Your choice of heroes is the most important decision you’ll ever make.

Why? Because Napoleon spent his entire life trying to be Caesar. Caesar idolized Alexander the Great, and Alexander imagined himself as the next Achilles. Who you idolize shapes who you become.

From a historical perspective, focusing on “the greats” can force us to wrestle with difficult yet vital questions on a societal level: Who should we hold up as exemplary figures in our society? Who should we teach our young men and women to emulate?

The framing of history that addresses these questions head on is the Great Man Theory of history. It’s a controversial idea proposed by 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle, who argued that “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”

Carlyle believed that history isn’t shaped by the masses, but by the will of heroes — elite figures who should be followed and revered for their inherent genius. But this isn’t simply a history lesson. If Carlyle is right, it means your choice of who to follow is the single most important factor in who you will become.

So let’s uncover the secrets of the Great Man Theory — how you can use it to unlock your full potential, and also, why you’ve probably never been taught it in your school’s history class….

The Driving Force of History

So first, where did Great Man Theory come from, and just what exactly does it say?

Thomas Carlyle first gave a series of lectures on the topic of heroism in 1840. These lectures were later published into a book entitled On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History. One of the book’s main theses was the Great Man Theory of history.

Carlyle argued that heroes shape history through both their personal attributes and “divine inspiration” — the world essentially turns on the ideas and decisions of elite men. Carlyle writes:

“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain…the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.”

But how do these great men emerge? Where do they come from? And what makes one great in the first place?

Carlyle based his theory on a couple assumptions. The first assumption is that great leaders are born, not made — Carlyle emphasized nature over nurture. Heroes inherently possess the traits that enable them to rise to the occasion and lead on instinct. Therefore, those who rise to power usually deserve to lead because of their abilities.

The second assumption is that great men rise only when a unique set of circumstances plays out — they don’t emerge in a vacuum. Though every aspect of history isn’t necessarily dependent on great men, heroes are the decisive factor in solving the problems of societies. They’re the weight that tips the scales one way or another.

What Defines a Great Man?

Carlyle’s heroes are utterly unique and possess a certain creative genius that can’t be made up for with any amount of raw manpower. How many Roman legions are the equivalent to a Julius Caesar? How many minor poets will give us a Shakespeare? The hero is unquantifiable.

Carlyle’s hero is somewhat similar to Aristotle’s conception of the magnanimous, or “great-souled,” man. The great-souled man is a man who possesses archetypal human virtue in the active sense, meaning he acts upon the world as opposed to having a more contemplative nature. The magnanimous man is a person of action.

In Carlyle’s conception, the hero isn’t perfect, though. The world is filled with contradictions that the hero has to deal with. Thus, all heroes will be flawed.

But here’s the key…

It’s precisely because they aren’t perfect that they can serve as a pattern for others to imitate. This imitation is the force that moves history forward. For example, Alexander the Great and his phalanxes set the template for ancient warfare. It would be hundreds of years before his methods were defeated. Likewise, Napoleon used artillery in an overwhelming fashion in a way no one had done before. Future generals took note and copied his tactics.

But Carlyle’s heroes aren’t just military or political figures. He identified six types of hero, encompassing all facets of human life:

1. the divine hero (like Odin)

2. the prophet (like Muhammad)

3. the poet (like Shakespeare)

4. he priest (like Martin Luther)

5. the man of letters (like Rousseau) and

6. the king (like Napoleon)

Thus there is a hero for every interest one can have. And this is where it gets personal, because Carlyle believed that who our heroes are shapes us…

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What we know about history is an illusion. We often speak about ancient peoples as “primitive” and “unsophisticated”, but these broad characterizations really only reveal our own simplicity.

Our “modernity bias” presupposes that we are the most intelligent generation to ever exist, and human intelligence is a declining metric as we peer backward in time. This leaves us with the assumption that cavemen were stupid, we are smart, and everyone in between was, well, in between.

But what serious historians know (and rarely tell us) is that history, anthropology, archaeology, and its sisters are inherently limited. They study the scattered writings, ruins, and tools that haven’t been given quite enough time to return to dust before being pulled into a museum

Hence, what we know of the past is not merely based on what existed, but instead of the much smaller category of what survived.

Our picture of the past, then, is not only incomplete, but naturally biased toward incompleteness — and that inherent incompleteness means that modern historians (and the public alike) will always underestimate the intelligence, capabilities, and complexities of past humanity.

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The Problem of Survivorship

Most human activity leaves no trace: conversations, daily habits, clothing, and local knowledge can fade away in merely a generation. Some artifacts may last many generations with careful storage, things like letters, paper, various heirlooms, wooden tools, and the like. But fewer items can last beyond a millennium: coins, weapons, armor, jewelry, etc. Of things that last several millennia, we are typically only left with what is large and therefore slow to return to dust: megalithic structures, buried cities, and deep engravings in stone.

