Windows into Western Civilization
Documents and Essays
First Edition
Edited by Ginger Lee Smoak
University of Utah
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ISBN: 978-1-62131-633-6 (pbk)/ 978-1-62131-634-3 (br)
Contents
Editor’s Introduction
vii
SECTION I: ANCIENT NEAR EAST: WESTERN CIVILIZATION
BEGINS IN THE EAST?
Introduction3
A. Mesopotamia: The Pessimistic Birth of Western Civilization
Women in Mesopotamia
By M. Stol
9
Code of Hammurabi
29
From Atrahasis: An Account of the Great Flood
43
From the Epic of Gilgemesh
53
Edited by James B. Pritchard
Translated by Benjamin R. Foster
Translated by Benjamin R. Foster
B. Egypt: Eternal Optimism
Power and Gender in Ancient Egypt: The Case of Hatshepsut
65
The Protestation of Guiltlessness
73
By Kristina Hilliard and Kate Wurtzel
SECTION II: GRECO-ROMAN WORLD
Introduction83
A. Hellenic and Hellenistic Civilizations: Building Bridges
Greek Cities and Sanctuaries in the Late Classical Period
By Charles Gates
91
Allegory of the Cave
111
The Peloponnesian War
117
The Spartan Creed
123
By Plato
By Thucydides
By Tyrtaeus
B. Rome: A “Sponge” Civilization
The Roman Empire in Relation to Culture
By Bertrand Russell
127
Germania139
By Tacitus
Selections from the Lives of the Twelve Caesars149
By Suetonius
Notices and Graffiti of Pompeii
153
SECTION III: LATE ANTIQUITY: THE “FUN-FACTORY”
TRANSITION
Introduction159
A. Christianity and the Rise of the Corporate Church
Women as Sources of Redemption and Knowledge
in Early Christian Traditions
165
Excerpts from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene
191
By Gail Corrington Steele
City of God: Book I
195
The Confessions of Saint Augustine: Book VIII
197
Benedictine Rule
201
History of the Franks
211
By Augustine of Hippo
By Augustine of Hippo
By St. Benedict
By Gregory of Tours
B. Germans: Warriors, Rulers, and Christians
Charlemagne215
By Franҫois L. Ganshof
General Capitualary for the Missi
225
Salic Law of the Franks
231
By Charlemagne
SECTION IV: MIDDLE AGES
Introduction239
A. Feudalism: More than a Construct?
The Irony of English Feudalism
245
Letter to Duke William V of Aquitaine
267
Domesday Book: Huntingtonshire
269
Excerpt from The Magna Carta
273
By Warren Hollister
By Henry of Huntingdon
B. High Middle Ages: Church and State: Conflict and Social Change
The Dominion of Gender or How Women Fared in the High Middle Ages
By Susan Mosher Stuard
277
Dictates of the Pope
299
Inquisition Records
301
By Pope Gregory VII
By Jacques Fournier
C. Late Middle Ages and Renaissance:
Crisis and Rebirth: “Clean Break” or Continuity?
Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages
By David Nirenberg
329
Chronicle335
By Fritsche Closener
From the Decameron
By Giovanni Boccaccio
341
Credits347
Editor's Introduction
W
indows into Civilization is a Reader designed to give all students access to
the tools they need to supplement their Western civilization textbooks and
lecture notes. It is intended to allow students to find selections of important
primary and secondary documents to be read in conjunction with those other media. But
it is not just another source book; it also acts as a workbook of sorts. After my twenty
years of teaching Western Civilization certain devices and aids have proved more effective than others in improving student success. Students will find helpful review sheets,
unit objectives, charts and timelines so that they may better organize, memorize, apply
and contextualize the material. Most importantly perhaps, they will learn how to find and
learn it again if they forget it!
Studying early civilizations and ancient, classical and medieval history is like finding a
thousand piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box. Upon looking inside, you find
only one hundred pieces and no corners or edges. We can use our clues to determine
what the puzzle depicts, but we have to recognize that we have to use whatever kinds of
limited information and tools that we have available to us. These auxiliary tools can aid us
in analyzing and interpreting our clues, but ultimately we are like detectives using inductive and deductive reasoning to create a story, or to make our puzzle resemble an image.
