Scholastics

The Papacy in the Age of Darkness

In the four centuries separating Gregory the Great from Sylvester II, the papacy underwent remarkable twists of fate. At times, it found itself dependent on the Greek emperor, at others on the Western emperor or the local Roman aristocracy; yet, the energetic popes who occupied the Roman throne in the 8th and 9th centuries laid the groundwork for the tradition of papal authority, seizing favorable moments to assert their power. The period from 600 to 1000 CE is crucial for understanding the medieval church and its relationship with the state.

The popes gained independence from the Greek emperors not so much through their own efforts but with the assistance of the Lombard warriors, to whom they held no gratitude. The Greek church remained largely subordinate to the emperor's authority, who claimed the right to determine matters of faith and to appoint and depose bishops and even patriarchs. Monasticism sought independence from the emperor and sometimes allied itself with the pope. However, the patriarchs of Constantinople, while agreeing to submit to the emperor, refused to consider themselves in any way dependent on papal authority. Occasionally, when the emperor needed the pope's assistance against the barbarians in Italy, he enjoyed better relations with the pope than with the patriarch of Constantinople. The primary reason leading to the eventual schism between the Eastern and Western churches was the refusal of the former to submit to papal jurisdiction.

Following the defeat suffered by the Byzantines at the hands of the Lombards, the popes rightly feared that they too would be conquered by these formidable barbarians. They found salvation in an alliance with the Franks, who, under Charlemagne, conquered Italy and Germany. The fruit of this alliance was the Holy Roman Empire, an organizational system that envisioned harmony between the pope and the emperor. However, the power of the Carolingian dynasty rapidly declined. In its early days, the papacy reaped the benefits of this decline, and Nicholas I elevated papal power to unprecedented heights. Yet, general anarchy led to the effective independence of the Roman aristocracy; in the 10th century, they brought the papacy under their control, with devastating consequences. The manner in which the papacy and the church were ultimately saved from the subjugation of the feudal aristocracy through a great reform movement will be recounted in a subsequent chapter.

In the 7th century, Rome still found itself dependent on the military power of the emperors, with the papacy facing either subjugation or suffering. Some, like Honorius, submitted even to the point of crossing into heresy; others, like Martin I, fought back and were imprisoned by the emperor. The majority of popes who occupied the Roman throne from 685 to 752 were Syrians or Greeks. However, as the Lombards gradually conquered one part of Italy after another, the power of Byzantium waned. In 726, Emperor Leo III issued his iconoclastic edict, deemed heretical not only in the entire West but also by a significant faction in the East. The popes mounted fierce and successful resistance against iconoclasm; the issue was resolved in 787, when, under Empress Irene (who initially ruled as regent), the East renounced the iconoclastic heresy. However, in the meantime, events in the West forever severed Byzantine control over the papacy.

Around 751, the Lombards captured Ravenna, the capital of Byzantine Italy. This event, while placing the papacy in great peril from the Lombards, liberated them from any dependence on the Greek emperors. Several reasons compelled the popes to prefer the Greeks to the Lombards. First, the emperors ruled on legitimate grounds, while barbarian kings were deemed usurpers unless their authority was recognized by the emperors. Second, the Greeks were a civilized people. Third, the Lombards were nationalists, whereas the church upheld Roman internationalism. Fourth, the Lombards adhered to Arianism and even after their conversion to Christianity continued to bear a certain ill repute.

In 739, under King Liutprand, the Lombards attempted to conquer Rome but met with staunch resistance from Pope Gregory III, who sought assistance from the Franks. The Merovingian kings, descendants of Clovis, had lost all real power in the Frankish kingdom, which was ruled by "mayors of the palace." At that time, the mayor was Charles Martel, a man of extraordinary energy and talent; like William the Conqueror, he was born out of wedlock. In 732, Charles Martel won a decisive battle against the Moors at Tours, thereby saving France for the Christian world. This should have earned him the gratitude of the church, but his need for funds led him to seize part of church lands, significantly diminishing his merits in the church's eyes. Nevertheless, both Charles Martel and Gregory III died in 741, and the former's successor, Pepin, was quite satisfactory to the church. In 754, Pope Stephen III, fleeing from the Lombards, crossed the Alps to visit Pepin; they struck a deal that proved exceedingly advantageous for both parties. The pope needed military protection, while Pepin sought what only the pope could provide: he wished to legitimize his title as king in place of the last Merovingian. In exchange for this service, Pepin granted the pope Ravenna and all the territory of the former exarchate in Italy. It was unlikely that Constantinople would recognize such a gift, making a political rupture with the Eastern Empire inevitable.

