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(MUSIC) FRANCK: Organ
Chorale No.3 in A Minor

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Ruskin said: Great nations write their
autobiographies in three manuscripts.

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The book of their deeds; the book of
their words; and the book of their art.

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Not one of these books can be understood
unless we read the two others.

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But, of the three
the only trustworthy one is the last.

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On the whole, l think this is true.

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Looking at those great works of Western man,

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and remembering all that he has achieved
in philosophy, poetry, science, law-making,

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it does seem hard to believe
that European civilisation can ever vanish.

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And yet, you know, it has happened once.

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All the life-giving human activities
that we lump together under the word "civilisation"

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have been obliterated
once in Western Europe.

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When the barbarians
ran over the Roman Empire.

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For two centuries, the heart of
European civilisation almost stopped beating.

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We got through by the skin of our teeth.

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In the last few years, we've developed an
uneasy feeling that this could happen again.

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And advanced thinkers

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who, even in Roman times, thought it fine
to gang up with the barbarians,

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have begun to question
if civilisation is worth preserving.

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This is why it seems to me a good moment
to look at some of the ways in which

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man has shown himself to be an intelligent,
creative, orderly and compassionate animal.

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The time to begin looking is the time when the
old world of Greece and Rome had collapsed

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and the new world of Western Europe

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had not produced anything
that one could call civilisation.

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What is civilisation?

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l don't know.
l can't define it in abstract terms yet.

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But l think l can recognise it when l see it.

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And I'm looking at it now.

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If l had to say which was telling the truth
about society,

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a speech by a Minister of Housing,
or the actual buildings put up in his time,

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l should believe the buildings.

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But this doesn't mean that
the history of civilisation is the history of art.

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Far from it.

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Great works of art
can be produced in barbarous societies.

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In fact, the very narrowness of primitive society

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gives their ornamental art
a peculiar concentration and vitality.

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At some time in the 9th century,

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monks would have looked down
into the River Seine

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and seen the prow of a Viking ship
coming up the river.

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Looked at today, it's a powerful work of art.

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But to the mother of a family
trying to settle down in her little hut,

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it would have seemed less agreeable.

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As menacing to her civilisation as the periscope
of a nuclear submarine.

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A powerful work of art.

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More moving, to most of us,
than this Graeco-Roman head.

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And yet this is from the figure that was once
the most admired piece of sculpture in the world.

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The Apollo of the Belvedere.

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Well, whatever its merits as a work of art

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the Apollo surely embodies a higher state
of civilisation than the Viking prow.

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The Northern imagination takes shape
in an image offear and darkness.

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The Hellenistic imagination in an image of
harmonised proportion and human reason.

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At certain moments, man has felt the need to
develop these qualities of thought and feeling

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so that they might approach,
as nearly as possible, to an ideal of perfection.

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He's managed to satisfy this need
in various ways through myths,

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through dance and song,
through systems of philosophy,

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and through the order that he has imposed
on the visible world.

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The children of his imagination
are also the expressions of an ideal.

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Western Europe inherited such an ideal.

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It had been invented in Greece
in the 5th century before Christ

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and was, without doubt, the most extraordinary
creation in the whole of history.

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So complete, so convincing,

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so satisfying to the mind and the eye that it
lasted practically unchanged for over 600 years.

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Of course, its art became very, stereotyped
and conventional

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but there it was.

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The same architectural language,
the same imagery, the same theatres,

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the same temples.

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At any time for 500 years, you could have found
them all round the Mediterranean -

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in Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, North Africa,

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or in the South of France, where l am now.

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This building,
the so-called Maison Carre at Nimes

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is a little Greek temple that might have been
anywhere in the Graeco-Roman world.

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That world must have seemed
absolutely indestructible.

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And, of course, some of it was never destroyed.

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This aqueduct, not far from Nimes,

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was materially beyond the destructive powers
of the barbarians.

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What happened?

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Well, it took Gibbon nine volumes to describe
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire,

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and l shall not embark on that.

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But thinking about
this almost-incredible episode

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does tell one something about
the nature of civilisation.

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It shows that however co,complex and solid
it seems

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it's actually quite fragile.

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It can be destroyed.

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What are its enemies?

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First of all, fear.
Fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague.

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Fears that make it simply not worthwhile
constructing things

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or planting trees,
or even planning next year's crops.

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And fear of the supernatural,

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which means that you daren't question anything
or change anything.

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The late antique world was full
of meaningless rituals, mystery religions,

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that destroyed self-confidence.

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And then...boredom.

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A feeling of hopelessness,

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which can overtake people
with a high degree of material prosperity.

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There's a poem by a modern Greek
called Cavafy.

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A poem in which he imagines the people
of some late antique city,

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waiting every day for the barbarians
to come and sack it.

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And then, finally,
the barbarians move off somewhere else

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and the city is saved.

