3 - “Europe” in the Middle Ages

Summary

In the great thirteenth-century collection of poems and songs known as the Carmina Burana, one of the longer specimens of the versifier's art opens with the phrase “Cum in Orbem Universum,” poetically captured in English as “Song of the Vagrant Order.” The song takes its starting point from the Latin imperative Ite (Go forth) and describes the wandering lives of priests, monks, and deacons who bolt their duties. As the poem continues, the poet characterizes other social groups as travelers, often doing so with a hard and biting sarcastic edge. Besides priests, monks, and deacons, the wanderers include adolescents and soldiers, tall men and short men, and scholars. A description repeated in the song—although not in precisely the same words—identifies the band of vagabonds in territorial terms. At one point the poet describes them as Austrians, Bavarians, Saxons, and Easterners; at another he sings of Bohemians, Germans, Slavs, and Italians:

Give to any folk you meet

Reasons for your questing.

As that men's peculiar ways

Seem in need of testing.

In other words, the poet advises the wanderer to respond to questions about his purpose by an affirmation of the virtues of cosmopolitanism. Individual ways—the ways of Austrians or Italians—have to be tested against the habits, loves, and hatreds of other people.

In this chapter I reflect on the idea of Europe in the High Middle Ages, the period from about 1050 to 1350.