Had the popes remained dependent on the Greek emperors, the development of the Catholic Church would have taken a wholly different course. In the Eastern Church, the patriarch of Constantinople could never achieve the independence from secular power or the superiority over other church representatives that the pope attained. Initially, all bishops were regarded as equals, and this perspective largely held in the East. Moreover, there were three other patriarchs in the East—Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—whereas in the West, the pope was the sole patriarch. (However, this fact lost its significance following the Muslim conquests.) In the West, unlike in the East, the overwhelming majority of laypeople remained illiterate for many centuries, providing the church with an advantage that it lacked in the East. No Eastern city could match the prestige of Rome, for the latter's prestige combined imperial tradition with legends of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul and the belief that Peter was the first pope. The emperor could still contest the pope's prestige, but no Western monarch was capable of doing so. The emperors of the Holy Roman Empire often lacked any real power; furthermore, they only became emperors after being crowned by the popes. Given all this, the liberation of the papacy from Byzantine dominance was of paramount importance for both the church's acquisition of independence from secular monarchs and the eventual establishment of papal monarchical authority in the governance of the Western church.

This period is marked by two documents of immense importance: the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals. While the latter does not concern us, a few words must be said about the Donation of Constantine. To lend the gift of Pepin an air of legitimacy rooted in antiquity, church officials forged a document—a fictitious edict from Emperor Constantine, allegedly granting the pope Ancient Rome and all its western territories upon the founding of New Rome. This grant, which the papacy used to justify its claim to secular power, was accepted as authentic throughout the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was only rejected as a forgery during the Renaissance, in 1439, by Lorenzo Valla (circa 1406—1457). Valla was the author of a work titled "On the Elegance of the Latin Language"; it was evident that the document composed in the 8th century bore no trace of such elegance. Most astonishingly, after the publication of his book against the Donation of Constantine, as well as a treatise praising Epicurus, Lorenzo Valla was appointed apostolic secretary by Pope Nicholas V, in whose eyes Latin held greater significance than the church. Nevertheless, Nicholas V did not propose abandoning the papal states, even though the papacy's claim to them was based on the fictitious Donation of Constantine.

A brief summary of the content of this remarkable document is found in the words of S. Delisle Burns: "Constantine begins with a succinct account of the Nicene Creed and the biblical narratives surrounding the Fall of Adam and the birth of Christ. He then declares that he was afflicted with leprosy and that the doctors were powerless to cure him; thus, he turned to the 'priests of the Capitol.' They advised Constantine to sacrifice several infants and bathe in their blood. However, moved by the tears of their mothers, he spared their lives. That very night, Peter and Paul appeared to him, declaring that he would be healed by Pope Sylvester, who was hiding in a cave on Mount Soracte. Constantine journeyed to Mount Soracte, where the 'universal pope' informed him that Peter and Paul were apostles, not deities, and showed him their likenesses, which he recognized as the very faces that had appeared to him in his vision; the emperor acknowledged their superiority over all his 'satraps.' Thereupon, Pope Sylvester instructed him to perform penance in a hair shirt for a specified duration; then, seeing a hand reach down from heaven and touch Constantine, he baptized him. Constantine was healed of leprosy and renounced the veneration of idols. Subsequently, 'with all his satraps, the Senate, his nobility, and all the Roman people, he deemed it right to grant supreme authority to the throne of Peter,' as well as primacy concerning Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. He then constructed a church in his Lateran palace. He bestowed upon the pope his crown, tiara, and imperial garments, personally placing the tiara upon the pope's head and holding the reins of his horse. Constantine left 'to Sylvester and his successors Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the West, that they might eternally be subject to the authority of the Roman Church'; he himself subsequently moved to the East, 'for it is unjust that an earthly emperor should wield power where the heavenly emperor has established the dominion of bishops and the head of the Christian religion.'

