Environmentalism in the Middle Ages
I have always been fascinated by the environment, and how we as humans think about and interact with it. We are currently living in an unprecedented time in terms of our impact on the environment. We are pulling millions of years’ worth of oil and natural out of the ground, emitting massive amounts greenhouse gases, and altering landscapes like never before. While it is easy to think that the world was just a giant wilderness before the industrial revolution, humans have been impacting the earth for a long time, just not to the scale we are seeing today. This paper will examine how people in the middle ages understood their natural surrounding and their impact on it and try to see if our modern ecological problems have roots from the middle ages.
Religion played a huge role in the lives of many people throughout the middle ages, so I feel it is important to look at how some of the major religions viewed nature and animals. The Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammed both made many references about the welfare of animals. Clive J.C. Phillips points out many such examples.[1] From Surrah An-Noor 24:41 of the Qur’an: “Seest thou not that it is Allah Whose praise all beings in the heavens and on earth do celebrate, and the birds (of the air) with wings outspread? Each one knows its own (mode of) prayer and praise, and Allah knows well all that they do.” There are also examples from the hadith: “There is a reward (ajr) for helping any living creature.” Reading and understanding the Qur’an was very important to Arab people in the middle ages, so it seems likely that reading things like this would have had an influence on the way the Muslim people viewed the treatment of animals. Many humans have viewed the value of animals as what they contribute to us, but these teachings enforce the idea that the life of an animal has intrinsic value. It would have been especially beneficial to the lives of camels, who were used frequently to transport good across the desert, as well as humanely killing animals for food. This view can be witnessed even today, with halal meat. Halal practices involve the practice of humanely killing animals to be used for food, and that idea comes from the Qur’an.
The Christian view is a bit different. Christianity existed well before Islam, and a lot of the early ideas came about because of the circumstances of the time. Christianity spread quickly during the end of the Roman Empire and early in the middle ages when education and literacy had not quite reached the levels it would by the time Islam came around. Christian Rohr writes that the early Christian view of life consisted of two parts: the macrocosm and microcosm.[2] The macrocosm deals with the earth and the microcosm with the human body, with were considered equivalent. The human head was meant to represent the globe in this scenario, which, contrary to popular belief, people knew was round. Animals were frequently used as symbols in this ideology. Rohr writes about the Physiologus, a work that came from Greece in the 2nd or 3rd century. The Physiologus compares plants and animals with various religious figures. The snake was compared to Christian after a confession because of the snake’s ability to shed its skin. It was also compared to the devil, because of the way it attacks people. Lastly, it was compared to martyrs. It claimed if the body of the snake dies, its head stays alive, like the life of a martyr lives on after death. We know these ideas were widespread because the Physiologus was translated into many different languages.
The Christian view on nature and the environment shifted in the middle and high middle ages. Ellen Arnold writes that the idea of church and science being separate and incompatible came about only in the 18th and 19th centuries.[3] In the middle ages religious figures wrote commentaries about science and produced some of their own research. Many Christians of this time also did not view nature as an adversary, but noticed the beauty of nature. The songs of the birds, the color of the flowers and how animals behaved. They were also aware that people could have an impact on nature, and it was important to live in harmony with it. No one illustrates this more than the man who the current Pope Francis is named after, Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis is known by many as one of the earliest ecologists. He was born in 1180 to a wealthy merchant family. He became very religious as a young man, and eventually gave up all his possessions. He formed his own order, the Franciscan Order, in 1210. This order was based on the idea of living in poverty and spreading reform via word of mouth. It became very successful, with thousands of people joining it. Thomas of Celano, who joined the order in 1215, wrote a book about titled “The First Life of St. Francis”. The translation quoted here comes from Leah Shopkow[4]. Thomas of Celano writes “But, not a little surprised that the birds did not fly away (as they are wont to do) he was filled with exceeding joy and humbly begged them to hear the word of God: and, after saying many things to them he added, "My brother birds, much ought you to praise your Creator, and ever to love Him who has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flight and all that you had need of. God has made you noble among His creatures, for He has given you a habitation in the purity of the air, and, whereas you neither sow nor reap, He himself does still protect and govern you without any care of your own." On this (as he himself and the brethren who had been with him used to say) those little birds, rejoicing in wondrous fashion, after their nature, began to stretch out their necks, to spread their wings, to open their beaks and to gaze on him.” The story of him approaching a bunch of birds, talking to them about God, and them responding to it might seem silly, but stories like this had a big influence on how religious figures viewed nature, up to and including today. Not only is the current pope named after him. but there are statues with him holding birds all around the world and people celebrate his life on October 4th with pet blessings. Even 800 years after he lived, he is still having an impact on how modern people view animals and the environment.
