The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Poggio’s clothing and bearing don’t fit the norm for southern Germany in 1417 because they fail to identify his role and status, and one’s social position is all important. Poggio’s self-appointed task is to search for old and musty books hundreds of years old; this puzzles people he meets.

For one thing, the late Middle Ages is a hierarchical time when nearly everyone is a subject to someone else higher in station. “Independence and self-reliance had no cultural purchase; indeed, they could scarcely be conceived, let alone prized” (16).

For another, “[i]n a culture with very limited literacy, to be interested in books was already an oddity” (17). Secretary to a pope recently overthrown, Poggio is without an employer and needs cash. He does not, however, try to find work among the nobles and clerics. “What he did instead was to go book-hunting” (22). 

In 1330, Petrarch discovers the History of Rome by Titus Livius (or “Livy”), and the search for lost classical texts begins. This quest launches a new branch of learning, the “humanities,” whose scholars pore over the ancient words, which often mention obscure tomes; the “humanists” realize that many more works remain to be found (23).

Most old books are in monasteries where—according to the sixth-century Benedictine Rule—monks are expected to be literate and spend time each day reading. Debate is forbidden, in contrast to the ancient Greek and Roman academies, which were “places that had thrived upon the spirit of contradiction and cultivated a restless, wide-ranging curiosity” (28).

Nevertheless, reading requires that books be available. Sixth-century wars kill off the book industry, and monasteries must learn to make parchment and copy books; monks “became the principal readers, librarians, book preservers, and book producers of the Western world” (29).

Humanists scour the libraries of Italy and soon travel to remote, and sometimes nearly inaccessible, corners of Switzerland and Germany in search of more finds. The monasteries are skeptical of outsiders and reluctant to part with their ancient manuscripts. Many tomes they protect with elaborate curses: for a book thief, “[l]et him be struck with palsy [...] Let bookworms gnaw his entrails [...] let the flames of Hell consume him forever” (30).

Poggio, though not a cleric, has deep knowledge of ancient Latin texts, “long service in the papal curia” (31), and great charm. An excellent scribe with beautiful handwriting and efficient accuracy, Poggio can, if necessary, copy manuscripts “on the spot” (33).

Poggio’s friend and fellow scriptor, Bartolomeo de Aragazzi, accompanies him on several book-hunting trips. They also compete in the book-hunting game, and soon they go their separate ways in search of finds they can claim as their own.

Though the papyrus scroll has long been replaced by the “codex,” or manuscript made of pages—which provides a much easier method of searching within books—copying onto animal-skin parchment remains a laborious process of scraping away fur, etching lines, and inking in the words. The finest, whitest skins become “uterine vellum, from the skins of aborted calves” (40), reserved for the most important books to be copied.

Monks are to reproduce texts exactly as they find them, with no editing or correcting. The less they think about the words, the better.

Parchment is long-lasting but costly; thus, some works survive for centuries while others are erased and the parchment reused. Now and then, an obliterated ancient text can still be read beneath the newer words; these “palimpsests,” “from the Greek for ‘scraped again’” (43), have provided modern researchers with works that otherwise would have been lost.

Poggio would likely have traveled to central Germany’s Abbey of Fulda, a powerful and fortress-like monastery renowned for its great library. Here or elsewhere he begins to locate ancient texts long forgotten: poems by Silius Italicus and Marcus Manilius; works by critics, a grammarian, and the historian Ammianus Marcellinus; and Lucretius’ beautiful 50 BCE poem On the Nature of Things, which Poggio’s scribe promptly copies. “What is not clear is whether he had any intimation at all that he was releasing a book that would help in time to dismantle his entire world” (50).

Lucretius’ poem is, as Cicero puts it, “rich in brilliant genius” (51), and it is referenced many times by other Roman greats such as Ovid and Virgil. Yet Lucretius himself remains largely unknown. Saint Jerome mentions him, with some bias, as a sex-maddened, suicidal writer edited by Cicero; beyond that, no biographical information has surfaced.

Italy’s Mount Vesuvius erupts in 79 CE, burying the coastal town of Herculaneum under several feet of ash. The town is rediscovered in the 1700s; excavators find a well-preserved country home, the Villa of the Papyri, with a large library of book scrolls. Such libraries are common among the Roman wealthy, who have acquired the Greek taste for literature. Fragments of Lucretius’ poem are found among the villa’s scrolls.