As we look back into recent history, what survives is largely accidental, perhaps simply those knickknacks left by a grandparent in a chest in the attic. But as we look back farther into history, we find relatively fewer artifacts as a result of mere accident and more as a result of past peoples to create permanence. While this is stating the obvious, the implication then is that our knowledge of peoples further back in history is proportionally overinfluenced by the grand structures (aimed at permanence) that have survived. It’s no surprise, then, that we tend to think of “primitive” peoples as dominated culturally by purely religious or superstitious belief and cartoonishly void of practical, political, and personal qualities.

As an example, when we think of the pyramids at Giza, we assume they were the central focus of Egyptian society, ignoring the probable idea that it was very likely only one (admittedly impressive) feature of an ancient city. We are very likely to see the pyramids as a holy and serious site, and very unlikely to see that the children of the surrounding town probably enjoyed bouncing balls off its faces. This particular fact is conjecture, of course, but it’s entirely more reasonable to assume past humans did human things than to assert past humans only did what we can know from the dirt.

The survivorship bias will always result in an inadequate picture of past human society; alone, survivorship bias will lead us to the conclusion that more ancient humans must be dumber humans. Entire domains of intelligence (practical skills, social complexity, moral reasoning) are largely invisible archaeologically. Drawing conclusions about the intelligence of past mankind from merely what is found in the dirt risks judging a civilization by its trash heap or a handful of ruins.

Misreading the Evidence

Archaeologists and historians often interpret artifacts as representative of a whole culture. G.K. Chesterton noted in The Everlasting Man that the historians of his day assigned deep religious significance to some crude cave drawings. But Chesterton scoffed at these assumptions that limited the sophistication of prehistoric man to these drawings, offering that the sketches could equally well have been the drawings of a prehistoric child. The danger here is that we project meaning (or lack of it) onto ambiguous evidence. When we look for meaning in prehistoric doodles, we might equally wonder what our grandchildren might think of us if the only thing they inherit is our drawings made in boredom.

The sophistication of the caveman must surpass our understanding of them based on the limited drawings, tools, and other random artifacts we have discovered. What if the more sophisticated aspects of ancient societies simply didn’t survive?

Then, we also might realize that what cavemen had in their heads might not be represented by the physical evidence, even if all of it were well-preserved. The mind of the caveman was likely no lesser to ours. Perhaps we have merely been afforded the luxury to think about it, while they were using their minds constantly for survival. Few modern men would even survive the world of the cavemen (at least our understanding of it). Most today can’t make a fire without a lighter, forage the local flora, skin an animal, or construct even simple tools from purely natural products. But the caveman could — and probably could do much more that we can say.

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In 1787 Alexander Hamilton argued that the United States should resemble an elective monarchy, featuring a strong national leader elected for life. It might sound like heresy to modern Americans, but his idea had some merit — and exposes a shortcoming of modern democracy.

Although Hamilton enjoys pride of place among historical figures as a founding father of the United States, his support for centralized government and a powerful executive has tarnished his image today. This isn’t surprising considering he referred to the British governmental system — which America fought a war to disentangle itself from — as the “best in the world.”

Despite his blemished reputation, Hamilton advocated for “good government” which pursued longevity and stability. And his original plan for America sheds light on the weaknesses of today’s political systems…

Hamilton’s King

Hamilton gave an impassioned, six-hour-long speech at the constitutional convention laying out his plan for the government and a powerful executive head. Despite his zeal, though, it was resoundingly voted down in favor of the system the U.S. has today. But what did Hamilton advocate for exactly?

Sympathetic to Britain’s strong monarchy, Hamilton proposed a system that was similar to his former allegiance’s government. But unlike the British monarchy, where power was transferred via bloodline, Hamilton’s leader — referred to as the national “governor” — would be an elected figure.

Hamilton lays out his vision for the executive during his speech:

“The supreme Executive authority of the United States to be vested in a Governor, to be elected to serve during good behavior; the election to be made by Electors chosen by the people in the Election Districts aforesaid.”

Essentially, the governor would retain power for life as long as misconduct did not force an impeachment by congress i.e. “to serve during good behavior.” And he would have a broad swathe of powers, including the ability to veto any law, make treaties, and appoint all chief officers of the Departments of Finance, War, Foreign Affairs, etc. Notably, the executive would also appoint state governors, giving him more power than today’s president.

Hamilton’s monarch-like governor would wield enough power domestically to resist foreign influence, while the possibility of impeachment prevented tyranny. It was a balance of incentives, Hamilton envisioned, that ensured a functional, yet limited rule.