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But the people are disappointed.

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It would have been better than nothing.

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Of course, civilisation requires
a modicum of material prosperity.

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Enough to provide a little leisure.

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But far more, it requires confidence.

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Confidence in the society in which one lives,

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belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws,

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confidence in one's own mental powers.

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The way the stones of that bridge are laid

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is not only a triumph of technical skill,

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but it shows a vigorous belief
in discipline and law.

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Energy, vitality - all the great civilisations
or civilising epochs,

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have had a weight of energy behind them.

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People sometimes think that civilisation
consists in fine sensibilities

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and good conversation, and all that.

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These can be among the agreeable results
of civilisation

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but they are not what makes a civilisation.

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And a society can have these amenities
and yet be dead and rigid.

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So, if one asks why the civilisation
of Greece and Rome collapsed,

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the real answer is that it was exhausted.

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The barbarians

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who'd hammered at the borders of the Roman
Empire throughout its whole history,

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finally crossed the Danube and the Rhine.

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At first they were half-Romanised,

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and helped to carry on the administration
of the Empire,

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but gradually the great system broke down.

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Into Italy there poured
successive waves of invaders

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who were destructively hostile
to what they couldn't understand.

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l don't suppose they bothered
to destroy the great buildings

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that were scattered all over the Roman world.

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But the idea of keeping them up
never entered their heads.

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They preferred to live in prefabs,

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and to let the old places fall down.

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Of course, here and there life must have
gone on in an apparently normal way

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for very much longer than one would expect.

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It always does.

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Civilisation might have drifted downstream
for a long time.

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But in the middle of the 7th century,

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there appeared from the south
a new agent of destruction: Islam.

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"There is one god
and Mohammed is his prophet."

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The simplest doctrine
that has ever gained acceptance.

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It gave to the prophet's followers

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the invincible solidarity
that had once directed the legions of Rome.

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In a miraculously short time -
about fifty years -

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the classical world was overrun.

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Only its bleached bones
stood out against the Mediterranean sky.

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The old source of civilisation was sealed off

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and, if a new civilisation was to be born

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it would have to face the Atlantic.

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What a hope.

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People sometimes tell me that they prefer
barbarism to civilisation.

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l doubt if they've given it a long enough trial.

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Like the people of Alexandria,
they are bored by civilisation.

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But all the evidence suggests that the boredom
of barbarism is infinitely greater.

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Quite apart from the discomforts, the privations,

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there was no escape from it.

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Very restricted company, no books,

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no light after dark,

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no hope.

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On one side the sea, battering away.

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On the other, infinite stretches of bog and forest,
and rocky waste.

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A most melancholy existence.

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And the Anglo-Saxon poets
had no illusions about it.

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"A wise man may grasp how ghastly it shall be

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When all this world's wealth standeth waste

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Even as now, in many places over the earth

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Walls stand, wind-beaten

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Heavy with hoarfrost, ruined habitations

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The maker of men hath so marred this dwelling

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That human laughter is not heard about it

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And idle stand those old giant works."

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Well, it was probably better
to live on the very edge of the world

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than in the shadow
of one of those old giant works,

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where, at any moment, you might be attacked
by a new wave of marauders.

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Such, at least
was the view of the first 'Christians.

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They struggled on
in search of the most inaccessible fringes

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of Cornwall, Ireland, or the Hebrides

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and what places they found.

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Eighteen miles from the Irish coast
is the island of Skellig Michael,

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a pinnacle of rock rising 7OO feet from the sea.

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Even today it's impossible to land
except in fair weather.

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Yet, for 400 years,
Christians found it a place of refuge.

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They made this stone causeway
up its steep slopes.

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An extraordinary achievement
of courage and tenacity.

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Looking back from the great civilisations
of 12th-century France or 1th-century Rome,

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it is hard to believe that for quite a long time -
over a hundred years -

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Western Christianity survived
by clinging to places like this.

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Just below the summit
on the only habitable fragment' of land,

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they built their dry-stone huts.

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There are stones of white crystal on the island

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and they've been used to make this rough cross
above the doorway.

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Of course, there was a pope
in the ruined, beleaguered city of Rome.

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But the Celtic church
owed no allegiance to him.

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Here these devoted transmitters of Christianity

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lived their uncomfortable, inward-turning lives,

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while the tides of barbarians
ebbed and flowed across Europe.

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The Christian few sought remote places
of enduring sanctuary.

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But the pagan tribes
were not interested in permanence.

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Like the Irish tinkers of today,
they preferred drifting as the mood took them.

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All through the early Dark Ages,
great masses of people were on the move,

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taking their animals
and their possessions with them.

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What did the early wanderers care about?

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The answer comes out in the poems.

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Gold.

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Whenever an Anglo-Saxon poet wants to
put into words his ideal of a good society,

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he speaks of gold.

