LOYALTY and THE INDIVIDUAL
The Byzantine - Islamic - Early European Cultural Matrix

INTRODUCTION

1. IN THIS UNIT, we will consider some of the developments within the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix from the time of the breakup of the Roman Empire to the start of the nation-state system in western Europe. As we trace these developments, we detect a movement from the value of loyalty to the value of the individual. We will see the shift represented through three values that, at one time or another, play an integrating role in the various societies of the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. The three values are:

· unified loyalty

· divided loyalty

· the individual

As we observe how these values play out over the period covered in this unit, we find models of unified loyalty in the Byzantine, Islamic, and Feudal European Cultural Matrixes. As the Feudal Cultural Matrix gave way to what we call the Urban Cultural Matrix in Europe, we discover a process through which loyalty divides, so that people's loyalties are split in various ways. It seems that when the divisions finally run deep enough, people discover that their primary loyalty is to themselves. It no longer makes sense to use "loyalty" as a way of describing this situation, because loyalty -- if it is to have any meaning at all -- must be to someone or something outside oneself. Once it makes the inward turn, we may appropriately speak of the value of the individual. We shall see some of the triumphs and pitfalls of this value as we examine our final European matrix, which we call the "Dynastic" European Cultural Matrix.

1.1. The relationship between the value of loyalty and the value of the individual is essentially one of conflict. We gain a sense of this conflict by considering contemporary life in the United States, where we profess to place high value on loyalty. At the same time, we profess to place high value on the market in economics and freedom in politics, two values that would not seem to easily coincide with loyalty. Isn't the actual value of loyalty in our shared society an open question? We might consider loyalty more of a Feudal and religious value than a capitalist one, calling up images of knightly chivalry and codes of honor /see Wolfe 46/, devotion to God and Christian/Islamic religious institutions. An astonishing act of disloyalty created the United States. Our corporations, our professional sports teams, our universities reward those who demonstrate the least amount of loyalty, those who are most willing to move elsewhere. From these examples, we might conclude that values of the individual, such as self-fulfillment and liberation, conflict with loyalty. If our shared contemporary society rarely values loyalty in practice (where it counts), why do we pay homage to it in theory? And we do.

1.2. Part of the answer might come from questions we might ask about loyalty. Consider the following:

· On what is loyalty based?

· How is loyalty demonstrated?

· What values does loyalty integrate?

· How can a person's various loyalties be blended together without conflict?

1.3. You can probably think of many other questions we might ask about loyalty. There is no simple, clear-cut answer to any of these questions. We might, however, gain some leads by looking back at our Mediterranean heritage. In observing the role of loyalty in the Byzantine, Islamic, and Feudal European Cultural Matrixes, we can see loyalty functioning as a value to which other values are truly subordinate.

Values of UNIFIED LOYALTY in the Byzantine Cultural Matrix

2. DURING THE fourth through sixth centuries C.E., the empire centered in Rome gradually lost its dominance over the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. As the slow disintegration occurred, no political force capable of maintaining control over the entire matrix emerged as a replacement. Rather, three interactive branches of the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix came into being. The fourth-century split of the Roman Empire into the Byzantine and Roman Empires diminished Rome's influence east of the Mediterranean Sea, which had always been limited by the ongoing existence of the Persian Empire. Byzantium marked a new dividing-line between an Eastern branch and a Western branch of the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Even the existence of Byzantium could not prevent the emergence of a power-vacuum when the part of the Roman Empire centered in Rome collapsed. To the east of the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic Empire would develop in the seventh century. West of the Byzantine Empire, a new social entity gradually evolved. It was comprised of numerous political segments and strongly influenced by organized Christianity centered in Rome. "Europe" is the name that would eventually be assumed by this area of the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix.

2.1. The Byzantine Empire served as a partial replacement for Rome, but Byzantium could never regain the dominance Rome had once held over the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Byzantium came to see itself as the heir of the Greeks, and it preserved most of what we know of Greek literature. It also developed its own distinctive style of Christianity, dividing the Church into an "Orthodox" (Byzantine) and "Catholic" (Roman) branch. As Byzantine power ebbed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, a new power -- Kiev Rus -- developed to the north of the Black Sea to spread Byzantine-style culture beyond the bounds of the Byzantine Empire. As Kievan civilization came to an end in the twelfth century, a further dispersal of Mediterranean culture to the lands north and northwest of the Black Sea occurred.