The Lombards did not demonstrate submissive humility before Pepin and the pope, but were defeated in several wars with the Franks. Finally, in 774, Pepin's son, Charles the Great, advanced into Italy, inflicting a crushing defeat upon the Lombards, forcing them to recognize him as their king, and then occupying Rome, where he confirmed Pepin's donation. The popes occupying the Roman throne during Charles the Great's reign—Adrian and Leo III—considered it in their interest to support his plans in every possible way. He conquered much of Germany, employing the harshest persecutions to convert the Saxons to Christianity, and ultimately, when on Christmas Day in the year 800 the pope crowned him emperor in Rome, he, in his own person, revived the Western Empire.

The establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, marking an epoch in the evolution of medieval theory, held considerably less significance for the development of medieval practice. The Middle Ages were extraordinarily devoted to legal fictions; until the time of Charles the Great, people's minds continued to be dominated by the fiction that the western provinces of the former Roman Empire were still subject de jure to the Byzantine emperor, who was considered the sole source of legitimate authority. Charles the Great, well-versed in legal fictions, insisted that the imperial throne was vacant, for the ruling Eastern Empress Irene (who called herself not empress but emperor) had usurped power, as a woman had no right to be emperor. Charles received recognition of the legitimacy of his claims to the imperial title from the pope. Thus, from the very outset, a curious interdependence between the pope and the emperor was established. One could not become emperor without an act of coronation performed by the pope in Rome; on the other hand, for several centuries, any powerful emperor claimed the right to appoint and depose popes. Medieval theory of legitimate authority established its dependence on both the emperor and the pope; their mutual dependence weighed heavily on both sides, but for centuries was unavoidable. On this foundation, persistent conflicts arose, with the balance of power shifting from one side to the other. Finally, in the 13th century, the conflict became irreconcilable. The pope emerged victorious from this struggle but soon thereafter lost his moral authority. Both he and the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire survived: the pope until the present day, the emperor until the time of Napoleon. However, the meticulously developed medieval theory defining the relationship of their powers lost its strength by the 15th century. The unity of the Christian world, which this theory asserted, was shattered by the might of the French, Spanish, and English monarchies in the secular sphere and by the Reformation in the realm of religion.

Dr. Gerhard Zeeliger summarizes the characterization of Charles the Great and his court as follows: "Life flourished at the court of Charles. This court presents us with a spectacle, on the one hand, of splendor and genius, on the other, of moral corruption. For Charles was not particularly discerning in his selection of those who constituted his entourage. Charles himself was by no means a paragon of virtue and was quite lenient towards the greatest debauchery of those he loved and found useful to himself. Although Charles's lifestyle revealed little holiness, he was addressed as the 'Holy Emperor' in his proclamations. Thus, Alcuin addresses him, who also lavishes praise upon the emperor’s beautiful daughter, Rothrude, renowned for her virtue, despite the fact that she bore a son to Count Roderic of Maine while not being his wife. Charles did not wish to part with his daughters, forbidding them to marry and therefore had to endure all that could ensue from this. His other daughter, Bertha, also had two sons by the devout Angilbert, abbot of Saint-Riquier. In reality, Charles's court was the center of a highly dissolute life."

Charles the Great was an energetic barbarian; from political calculations, he supported an alliance with the Church, but personally was not burdened with excessive piety. Charles could neither read nor write, yet he became the initiator of a literary revival. He lived a dissolute life and was utterly reckless in his love for his daughters, yet he did all within his power to spread the holy way of life among his subjects. Like his father Pepin, Charles skillfully utilized the zeal of missionaries to extend his influence in Germany, while ensuring that the popes complied with his orders. They did so all the more willingly because Rome had become a barbaric city, in which the pope felt unsafe without foreign protection, and papal elections had degenerated into tumultuous brawls between rival factions. In 799, local enemies captured the pope, imprisoned him, and threatened him with blinding. While Charles lived, it seemed that the dawn of a new order was beginning, but after his death, little remained of it, save for the theory.

The acquisitions made by the Church, and foremost the papacy, proved more durable than those of the Western Empire. The missionary monks sent by Pope Gregory the Great converted England to Christianity; the latter remained more dependent on Rome than countries where bishops had long enjoyed local autonomy. The conversion of Germany was largely the work of St. Boniface (680—754), an English missionary, who was a friend of Charles Martel and Pepin, and who was slavishly devoted to the pope. Boniface founded many monasteries in Germany; his friend, St. Gall, established a monastery in Switzerland bearing his name. According to some accounts, Boniface anointed Pepin as king, borrowing the ritual from the First Book of Samuel.