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"There once many a man

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Mood-glad, gold bright, of gleams garnished

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Flushed with wine-pride, flashing war gear

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Gazed on wrought gemstones,
on gold, on silver,

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On wealth held and hoarded
on light-filled amber."

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(Crows caw)

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Struggling through the forest,
battling with the waves

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conscious chiefly of thee animals and
the birds that hung in the tangled branches,

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the barbarians were not interested
in human beings.

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The wanderers
had never been without craftsmen.

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All their pent-up need to give some permanent
shape to the flux of experience,

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to make something perfect
out of their singularly imperfect existence

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was concentrated in these marvellous objects.

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This love of gold and wrought gemstones,

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this feeling that they reflected an ideal world
and had some kind of enduring magic

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went on right up to the time when
the dark struggles for survival were over.

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It's arguable that Western civilisation
was saved by its craftsmen.

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The wanderers could take their craftsmen
with them.

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Since the smiths made princely,weapons,
as well as ornaments

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they were as necessary to a chieftain's status

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as were the bards
whose calypsos celebrated his courage.

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But, even while these splendid objects
were being made,

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Christianity was gaining ground in the West.

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And two or three of the British Isles
offered, for a short time, relative security.

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One of them was Iona.

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The Celtic missionaries are said to have
preached to the seals.

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And the seals, with their usual curiosity,
no doubt came up to listen.

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Secure and sacred.

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l never come to Iona -
and l used to come here almost every year

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because, when l was young
my home was nearby -

236
00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,380
without the feeling:. Some god is in this place.

237
00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:54,470
It's not as awe-inspiring
as some other holy places - Delphi or Assisi,

238
00:19:54,548 --> 00:19:58,900
but Iona gives one,
more than anywhere else l know,

239
00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:02,230
a sense of peace and inner freedom.

240
00:20:03,308 --> 00:20:05,259
What does it?

241
00:20:05,348 --> 00:20:07,298
The light?

242
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:09,348
Or the lie of the land?

243
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:13,990
Which, coming after the solemn hills of Mull,
seems strangely like Greece,

244
00:20:14,068 --> 00:20:16,019
like Delos, even.

245
00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:21,910
Or is it the memory of those holy men
who kept Western civilisation alive?

246
00:20:23,200 --> 00:20:25,150
Iona was founded by St Columba

247
00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:28,509
who came here from Ireland
in the middle of the 6th century.

248
00:20:28,588 --> 00:20:31,259
It seems to have been a sacred spot
before he came

249
00:20:31,348 --> 00:20:36,019
and for four centuries
it was the centre of Celtic Christianity.

250
00:20:36,108 --> 00:20:39,538
There's said to have been 360 crosses
like the one behind me

251
00:20:39,640 --> 00:20:43,108
nearly all of them thrown into the sea
during the Reformation.

252
00:20:44,440 --> 00:20:48,509
No-one knows which of the surviving
Celtic manuscripts were produced here,

253
00:20:48,588 --> 00:20:52,858
and which in the Northumbrian island,
of Lindisfarne, and it doesn't matter

254
00:20:52,960 --> 00:20:56,990
because they're all
in what we rightly consider an Irish style.

255
00:20:57,068 --> 00:20:59,019
The strange thing about these books

256
00:20:59,108 --> 00:21:03,180
is that the monks who decorated them
seem to have had so little consciousness

257
00:21:03,269 --> 00:21:05,828
of any form of classical or Christian culture.

258
00:21:05,920 --> 00:21:07,868
(PLAINSONG)

259
00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:24,308
They're all gospel books

260
00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:27,068
but they're almost devoid of Christian symbols,

261
00:21:27,160 --> 00:21:32,308
except for the fierce oriental-looking beasts
who symbolise the four Evangelists.

262
00:21:40,400 --> 00:21:43,910
When a man appears,
he cuts a very poor figure.

263
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:46,950
In this case
the scribe has thought it b' est to write in

264
00:21:47,028 --> 00:21:50,058
imago hominis - the image of a man.

265
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:52,950
But the pages of pure ornament

266
00:21:53,028 --> 00:21:57,180
are almost the richest pieces
of abstract decoration ever produced.

267
00:21:57,269 --> 00:22:01,940
More refined and elaborate
than anything in Islamic art.

268
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:05,190
We look at them for ten seconds

269
00:22:05,269 --> 00:22:09,098
then we pass on to something
that we can interpret, or read.

270
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:11,548
But imagine if one couldn't read

271
00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:14,390
and had nothing else to look at
for weeks at a time.

272
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:18,098
Then these pages would have
an almost hypnotic effect.

273
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:47,460
The last work to be decorated in Iona
has become the most famous.

274
00:22:47,548 --> 00:22:49,500
The Book Of Kells.

