From China to Spain, cavalry becomes the symbol of power, the icon image of artists to the service of military castes

Mature age of the European civilization: horses and Christianity.

 

Rome is destroyed by hordes of cavalry warriors, that thanks to the spur can control the horse while using the sword or the arc. The Huns destroy all previous civilizations, and the age of chivalry starts. In the cultural side, ethic religions dominate Europe [Christianism] and Asia [Islam].

It is interesting to notice that this period - a clear regression to a world without economical information [mathematics and digital money], where the main weapon of power is a carbolife form [the horse] resembles in great measure the Youth of History, the age of bronze and wor[l]ds. As the renaissance again based in monetary information, and mathematical, spatial descriptions of reality will resemble the Greek era. Today we despise under subconscious ideologies of science, and mathematics, as a supreme form of knowledge, this ethic age of religious thought. Yet there were fundamental values and concepts about human social organisms, that reached their apogee in the civilizations of this age...

We take as example of art, for the chivalry cycle, the "house of God', the Christian church, which is the main refuge left to culture, where books are copied, and those who still believe in human love, gather to pray for better times, as the wave of cavalry armies recedes.

Churches accordingly go through the 3 periods of artistic styles: The young, epic age of  cavalry hordes, which in art implies simple forms, and great strength in construction [Romanic period, Steinbach Cathedral, 821], to protect the people from those hordes.

The classic age, or Gothic age [Burgos Cathedral, XIII C],  when warriors settle down, and human goods prosper again, in which churches raise with optimism, to the sky in search of God.

Finally, as the new wave of gunpowder weapons spreads all over Europe provoking massive wars [Mongolian invaders, one Hundred years war], pests [black pest] and death, the decadent age of the Christian cultures is bon. In art, it is the age of Ornamental Gothic with an excess of form [Gloucester Cathedral, XV C.] Gunpowder has arrived, and the church looses power to armies paid by kings and money-men... 

If we consider literature on this age, we have a first period of epic literature [chanson du Roland, Mio Cid], a middle period of down-to Earth literature [The book of love by Arcipreste de Hita, Tales of Canterbury, Decameron], and a final period of prophetic mysticism, and apocalyptic thought [Age of religious wars]; that will extinguish religion as the fundamental form of social literature.

So happens in painting, and sculpture. We move from a first period of Lineal, powerful depictions of God [Christ Panthocrator], to a softened period of classic portrait [Portals of classic Gothic cathedrals], that will end in the baroque age of Middle Age painting, with the master piece by 'El Bosco', 'the garden of delights', that portrays, the 3 ages of History: The birth and paradise of carbolife, the massive reproduction of mankind, and his demise by the inferno of war, and metal-mining...

Of course, it has to be understood that each nation goes through the 3 periods of art, in a discontinuous manner, since new weapons and new ideas expand in discontinuous form. So in Northern Europe the Garden of delights [1500] closes the middle ages, when in Italy, renaissance is already in its classic period.

In the next illustrations we  show some elements of this culture in verbal and visual art:

EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION II AGE: CHRISTIANITY

Cavalry: ±410 Ad: Fall Of Rome, ±1208: Mongolian Hordes.

 Art Ages:

Visual Art: Architecture: The House Of God

I age: Lineal, Simple       II Age: Realist, Classic               III Age: Formal, Decadent

Romanic                                      Gothic                           Ornamental Gothic

Steinbach, 821 AD         Burgos Cathedral XIII C          Gloucester Cathedral, XV C

Verbal Art:

I Age: Epic, Arrogant:       II Age: Sensorial, Logic:    III Age: Baroque, extinctive:

Roy Diaz entered Burgos with sixty pennons strong,      This carpenter had lately wed a wife          "Why does not the pope empty purgatory

Forth to look upon him men and women throng.               Whom life loved better than  his life;      For the sake of holy love and of the dire

their grief was risen so high. they spoke with one accord:       She was come to eighteen years of age.       need of the souls that are there,

"God, what a noble vassal, an he had a worthy lord.           Jealous he was and held her close in cage.           if he redeems an infinite number

                                                                          For she was wild and young, and he was old,       of souls  for the sake                                                                                                                           Deemed himself as like to be cuckold.                  of miserable money?

                                                              

 Mio Cid, XI C,  Anonymous,                             Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, XIV C             Lutherus.   XVI C

 epic literature                                                                      Realist Literature                     Corruption of the Church

                                                                             

Cycle of gun infantry. Renaissance, or Age of Latin Europe.

The age of chivalry though came to an end with gunpowder weapons. Gunpowder extinguished the Middle ages, the power of the church and, the power of chivalry... The turning point is the arrival of gunpowder weapons to Venice. The point of no-return for all Europe is the battle of Pavia, when Spanish Musketeers massacre the aristocracy-on-horse of the Kingdom of France, center of the chivalry age.

Now Latin Europe, with its better organized states, takes over. First is Italy then Portugal and Spain, finally is France the leading nation, when Colbert organizes the state, and Catalina di Medicis, brings the Renaissance of Florence to the court of Paris.

s: the chip radiation" coords=73,0,106,13 href="2NDcycleNEOLITHIC.htm" shape=rect title="Metal-Heads: the chip radiation"> v Cycle: GUNPOWDER