The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity

Christopher Dawson

ISBN 10: 0813210836 / ISBN 13: 9780813210834

Published by Catholic Univ of Amer Pr December 2002, 2002

About this Item

The fact that the writings of Christopher Dawson have been nearly forgotten in all but a few small corners of the intellectual world proves the chronological snobbery of our age. In the 1930s and 40s, according to a Touchstone review, Dawson was praised by notables such as G.K. Chesterton, Barbara Ward, Russell Kirk, Dorothy Day, C.S. Lewis, Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Mumford; and T.S. Eliot named him the ''most powerful intellectual influence in England.'' His fundamental convictions were certainly against the grain of his time (as well as ours): ''It is the religious impulse which supplies the cohesive force which unifies a society and a culture. The great civilizations of the world do not produce the great religions as a kind of cultural by-product; in a very real sense the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest. a society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.'' One can surmise that he would have viewed with dismay the determination of the European Union to pass over Europe's Christian heritage in silence. The Making of Europe, first published almost fifty years ago and now reprinted, portrays the early Middle Ages as a richly formative period, when the disparate but converging elements of the Roman Empire, the Church, the classical tradition and the ferment of young barbarian cultures combined to form the foundations of European culture. Aldous Huxley commented after the original publication, ''The Dark Ages lose their darkness and take on form and significance. Thanks to the author's erudition and marshalling of facts, we begin to have a notion of what it is all about.'' 282 pp.

Seller Inventory # 198389

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity
• Publisher: Catholic Univ of Amer Pr December 2002
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813210836
• ISBN 13: 9780813210834
• Binding: Paper Back
• Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • History/General Topics

About this title

Synopsis

In this seminal work, described by the Times Literary Supplement as "impressive alike by the authority of its learning and the originality of its argument," Christopher Dawson concludes that the period of the fourth to the eleventh centuries commonly known as the Dark Ages is not a barren prelude to the creative energy of the medieval world. Instead, he argues that it is better described as "ages of dawn," for it is in this rich and confused period that the complex and creative interaction of the Roman empire, the Christian Church, the classical tradition, and barbarous societies provided the foundation for a vital, unified European culture.

In an age of fragmentation and the emergence of new nationalist forces, Dawson argued that if "our civilization is to survive, it is essential that it should develop a common European consciousness and sense of historic and organic unity." But he was clear that this unity required sources deeper and more complex than the political and economic movements on which so many had come to depend, and he insisted, prophetically, that Europe would need to recover its Christian roots if it was to survive.

Glenn Olsen has noted that Dawson's point "was that the spread and history of Christianity had provided the narrative which had formed Europe and taken out of this narrative, Europe could hardly be spoken of as existing." In a time of cultural and political ambiguity, The Making of Europe is an indispensable work for understanding not only the rich sources but also the contemporary implications of the very idea of Europe.

About the Author

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century.