Historical Precedent

As a well-educated man, Hamilton drew from history for much of his worldview. Like other founding fathers, he admired the Roman Republic specifically, calling it the “utmost height of human greatness” in the Federalist Papers. But before Rome was a republic, it was a kingdom with an elective monarch…

After the first legendary king of Rome Romulus, who took power by killing his brother Remus, monarchs were elected by the Roman people via the Curiate Assembly, who voted on candidates pre-selected by the senate. Though it was ultimately up to the Roman citizenry who became king, the senate held much of the power during the process.

Touted as the successor of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), likewise had an elective monarchy. In the HRE the emperor was appointed by a small body of the most powerful princes, or “prince-electors.” Once a leader was selected, the coronation of the emperor took place in either Aachen or Frankfurt, whereupon the prince would become monarch.

The longevity of the Holy Roman Empire, spanning hundreds of years, was a testament to the strength of the system. In fact, it was still intact during the time of the constitutional convention. Though Hamilton critiqued the HRE’s fractured structure, he clearly had no qualms with its monarchical system.

Another contemporary elective monarchy to Hamilton was that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Poles held “free elections” upon the death of a monarch, where any Catholic nobleman might be considered for the position. The Polish system was not as successful as the HRE’s, though, as infighting and even full on battle often occurred between candidates. Historian Norman Davies recorded that “in 1764, when only thirteen electors were killed, it was said that the Election was unusually quiet.”

Though uncommon today, elective monarchies were not unheard of when Hamilton made his speech to the constitutional convention in 1787.

So why specifically did Hamilton want a monarch-like system? And could it work in America today?

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Every great civilization eventually reaches a point where its power remains visible, but its foundations begin to erode.

Fiscal strain, social fragmentation, and declining confidence in leadership signal that the empire’s contraction has arrived. The military commander and writer John Glubb argued that empires often pass through predictable stages: from expansion and confidence to wealth, complacency, and eventual decline.

But history also offers another lesson. Sometimes decline is not the end. Occasionally, a leader emerges that manages to stabilize things — sometimes even reverse the downward trend. Figures like Augustus and Alfred the Great inherited power facing real crises. Yet through a mix of discipline and reform, they managed to buy their civilizations decades (or even centuries) more life.

Here’s how a leader facing a failing empire can reverse the decline…

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Restore Virtue

To save an empire, it first needs to be worth saving. That comes by instilling a sense of virtue in the culture again. At the point that the empire is crumbling already, it’s well into the Age of Decadence according to Glubb, where there is wealth without sacrifice, rights without duty, and spectacle in place of achievement.

If we look back to Rome, Augustus inherited a world exhausted by civil war. At the root of the issue was moral and civic decay. In response, August promoted the formation of families, a religious revival, a rededication to public duty, and military discipline. All fronts worked to remake the culture of Rome into one of decency, respect, and order. The result was the famed Pax Romana — an era of general peace in the empire.

But on this point, it’s much easier to say virtue should be restored than to actually do it. Ultimately, virtue is something chosen by each individual. A leader can’t force anyone to be a good person, especially if there’s disagreement on what good even is. But, a leader can provide the breeding ground on which virtue is better fostered, by establishing a common law across the land, enforcing laws equally, and by communicating a common moral framework.

The latter has most effectively been accomplished through organized religion. This has worked well historically because a religion that stands apart from a government separates the enforcement arm of a society from the moral authority, increasing the trust of everyone in a common moral understanding. So, the leader concerned with the decline of his empire can do nothing better than to restore organized religion’s high standing in society.

Lastly, a people will not turn to virtue if their leader shows extreme vices. Thus, the leader, if he truly wants to restore virtue to his empire, must reflect the attitudes and behaviors that will inspire his people to right action. He can’t be a hypocrite; the best rulers lead from the front.

Rebuild Institutions

Another sign of an empire in decay is the weakening of its institutions. When its legal, religious, and civic institutions lose credibility to the public, the gears that make an empire work stop turning. Part of the problem is bureaucratic: large empires usually require more labor and infrastructure to manage its many moving parts, but every level of control adds friction — slowing progress and diverting public funds away from other places where it might be more useful. Another part of the problem is that these weakened institutions no longer attract the best, brightest, and rightly motivated individuals. The institutions become filled with people who simply want a position of status or ease. Bulky institutions increasingly tax their populations to support the infrastructure, and people begin to view the institutions not as movers and shakers in the empire, but rather as roadblocks to its success.

Looking back to Rome again, Diocletian was a successful reformer. He wasn’t afraid to rethink Roman organization from the ground up. The emperor restructured many of the provinces, stabilized taxation, reordered the military, and reformed the administration as a whole to better serve the empire.

But institutions extend beyond government. The establishment of a strong religion is infinitely more important than the establishment of a provincial tax administration. As we said earlier, the institutions of religion provide a common moral framework for a people. They provide trust, community, and a long-lasting bond between generations. So, a leader must support strong religious communities if he wishes to have a strong empire.