275
00:22:49,588 --> 00:22:52,338
Soon after these fabulous pages
were completed,

276
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:54,470
when the book itself was unfinished

277
00:22:54,548 --> 00:22:57,108
the abbot of Iona was forced to flee to Ireland.

278
00:22:57,200 --> 00:23:00,670
The sea had become
more menacing than the land.

279
00:23:00,750 --> 00:23:02,700
The Norsemen were on the move.

280
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:05,670
(Screaming)

281
00:23:37,548 --> 00:23:40,108
"if there were a hundred tongues in each head,"

282
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:42,150
said a contemporary Irish writer,

283
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,190
"they could not recount or narrate

284
00:23:44,269 --> 00:23:48,618
or enumerate, or tell what all the Irish suffered
of hardships and of injuring

285
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:50,670
and of oppression in every house

286
00:23:50,750 --> 00:23:54,980
from those valiant, wrathful
purely pagan people."

287
00:23:56,068 --> 00:23:59,460
The Celts haven't changed much.
Purely pagan.

288
00:23:59,548 --> 00:24:03,818
Unlike the earlier wanderers
the Vikings had a rather splendid mythology,

289
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:05,868
romanticised for us by Wagner.

290
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:09,990
Their runic stones
have an almost magical power.

291
00:24:10,068 --> 00:24:14,058
They were the last people of Europe
to resist Christianity.

292
00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:17,700
There are Viking gravestones
from quite late in the Middle Ages

293
00:24:17,788 --> 00:24:22,940
that have symbols of Wotan on one side
and Christian symbols on the other.

294
00:24:23,028 --> 00:24:24,980
What's called hedging your bets.

295
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:29,788
This is how they portrayed themselves
on an engraved stone,

296
00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:32,180
sailing off in their ships, landing,

297
00:24:32,269 --> 00:24:34,220
fighting, looting.

298
00:24:34,308 --> 00:24:36,660
Off course they were brutal and rapacious.

299
00:24:37,348 --> 00:24:41,578
All the same, they have a place in the story
of European civilisation

300
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:45,990
because these pirates
were not merely destructive.

301
00:24:47,828 --> 00:24:50,900
If one wants a symbol of Atlantic man,

302
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:53,348
as opposed to Mediterranean man,

303
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:57,028
a symbol to set against the Greek temple,

304
00:24:57,108 --> 00:25:00,058
then it must be the Viking ship.

305
00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:06,509
The Greek temple is solid, static, crystalline.

306
00:25:06,588 --> 00:25:13,700
The Viking ship is light, mobile, buoyant,
floating like a water lily.

307
00:25:13,788 --> 00:25:17,058
The one beside me is 72 feet long.

308
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,720
It has a very shallow draught - only three foot.

309
00:25:20,750 --> 00:25:25,578
It belongs to the early period of Viking
navigation, when they still hugged the shore.

310
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:28,269
Hence the shallow draught.

311
00:25:28,348 --> 00:25:30,298
This is the ocean-going type.

312
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:35,548
By the time it was built - it's about
50 years later than the first one we saw -

313
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:38,150
the Vikings were quartering the world.

314
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:43,068
They set out from a base and,
with unbelievable courage and ingenuity,

315
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:47,548
they got as far as Persia
via the Volga and the Caspian Sea.

316
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,338
And then they returned home
with all their loot in these open ships,

317
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,140
including coins from Samarkand
and even a Chinese Buddha.

318
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:01,190
The sheer technical skill of their journeys
was a new achievement.

319
00:26:01,269 --> 00:26:05,940
And their spirit did contribute something
very important to the Western world

320
00:26:06,028 --> 00:26:10,660
because, in the end
it was the spirit of Columbus.

321
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,230
They were also considerable artists.

322
00:26:15,068 --> 00:26:18,980
The ornament of the prow,
which as you see is highly sophisticated,

323
00:26:19,068 --> 00:26:21,338
is a pattern of movement, of endless flux,

324
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:27,670
with a rhythm that was still to underlie
the great ornamental art we call Romanesque.

325
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:42,430
When one also considers the Icelandic sagas,
which are among the great books of the world,

326
00:26:42,509 --> 00:26:45,460
one must admit
that the Norsemen produced a culture.

327
00:26:46,509 --> 00:26:48,858
But was it a civilisation?

328
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:52,308
Well, the monks of Lindisfarne
wouldn't have said so.

329
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:54,028
Nor would Alfred the Great.

330
00:26:54,108 --> 00:26:58,019
Nor the poor mother trying to settle down
with her family on the banks of the Seine,

331
00:26:58,108 --> 00:27:00,140
whom l mentioned earlier.

332
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:05,630
Civilisation means something more than
energy and will, and creative power.

333
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,630
Something the early Norsemen hadn't got

334
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:13,578
but which, even in their time
was beginning to reappear in Western Europe.