2.2. If we view the Byzantine Cultural Matrix from the vantage-point of its emperors, we see an impersonal  model of loyalty centered around a ruler whose absolute power derives from God. Such power implies a perspective of ethnocentrism in that it deserves absolute loyalty, regardless of the individual who holds the office of ruler. Values associated with the Byzantine model of loyalty include: religious faith, ceremony, system, efficiency, progress, sternness, uncertainty, violence, and unity.

Values of UNIFIED LOYALTY in the Islamic Cultural Matrix

3. THE EMERGENCE of the Islamic Empire in the early seventh century takes us to the sector of the Ancient Mediterranean World for which there is little evidence. This is Arabia. And Arabia provided the starting-point for the second partial  replacement for Rome.

3.1. The Islamic Empire became known for its military and cultural achievements. Through conquest it would spread its own version of the Mediterranean tradition throughout all the old Mediterranean sectors east of the Aegean, and it would extend eastward from ancient Mesopotamia as well. The political success of Islam gave rise to the concept of the "Middle East" in European society -- a kind of fiction, still with us, that the dominant tendencies of the Islamic world are "Oriental" in nature. Through the establishment of universities in Spain, Islam established an important beachhead in Europe created an intellectual spark that would help point Europe in a new direction.

3.2. In the Islamic Cultural Matrix, the root idea of unified loyalty was "submission" to the will of God as it was revealed word-for-word to the prophet Muhammad. We may begin to understand the Islamic notion of loyalty-as-submission by associating it with values such as wellbeing, one true God, fitra, prophets, Qur'an, shakir, pillars (shahada, tsalat, zakat, tsawm, khajj), jihad, the group, and qadar. Described in our categories of values-analysis, the perspective is ethnocentrism -- there is no arguing with the revealed will of the universal, one true God.

The Early European Cultural Matrix (476 to 1648)

4. WHILE BYZANTIUM AND ISLAM present for our consideration models of unified loyalty, the situation in Europe is quite different. Europe presents a more complex picture, both in terms of definition and in terms of description, simply because Europe developed in a more fragmented fashion than the Byzantine or Islamic Cultural Matrixes.

4.1. Trying to come to an exact definition of the start of "Europe" seems to be an unrewarding and hopeless task. To the west of the Byzantine Empire, a new cultural geography emerged from remnants of the Roman Empire, as the peoples of the Roman territories north of the Mediterranean Sea blended with the Germanic peoples still further north. By the eighth century C.E., some who lived north of the Mediterranean were starting to call this territory "Europe" /Bloch 1: xix/. Since the name stuck, we of course use it. Despite great regional differences, a distinctive style of culture developed, and we may refer to the "Early European" Cultural Matrix.

4.2. As we trace the development from unified loyalty to divided loyalty to the individual in the Early European Cultural Matrix, we can find no clear and simple route for our description. Consider:

"476" is a formal political date. It marks the last year a Roman sat on the throne of the Roman Empire centered in Rome. Evidence for what happened next across "Europe" is vague. Many "historians" use 600 as an approximate starting-point, even though it is not tied to any specific event -- rather, it simply represents an "intuition" (based as much as anything on the absence of evidence!!) that by 600 Rome was no longer in political charge of anything
By the end of the Early European era, Europe collectively was the dominant power in the world, and this power has done more to shape the world than any other phenomenon of the last few hundred years. We must find a way to account for the shifts in values that made this happen
It is certainly possible to trace the major shifts in values that we have mentioned, but any mode of presenting these shifts as a simple chronological sequence runs into major difficulties, because similar things happen at different times and there is an incredible amount of overlap -- HOWEVER ...
... if we try to sidestep the attempt to describe Early Europe by periods, we run into even greater difficulties because we have no tangible pattern by which to organize our observations about values

4.3. Commonly, "historians" divide the Early European Cultural Matrix into two phases: the Middle Ages (or Medieval) and the Renaissance. If you read any general "history" of Europe written, say, over the last thirty years, you will find that "no one" really likes this pattern. It is quite flawed in ways that are easy to notice. So scholars continue to use the pattern, but they tinker around with it.

4.3.1. The phrase "Middle Ages" reflects a view articulated by Italian "humanists" during the fourteenth century. These humanists used the concept of "Middle Ages" to devalue the entire period between the end of Greco-Roman antiquity and their own time. The term "Middle Ages" implies that the era had no significant content or importance. In itself, the use of a derogatory term to classify a cultural era is not a critical handicap -- terms tend to lose their power over time. We reject the term "Middle Ages" not so much because it is negative -- making the claim that the era was nothing more than a long waste of time between two more important stages in Mediterranean Culture -- but rather because it is misleading. It's in the so-called "Middle Ages" that we discover the shift in values that leads directly to the kind of world in which we live. In standard "historical" treatments, this issue is resolved by dividing the Middle Ages into two stages.