In order to be successful in a Western Civilization course, or any history course for that
matter, it is not enough to see the forest through the trees—one must be able to see the
forest and the trees. Students tend to be myopic, seeing only “trees”, that is facts, details,
names, dates, and titles. This is one of the most common reasons students cite for their
dislike of history! The larger picture is lost, as is historical cause and effect, trends and
vii
viii | Windows into Western Civilization
systemic aspects. On the other hand, history is most interesting in detail. Without the
detail, the big picture becomes like a picture you would see from space, without contour,
without form, without shape: amorphous.
This Reader gives students and professors a toolbox, with a variety of implements from
which to choose. Each section contains primary source readings, secondary readings in
the form of articles and book chapters, images, and study materials such as timelines,
term lists and review sheets, objectives and themes. They provide options to professors,
and may be used as a whole or in part.
Primary Source Evidence
Whether students recognize it, they are historians while they are taking a Western
Civilization course, and they must learn to read and analyze primary sources to glean
valuable information. It is important to remind them that the primary documents are
the raw material of history, while secondary sources provide interpretations of those
primary sources. Secondary sources are always subject to revision as we discover new
sources and reinterpret them, or become more aware of the relationship between text
and context. The primary sources presented here have been selected out of the many
available because they are commonly discussed, indicative of the ideas and institutions in
Western Civilization, and are relevant to the course. This Reader provides germane source
selections which, paired with the other materials, allow students to have those most often
taught in class, conveniently collected in one text.
Secondary Source Evidence
It is often difficult in a lower division survey course to give students an opportunity to
read academic articles and essays that use not only the available primary sources, but
also other auxiliary disciplines such as archeology, anthropology, philology and art history. This Reader presents selections of this supporting evidence to pair with primary
source selections in topical, geographical and chronological units. These units then create
an opportunity for students to read and differentiate between kinds of evidence, to go
beyond the textbook material without having to navigate research databases or other
mechanisms of finding scholarly articles. The supplemental textbook material can be used
with or without a standard Western Civilization textbook to give students a more in-depth
subject analysis of women and gender, for example.
Supporting Material
The supporting material in this text includes review sheets, objectives, images and timelines. The Review Sheets including lists of terms and can provide a skeleton of information
that the students need to know. I often have my students use the sheets as prompts for
their in-class lecture notes, so that they can be sure to include certain information. I also
Editor's Introduction | ix
use them as a way for the student to study for in-class lecture quizzes, as well as for the
identification portion of my exams.
“Do we have to know dates?” This is no doubt the most heard question for every history teacher. And of course, depending on our pedagogy and teaching philosophies, the
answers range from yes to “sort of.” Chronology is the backbone of historical study and we
can’t flesh out structures, events and ideas without it. That having been said, it is at least
vital for students to understand the causation of events and the historical effects of those
events. The timelines can help students understand that multiple civilizations exist in the
Ancient Near East, the Aegean, and Europe, often at the same time. They can also help
them envision the chronological patterns and larger factors, such as geography, climate,
and systemic development. Once they have the chronology they can use it to compare
and contrast civilizations, states and systems. Change over time is vital to understand, and
one cannot do that without an understanding of chronology.
Chapters and Sections
This Reader has multiple sections and chapters within those sections. They are arranged
both chronologically and topically and centered on an organizing theme or metaphor.
Section One: Ancient Near East: Western Civilization Begins in the East?
This section looks at the Ancient Near East and addresses the questions that students
often have concerning why we spend the first several chapters looking eastward in a
course with Western in the title. Of course they can readily see how the physical and
geographic structures and environments create myriad political structures, social and
legal concepts, intellectual traditions, gender relations, religious beliefs, and economic
systems in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia, and how those structures then disseminate
to the West over time.
One of the ways in which we can examine the pertinent ideas and systemic development in the Ancient Near East is to use the well-known category of analysis comparing
viewpoints: intellectual, social and religious. How do they see the world? It has been
posited that the Mesopotamians were “pessimistic,” that is they saw their geography, their
gods, and their rulers as harsh and unforgiving, and were never fully reassured that they
would be able to follow the rules or even know what those rules were. As a result of living
in a desert with notoriously unpredictable and harsh conditions, rivers that flooded only
occasionally, bringing with it fertile soil to plant and water to drink, the Mesopotamians
seemed to have a cultural belief that the gods were unable to take care of them or were
vengeful, punishing them for not heeding a proper set of beliefs and rituals designed to
keep the gods placated. The Epic of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis both address these ideas.