335
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:15,630
How can l define it?

336
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:18,150
Very shortly, a sense of permanence.

337
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:23,230
The wanderers and the invaders
were in a continual state of flux.

338
00:27:23,308 --> 00:27:26,500
They didn't feel the need to
Look forward beyond the next march

339
00:27:26,588 --> 00:27:28,460
or the next voyage or the next battle.

340
00:27:29,548 --> 00:27:33,420
And for that reason it didn't occur to them
to build stone houses

341
00:27:33,509 --> 00:27:35,460
nor to write books.

342
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,108
This is almost the only stone building

343
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,788
that has survived from the three, centuries
after the fall of Rome

344
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:47,108
the Baptistry at Poitiers.

345
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:49,578
And as you see, it's pitifully crude.

346
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:56,190
The builders, who have tried to use
some elements of Roman architecture

347
00:27:56,269 --> 00:27:57,980
capitals and pilasters and so forth,

348
00:27:58,068 --> 00:28:00,338
have no idea of their original intention.

349
00:28:01,788 --> 00:28:05,490
But at least this miserable construction
was meant to last.

350
00:28:06,548 --> 00:28:08,500
It isn't just a wigwam.

351
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:17,028
Civilised man, or so it seems to me, must feel
that he belongs somewhere in space and time,

352
00:28:17,108 --> 00:28:20,180
that he consciously
Looks forward and looks back.

353
00:28:20,269 --> 00:28:22,700
And for this he needs a minimum of stability.

354
00:28:23,750 --> 00:28:27,098
Which was, in Western Europe,
first achieved here in France.

355
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,630
Or, as it then was, the Kingdom of the Franks.

356
00:28:31,108 --> 00:28:32,460
It was achieved by fighting.

357
00:28:33,509 --> 00:28:38,420
All the great civilisations in their early stages
are based on success in war.

358
00:28:39,750 --> 00:28:41,618
And so it was with the Franks.

359
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,990
Clovis and his successors
not only conquered their enemies

360
00:28:45,068 --> 00:28:46,420
but maintained themselves

361
00:28:46,509 --> 00:28:52,538
by cruelties and tortures remarkable
even by the standards of the last 30 years.

362
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,750
Fighting, fighting, fighting.

363
00:28:55,828 --> 00:29:00,690
These 9th-century drawings
make it look less beastly than it was.

364
00:29:00,788 --> 00:29:05,220
Incidentally, they show, almost for the first time,
that the horsemen have stirrups.

365
00:29:05,308 --> 00:29:10,140
And people who like mechanical explanations
for historical events

366
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:14,390
maintained that this was the reason
why the Frankish cavalry was victorious.

367
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:19,420
One sometimes feels that the 7th and
8th centuries were like a prolonged Western.

368
00:29:19,509 --> 00:29:23,778
And the resemblance is made more vivid
by the presence, already in the 8th century,

369
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,230
of our old friends the sheriff and the marshal.

370
00:29:27,308 --> 00:29:29,769
But it was really far more horrible,

371
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:34,740
because unredeemed by
any trace of sentiment or chivalry.

372
00:29:35,788 --> 00:29:37,980
But fighting was necessary.

373
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:44,630
Without Charles Martel's victory over the Moors,
here at Poitiers in 732

374
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:49,190
Western civilisation might never have existed.

375
00:29:49,269 --> 00:29:52,538
And without Charlemagne's
tireless campaigning,

376
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:55,788
we should never have had the notion
of a united Europe.

377
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,509
We got through by the skin of our teeth.

378
00:30:14,108 --> 00:30:16,740
Charlemagne is the first great man of action

379
00:30:17,548 --> 00:30:21,940
to emerge from the darkness
since the collapse of the Roman world.

380
00:30:22,028 --> 00:30:24,098
He became a subject of myth and legend.

381
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:29,108
This magnificent reliquary made about 500
years after his death to hold a piece of his skull

382
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:32,308
expresses what the Gothic Middle Ages
felt about him

383
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:35,150
in terms that he himself
would have appreciated.

384
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:37,588
Gold and jewels and antique cameos.

385
00:30:41,788 --> 00:30:45,490
But the real man wasn't so far from that myth.

386
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:48,670
He was a commanding figure,

387
00:30:48,750 --> 00:30:51,500
over six feet tall with piercing blue eyes.

388
00:30:51,588 --> 00:30:56,058
Only, he had a small, squeaky voice
and a walrus moustache instead of the beard.

389
00:30:57,680 --> 00:30:59,548
He was a tireless administrator.

390
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,308
The lands he conquered,
Bavaria, Saxony, Lombardy,

391
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,788
were organised beyond the capacities
of a barbarous people.

392
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:09,950
His empire was an artificial creation.

393
00:31:10,828 --> 00:31:16,019
Yet the old idea that he saved civilisation
isn't so far wrong.

