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THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS
A LOOK AT OUR PAST
MILLENNIUM MAN
In 1999 several polls were undertaken to gauge the public’s perception of the most significant figure of the past millennium. Most respondents named 20th century figures as might be expected — given that the poll failed to contact any dead people and human memory is notoriously short.
Old Bill Shakespeare was named in one British poll and various other well known names also popped up around the planet — even some that many wouldn’t recognize. The choice of Shakespeare by the British folks for the millennium provides a little more depth than say the naming of FDR or Walt Disney — but beyond the superficial, would life today be much different if they had not existed....
From 1,000 years ago to now a search for the most important person will require us to identify the main changes, their causes and their significance. One important difference, of course, is our extraordinary material prosperity. A more important one is the focus on the individual, rather than on collectivity, the move from status to contract, that, among other things, made much of that prosperity possible.
If the rise of individualism is the most important development of the past millennium, then the most important person must be whoever contributed most to it. For the key figure in the preceding millennium it would be a clear choice: Jesus Christ. Savior or not, his teachings are the wellspring of individualism.
William Faulkner said "history isn’t was, history is." Who then did the most and in the most irreplaceable way to unleash individualism in the past 1,000 years — given that, as the French say, the graveyards are full of indispensable men?
One obvious candidate, picking up Christ's mantle if you will, is Martin Luther. When he nailed his theses to the door he made every man and woman their own judge of the bible and hence of absolute truth.
Without slighting other Enlightenment figures, such as Erasmus, it was Luther's injuction that led people ultimately not only to reinterpret scripture but to lay it aside entirely
But what if he had not lived, or had been run down by an ox cart when he was two? Would not someone else have come to the same conclusions he did at around that time, given the corrupt state of the Catholic church and the growing prosperity as Europe rebounded from the Black Death?
Obviously, we can never know, but it does not seem unreasonable to think that someone might — by the standards of such vague guesses.
William the Conqueror.
- The introduction of feudalism into England produced a unique fusion of Roman tradition with Norse vigor and Anglo-Saxon common law that gave rise to political rights for the first time since Rome — in a more rigorous, robust and comprehensive form.
- Had he not done so, there is no particular reason to assume anyone else would have.
- England might have remained stuck in Dark Ages for a century or more while the absolute monarchs of France, for example, grew stronger, and then conquered it.
- Even if another continental ruler had seized power, he would probably not have created, as William and his successors did, a sound administrative structure that fused organically with egalitarian communities of self-reliant individuals jealous of their rights.
- Without the example and power of England over the past 1,000 years, a society in which a William Shakespeare, James Watt, George Washington, Sir Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill and others could flourish might well be immeasurably different and perhaps much worse!
The gradual spread of the English model is responsible for most of what little political decency exists in the world today. And without William to bring feudalism to England in the form that he did, that model probably would not have existed. That William, like Jesus, comes right at the beginning of his millennium strengthens his claim to be its key figure.
To the extent millennia are not just arbitrary by-products of a base ten numbering system, the second could be said to began not in 1001 but in 1066 for the Battle of Hastings did forever change the world.
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