For Romans, a high point of culture is discourse and conversation, friendly rather than doctrinal or quarrelsome, and “always allowing room for alternative views” (70). These people “lacked a fixed repertory of beliefs and practices reinforced by what was said to be the divine will. They were men and women whose lives were unusually free of the dictates of the gods (or their priests)” (71). Many adhere to the views of Lucretius’ favorite philosopher, Epicurus.

Epicurus believes that all things are made up of infinitesimally small atoms, which combine and recombine to form all the larger things of this world, from tiny flies to the sun and moon. Celestial objects, in turn, are not “divine beings who shape our destiny for good or ill, nor do they move through the void under the guidance of gods: they are simply part of the natural order” (74). Furthermore, “there is a hidden natural explanation for everything that alarms or eludes you” (74). From this viewpoint, fear of punishment by the gods, now or in the afterlife, fades away.

Critics complain that the Epicurean view doesn’t much help with the fear of dying. “What the Greek philosopher offered,” however, “was not help in dying but help in living” (76). Once freed from superstition, Epicurus claims, you can pursue pleasure. Critics decry the debauchery this must entail, but Epicurus lives simply. “‘Send me a pot of cheese,’ he wrote once to a friend, ‘that, when I like, I may fare sumptuously.’ So much for the alleged abundance of his table” (77). True pleasure, according to Epicurus’ disciple Philodemus, comes from “living prudently and honourably and justly [...] courageously and temperately and magnanimously [...] making friends, and [...] being philanthropic” (77).

Because the Epicurean philosophy lacks piety, it is condemned by most pagans, Jews, and Christians, who portray Epicurus as a degenerate. Still, the wealthy and powerful, such as those living in Herculaneum, are drawn to a philosophy that offers a reprieve from the stress of politics and worldly pursuits. 

Most of the written works of ancient Greeks and Romans have disappeared. Of 1,430 poems cited by fifth-century editor Stobaeus, all but 315 are lost. Nearly all of the 1,000 works of Epicurus and his chief philosophical rival, the Stoic Chrysippus, have vanished. Rain, fire, and pests are the chief culprits, but simple, daily usage also takes its toll.

Authors are paid by wealthy patrons, who then arrange for the copying and selling of the books. In Rome, copyists, or librari, are often slaves; scribes, or scribae, are freemen who “worked as archivists, government bureaucrats, and personal secretaries” (85). Despite the laborious process, book copies in the ancient world are not rare: “a well-trained slave reading a manuscript aloud to a roomful of well-trained scribes could produce masses of text”; over the centuries, “hundreds of thousands of copies” are sold (86).

The library in Alexandria, Egypt, along with its annex, the Serapeon, boasts a half-million scrolls from around the world, preserved in a spirit of open-mindedness. Many of the volumes are religious in nature, representing pagan, Jewish, and Christian beliefs. The sects live in tolerance for one another.

By 391 CE, the Roman Empire is largely Christian, and in that year, Emperor Theodosius bans pagan practices. A riot breaks out in Alexandria between Christians and pagans; the Alexandrian patriarch Theophilus directs Christians to break into the Serapeon, smash the statues, and take over the building for use as a church.

Some years later, Theophilus’ successor, Cyril, tries to banish the Jews from the city; during the riots that ensue, one of the library’s most eminent philosophers, Hypatia, is accused of witchcraft, dragged from her home, her skin torn off and her body burned. Ironically, “Cyril was eventually made a saint” (93).

The library falls into ruin; other libraries suffer neglect as the western Roman Empire slowly collapses; Germanic invaders, largely illiterate, have no use for the libraries in the villas and cities they conquer. 

Saint Jerome translates the Bible into the Latin Vulgate used by the Church for centuries. Jerome’s love for pagan literature—Cicero, Pliny, and the like—causes distress, and he swears off reading them, encouraging others to do the same. By the 500s, education is considered inferior to piety; learning leads to sin and must be abandoned by the faithful. Heresies, especially the Epicurean beliefs in pleasure, the soul’s mortality, and the absence of an afterlife, should be rejected. “Christians must refuse the invitation and understand that pleasure is a code name for vice” (102).

Instead, pain is glorified. “Jesus wept, but there were no verses that described him laughing or smiling, let alone pursuing pleasure” (105). For Christians, humans are inherently corrupt and deserve punishment: “it was only through this pain that a small number could find the narrow gate to salvation” (105). Self-punishment becomes atonement for sins.

Monasteries, “driven by the belief that redemption would only come through abasement” (106), inflict corporal punishment liberally. Acts of self-flagellation “were noted again and again as a distinctive mark of holiness” (108).

“Epicurus was dead and buried, almost all of his works destroyed” (109). Only by chance was a copy rediscovered.