394
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:21,630
Because it was through him
that the Atlantic world re-established contact

395
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,910
with the ancient culture
of the Mediterranean world.

396
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:30,430
There were great disorders after his death,
but no more skin of our teeth.

397
00:31:30,509 --> 00:31:32,460
Civilisation had come through.

398
00:31:34,028 --> 00:31:35,538
How did he do it?

399
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:41,190
Well, first of all, with the help of an outstanding
teacher and librarian named Alcuin of York

400
00:31:41,269 --> 00:31:44,019
he collected books and had them copied.

401
00:31:44,108 --> 00:31:45,900
People don't always realise

402
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:51,150
that only three or four antique manuscripts
of the Latin authors are still in existence.

403
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:54,828
Our whole knowledge of ancient literature

404
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:59,630
is due to the collecting and copying
that began under Charlemagne.

405
00:32:01,028 --> 00:32:02,578
This is the more extraordinary

406
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:06,068
when one remembers that for over 500 years

407
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:11,470
practically no lay person, from kings
and emperors downwards, could read or write.

408
00:32:12,509 --> 00:32:14,660
Charlemagne learnt to read.

409
00:32:14,750 --> 00:32:16,338
But he never could write.

410
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:18,868
He said he couldn't get the hang of it.

411
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:21,630
Alfred the Great
who was an exceptionally clever man,

412
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,828
seems to have taught himself to read
at the age of 4O

413
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:26,710
and was the author of several books

414
00:32:26,788 --> 00:32:30,460
although they were probably dictated
in a kind of seminar.

415
00:32:30,548 --> 00:32:36,338
Great men, even ecclesiastics, normally
dictated to their secretaries, as they do today,

416
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:41,430
and as you may see one of them doing
in this 10th-century illustration.

417
00:32:42,509 --> 00:32:45,140
Of course, most of the higher clergy could read.

418
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:46,910
And the pictures of the Evangelists,

419
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,588
which are the favourite, often the only
illustrations in early manuscripts,

420
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:57,019
become in the 10th century a kind of assertion
of this almost divine accomplishment.

421
00:32:58,108 --> 00:33:00,980
This ivory is a glorification of writing,

422
00:33:01,068 --> 00:33:03,980
with its inspired concentration of St Gregory

423
00:33:04,068 --> 00:33:07,900
and its three smug little scribes below.

424
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:09,910
In copying these manuscripts,

425
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:14,858
Charlemagne's scribes arrived at
the most beautiful lettering ever invented.

426
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:16,308
Also the most practical.

427
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:17,990
So when the Renaissance humanists

428
00:33:18,068 --> 00:33:22,380
wanted to find a clearer and more elegant
substitute for the crabbed Gothic script,

429
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:24,430
they revived the Carolingian.

430
00:33:25,750 --> 00:33:29,900
And so it has survived, in more or less
the same form, until the present day.

431
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:36,308
Charlemagne's adoption of the imperial idea
led him to look not only at antique civilisation

432
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:42,548
but at its strange posthumous existence
in what we call the Byzantine Empire.

433
00:33:47,108 --> 00:33:49,058
(Chanting)

434
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:14,949
For 400 years, Constantinople
had been the greatest city in the world

435
00:34:15,030 --> 00:34:20,539
and the only one in which life had gone on
more or less untouched by the wanderers.

436
00:34:20,630 --> 00:34:22,739
It was a civilisation all right.

437
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:28,030
It produced some of the most nearly perfect
buildings and works of art ever made.

438
00:34:28,110 --> 00:34:30,670
But it was entirely sealed off
from Western Europe,

439
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,710
partly by the Greek language,
partly by religious differences,

440
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:40,469
chiefly because it didn't want to involve itself with
the bloody feuds of the Western barbarians.

441
00:34:40,550 --> 00:34:44,018
It had its own Eastern barbarians to deal with.

442
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:54,389
(Chanting)

443
00:34:59,510 --> 00:35:02,070
l am in the church of San Vitale at Ravenna

444
00:35:02,150 --> 00:35:07,860
which for a part of the 5th and 6th centuries
was the seat of the Byzantine court.

445
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:09,909
(Chanting continues)

446
00:36:16,190 --> 00:36:19,059
Charlemagne came here
on his way back from Rome.

447
00:36:20,070 --> 00:36:23,420
No emperor had visited Rome
for almost 500 years.

448
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:28,349
And when Charlemagne, the great conqueror,
went there in the year 800,

449
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:33,070
the Pope crowned him
as the head of a new Holy Roman Empire,

450
00:36:33,150 --> 00:36:38,300
brushing aside the fact that there
was another emperor in Constantinople.

451
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:42,550
Charlemagne was afterwards heard to say that
this famous episode was a mistake.