Further, an empire thrives on the health of its most fundamental unit cell: the family. In its latter days, wealthy Romans were reluctant to marry and start families, preferring decadence and freedom from responsibility to a life of domestic purpose and meaning. But that meant civilizational suicide, as Rome’s old families dwindled among crowds of newcomers in the empire. Cultural cohesion eroded quickly, and political instability driven by cultural nihilism took over the Roman town square. An empire needs a strong base of patriotic families, not only to provide for a future citizenry, but also to instill a generational mindset in the culture. Mothers and fathers naturally care for where their society is headed, because their children have to inherit that world. So, an emperor should encourage marriage and families to ensure that patriotism is inherently tied to love for their families.

The successful empire needs strong institutions to make it work; these fundamental institutions of law, executive government, religion, marriage, and family are critical to renew a faltering empire. However, institutions need protection to function…

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When did Western Civilization peak, exactly? A subscriber recently asked this very question. At first an answer came quickly, but the more I think about it, the more difficult the question reveals itself to be.

The meaning of a “peak” of civilization is ambiguous. By which metric do we judge? My first instinct, as a traditionally minded thinker, is to suggest a moral or spiritual metric: when was the bulk of society aligned in a common moral understanding or religion? That quickly takes us farther back in history.

Or, by “peak”, do we mean an intellectual summit, perhaps in achievement or at least in literary, artistic, or scientific activity?

Another metric we might judge civilization by is for its peacefulness. When did the West avoid conflict for an extended period of time? Or similarly, do we judge the pinnacle of a society to be when average living conditions rise above an established norm?

And, lastly, perhaps the “peak” of a civilization lies where its essence was most clearly defined. What time period most embodies the characteristics of the West?

All appear as valid metrics. Let’s now look at which time periods stand out when filtering by these metrics of religious unity, intellectual activity, peace, living conditions, and essence.

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Peak of the Western Religion

The “Western religion” is undoubtedly Catholicism. While we may extend the title to all Christianity, it is hard to imagine a “peak” of a religion in times where it is so divided, as Christianity has become so fragmented since the Protestant Reformation. We might fairly point to the East/West Schism of the 11th century as another division (into Orthodox vs Catholic), but as we are only concerned with “Western Civilization”, Catholicism has remained undivided in the West proper for its entire history.

While any careful study of history reveals cracks and signs of disunity in every age, Catholicism stood taller and stronger in some periods than others. The 1200s were a high point, as it was this century that the intellectual foundations of Catholicism were best summarized, synthesized with Aristotelian thought, and born out in the many writings of the Scholastics. St. Albertus Magnus, his student St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus were Catholic intellectual giants of the era.

Further, society itself was wholly organized around the Church at this point. The Popes has gained power not only over the spiritual leadership Western Europe, but also over many of the temporal matters later only held by kings. While kings and popes did come to blows at some points, still nearly every king acknowledged the legitimacy of the papal power and thought long before challenging it.

Cathedrals and monasteries were central to the landscapes; the Franciscans and Dominicans both emerged to revitalize the Church’s mission; and pilgrimages were common to the Holy Land still under some protection from late Crusaders.

It was during this century that Western Europe was Catholic through and through.

Peak of the Intellect

A peak period of intellectual life is more challenging to determine, as we are not looking for the time period which has the most information available (obviously today) but the one in which the most relative progress or activity was made. A few periods stand out: 1) the Scholastic period of the 1200s, but only really for the intellectual life of the Church, 2) the late Renaissance period of the 1600s, 3) the late 1800s with the spread of steam engines and electricity, or 4) the late 1900s with the advent of the internet and computer.

Comparing these diverse periods is difficult because the kinds of advances made in each are so different. The 1200s reconciled theology with secular philosophy. The Renaissance adopted and applied the “new” methods of rationalism to science and philosophy, while simultaneously exploding in artistic vigor. The 1800s witnessed built the great machines that multiplied human labor tenfold and hundredfold. But the late 1900s began the project of building man’s most cherished gift, his intellect, into a machine of its own.

Then, in terms of scientific achievement, I must defer to our most recent advent of the computer and internet, which are now being transformed by AI, as the most revolutionary in human development. In artistic intellect, however, I would point instead to the Renaissance; in theological intellect, to the 1200s. And, I will add, that in literary intellect, I personally hold the early 20th century as a high point because of its perfect balance of artistic language and clarity.

Peak of Peace

The high point of peace in Western Civilization is much less contested than that of the intellect. Generally, 1800s Europe was known as a time of relative peace across the continent. The United States may have thought differently with the War of 1812 and the Civil War, but overall, Western Civilization was relatively content during this period. The chaos of the French Revolution had subsided, and the British Empire continued to rule the seas. Further, the Industrial Revolution was propelling economies to new heights — why wage war when technology could accelerate the European economies?

Next, let’s take a look at living conditions and what we’ll call the “Western character”.