St. Boniface hailed from Devonshire, where he received his education in Exeter and Winchester. In 716, he set out for Frisia, but was soon forced to return. In 717, he made a trip to Rome, and in 719, Pope Gregory II sent him to Germany on a mission to convert its inhabitants to Christianity and to oppose the influence of Irish missionaries (who, it should be noted, could not even accurately determine the date of Easter or the form of tonsure). Having achieved significant success, St. Boniface returned to Rome in 722, where he was consecrated bishop by Pope Gregory II, to whom he pledged an oath of obedience. The pope gave Boniface a letter to Charles Martel and charged him, besides converting pagans to Christianity, with exterminating heresy. In 732, he became archbishop, and in 738, visited Rome for the third time. In 741, Pope Zachary appointed Boniface as legate and entrusted him with reforming the Frankish Church. He established the Abbey of Fulda, to which he gave a rule stricter than that of the Benedictines. Boniface then became embroiled in a dispute with an Irish bishop of Salzburg named Virgil, who asserted that there were other worlds besides ours, but was nevertheless elevated to the rank of saint. In 754, after returning to Frisia, Boniface and his companions were slain by pagans. It was through him that Christianized Germany found itself within the orbit of papal influence rather than that of Ireland.

During this period, English monasteries, particularly those in Yorkshire, gained significant importance. The civilization that once thrived in Roman Britain had vanished, and a new civilization, brought by Christian missionaries, focused almost exclusively around the Benedictine abbeys, which owed their very existence directly to Rome. Bede the Venerable was a monk at Jarrow, and his disciple, Egbert, the first Archbishop of York, founded a cathedral school that educated Alcuin.

Alcuin stands as a pivotal figure in the culture of this time. In 780, he made a journey to Rome, where, in Parma, he encountered Charlemagne. The emperor welcomed him into his service to teach the Franks Latin and serve as a tutor to the royal family. Alcuin spent a significant portion of his life at Charlemagne's court, engaged in teaching and founding schools. In the final years of his life, he became the abbot of the monastery of St. Martin in Tours. Alcuin authored numerous works, including a poetic history of the Church of York. Although the emperor himself was uneducated, he was deeply convinced of the value of culture and briefly alleviated the darkness characteristic of the so-called Dark Ages. However, his efforts in this regard proved ephemeral. The culture of Yorkshire was temporarily obliterated by the Danes, while the culture of France suffered at the hands of the Normans. The Saracens devastated Southern Italy, conquered Sicily, and even attacked Rome in 846. In general, the 10th century was arguably one of the bleakest epochs in the history of the Western Christian world; whereas the 9th century is brightened by the efforts of English church figures and the remarkable presence of John Scotus, who I shall soon discuss in greater detail.

The decline of Carolingian authority after Charlemagne’s death and the division of his empire initially benefitted the papacy. Pope Nicholas I (858—867) elevated the papal authority to heights previously unseen among his predecessors. He confronted the emperors of both East and West, King Charles the Bald of France, and King Lothair II of Lorraine, as well as the episcopate of nearly all Christian lands; yet, in almost all his confrontations, the pope emerged victorious. In many regions, the clergy had fallen under the sway of local princes, and Nicholas I exerted considerable effort to rectify this situation. The two most significant disputes he instigated revolved around the divorce of Lothair II and the deposition of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Ignatius, which was carried out in violation of canon law. Throughout the Middle Ages, church authorities often grappled with royal divorces. Kings were men of unbridled passions; they regarded the indissolubility of marriage as a doctrine obligatory only for their subjects. Yet, only the church could contract marriages, and if the church declared a marriage invalid, one could almost certainly expect strife and dynastic wars over the succession to the throne. Consequently, the church's position in opposing royal divorces and unlawful marriages was quite strong. In England, it lost this position under Henry VIII but regained it under Edward VIII.

When Lothair II sought a divorce, the clergy of his realm acquiesced. However, Pope Nicholas deposed the bishops who had facilitated this decision and categorically refused to grant the king’s request for a divorce. In response, Lothair’s brother, Emperor Louis II, marched on Rome to intimidate the pope; however, superstitious fears proved overwhelming, and he turned back. Ultimately, the pope's will triumphed.