452
00:36:42,630 --> 00:36:45,010
He advised his son to crown himself.

453
00:36:45,110 --> 00:36:46,940
Perhaps he was right.

454
00:36:47,030 --> 00:36:51,699
By crowning Charlemagne, the Pope
could claim a supremacy over the Emperor,

455
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:55,869
which was the cause or pretext of war
for three centuries.

456
00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:00,268
But historical judgements are very tricky.

457
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:05,190
Maybe the tension between the spiritual and
worldly powers throughout the Middle Ages

458
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:09,030
was precisely what kept
European civilisation alive.

459
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,030
If either had achieved absolute power,

460
00:37:13,110 --> 00:37:20,500
society might have grown as static as
the civilisation of Egypt or of Byzantium itself.

461
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:26,630
Anyway, Charlemagne saw these mosaics
of Justinian and Theodore...

462
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:31,268
and realised how magnificent
an emperor could be.

463
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:34,789
l may add that he himself never wore anything
but a plain Frankish cloak.

464
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,429
And when Charlemagne returned to
his residence at Aix-la-Chapelle -

465
00:37:39,510 --> 00:37:42,579
he settled there because he liked swimming
in the hot springs -

466
00:37:42,670 --> 00:37:47,739
he determined to build a replica of San Vitale
as his parish chapel.

467
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:51,309
(Plainsong)

468
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:37,739
Those mosaics are a reconstruction
done in the 19th century.

469
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:40,469
And we can see that
by comparison with Ravenna,

470
00:38:40,550 --> 00:38:44,329
the octagon at Aix
is rather stiff and monotonous.

471
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:49,659
But those magnificent iron grilles,
which were made locally,

472
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,510
are an impressive technical achievement.

473
00:38:52,590 --> 00:38:54,539
(Plainsong)

474
00:39:03,550 --> 00:39:06,860
And when one thinks that
nearly all the buildings in northern Europe,

475
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:10,739
including the greater part of
Charlemagne's palace, were of wood,

476
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:16,789
and that such stone buildings as existed
were the converted husks of Roman remains

477
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:18,829
it is the most extraordinary feat.

478
00:39:33,030 --> 00:39:34,619
Charlemagne's throne.

479
00:39:35,670 --> 00:39:39,059
Of course, the craftsmen who made those grilles
may have come from the East,

480
00:39:39,150 --> 00:39:44,268
because under Charlemagne Europe was
once more in touch with the outside world.

481
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:50,268
He even received a present from
Harun al-Rashid, caliph of the 1001 nights.

482
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:52,989
An elephant called Abul-Abbas.

483
00:39:53,070 --> 00:39:55,369
It died on campaign in Saxony.

484
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:59,309
Its tusks were made into chessmen
which still exist.

485
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:04,550
As ruler of an empire
stretching from Denmark to the Adriatic,

486
00:40:04,630 --> 00:40:07,500
he amassed treasures
from all over the known world.

487
00:40:08,590 --> 00:40:11,579
But in the end, it was the books that mattered.

488
00:40:12,590 --> 00:40:17,139
There have never been more splendid books
than those illuminated for the court library

489
00:40:17,230 --> 00:40:19,860
and sent as presents all over Western Europe.

490
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:22,789
In their own day these books were so precious

491
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:28,670
that the practice arose of giving them the richest,
most elaborate bindings conceivable.

492
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:33,829
Usually they took the form of an ivory plaque
surrounded by beaten gold and gems.

493
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,030
And these small pieces of sculpture

494
00:40:37,110 --> 00:40:42,619
are in some ways our best indication
of the intellectual life of Europe

495
00:40:42,710 --> 00:40:44,659
for almost 200 years.

496
00:40:46,230 --> 00:40:48,530
Only Charlemagne
could hold the Empire together.

497
00:40:48,630 --> 00:40:49,980
After his death it broke up

498
00:40:50,070 --> 00:40:53,219
and Europe entered a phase
which historians usually consider

499
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:57,630
almost as dark and barbarous
as the century before him.

500
00:40:57,710 --> 00:41:03,500
Well, that's because they look at it from the point
of view of political history and the written word.

501
00:41:03,590 --> 00:41:09,500
If we read what Ruskin called the book of its art
we get a very different impression.

502
00:41:09,590 --> 00:41:12,820
Because, contrary to all expectation,

503
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,699
the 10th century produced work as splendid,

504
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:20,630
and as technically skillful,
and even as delicate, as any other age.

505
00:41:24,230 --> 00:41:27,059
To me, this cross of Lothair

506
00:41:27,150 --> 00:41:32,300
is one of the most moving objects
that has come down to us from the distant past.

507
00:41:37,630 --> 00:41:41,659
On the front
there's a beautiful assertion of imperial status.

508
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:46,780
At the centre of these gems and gold filigree
is a cameo of the Emperor Augustus,

509
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:51,268
an image of political imperium
at its most civilised.