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Christianity built Western Civilization.

Or, at least, Christianity unified it. Before the Church, in fact, there was no unified Western identity at all – just a collection of warring chieftains, lords, and petty kings who obtained power via force. A lord in France, for example, felt no connection to another halfway across the continent in Hungary or Poland.

But the Church found a way to rally all of Europe behind a common cause, and create Christendom, a grand union of Christians across the continent. The key was to harness — rather than stifle — the power of its internal factions and use it for the Church’s goals.

So how did this unification happen? Here’s the story of how Christendom came to be…

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A Dual Tension Between Church and Tribe

Historian Christopher Dawson makes the case in Religion and the Rise of Western Culture that after the fall of Rome, Europe was under a dualistic tension: a barbarian power structure stood in contrast to a Christian ethos. On one side rested the secular authority of local lords and kings, who largely maintained control through aggressive means. On the other lay the cultural influence of the Church, who remained powerful in spite of the collapse of nearly all other Roman institutions. This dichotomy between secular and religious authority lies at the root of the West’s origins…

Dawson called the West a “missionary culture” because it was only via the Church that the transmission of higher cultural elements occurred. He writes:

“…it was only in so far as the different peoples of the West were incorporated in the spiritual community of Christendom that they acquired a common culture.”

Dawson contrasts this development with Eastern civilizations like China and India, whose cultures developed internally over centuries with little outside influence. Their religion and culture grew together like roots in the same soil.

But Western civilization was a clash from the start: missionaries like the saints Boniface, Patrick, and Gregory brought a new culture — and a new authority — into the existing power structures of the Northern barbarian kingdoms. Though nearly all of Western Europe converted to Christianity, the Church’s influence did not create a utopia, but rather an uneasy tension…

Kings and lords still maintained their power via force while serving vital functions: levying taxes, ensuring security, and administering justice. But it was in the Christian Church where most turned for cultural direction. Dawson writes:

“The new barbarian kingdoms had taken over the military and political functions of the Empire…but everything else belonged to the Church — moral authority, learning and culture, the prestige of the Roman name and the care of the people.”

While kings held military and administrative power, bishops had the institutional backing of the Church. Often bishops held just as much — if not more — authority as the kings.

And this tension was not merely a practical reality, but a theological vision of the world accepted by medieval Christians. For example St. Augustine, a theologian who influenced the medieval mind perhaps more than any other, argued in his work “City of God” that the world was always at tension between two opposing forces: the City of Man and the City of God.

All of history was a war between God and Satan. As the “prince of this world,” according to the Bible, Satan would continue to influence the world until Christ’s return. In the meantime, Christians accepted that earthly authority would never be completely just, hence the allowance of a non-ecclesial power alongside the Church.

Despite this dualistic understanding of secular and religious power, there were many who sought to unify them. In the late 8th and early 9th centuries, one man tried to create a unified Church and State…a Christian empire.

The Hope of a Christian Empire

Charlemagne, famously crowned emperor by the pope in 800 AD, attempted to create a more unified system that encompassed both secular and religious authority. Throughout his reign he implemented a series of reforms that blurred the lines between ecclesial and political power.

His reforms focused on strengthening the Church’s hierarchical structure, improving clerical education, standardizing liturgical practices, and rooting out paganism. Eventually, Charlemagne’s powers covered ground that only the Church had occupied previously such as disciplining clerics, appointing bishops and abbots, and defining orthodox doctrine.

What’s more, he did it all with support from the papacy. Some even referred to Charlemagne’s realm as the “new Israel,” recalling the Biblical kingdom where little distinction between religious and civil law existed. Charlemagne’s dreams of creating a Christian Europe unified under common religion seemed within reach…

But this unity did not endure.

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The Black Death wiped out a third of Europe — possibly as many as 50 million people perished as a result of the deadly plague. The word apocalyptic doesn’t even cover it. It’s a wonder it didn’t actually spell the end of European civilization.

From the perspective of a 14th-century peasant on the ground, it would have been a traumatic experience on a scale we can’t comprehend today: dozens of your friends and family covered in blisters and sores before succumbing to fever and eventually death. And you might be next. The Final Judgement surely felt near!

But if you managed to survive, your life may have actually improved from the conditions you were in beforehand. You had more food, pay, and maybe some land, too. Your station in life instantly skyrocketed. Sounds impossible, right?

Well, for some it’s exactly what happened. Though the Black Death almost ended European civilization, it actually contributed to a rebirth in many ways. For one, it reordered society, allowing for upward mobility of peasants previously locked in a stagnant hierarchy.

Here’s how the Black Death helped create a brighter future for those who remained…

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Agent of Chaos

Supposedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of Caffa in 1347, the disease was likely carried by fleas that hitched rides on Genoese ships sailing around the Mediterranean. At the time, no one could have guessed the damage these little fleas would cause…

Major population centers like Constantinople, Sicily, and Italy were rich targets and eventually launching pads for the plague to reach mainland Europe. Once on land, the Black Death jumped from a flea-born disease to humans, spreading from person-to-person as a type of lung infection.