The case of Ignatius is particularly interesting, as it demonstrates that the pope could still assert his rights in the East. Ignatius, who had incurred the wrath of regent Bardas, was deposed and replaced by Photius, who had previously been a layman. The Byzantine government appealed to the pope to sanction this change. The pope dispatched two legates to investigate the matter; upon their arrival in Constantinople, they were threatened and gave their consent. For a time, these events were concealed from the pope, but when he learned of them, he reacted with great severity. At the pope's command, a council was convened in Rome to consider the matter; the pope deposed one of the legates, a former bishop, as well as the Archbishop of Syracuse, who had elevated Photius; the pope excommunicated Photius, deposed all those whom he had appointed, and reinstated all those who had been removed for opposing Photius. Emperor Michael III was furious and sent an angry letter to the pope, but the pope responded, “The time of kings, priests, and high priests of emperors has passed; Christianity has divided these responsibilities; and if Christian emperors need the pope for we must face eternal life, then popes do not need emperors, except in matters pertaining to worldly affairs.” In reply, Photius and the emperor convened a council that excommunicated the pope and declared the Roman church heretical. However, shortly thereafter, Michael III was assassinated, and his successor, Basil, restored Ignatius, thereby silently acknowledging the pope’s jurisdiction in this matter. This triumph occurred immediately after Nicholas's death and can almost exclusively be attributed to the fortuitous circumstances of court coups. After Ignatius died, Photius once again became patriarch, and the rift between the Eastern and Western churches deepened. Thus, it cannot be said that Nicholas’s policy in this matter ultimately culminated in victory.

Perhaps facing even greater difficulties than in his dealings with kings, Nicholas encountered challenges when attempting to dictate his will to bishops. Archbishops began to consider themselves quite powerful and were reluctant to humbly bow to the church monarch's will. Nonetheless, Nicholas insisted that the bishops owed their existence to the pope, and throughout his life, he generally succeeded in gaining recognition of this view. Throughout these centuries, significant doubts arose regarding the process of appointing bishops. Initially, bishops were elected by acclamations of approval from the faithful of the synodal cities; later, elections were typically conducted by a synod of bishops from nearby cities; still later, they were sometimes conducted by kings or popes. Bishops could be deposed for serious transgressions, but it remained unclear who possessed the right to judge them— the pope or a provincial synod. Due to all this uncertainty, the actual episcopal power depended on the energy and cunning of the bishops themselves. Nicholas elevated papal authority to its utmost limits, the highest it could achieve in those times; under his successors, it again fell to a considerably low level.

Throughout the 10th century, the papacy was under the complete control of the local Roman aristocracy. There were no firm rules governing the election of the pope; sometimes they owed their elevation to the approval of the populace, sometimes to emperors or kings, and sometimes (as in the 10th century) to holders of local civic power in Rome. At this time, Rome was not the orderly city it had been during the days of Gregory the Great. Occasionally, actual battles broke out between rival factions; at other times, a wealthy family managed to seize power through a combination of violence and bribery. Disorder and impotence in Western Europe reached such proportions during this period that one might think the Christian world faced complete collapse. The emperor and the King of France were powerless to curb the anarchy created in their domains by feudal magnates, who were nominally considered their vassals. The Hungarians launched plundering raids into Northern Italy. The Normans conducted raids along the French coast until they were granted Normandy in 911 in exchange for accepting Christianity. However, the greatest danger to Italy and Southern France came from the Saracens, who could not be converted to Christianity and held no respect for the church. By the end of the 9th century, the Saracens had completed their conquest of Sicily; they established themselves along the Garigliano River, near Naples; they destroyed Monte Cassino and other major monasteries; their settlements even reached the coast of Provence, from where they launched raids into Italy and the Alpine valleys, disrupting trade between Rome and the North.

The conquest of Italy by the Saracens was thwarted by the Eastern Empire, which dealt them a devastating defeat at Garigliano in 915. Nevertheless, the Eastern Empire was not strong enough to bring Rome under its control as it had been after the conquests of Justinian, and for an entire century, the papacy fell prey to the Roman aristocracy, or the counts of Tusculum. The most powerful Romans at the beginning of the 10th century were "senator" Theophylact and his daughter Marozia, from whose lineage the title of pope became almost hereditary. Marozia cycled through several husbands and an unknown number of lovers. One of her lovers became pope under the name Sergius II (904—911). Her son from this union became Pope John XI (931—936); her grandson, John XII (955—964), ascended to the papacy at the age of sixteen and “with his dissolute life and orgies, which soon became the norm at the Lateran Palace, ultimately undermined the authority of the papacy.” Evidently, Marozia's story served as the foundation for the legend of “Pope Joan.”