510
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,829
On the back, there's a flat piece of silver.

511
00:42:04,070 --> 00:42:07,768
But on it is engraved
an outline drawing of the crucifixion,

512
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:12,309
a drawing of such poignant beauty as to
make the front of the cross look worldly.

513
00:42:13,550 --> 00:42:17,699
It's the experience of a great artist
simplified to its essence.

514
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:21,268
What Matisse wanted to do
in his chapel at Vence.

515
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,829
But more concentrated
and, of course, the work of a believer.

516
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:30,949
We've grown so used to the idea that the
crucifixion is the supreme symbol of Christianity

517
00:42:31,030 --> 00:42:36,539
that it's a shock to realise how late in the history
of Christian art its power was recognised.

518
00:42:36,630 --> 00:42:40,900
In the first six centuries, the crucifixion
is practically never represented.

519
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:42,909
And the earliest example,

520
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:45,070
on the doors of Santa Sabina in Rome...

521
00:42:45,150 --> 00:42:47,659
it's stuck away in a corner, almost out of sight.

522
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:49,750
It's not only obscure, but unmoving.

523
00:42:54,030 --> 00:42:57,940
The simple fact is that
the early Church needed converts.

524
00:42:58,030 --> 00:43:02,739
And from this point of view, the crucifixion
was not an encouraging subject.

525
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:05,909
So early Christian art is concerned
with miracles -

526
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,070
healings, water into wine.

527
00:43:08,150 --> 00:43:12,860
And with hopeful aspects of the faith
such as the Ascension and the Resurrection.

528
00:43:14,030 --> 00:43:16,460
The few surviving crucifixions
of the early Church

529
00:43:16,550 --> 00:43:19,260
make no attempt to touch our emotions.

530
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:24,869
It was the 10th century, that despised
and rejected epoch of European history,

531
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:29,030
which made the crucifixion into a moving symbol
of the Christian faith.

532
00:43:29,110 --> 00:43:30,940
In such a figure as this,

533
00:43:31,030 --> 00:43:34,650
made for Archbishop Gero of Cologne
1000 years ago,

534
00:43:36,710 --> 00:43:42,260
one sees the figure of the crucified Christ
as it has been almost ever since.

535
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:45,960
The upstretched arms,

536
00:43:46,030 --> 00:43:48,699
the sunken head

537
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:50,989
the poignant twist of the body.

538
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:54,869
(Plainsong)

539
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:16,750
The men of the 10th century

540
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:21,469
not only recognised the meaning of
Christ's sacrifice in physical terms,

541
00:44:21,550 --> 00:44:24,820
they were able to sublimate it into ritual.

542
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:27,670
The evidence of book illustrations and ivories

543
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:33,230
shows for the first time a consciousness
of the symbolic power of the Mass.

544
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:36,829
(Plainsong continues)

545
00:45:13,230 --> 00:45:18,349
Look at these solemn, columnar characters
celebrating and chanting the Mass.

546
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:22,750
Are they not almost literally
pillars of a great new establishment?

547
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:32,469
And what about this enamelled pulpit
at Aix-la-Chapelle

548
00:45:32,550 --> 00:45:36,500
from which the word of God could be preached
to the Emperor and his court?

549
00:45:40,030 --> 00:45:45,179
These grand, authoritative works
show that at the end of the 10th century

550
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:49,550
there was a new power in Europe,
greater than any king or empire -

551
00:45:49,630 --> 00:45:51,059
the Church.

552
00:45:51,150 --> 00:45:54,219
And the Church at this date
was a humanising influence.

553
00:45:55,590 --> 00:45:58,739
I'm reminded of the most famous lines of Virgil -

554
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,989
Virgil who loomed so large
in the medieval imagination.

555
00:46:02,670 --> 00:46:05,500
They come when Virgil's hero Aeneas

556
00:46:05,590 --> 00:46:10,059
has been shipwrecked in a country
that he fears will be inhabited by barbarians.

557
00:46:11,150 --> 00:46:16,340
Then as he looks around, he sees
some figures carved in relief and he says,

558
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:21,710
"These men know the pathos of life,
and mortal things touched their hearts."

559
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:27,710
Man is no longer imago hominis,
the image of a man,

560
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:32,230
but is a human being
with humanity's impulses and fears.

561
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:37,469
Also humanity's moral sense
and belief in the authority of a higher power.

562
00:46:39,670 --> 00:46:41,539
By the year 1000,

563
00:46:41,630 --> 00:46:45,139
the year in which many timid people
feared that the world would come to an end

564
00:46:45,230 --> 00:46:48,260
the long dominance
of the barbarous wanderers was over

565
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:53,190
and Western Europe was prepared
for its first great age of civilisation.

566
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:56,268
(Plainsong)