On the other hand, the Egyptians are said to have been “optimistic”, that is that they saw
x | Windows into Western Civilization
the regular and gentle flooder as a gift from their gods, who had provided all that they
needed, from protection, to communication, to transport, to agriculture. As a result of this
optimism, the Egyptians had a concrete idea of the gods and how they affected humans, a
promise of an afterlife, and well known rituals to achieve these things, seen in the excerpt
from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
This Reader looks to gender relations as a barometer of social and cultural developments in Western Civilization. In the Ancient Near East we can look to how women
are protected and what kinds of rights they were afforded under the law in the Code of
Hammurabi. We can also see the opportunities for both power and agency that women
are either given or are able to take in Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies in the articles “Women in Mesopotamia” and “Power and Gender in Ancient Egypt: The Case of
Hatshepsut.” By understanding these ancient women, we can better understand women’s
roles in the West.
Section Two: Greco-Roman World: Hellenic and Hellenistic
Civilizations: Building Bridges
This section is especially concerned with the ideas and components of Civilization that are
transferred from the East to the West through the development of the Aegean. The Greek
world and its city-states were fundamentally localized yet the ideas and systems that developed there were transmitted through the Hellenistic, or “Greek-like” constructs created
by Philip II and Alexander the Great. Localism led to warfare in the Classical period and
we cannot understand the Greek world without understanding the Spartan Creed and the
unfolding of the Peloponnesian Wars. Through these sources like Tyrateus’, students are
able to identify why warfare was important to these city-states, and also how Thucydides
defined history and Greek identity in his Peloponnesian Wars.
Greek religion in the form of the civic cult is fundamental in understanding localized
identities upon which the Greek city-states are based. Those cults, along with the mystery cults and dualistic cults of the Persian and Asian worlds and the philosophic ideas
and schools founded in the east by Alexander, were inherited by Rome as they become
conquered and digested as part of Roman imperialism. “Greek Cities and Sanctuaries in
the Late Classical Period” illustrates these structures and their cultural importance to the
Greeks, the Hellenistic civilization, and ultimately to Rome. We can see in the Allegory
of the Cave the Platonic concepts that became a key to understanding Christianity,
Scholasticism, and Humanism as Western history unfolded in the Middle Ages.
These religious cults, along with Geek and Hellenistic philosophies, were integral to
understanding Roman cultural identity. These ideas, along with those of the Germans,
are reflected in the selections from Tacitus’ Germania and Suetonius’ Life of Caligula,
as well as in the Graffiti of Pompeii. These works provide us with a glimpse of Roman
cultural life in the early Empire and allow us to see this syncretism. As a “sponge society”
the Romans found great success at absorbing intellectual and spiritual ideas, along with
Editor's Introduction | xi
political, economic, military and cultural components, and adapting them to their benefit.
Adoption and adaptation then are the keys to understanding Roman civilization and
contain the secrets to their successes.
Section Three: Late Antiquity and the “Fun-Factory” Transition
This section centers on a metaphor of assimilation and transition that I use in my classes.
It goes back to a child’s toy-the Playdough Fun-Factory. In this toy the child inserts a
ball of Playdough into one end and extrudes it out the other side. When the user adds
more than one color, the result is a mixture that begins to look brown, but with pieces of
the individual colored Playdough recognizable inside. I discuss Late Antiquity the same
way, saying that different factors, or colors, go in and what you get on the other side is
a mixture, but not a homogenized one. So, Greco-Roman cultural ideas, Christianity, and
Germanic politico-military and social structures emerge as “medieval”: a brown mixture
with extant fragments of the existing components.
Christianity became a functioning corporation during the reign of Constantine the
Great in the beginning of the fourth century. The Church took administrative and organizational structures, leaders, laws, language and titles from the Roman Empire as they
became “imperialized.” By looking at the Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, we
can see how the Roman leaders were recruited and absorbed by the corporate Church
and how that their ideas become part of the doctrinal teachings of orthodox Christianity.