The speed at which the plague spread is perhaps what is most remarkable about the disease. Just a few years after reaching Caffa, it had spread to every corner of Europe — from Russia to England to Spain. And everyone became acutely aware of the plague’s symptoms: swollen lymph nodes, fever, skin sores, then death.

Estimates are that between 30-60% of the population succumbed to the illness. Entire towns and families were wiped out. Mass graves were dug to keep up with the staggering amount of corpses. Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura wrote in 1348:

“Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices...great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night”

It sounds like Hell on earth — or divine punishment — and that’s exactly how many interpreted the events. For some, the plague could only be explained as wrath from God for their sins. Others saw it as the end of the world, referencing the book of Revelation where it states “a third of mankind was killed” due to plague.

In some ways it was the end of the world, though. Or at least the end of a certain type of society…

Rapid Social Changes

The effects of the Black Death on the medieval world have been the topic of wide speculation. Everything from climate change to advances in medical science have been attributed to the plague.

Some scholars have even theorized the Renaissance got its jumpstart from the Black Death. The plague hit especially hard in Florence and other Italian cities, and it’s possible a worldview shift occurred — familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell on matters of religion and spirituality. This wave of piety then manifested in the widespread sponsorship of religious art, leading to an explosion in painting, sculpting, and architecture. Much of Renaissance art was a contemplation of death and the possibility of life anew in Christianity.

Though the plague’s role in the birth of the Renaissance is conjecture, what’s more concrete is that it contributed to feudalism’s downfall and the rise in upward mobility for the peasant class.

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The Renaissance was the culmination of centuries of progress combined with a rediscovery of the classical spirit. Architectural feats like Florence’s Duomo and St. Peter’s Basilica remain recognizable icons of the cultural “rebirth” that swept through Western Europe.

But did you know much of Renaissance architecture was inspired by a single man — one who…

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Andrew Carnegie is often credited with ushering in America’s “Gilded Age” via the industrial empire he forged. His reputation is one of a cunning capitalist who helped transform the nation into an economic powerhouse at the turn of the 20th century. He became one of the wealthiest men in American history.

But his wealth wasn’t just for his private use — he believed he had a responsibility to care for the common man, too. Thus he patronized the arts, built over 3,000 public libraries, and funded museums and music halls at his own expense. He even claimed that providing education and beauty to the masses was the “noblest possible use of wealth.” — why?

Though he might not have called it by name, Carnegie followed the principle of noblesse oblige — the idea that the wealthy or powerful in a society have an obligation to lift up the poor and weak.

It’s a forgotten virtue that sorely needs to be resurrected. Here’s an introduction to noblesse oblige and how we can implement it today.

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Classical Origins

The meaning of noblesse oblige can be summed up simply: privilege entails responsibility. More precisely, though, it can be described by two principles:

1. Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly.

2. One must act in a fashion that conforms to one’s position and privileges with which one has been born, bestowed, or has earned.

Noblesse oblige is a French term literally translating to “nobility obliges,” but its origins go way back to at least ancient Greece. For example, Homer’s Iliad hints at the concept when, in Book XII, the hero Sarpedon urges his comrade Glaucus to fight with him in the front ranks of battle. Homer writes:

“’Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace

The first in valour, as the first in place;

That when with wondering eyes our confidential bands

Behold our deeds transcending our commands,

Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,

Whom those that envy dare not imitate!”

Homer is pointing out how those “first in place” — the privileged class or the elite warriors — have an obligation to lead their soldiers from the front, to be “first in valor.” It’s a call to earn the position that they occupy so that they are deemed deserving of their privilege.

Aside from mythology, the ancient Greeks had a version of noblesse oblige called euergetism (roughly translated as “do good deeds”), a social expectation that wealthy individuals should distribute part of their wealth to the community. This often took the form of funding public institutions, which derived their legitimacy from the backing of wealthy individuals. This is evidenced in 355 BC, when the Athenian statesman Demosthenes mentioned how the rich had failed in their duty to contribute to the community in his work Against Leptines, and Xenophon hints at similar themes in some of his works.

A more formal instantiation of euergetism was the position of choregos — a wealthy Athenian citizen who took on the public duty of financing the chorus and other aspects of the production of plays that were not funded by the polis, or city state.

Though philanthropic on its surface, many speculate that euergetism did not come from a genuine love for the people, but rather was a way of placating the masses, ensuring poor citizens didn’t revolt. The philosopher Aristotle supports this theory in his work Politics:

“[the rich] will make magnificent sacrifices, and build some monuments and the people, then taking part in the banquets and feasts, and seeing the city splendidly decorated temples and buildings, wish to maintain the constitution [government]…”

Ancient Rome adopted the patron-client system, a practice where high status Romans offered favors for clients in return for political support. Though initially transactional in nature, this generosity toward clients eventually expanded into a more general charity toward the poor.