4.3.1.1. The first has often been called the "Dark Ages," from around 600 to 1000. Problem is there's nothing very "dark" about it. The general idea seems to be that "semi-civilized" groups took over Europe during the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire, and constant warfare drained attention away from literature and art /McNeill 221, 237/. But this doesn't work.  New institutions and techniques emerged, generated by the combination of knighthood (when the invention of stirrups made lance-warfare possible), the heavy (moldboard) plow which improved agriculture and expanded possible lands for cultivation, and the development of seatrade (which created an independent, assertive merchant class) /McNeill 222, 234, 236-237/. In addition, the Church preserved the Latin language, studied some Greco-Roman texts, and maintained contacts outside of Europe. There was even a "Renaissance"!

4.3.1.2. Then, things really got going after 1000, and historians have to take account of the changes. So a "high" Middle Ages (which may then be further subdivided) is born, covering the period from about 1000 to 1350. If, as students of humanities, we are looking at early Europe for shifts in values, we note that all of the basic moves occur right here. In significant ways, this era is not a continuation of the previous era. It is a time of dramatic and surprisingly rapid change, a time that must be explored in its own right.

4.3.2. This brings us to the Renaissance, say from about 1350 to 1600. "Rebirth," the literal meaning of the term Renaissance, refers to the idea of some Europeans during this time-period that they had bypassed their immediate cultural heritage and revived Greco-Roman Culture, two claims that are generally falsified by the actual events of the time-period. Greco-Roman influence was not reborn because it never died, nor even been lost. It was replaced and partly absorbed during the early centuries of Europe (as well as Byzantium and the Islamic world). The so-called "Renaissance" did pick up some pieces, such as artistic styles, that had languished. Yet the Renaissance ignored at least as much as it used -- for instance, the Greco-Roman interest in democratic and republican forms of government. The Renaissance revived only selected fragments of the Greco-Roman heritage, and the immediate heritage of the Renaissance provided an intellectual basis that was at least as strong -- well, let's face it, stronger -- than the Greco-Roman heritage. (The only way you can ignore this "fact" is to limit your view of the "Renaissance" to a handful of writings and pictures, and overlook virtually everything else that was going on -- say in education, in science, in economics, in politics, in religion.) Because the "Renaissance" was so limited in its scope, scholars often speak of two periods here (as they do of the "Middle Ages.")

4.3.2.1. First, there is the Renaissance proper. We might consider this a movement associated primarily with southern Europe. In rejecting -- as we do -- the use of the term "Renaissance," we don't mean at all to overlook the marvelous innovations that are usually located in this "matrix." Just to give one example from the realm of art, we have movies as we know them because "Renaissance" artists worked out the techniques of "illusionism" -- techniques that "fool" the willing viewer into believing that a two-dimensional image has three dimensions. These techniques would have a profound effect on cinematography. That these techniques depended on a sense of Greco-Roman heritage is, to say the very least, doubtful. They were invented by highly creative minds seeking new directions, not merely seeking to recapture the past. We can better appreciate the art, the writings, the music, and every other cultural development if we abandon a limited and misleading label. By freeing ourselves from a "Renaissance" prejudice, we can explore real connections, real meanings, real values!

4.3.2.2. Here's the short, short story of the term "Renaissance." To Giovanni Boccaccio in the fourteenth century, the concept applied to contemporary Italian efforts to imitate the poetic style of the ancient Romans. In 1550 the art historian Giorgio Vasari used the word rinascita (rebirth) to describe the return to the ancient Roman manner of painting by Giotto di Bondone at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It was only later that the word Renaissance acquired a broader meaning. Voltaire in the eighteenth century classified the Renaissance in Italy as one of the great ages of human cultural achievement. In the nineteenth century, Jules Michlet and Jakob Burckhardt (1818-1897) popularized the idea of the Renaissance as a distinct historical period heralding the modern age, characterized by the rise of the individual, scientific inquiry and geographical exploration, and the growth of secular values.