Naturally, the popes of this period lost the last remnants of the influence that their predecessors still wielded in the East. North of the Alps, nothing remained of the power the popes once held over bishops, which had been so successfully defended by Nicholas I. Provincial councils affirmed their complete independence from the pope, yet they could not attain independence from secular rulers and powerful feudal landowners. Bishops increasingly assimilated, transforming into feudal magnates. Thus, the Church presents itself as a victim of the same anarchy that rends secular society; all base inclinations found full freedom, and never before had the clergy, retaining some concern for religion and the salvation of the souls entrusted to them, so mournfully lamented the universal decay or directed the gaze of the faithful towards the specter of the end of the world and the final judgment.

And yet, it is a mistake to believe that a particular fear of the world's end in the year 1000 prevailed at this time. Since the days of St. Paul, Christians had always thought that the end was imminent, yet this did not prevent them from continuing their usual affairs. The year 1000 conveniently serves as a milestone marking the culmination of the decline of Western European civilization, which had reached its lowest point by that time. From this moment, an upward movement commenced, continuing until 1914. In the early stages, progress was primarily due to the reformative movement arising from monasteries. As for the clergy outside the monastic orders, they largely became barbarous, secularized, and led immoral lives; they were corrupted by the wealth and power granted by the donations of their loyal flock. The same process continually beset even the monastic orders; yet, the reformers fervently revived their moral strength whenever it began to wane.

Another reason rendering the year 1000 a pivotal moment is that around this time, the conquests of the Muslims and northern barbarians came to an end, at least concerning Western Europe. Successive waves of Goths, Lombards, Hungarians, and Normans invaded its territories; each horde, in turn, was Christianized but simultaneously weakened the tradition of civilization. The Western Empire fragmented into numerous barbarian kingdoms; kings lost power over their vassals; a state of universal anarchy ensued, characterized by ceaseless violence on both grand and small scales. Ultimately, all races of powerful northern conquerors were converted to Christianity and established permanent settlements. The Normans, the last to invade, proved particularly receptive to civilization. They reclaimed Sicily from the Saracens and secured Italy from the Muslims. They returned England to the Roman world, from which it had been largely severed by the Danes. Once the Normans settled in Normandy, they enabled France to rejuvenate and materially contributed to this process.

The term "Dark Ages," which we use to denote the period from 600 to 1000, reflects an altogether excessive focus on Western Europe. In China, this period coincided with the Tang Dynasty. It was a great era of Chinese poetry and remarkable in many other respects. Across the vast expanse from India to Spain, a brilliant Islamic civilization flourished. One should not presume that what was lost to the Christian world during this time constituted a loss to civilization; quite the opposite was true. Given the state of Western Europe at that time, no one could have foretold that it would later assume a dominant position in the world in terms of power and culture. We seem to confine the notion of civilization to that of Western European civilization, but this is a limited perspective. Much of the cultural content of our civilization derives from the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean—namely, the Greeks and Jews. As for power, Western Europe held a dominant position in the world from the time of the Punic Wars until the fall of Rome—roughly six centuries, from 200 BCE to 400 CE. After this, no state in Western Europe could compete in might with China, Japan, or the Caliphate.

The superiority achieved after the Renaissance is owed in part to science and scientific technology, and in part to the political institutions gradually established during the Middle Ages. However, based on the nature of things, there is no reason to assume that this superiority should be maintained in the future. In the current war, Russia, China, and Japan have demonstrated themselves as great military powers. There is nothing implausible in the assumption that for several centuries to come, civilization—if it survives—will be more diverse than it has been since the Renaissance. There exists a cultural imperialism that is even harder to overcome than imperialism through force. After the fall of the Western Empire, European culture retained the hues of Roman imperialism for a long time—essentially until the Reformation. Now it bears the mark of Western European imperialism. I believe that if we are destined to breathe freely in the world that emerges after this war, we will be compelled in our thoughts to acknowledge the equality of Asia, not only politically but also culturally. I do not know what changes this will evoke, but I am certain of one thing: these changes will be profound and of great significance.