The Vision and Principles of Christopher Dawson

The Vision and Principles of Christopher Dawson | David Knowles | Introduction to Christopher Dawson's The Dividing of Christendom | Ignatius Insight

In the early years of his long life of study Christopher Dawson set himself the task of surveying the history of European civilization in the light of a master-idea: that religion is the dynamic force, the basic constituent and the inspiration of all higher human activity, and that therefore the culture of an era depends upon its religion, and not vice versa.

This task was to him a very demanding one, for it presupposed an intimate and detailed knowledge of the history—political, intellectual, social , aesthetic, and economic—of the cultures he undertook to consider. His first major writing, The Age of the Gods, was the outcome of many years of research in the religion of primitive man, and the early civilizations of the East. It remained in many ways his greatest single achievement, and it received immediate critical acclaim. Forty years ago, before the immense success of Arnold Toynbee's work, readers of world-history had been gjven Spengler's sombre picture of the West in decline, and the tendentious outlook of the History of the World by H. G. Wells.

Dawson's work was very learned, but there was nothing difficult or esoteric about it. He did not impose patterns on events nor did he create a vocabulary to express his ideas. The ideas he used were those common to all human thought. His mind had the clarity of wisdom, not the simplicity of the superficial, and his style was lucid and free.

The second instalment should have covered the civilization of the classical world, and he would have been fully competent to present this, but he left it aside, perhaps because he felt that generations of fine minds had made it familiar, and wrote of what was then a less cultivated field, the twilight of classical civilization and the dawn of medieval Christian culture. He called the book The Making of Europe. This was a less attractive theme for many, but it was probably Dawson's most influential book as it filled a gap that had long existed in general historical knowledge, and set out persuasively and convincingly a twofold thesis: that medieval and modern civilization derived a very large part of its human and secular content from Greece and Rome, and that the spirit that gave life and growth to what seemed to be a ruin was the spirit of Catholic Christianity.

It told the strange story of the transmission of Christianity to the West, together with the basic ideas of ancient government and thought, by way of the circumference of Christendom and back to Northern Europe. It was a book that opened a new world to many readers, and though in the thirty-odd years that have passed many have explored the archaeology and art of the Dark Ages, no work has completely taken its place.

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Comments

[Mark Brumley]

Dawson is a forgotten treasure. It is an honor that Ignatius Press is able to publish some of his works. As we approach the 500th anniversary of the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, it is crucial for Catholics and others to have an appreciation for both the formation of Christendom and its dividing. Dawson gives an unbiased treatment of both, even though he is not bashful about his Catholicism and Catholicism's vital role in western history.

[Jackson]

> he is not bashful about his Catholicism and
> Catholicism's vital role in western history.

Would you say this is the primary reason why he's mostly forgotten? Any other reasons?

[Fred]

Any other reasons?
Well, as an independent scholar, Dawson worked outside the academy - which means he wouldn't have directed or supervised dissertations, etc. In other words, his works never became integrated into the academic world. He was a brilliant man but he didn't generate a school...

[Mark Brumley]

Primary? I'm not sure. Like many notable preconciliar Catholic writers, Dawson fell into eclipse after Vatican II as a result, at least in part, of a false reading of the council and the collective amnesia to which large numbers of Catholics succumbed. In the 1980s, through the philanthropy of Chauncey Stillman, with the formation of the Society for Christian Culture and the work of John Mulloy, a disciple of Dawson, a Dawsonian revival occurred. For reasons I cannot go into here, this revival did not realize its potential. Let's hope and pray that circumstances today are such that Dawson will come to hold the place he deserves to hold and his work can have the influence it should.