4.3.2.2.1. Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt's 1860 book, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, would prove to be extremely influential. In it, he argued that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a true revolution in values in that country. People allegedly shook off the religious illusions and institutional restrictions of their society and rediscovered both the visible world and their own true selves. The essential novelty of Renaissance culture was the accent it placed on the individual and the delight it took in the beauties and satisfactions of life. The humanistic heritage of Greece and Rome, which stressed similar values, appealed to the people of this age, and the revived interest in Greece and Rome constituted the Renaissance. Moreover, according to Burckhardt, the Italy of this period deserves to be considered the birthplace of the modern world.

4.3.2.2.2. In the twentieth century the term Renaissance was broadened to include other revivals of Greco-Roman culture, such as the Carolingian Renaissance of the ninth century or the Renaissance of the twelfth Century. Se we end up with at least three Renaissances in the Early European Cultural Matrix!! There seems to be a general consensus that the Italian Renaissance is lacking in unique and distinctive qualities (apart from innovations that are particular to it), yet few students of science, technology and economy deny the validity of the term, much less students of art and literature. (Music critics seem to vary -- many of them are more interested in the twelfth century, rather than the fourteenth, as the era of great innovations.)

4.3.2.3. That the Renaissance began in the fourteenth century rather than the twelfth proved to be a handy notion for supporting two kinds of agendas. The first agenda is explicit. The further the Renaissance can be moved from the "Middle Ages," the easier it becomes to devalue the "Middle Ages." But there is also a hidden agenda tied to a late dating of the Renaissance: "trashing" Islam and Christianity. The later the dating, the easier it is to minimize the contribution of Islam in passing on the Greco-Roman heritage and its own knowledge. Here the dating finds geographical support. We should look for the start of the Renaissance in fourteenth-century Italy, not twelfth-century Spain. When the beginning of the Renaissance is dated as closely as possible to the Reformation [see next paragraph], it becomes easier to portray the Church as oppressive, corrupt, and "Medieval." The Church is seen as an institution that stands against individual freedom and open inquiry, especially scientific and other types of scholarly inquiry. As students of humanities, we should not pursue these kinds of agendas. As students of the past, we should not accept a fourteenth-century date for the start of any major new developments in values.

4.3.2.4. In 1517, a large-scale event began in the north that would change the face of Europe and the world. It's called the Reformation. It set in motion a period of warfare that takes us all the way to the treaty signed in 1648 that brings an end to the "Early European" Cultural Matrix. At last! A useable term!! It's about a real event, with real consequences -- not a fantasy or a prejudice. (So if you thought we were trying to throw out every descriptive category used for Early Europe, now you know!) It would change religion, politics, economics, and every other aspect of culture and values.

4.4. RECAP and PREVIEW. Here's the deal so far. Early Europe presents us with a complex situation in which we detect a move from unified loyalty to divided loyalty to the individual. We agree with previous students that the best way to get some sense of this movement in values is to divide the matrix into sub-matrixes, but we don't agree that "Middle Ages" and "Renaissance" are very helpful if we want to focus on values. What we want to do is invent "new" periods that will better connect to the values-picture. As we look toward this, we need to remind ourselves that we don't have an "ideal" solution. Because of the nature of developments in Europe, there are issues of chronology (when things happen) that we don't know how to resolve. What we do is define three trajectories that correspond to the three values under consideration, tie each trajectory to specific events, and then explain the most important thing about this scheme. Oh, you want to know right now?! Well, the cultural motion established in the first era doesn't really blossom until the second era. By then, of course, it's too late because the values have changed. The same is then true of the second era in respect to the third. So European society tends to lag behind its own values until the third era. Simply put, there is a lot of overlap and cultural lag. Another major issue is that nothing happens everywhere -- so any of our generalizations apply only to some sector of Europe, not all of it. We try to select trends with significance for "our" lives as well as "theirs" (which is pretty much what historians do!), and that we find interesting for what they reveal about values. Our description of periods aims to provide a rough guide to the observations we will make about values. We can't put everything in neat compartments, but we can get a realistic sense of where Europe was going.

4.5. Now, here is our schema:

· Feudal Europe -- 476-987 (Hugh Capet) -- unified loyalty

· Urban Europe -- 987-1347 (Black Plague) -- divided loyalty

· Dynastic Europe (i.e., new monarchies) -- 1347-1648 -- the individual

4.5.1. For Feudal Europe we have already given a rationale for the use of 476. In 987 the great nobles of France elected as their king Hugh Capet, whose descendants held the throne until 1792. This event would slowly set in motion a stream of events that brought an end to feudalism. It took a long time. The last vestiges of feudalism in France did not disappear until the French Revolution of 1789, and Feudal institutions are still reflected in English constitutionalism.