Wealthy Romans often supported public entertainment like games, or built amenities like theaters, libraries, or baths. It’s not uncommon to find the inscription D.S.P.F. (de sua pecunia fecit, “done with his own money”) on a building indicating a wealthy Roman had funded it.

These types of charitable customs were precursors to noblesse oblige, but they didn’t encompass the entire concept. Christianity would be instrumental in establishing noblesse oblige in its fullest form…

A Biblical Expectation

Despite having roots in antiquity, the medieval and modern conceptions of noblesse oblige stem mostly from Biblical teaching. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:

“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.”

Thus a clear expectation is established from privileged members of society toward the poor. And like other commandments of Christ, these words were not taken lightly especially by the earliest Christians…

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Future wars won’t just be fought between nations — they’ll be fought between entire civilizations.

That is, according to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington and his controversial thesis presented in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). Huntington’s argument challenged the dominant post-Cold War assumption that ideologic…

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As the fires of Rome dimmed and its marble crumbled, a strange thing happened: the empire refused to die.

Though centuries ticked by from its official end in 476, new rulers emerged who all claimed a lineage to the ancient, long-gone empire. Roman ruins dotted Europe, but kings and conquerors still appealed to the legacy of the once-great civilization.

An…

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In a time that honored martial prowess and piety above all else, the warrior bishop was the physical embodiment of the medieval ethos: a soldier of Christ — miles christi. When Christian and heathen worlds collided throughout Western history, religious differences often led to physical confrontation. In comes warrior bishops.

This controversial fusion of clergyman and soldier played a pivotal role on the medieval battlefield and shaped the West’s understanding of piety, violence, and warfare. The warrior bishop became a symbol of Christendom’s struggle against forces and ideologies that threatened its existence.

So where did they come from, and why were they a vital part of medieval history?

To understand how these unique figures shaped the medieval Church’s perception of conflict, let’s examine their development throughout the medieval period. We will examine four distinct periods: the Late Roman Era, where bishops would first lead soldiers and fight out of necessity; the early middle ages, where a consolidation occurred between Church and state leading to a militarization of the priesthood; the Crusades, where heroes and villains would arise among the clergy; finally we’ll look at the Late Middle Ages, where brazen overreach would lead to the Church’s rupture.

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Power Shift: Bishops on the Battlefield in the Late Roman Era

Despite widespread oppression throughout the Roman Empire, early Christians maintained a pacifist philosophy. Persecution and martyrdom were ever-present dangers, often borne with meek acquiescence in true Christ-like fashion. Having little political power, Christians were left to the whims of those with more earthly authority. This power dynamic shifted, aptly, on a battlefield – Constantine’s vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D. signaled a momentous change in Christianity’s fate. Not only would it be the impetus to change Christianity’s official status as a religion, the battle where Constantine commanded his men to paint a Chi Rho on their shields was a precursor to more direct Christian involvement on battlefields of the future.

Constantine would consequently be the first to introduce clergymen directly onto the front lines. Accompanied by symbols of the cross flying high over Roman legions [1], clergymen joined soldiers during battle – not as fighters, but as symbolic additions meant to boost morale. Though priests now accompanied troops during military campaigns, their role changed little from their peacetime brethren. Offering mass, hearing confession, and tending the sick were all standard duties of these wartime clerics [2].

Bishops weren’t seen exercising full military command until nearly a century later. One of the first examples took place shortly after Easter in 429 when Germanus, bishop and former duke of Autissiodorum, assumed leadership of the Britons during a Saxon raid on Mold, a small mountain village in northern Wales. The bishop’s prior experience as general surely proved invaluable when he hand-selected a group of soldiers, carried their banner, and led the force to a vale, hoping to ambush the invaders before they reached the village. As the raiders approached, the freshly baptized Britons gave three shouts of “Alleluia!” – their new battle cry taught to them by Germanus. Startled by the yells reverberating throughout the low hills, the raiders assumed the sound could only have been made by a massive army, fleeing before any blood could be spilled [3]. Germanus’s fellow bishops were elated that he had won the battle without bloodshed, calling it a “victory gained by faith and not by force.” [4]

Germanus would develop a reputation for his confrontational style. The bold bishop famously challenged the barbarian king “Goar,” ruler of the Alans, convincing the king to hold off an attack against insurgents in Armorica while waiting for direct orders from the emperor in Italy (the Alans were sent to quell the rebellion by Aetus, the most influential general in the empire at the time). To defy a king was no small feat, and soon Germanus had a cult following. His heroic exploits were eventually passed down across generations and his name became etched into legend – he was a shoo-in for sainthood.