Taking a broader view of society outside of religion, John Aberth categorizes the European view of the environment into four parts in the middle ages.[5] The first being the “eschatological” view, which was the Christian view that was previously discussed. The next period is “adversarial”, extending from about the sixth to tenth centuries. This period was a result of people being more disconnected from each other than they had been in the century prior when Roman and Greek cities were all over Europe. Vast amounts of wilderness separated people, and people were frequently scared of that wilderness. Beowulf was written during this time period, in which Grendel comes from the outskirts of town to start killing the people in the town. In addition, trade had reduced dramatically from the height of the Roman Empire, so people did not travel as much and see a variety of different environments and cultures. There were still people with an appreciation of nature at this time, but it was not necessarily the predominant view. The 1000-1300 period is called the “collaborative” stage. This is when populations centers expanded, and people needed to be more in control of their natural surroundings. There were huge amounts of land needed for all the crops needed for these growing populations and there were massive systems of trade routes all over Eurasia. Never before had people had much a control over their surroundings. This peace and harmony came to a crashing end with The Great Famine of 1315 and the Plague. The people viewed this as nature making war against them, and thus ushered in the “adversarial” period. The idea here is that people came to view the environment as the
natural enemy of humanity. The delicate agricultural systems designed to feed masses of people were heavily disrupted by famine and lack of people to work the land, and that has a big impact on how people saw the world. It is my hope that we are currently in a transition period between living a more adversarial time, in which we take what we want without any regard for the future, and a more collaborative one in which we create a sustainable future. For decades and centuries we have wreaked havoc on the environment and it’s time to change that.
People’s views of nature were very often influenced by things that were happening in their surroundings, either caused by humans or natural disasters. This is a very natural thing that we see today. People respond not to the threat of impending natural disasters, but to the disasters themselves. An excellent example of this is seen from the Yellow River flooding of the Hebei Plains in China in 1048, as written by Ling Zhang.[6] The people of Hebei lived far away from the river, with no knowledge of it except from stories they were told. That was until one day in 1048 a massive flood swept through the plains, killing people and livestock, destroying properties, and making the land unsuitable for crops. This created a humanitarian crisis similar to what is seen in the Horn of Africa today, as a result of climate change destroying their land, making it hard for them to grow crops and raise livestock. Massive amounts of people in the Hebei became refugees, and because the flood destroyed so much crop land, there was not enough food to feed them all. Slums were set up for refugees, where disease and starvation were common. The affects of this flood impacted people in this region for centuries afterward. Floods are something that occur naturally, so it might seem that people had nothing to do with this, but Zhang makes a different case. The Hebei plains is north of the Yellow River, and traditionally the river had flooded south. Due to dike construction, repairs of bank ruptures, and other human activities, the river became more likely to flood north. This controlling of the river may have led to a more severe flood than there would normally be, as the Hebei plains is low lying and susceptible to flood damage. This is an important cautionary tale about the powerful consequences nature can have if managed poorly.
There are environmental lessons to be learned even in horrible tragedies, like the Plague. Data collected from ice cores suggests that there was substantially less lead in the air during and immediately after this period.[7] As I stated in the introduction, pollution was not a newly invented phenomena during the industrial revolution. The lack of people able to operate the mines in the period led to the cleanest air seen in centuries. I am in no way suggesting that it is good that a plague wiped out so many people, just that it is interesting to see how clean the air was as a result. We saw a similar affect in 2020 as people’s habits changed as a result of a pandemic. Earth overshoot day is the date each year in which we use the amount of resources the earth is able to naturally regenerate in a year. In 2019 that date was July 29, and in 2020 it was August 22 [8]. As with the Plague, the human toll over the last year has been terrible. The silver lining is that we used a lot less resources than we typically do. I am hopeful that some of these changes will stick, and we can continue to reduce our footprint, not because of a deadly pandemic, but because it is the right thing to do.