4.5.2. Meanwhile, the year 987 brings us to a radical transformation of European society and values, marked by the re-emergence of cities, and the life that goes with them, as the center of developments in values. Here is a real "rebirth," the rebirth of urban life accompanied by a series of changes that created what we might think of as "traditional" Europe -- that is, a Europe that looked both forward and backward, a Europe as it existed before the "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century. It was a time when one new event after another occurred. It was also the time when feudalism reached the apex of its political power, as "princes" used the system to maintain stability in their domains. The great plague that began in 1347 would decimate the population of Europe. Conservative estimates indicate that by 1450 all of Europe had less than one-third the population it had had in the thirteenth century.

4.5.3. As Europe slowly recovered from the effects of the plague, a renewed sense of confidence began to spread in the late fifteenth century. In three leading kingdoms a new assurance began to permeate the government as its leaders reasserted their power and control over their domains. These kingdoms were England, France, and Spain. The "new monarchs" of these countries would raise their power, the power of central authority, to previously unimagined heights -- marshaling the resources of their territories for personal gain and glory. Meanwhile, the Germans, Italians, and Eastern Europeans began to fall behind in this crucial respect. The Reformation started in Germany in 1517. It would plunge Europe into a series of wars that continued until the Peace of Westphalia articulated a new situation. The Peace did not bring an end to the dynasties, but it set trajectories in motion -- trajectories of the individual -- that would eventually undermine the power of the dynastic monarchs of the last phase of the Early European Cultural Matrix.

Values of UNIFIED LOYALTY in the Feudal European Cultural Matrix

5. THE SOCIAL/ECONOMIC SYSTEM of Early Europe is called "feudalism," and this system gives the name to the first phase of the Early European Cultural Matrix. Feudalism is characterized by links of dependence, and "vassalage" is the most general term for these links. The links of dependence would evolve into a complex stratification of society into classes, with group life initially organized into self-sustaining, independent agricultural co-ops called "manors."  A "synthesis" of northern and southern European values marked the formative stage of the Feudal Cultural Matrix. A later synthesis of European and Islamic ideas transformed Feudalism and initiated its extremely slow decline.

5.1. For Feudal Europeans, loyalty signified allegiance based on obligation, and this unified, personal type of loyalty integrated other values such as violence, security, justice, support, and wellbeing. The strongest symbol for the loyalty-as-allegiance-based-on-obligation value-system is the Feudal oath, or vow, which establishes loyalty by affirming mutual support between two people. The genius of Feudal loyalty is that it is personal in nature, sealed with a vow made before God. It may be that in our time and place, such a personal notion as a vow has become outmoded. Our connection to our Feudal heritage exists in the fact that we still place high value on personal treatment, even though our situation today makes the idea of "personal" about as outmoded as the idea of "vow." We live in a huge, bureaucratic society governed by law (and all the stereotypes that accompany such governance), in which most of us function as interchangeable parts in systems beyond our control, or even our understanding. (Remember the great line from the song "Secret Agent Man": "They've given me a number and taken away my name.") Yet do we not feel somehow betrayed when our systems fail on the surface to treat us as personal human beings, and don't our systems expend vast amounts of energy trying to help us feel that our personal contributions are important?

5.2. The largest-scale effort in Feudal Europe to unify loyalty centered around the idea of "Christendom," with its vision of uniting political and religious sovereignty in Europe under the authority of the Church. The practical implementation of Christendom centered around the concept of a "Holy Roman Empire." On Christmas day of 800, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, established the first actual "Holy Roman Empire" and initiated a "Carolingian Renaissance" which attempted to renew Greco-Roman cultural and artistic ideals. After the death of Charlemagne, the Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided his empire into units that would evolve into France, Germany and Italy. It would take a long time for the consequences to be fully realized, but a new Europe -- a Europe of states rather than empires -- began to form. Europeans didn't know it, but the feudal and Christian ideal of unified loyalty had just come to an end.

5.3. The final development that sealed the fate of unified loyalty occurred when the nobles of France elected as their king Hugh Capet in 987. The Capetians established a long-lived dynasty that replaced the idea of personal negotiations as the path to kingship with the idea of heredity. This move also anticipated the removal of the Church from its political role as the keeper of unified loyalty. Although various parties would not admit it for hundreds of years, the ability of unified loyalty to integrate Feudal values had died.

5.4. The perspective of Feudal Christianity is the same as that of Byzantine Christianity and Islam: one truth, revealed by God for all people, produces ethnocentrism. However, in the Feudal ideal of allegiance based on obligation, we find at least the seeds of tolerance. In making deals for their mutual good people had to listen to each other, to find a common ground.