Augustine’s Confessions and City of God both illustrate his dualistic ideas, his struggles with
denying himself previous pleasures and comforts, and his response to the sack of Rome
by the German Visigoths in 410. We also see the focus on the corporate Church’s desire
to control the behavior of its members and its focus on rules and order in the Benedictine
Rule. Roman civil law, Christian canon law, and German criminal law assimilated in this
period to form feudal law, and we can see the beginning of this process in The Salic Law
code.
By examining the role of women in both Christianity and in Germanic societies we can
also continue to see the important part they played religiously, politically and socially.
From women in the early Gnostic traditions of the Catholic Church in the Excerpts of the
Gospel of Mary Magdalen, and “Women as Sources of Redemption and Knowledge in Early
Christian Traditions,” to that played by Germanic women who converted to Christianity
and then acted as “secondary converters,” it is possible to find their voices. Clotilda’s influence in the decision of her husband Clovis, King of the Merovingian Franks, to convert
to orthodox, and not heretical, Christianity is enormously important and is reflected in
Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks.
In the segment about German warriors and their conversion, we can see the combination of the warrior and pious Christian in Charlemagne. In the General Capitulary of the
Missi we can see Charlemagne’s theocracy, the ultimate fusion of his German state and his
Christian religion.
xii | Windows into Western Civilization
Section Four: Middle Ages
The Middle Ages allow us to see the continued morphing of these Late antique ideas and
the creation of uniquely “medieval” constructs like feudalism. Despite the fact that the
term comes from the modern period and would not have been understood as a “system”
in the medieval period, clearly feudalism offers a fruitful way for historians and students
to understand political, military, socio-economic, and even religious power relations as
a combination of the Germanic volk and the developing chivalric system. By reading the
Letter To Duke William V of Aquitaine students can get a sense of how this system of
mutual obligation was conceived in the early Middle Ages. Furthermore, in addition to
being a legal and constitutional document, the Magna Carta is essentially a feudal one
as well. Dating from 1215 this charter illustrates the development of medieval feudalism
and its power to check the authority of the king by arguing that John is also a feudal lord
and has obligations to treat his nobles as such and not to violate the feudal rules set in
place by that point. England, as I always say, thrives on being unique, and the English
feudal construct is no exception. Because of its importation by William the Conqueror
in 1066 it acts as a mixture of English Anglo-Saxon and Danish political aspects and the
Norman Continental feudal system, as seen in “The Irony of English Feudalism.” And in
“The Dominion of Gender: or How Women Fared in the High Middle Ages” we are able to
see the effects of feudalism on women, bringing our investigation of women’s agency and
social positions perhaps to its pinnacle.
Relations between the Church and State in the Middle Ages continue to be strained as
a result of the power alignment and prevailing political, religious and economic climate.
The Investiture Contest and the Crusades act as events indicative of this climate and
power politics. The Dictates of the Pope offers students a glimpse of the claims made by
the Papacy in the High Middle Ages in obvious and practical ways. They can see how these
claims led to a contest between the Popes and the Emperors over who could invest, or
grant the symbols of power to, bishops and how that is directly related to the wielding
of the sword as well as the cross. The Crusades provide another way in which to see
this power play between Church and State and here we can see it in the Albigensian
Crusade of Pope Innocent III. This “Crusade” against heretics in France produces records
from the inquisition that are not only fascinating, but are icon as well. The persecution of
infidels, heretics, and other minorities in the Middle Ages also provides a window into the
medieval holocaust. The persecution of the Jews during the Crusades and the early stages
of the Black Death is elucidated in “Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in
the Middle Ages.” The Chronicle and the Decameron introduction also allow students to
get an effective description of the realities of the Black Death, as well as the beliefs of the
people affected by it.
Primary sources provide us with windows into the past. The title of this Reader, Windows
into Western Civilization, comes from the idea that historians, professors and students,
are really attempting to peer into the openings of the societies that came before us. This
Editor's Introduction | xiii
text is helpful in allowing us to do so by using different sources, pictures, techniques and
perspectives aimed at allowing us to examine and critically analyze and interpret what we
see. Windows can allow us to do so, and they can also illuminate and shed light on past
civilizations.