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Proper way to view the Medieval Era - A Synopsis based on Umberco Eco's 'Introduction to the Middles Ages'

The idea of ​​what seems to be the Middle Ages and what it really is, according to Umberto Eco, are two different realities, largely because the great modernist 'propaganda' is, in particular, against medieval concepts and ideas, the modernists wanting to make an antithesis between the two historical eras, so that there is no chance of introducing the two historical concepts, as if they were similar in any other way, due to the idea of ​​the modern world wanting to move away from the 'old ways' of medievalism, giving to know a more modern and progressive part of a more modernist world. Various reasons and events are introduced that demonstrate, and lead to believe, from the author's point of reasoning, why the Middle Ages is being unfairly known as if it were a kind of permanent 'Dark Age', throughout its own period – after a civilizational period full of changes, at least on the European continent, and before an 'explosion' and several revolutions in science and many other areas, such as the Discoveries, but it attributes, and accepts, the idea of ​​the Dark Ages, but only if it were referenced and connoted as the transition period between the classical and, necessarily, the medieval era – therefore, basically, the period that is commonly attributed as Late Antiquity, by many others historians.

The objective is to demystify various events taken as facts, or various presumptions taken as present during medievalism, in which a large part of the world population still believes, showing, directly, that, in the author's opinion, one should change and lower the everyday prejudice that one usually has with the Middle Ages. One of the characteristics that we seek to make known is the fact that, for the author, there are two Middle Ages: High Middle Ages and Low Middle Ages, each having several distinctions that could easily be recognized as an age of transition period that existed after the fall of the Roman Empire, or at least that of the West, which allowed the entry and establishment of many other peoples, many of them Germanic, within the borders that would be the Western Roman Empire, until the end of that same transactional period, which would be concluded around the year 1000, or tenth century, or at least with the death of Charlemagne, coining, in the Low Middle Ages, as another transition period, but for what would come to be the well-known Renaissance, in which, according to the author, this period before the much-acclaimed Renaissance was a time when, despite the connotation that 'Low' gives and demonstrates, it is a period “when Dante concludes the Divine Comedy, Petrarch and Boccaccio write and the Florentine humanism flourishes", demonstrating that the Low Middle Ages itself cannot be 'low' in the negative sense, but rather positive, because if it were some period in history in which the denigrable was really always practiced, or what always is as a decadence, or at least the lack of an ascension, in the civilizational sense, there would never have been the hypothesis that these well-known medieval authors had produced, or even existed, in this historical epoch, an epoch of feudal lords to serfs, from monarchs to clergy, also including the fact that the Middle Ages, in general, not only belong to European civilizations, but also to African and Asian civilizations, which even came to influence each other, which allowed great technological advances, also not repudiating science, or by not as much as one wants, and the very changes that allowed the Renaissance, everything having happened during the previous period, the medieval, or the Middle Ages.

Bibliography: - ECO, Umberto, Idade Média, vol. 1 – Cristãos, Bérbaros e Muçulmanos, Lisboa, Ed. Dom Quixote, 2011, pp. 13-­‐40

[openhistory]

The city of Carthage (814 BC–146 BC)

The city of Carthage, like all its history, from the beginning, or its foundation, to the end, that is, its last moments as an existence in the world, an end brought about by the Romans who conquered Carthage itself, which crossed hundreds of years, many of them glorious, while others less good. Since Queen Dido had decided to flee Tyre, because of her tyrant brother who had just become king of the same city-state, from the Phoenician molds and influences that Carthage assimilated, since he had become independent from the power of Tire and the Phoenicians with their autonomous city-states with relations between themselves for what would be considered as a single civilization and not as separate, but also since its end, already in another period ahead in history. But what is also worth highlighting is the fact of the impact that the city had on the Mediterranean world, which it accumulated for the rest of the world, due to the influence and assimilation of characteristics of the Carthaginians that many other more recent and modern powers have adopted, mainly taken through of the Discoveries, to the four corners of the world.

However, what matters is the memory and the traces that all citizens - and non-citizens - influenced, even if it had been by some action that constituted a tiny one, Carthage and all its doings, collectively and unconsciously contributed to what it would be remembered for history as Carthage and its city.

Bibliography: -VIRGÍLIO. (2016). “Eneida”. Tradutores Luís M.G. Cerqueira, Cristina Abranches Guerreiro, Ana Alexandra Tibúrcio L. Alves. Lisboa: Bertrand Editora; -RAWLISON, George. (1899). “History of Phoenicia”: Longmans, Green, and Co.

[openhistory]

How to make history - according to Marc Bloch, in ‘The Historian’s Craft‘

It began to be written during the author’s participation in the French Resistance, in Lyon, in the context of World War II, and was interrupted with his shooting in a Nazi concentration camp.

Marc Bloch insists, throughout the work, on the concept that History must be read, analyzed and understood, through the structure that really provides the basis and the necessary platform: the people. Bloch gives the impression that history has to be exposed from the bottom up, not the top down. This notion is built, starting with the stratum that offers the greatest amount of historical sources and facts and, simultaneously, of people forgotten by history itself, to the surface of memories of the past, where at the very top are the most recognizable individuals and ideas that established itself, in its time, as relevant. This group of people, forgotten by positivist history, are the least important, at least according to their contemporaries, the individuals who wrote and remind us of their historical periods. There is not only this notion that is served to us while reading this book, but also many others, but it serves a common purpose, a main purpose, as if it were so fundamental that the other notions would be organized into subcategories, always below the essential – how to make history – which brings us to another point.

“How is History made?”, “How should we choose the way History is made”, “Do we have to go to the most dated origins in the past to find sources with greater genuineness? Or are we actually just going to find almost nothing?” These are questions that experience the possibility of existing, during the reader’s reflection process, at a certain point in their reading. Multiple questions are asked and answered, however, the answers, just like the idea that the author presents to us, following his way of working, it is up to the readers to interpret the way they think it is, but above all , look for the source, and decipher your version of the truth, prioritizing rationalization.

The content of the work is taken to various sectors, and varies, so that how man himself works and how this affects the way our ancestors made history, even to the historical observation and the sensitivity of the positivist way, even during , not a very distant past, so how should we criticize and think before a historical fact, and also whether we should, for the most part, judge or understand before that same fact.

In short, the concept for what this book was designed and produced for, even during such a difficult time, as it was for the author, but who always knew how to use his knowledge to tell anything, even without his sources - which is ironic, as the book itself affirms the idea that there must be proven truths, close to the historian, to interpret them, to finally be able to tell them there, which does not happen in this context – it has a lot of potential, in terms of how it can be mentally stretched and worked on. What is meant by this statement is that there is a lot of mental gymnastics represented in this work, thanks not only to the author, but also to the non-positivist concept present, as it shows, above all, the capacity for a deep search for the truth, the one interpreted by the individual who is looking for it, and the appreciation for the sources.