Perhaps the closest historical parallel to our modern climate crisis is the little ice age. This was a period of unusually cold temperatures that extended from the end of the middle ages, around the 14th century, into the 18th century. Ghosh writes about some of the affects of this period of unusual climate. [9] This brought drought, and subsequently famine, to many regions such as Mexico, Chile, and many parts of Africa and Asia. Political upheaval and war followed in many places. This is not uncommon, as when food is scarce and people are dying, uprisings tend to occur. Other places prospered during this period. The Dutch became a world power, and Amsterdam grew from a small town to a thriving metropolis. [10] New innovations were required to help feed people under these harsh growing conditions. There is the possibly of future wars is certainty not out of the question for us as resources become scarcer. The little ice age is largely thought to have come about via natural causes, while ours are largely human caused, but I still believe there are lessons to be learned from it.
It is interesting to look at when people started to realize the human impacts on the environment and adjust to it. Dolly Jørgensen wrote about forest laws, first popularized by William I. [10] Their ideas of forests differed from ours. They thought of it as a place for wild beasts to be hunted, not necessarily a natural plot of forested land. William I realized that the land he wanted to use to hunt was being destroyed and wanted to preserve it. This is not necessarily the best reason to preserve land, but it at least shows an understanding of destructive affect people were having on lands that animals needed. This view can be seen more as the middle ages progressed. In the years leading up to the industrial period, from about 1250-1650, William H. Te Brake writes about the issue of sea coal burning. [11] Brake quotes a royal commission from 1285 about how lime kilns were operating “That whereas formerly the lime used to be burnt with wood, it is now burnt with sea-coal. The air is infected and corrupted to the peril of those frequenting…and dwelling in those parts.” This air pollution became so prevalent and problematic that Edward I attempted to ban the burning of sea coal in 1307 via proclamation. It seems to have worked, as there were few writings of air pollution until the 16th century. I see parallels to both deforestation and air pollutants to our modern environmental issues. We are destroying the environment at a rapid rate, knocking down forests that are needed as carbon stores and emitting massive amounts of harmful gases into the atmosphere.
I hope this paper reveals that out views of the environment and the problems we have with it are not new, but go back to the middle ages and perhaps even further. Plenty of people in the middle ages had great appreciation of the beauty of nature. They also recognized problems and tried to fix them. Our current environmental problems are much more complex than anything they had to deal with, and are more ingrained in how our society operates. Despite the complexity, our ancestors from the middle ages did their part in getting us to the present with the earth in one piece, and it is up to us to do the same for future generations.
Bibliography
[1] Rahman, Sira Abdul. “Religion and Animal Welfare-An Islamic Perspective.” MDPI, February 17, 2017. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5332932.
[2] Rohr, Christian. “Man and Nature in the Middle Ages,” November 1, 2002. http://www.sbg.ac.at/ges/people/rohr/nsk2002.html.
[3] Arnold, Ellen. “Pope Francis and the Traditions of Medieval Environmentalism.” How Did We Get Into This Mess?, June 22, 2015. http://www.thismess.net/2015/06/pope-francis-and-traditions-of-medieval.html.
[4] Shopkow, Leah, and Thomas of Celano. The First Life of St. Francis, n.d. https://dmdhist.sitehost.iu.edu/francis.htm.
[5] Aberth, John. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: the Crucible of Nature. London England: Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.
[6] Zhang, Ling. The River, the Plain, and the State: an Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
[7] Stone, Maddie. “The Black Death May Have Had a Surprising Effect on the Environment.” Gizmodo, July 7, 2017. https://gizmodo.com/the-black-death-may-have-had-a-surprising-effect-on-the-1796662704.
[8] “Past Earth Overshoot Days - #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day.” Earth Overshoot Day, January 25, 2021. https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/.
[9] Ghosh, Amitav. “The Coming Climate Crisis.” Foreign Policy, January 22, 2019.
[10] Livni, Ephrat. “What the 17th Century's ‘Little Ice Age’ Teaches Us about Climate Change.” Quartz. Quartz, February 21, 2019. https://qz.com/1554962/what-17th-centurys-little-ice-age-teaches-us-on-climate-change/.
[11] https://dolly.jorgensenweb.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Jorgensen-The-Roots-of-the-English-Royal-Forest.pdf
[12] Te Brate, William H. “Air Pollution and Fuel Crises in Preindustrial London, 1250-1650,” July 1975. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3103030?seq=1.
