Success on completion of the next 7 years is equated with competency. During these years the child is focused on industry and is upset by inferiority.
Just as some of Erikson’s characteristics are not entirely unique to a particular age in a child’s development so too characteristics of various historical epochs often overlap. Big picture historians like David Christian in Origin Story and Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens both cite 1500 as a momentous dividing line between the medieval and the modern. For Christian, European expansion to the Americas first by Spanish and then the Portuguese which united the world into a single trading system who’s increased ‘information flows’ catapulted the world towards modern capitalism. That view totally ignores the non-European trading systems described by Abu-Lughod. For Harari the emphasis is on the human’s willingness to accept the evidence of science rather than an unquestioning subservience to biblical certainty.
It’s not difficult to point to antecedents of the modern in the 12th century and supervenient of the medieval in the 16th century. An example of the former is provided by an Italian canon lawyer, Grantian, who’s Decretum in 1140 created the legal substructure for the prosecution of heretics. Fortunately for the papacy Grantian had the patience to excavate vast “…stockpiles of lay and liturgical rulings.” (Murphy, 2012.) The revolutionary aspect of the 12th century legal practice initiated by him was that man, not God, was now the sole arbiter of guilt or innocence. The early medieval practice of simply swearing an oath or trial by ordeal whereby survival indicated God’s clemency was replaced by a coherent set of laws which purported to interpret the Bible. So, they still used the fear of God, bearing in mind hardly anyone could read, to more efficiently control the thinking of the populace. You might well ask: how is the formal pursuit of heretics even slightly hinting at the modern? The answer lies not in the historicity of the type of legal infraction but in the methodology of operation. As Cullen Murphy notes any inquisition is “… a set of disciplinary procedures targeting specific groups, codified in law, organized systematically, influenced by surveillance, exemplified by severity, sustained over time, backed by institutional power and justified by a vision of the one true path.” (p.7) By 1400 all those elements were in place and running smoothly and, which is the point of his book, are still in place today.
It was the development of an efficient bureaucracy in the early middle ages that allowed inquisitors to standardize systems for logging cases and preserving the history and outcome of every trial. This discovery of the advantages of lexical order, duplicating, storing and retrieving abilities enabled tremendous industry in this field. For example, the number of papal letters dispatched grew from 300 in 1200 to 50,000 in 1300. Like the acquisition of reading and writing skills of a 10-year-old which are vital for progressing into secondary education this early recognition of the value of efficient record keeping “…extended the reach of the Inquisition and made it durable.” (Murphy p. 41)
An emblematic example of medieval thinking at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution was trial of Galileo in 1632 for arguing in favour of a heliocentric system. However, this episode in the Roman Inquisition was more about a refusal to cede power rather than a refutation of observable scientific fact.
Just as a sense of purpose is achieved by a successful resolution of 3-5-year old’s wrestle with initiative versus guilt so it was with humanity’s theological, technological and commercial purposeful triumph from 500CE to 1350. Paradoxically, the seeds of despotic control were sewn by commercial success. Thus, the breaks on moral progress were provided by the tendency to absolutism not only by Califate rulers who couldn’t resist adopting the cloak of divine right because of the riches afforded by such a huge empire, but also by Chinese emperors who enjoyed the ‘mandate of Heaven’. Despots around the world, no matter the prevailing creed, cynically exploited devoutly held belief in a divinity to legitimate autocratic rule. Hence a Korean king’s job was to harmonize people and heaven. (Global Crisis, Geoffrey Parker, 2013, p.37) Buddhist monarchs claimed to be ‘world conquerors’ and Moghul Emperors were the ‘Shadow of God on Earth’ while the Hindu rulers claimed all of the above plus sexual prowess as well. (ibid). Indonesia was also no exception to this tendency. Moving north west to Russia, the Czars were not embarrassed to claim to be a reincarnation of Christ himself and modelled their power-wielding on Old Testament kings and openly reclaimed autocratic rule right up until 1894. (ibid) In Europe and especially England the Divine Right of Kings was an anti-democratic doctrine which frustrated the hell out of parliaments in that country.
Here at aged 12 a balance between modesty and competency must be struck. Unfortunately for the moral progress of humankind, as we have seen, the virtue of competency far eclipsed any modesty amongst the world’s rulers. Everyone else must have felt inferior. Except when Gutenberg unleashed the printing press on Europe in 1440. This ‘information quake’ may have democratized the written word but initially it “…did not bring peace, but violence, revolt, struggle and blood.” (John Dalton lecture, 2009, Syd Uni) Without the printing press the Protestant Reformation and ensuing wars of religion would not have occurred. (Ibid)
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