A continent on a learning curve

Welshmen will know what Le Goff’s name means. To mediaevalists it conveys not only Smith, but all that is gracious, gilt-edged, and grandfatherly among French historians. Or, as one of the blurbs puts it, rather unkindly, ‘He is among France’s “great” historians.’ That means great in the special sense of an institutionally sanctified professor doomed in old age to confer imprimaturs on the work of others, to employ a ‘team’ of research assistants for his own, and to compose ponderous pensées such as ‘Today comes from yesterday and tomorrow emerges out of the past.’ Don’t laugh. He’s 80, and has written three thought-provoking books which shed light on three dark areas of the Middle Ages: Purgatory, profit and intellectuals. It was inevitable that he would write about the concept of Europe, what it means, how it began, and so on. Everybody’s doing it; some in the pay of the EU, some out of a disinterested desire to find new answers to some old questions, such as ‘Is or was there a European civilisation different from others? If so, why? Is it shared by all within Europe?’ And above all, why did or could Europe rape the rest of the world between 1500 and 1914? To which Le Goff answers, ‘Yes; because ideas, institutions and technology spread across frontiers in the Middle Ages; not equally; and because mediaeval commerce and imagination projected goals outside Europe (India, Prester John, cheap gold, free land) which inspired Europeans to go forth, if not always to find them.’