things necessitated increased trade with other parts of the world, which compelled a new generation of cartographers to quantify a broader physical dimension. By the end of the fifteenth century, world empires were beginning to take shape, colonized by transcontinental capitalists.
Columbus knew that the earth wasn't flat, which makes him smarter than a strange contingency of fundamentalists today. He may have indeed been looking for a means to circumnavigate the Turkish Empire en route to the Orient when he first landed upon the shores of Hispaniola, but his three subsequent voyages were motivated in large part by the prospect of finding gold there.
Yes, the famous Spanish explorer (from whom we get the "C" in Washington, DC) bled the defenseless natives dry in what ultimately proved to be a futile quest for gold that scarcely existed. Before Columbus conquered the island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, it is estimated that as many as a million people lived there. By the time he left, there were only about ten thousand of its inhabitants still alive. Happy Columbus Day...?
According to Christopher Columbus's own account (the murderous explorer, not the shitty director... also known as the reason why the post office is open for one less day in October and kids have the day off from school for some reason, presumably to celebrate colonialism with their loved ones): "Who has gold has a treasure with which he gets what he wants, imposes his will on the world, and even helps souls to paradise." He was right about the first two, but he may have been overly optimistic on that last one.
In a similar respect, but with significantly less murder and forced enslavement, Johannes Gutenberg was also an entrepreneur. His most successful business venture, the mechanical printing press (c. 1439), offered textual uniformity by means of mechanical reproduction, thus marking the beginning of mass media in the Western world. It also made him a shit ton of money. I'm American, so I'm not sure what that converts to in metric, but I do know that his invention allowed ideas to proliferate far beyond the limitations of the individual, and it was largely responsible for the spread of knowledge, itself an abstract commodity, throughout Europe.
His most famous publication, the 42-line Bible, is thought to have been created for some of the wealthy bishops of the Catholic Church, but subsequent printings also offered the increasingly literate populous a homogenous reality based on the doctrines of Christianity... kind of like those Veggietales cartoons, but with more wrath.
Many of these principles were diametrically opposed to the exciting new ideas of contemporary science, including the heliocentric model of the solar system that was quietly conceptualized by Nicholas Copernicus in 1514, but out of fear of retribution, it was not widely known about until after his death. During his lifetime, he was more widely recognized as an economic administrator and the author of Monetae Cudendae Ratio, which was published in 1526 and was a manifesto of his concerns about the dynamic European economy.
 |
| He seems to be waving goodbye to something big. |
With the spread of market commerce in Renaissance Europe, peasants could now gain wealth, land and power by selling their goods and labor -- largely to and from each other. Thus the idea of the middle class was born. Through this new economy, people could improve their social standing through their own skill, labor and diligence. Meanwhile, new forms of serfdom emerged by way of debt, labor and capital.
 |
| "Can I interest you in some Tupperware?" |
As suggested by the name, the Enlightenment fundamentally changed the way that Europeans saw their place in the world. The basic idea was that, as human beings, we can make our lives better through the acquisition and application of knowledge, and this could, in turn, lead us toward a common understanding of the physical reality we share. To quote the Faber College motto in National Lampoon's Animal House, "Knowledge is good."
Think of the above image as a metaphor. The pyramid symbolizes at its base the broad and eclectic ideas of humanity, spread to the far corners of the earth. Generations have passed in which ideas were built upon ideas, gradually bringing people closer together, ever upward toward a single unified point, which represents a universally accepted comprehension of reality. Note, too, that the "all-seeing eye" on the one dollar bill is human. Beneath it, the construction of this metaphorical structure has been in the works for thousands of years, just as it will likely continue ad infinitum, growing ever closer to a state of absolute omniscience that will forever elude us: the eye that hovers above the pyramid, part of the same basic design, but separate nonetheless. Much like the how the bricks are bound by gravity, so too are we to the limitations of being human.
Continuing with this metaphor, consider how "alternative facts" split us apart. The moneychangers divide us. While we should be coming together toward a common reality, our separate realities are in fact the cause of countless conflicts. My god can beat up your god, our country's economic system is better than yours, your favorite team is not as good as my favorite team, disco rules, etc. It can be difficult to see past one's own ideology, but "Truth" is not subjective. And just so you know, the opposite of the Enlightenment was the Dark Ages.
Highlights include the bubonic plague and the Spanish Inquisition. For more information, open a goddamn book once in a while.
Currencies of Europe
ReplyDelete