Values of DIVIDED LOYALTY in the Urban European Cultural Matrix

6. A surge of human energy generated major and rapid changes in Europe as the millennium turned over. In the two centuries from 1000 to 1200, with their booming growth in population, we find the origins of "traditional" -- that is, pre-"modern" as defined by developments in the eighteenth century -- European civilization.

6.1. The Urban European Cultural Matrix inherited from its Frankish precursors a view of loyalty that emphasized the importance of institutions, and therefore law, over personal relationships with their ethical and emotional ties. The new emphasis moved loyalty on a line from personal to impersonal. In so doing it led to the division, or fragmentation, of loyalties for individuals. As an example, consider this question: If you are a loyal vassal but have more than one lord, how do you make a choice when two of your lords have competing or conflicting demands?

6.2. Part of the essential formation of the Urban European Cultural Matrix was a great synthesis between Feudal European culture and Islamic culture. The synthesis introduced new goods and new knowledge into Europe. Even more, it opened the vision of Europeans to the "outside" world. A new materialism, new ideas, a new horizon ... you can see the division of loyalties increasing.

6.4. In assessing the value-system that was integrated by divided loyalty, we notice the following as prominent values:

· expansion and the mentality of colonialism

· social changes that shifted the balance between the free and unfree classes, and led to the emergence of a vital rural life in towns and villages, accompanied by the Christianization of the countryside

· commerce in the form of trade, both within Europe and with the other parts of the Mediterranean Cultural Matrix, accompanied by the value of exchange

· the rebirth of urban life, which enhanced the values of administration and commercial services, promoted the rise of a new merchant class as well as a new laboring class, revived a money-economy which, in turn, would lead to new demands for and forms of liberty and self-government,

· a new emphasis on the value of talent, with its corollaries of observation and reason

6.5. In the Urban European Cultural Matrix we may observe a budding perspective of relativism. The preceding cluster of values reveals that some important distinction between sacred and secular was developing. The Church, of course, maintained its ethnocentric view -- contributing to the evolution of a matrix in which serious conflict must occur.

Values of THE INDIVIDUAL in the Dynastic European Cultural Matrix

7. THE PLAGUE that began in the mid-fourteenth century erased the population explosion of the eleventh century, created a massive disruption in economic production, and altered Christian religious practice. In regrouping from the crisis generated by the Plague, Europeans found a center in the value of the individual that had started to become prominent in the twelfth century. In five broad areas -- metallurgy, firearms, printing, navigation, and business institutions -- European society began to move once more.

7.1. The increase in social and economic unrest after the Plague led to political changes centered around the value of the individual. By drawing on an ancient value in Mediterranean tradition -- the leader principle -- "new monarchs" established great dynasties, each appealing in its own way to some theory of the "divine right" of kings to rule, in England, France, and Spain. The new monarchs aimed to use the resources of their territories to win prominence in the larger world. In their ambition to control the resources of the entire world, the new monarchs developed Urban European economic ideas into a system called mercantilism, the forerunner of capitalism.

7.2. Another striking application of the value of the individual was the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation began in 1517 with the statement of an individual -- Martin Luther -- about the nature of the Catholic Church and its teachings. The Reformation marks the second phase of the Dynastic European Cultural Matrix. It fractured Latin Christianity and sparked a long period of warfare that culminated in the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648. In this war the Dynastic European Cultural Matrix came to an end.

7.3. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Catholic Church itself began a process of renewal that would re-invigorate its spiritual and social force, and lead to a remarkable burst of creativity in art, music, and writing. Here again, the value of the individual would provide the focus. Drawing on the spirit of humanism that had arisen in fourteenth-century Italy, the Church resisted the urge toward "secularism" often associated with humanism, and took advantage of humanist qualities such as personal independence and individual expression. By giving a new emphasis to the beauty of its places of worship and the richness of its ceremony, the Church also put its own effective spin on the humanist value of appreciation for the pleasures of this world.

The humanist emphasis on the individual spurred an outburst of creativity and revolutionary ideas. With this came a dramatic rise in the level of conflict in society. By attaching the idea of the individual to the notion of virtu, humanist values -- within and without the Church -- produced an ethnocentric "me-first" attitude that would continue to grow stronger as the Dynastic European Matrix developed. The story of Galileo's conflict with the Church, a story that has continued into our own time, illustrates both the potential and the danger of the value of the individual.