The Church at the time was not so enthusiastic about the confrontational style that Germanus and bishops like him championed. St. Paul’s warning that “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but…against spiritual wickedness in high places” [5] seemed to refute the necessity of having clergy lead armies of soldiers. That a cleric should be engaged in spiritual, not physical, combat was the prevailing viewpoint. Presented with this tension, the early Church wrestled with properly defining clergy’s role during wartime. The first full-fledged clerical prohibition on military service appeared at the Council of Chalcedon in 451:

“We decree that those who have once joined the ranks of the clergy or have become monks are not to depart on military service or for secular office. Those who dare do this, and do not repent and return to what, in God, they previously chose, are to be anathematised.” [3]

Later in 546, Canon I of the Council of Lérida specified that clergy were forbidden from spilling blood:

“…It is established that those who serve at the altar and handle the body and the blood of Christ, or who are allotted to the office of the holy vessel, should restrain themselves from all human blood, indeed [even] from that of the enemy…” [3]

The Church teaching was clear: clerics should not engage in military service and should not spill blood. Despite these official restrictions, the days of finding a bishop at the head of an army had just begun; bishops continued to participate in military ventures over the next millennia, becoming trusted advisors, generals, and, in some cases like Germanus, military heroes.

Thus a new kind of leader had emerged from the vestiges of the dying western Roman Empire – a shepherd of Christ who not only led believers in spiritual matters, but also commanded armor-clad warriors to protect his flock from flesh-and-blood dangers.

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What really is “the West” anyway? Is it merely a geographic term, a cultural distinction, or something more?

When thinking about what the West really means, there are two ways to approach the question: 1) the history of how it came to be, and 2) the characteristics of the West that make it distinct from all other civilizations. Most have a general sense of the first, but the second is more elusive as we struggle to define what it really is about the West that makes it so powerful, easy to love, and worth fighting for.

The soul of the West is truly its Christianity — Christendom is the old term for what we now blandly call “the West”. But, as I’ll show, it’s this integral Christian soul of the West that has developed all the other parts of our civilization — its Mind in philosophy, Heart in morality, and Hand in politics…

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Mind of the West: Philosophy

Rational Theology

Western philosophy depends on reason and rational argument rather than on revelation or tradition alone. The rational approach to philosophy is a fundamental result of the West’s understanding of an intelligible universe with universal truths, a necessary tenet for exploration of the natural world through the scientific method. This developed in Greek thought by the likes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but developed more fully in the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages which more explicitly synthesized faith and reason, since two truths cannot contradict. Greek rationalism and Jewish/Christian theology combined into a core component of the West in a rational theology, providing room for understanding the transcendent through logical extensions of fundamental theological principles.

Directive History

Another idea that was philosophically and scientifically formative to the West was the directivity of history towards an end. Unlike other civilizations which supposed a cyclical or regenerative history to the world, the Western conception of history assumed a beginning and an end to the known universe — and critically — one open to human improvement. The West recognized human agency in world affairs, but also in Christian salvation history by man’s cooperating God’s salvific plan.

Missionary Character

It’s fundamentally from this Western understanding of the directivity of world history that produced the “missionary character” of the West described by historian Christopher Dawson in his work Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. To Dawson, the West’s missionary character — what spurs is to spread beyond itself — distinguishes the West from the rest. The Western individual mind and collective mind are not content with the status quo or mere equilibrium, in stark contrast to many Oriental cultures’ emphasis on balance and harmony. This is not a moral judgment either way — it may well be that the world is better improved through moments of pause than constant motion, but the West fundamentally evolves with a characteristic entropy that tends toward technological, artistic, economic, militaristic, and even religious self-improvement. In Dawson’s words:

“The other great world cultures realized their own synthesis between religion and life and then maintained their sacred order unchanged for centuries and millennia. But Western civilization has been the great ferment of change in the world, because the changing of the world became an integral part of its cultural ideal.”

This missionary character of the West of course retains the literal sense of “missionary”, in that the West’s desire to spread beyond itself is not solely a desire to expand in merely secular ways, but also in spreading the Christian identity. This religious missionary spirit originates with peculiar historical precision in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Few civilizational characteristics can be traced so precisely to a single city or century, let alone a particular historical teacher and a span of a year or less. Many point to the first missionary as Paul in his great travels around the eastern Mediterranean; however, the first missionaries were truly the first followers of Jesus Christ, particularly those of his 12 apostles. These apostles, though perhaps they did not venture far by our modern standards of “mission trips” nonetheless fulfilled the fundamental core of missionary work by helping spread the teachings and influence of Jesus Christ in the communities through which they traveled. Nonetheless, this literal missionary work of the early Christians was the seed of the greater Western missionary sense — one that continues today.

In this universal missionary character, there is evidence to suggest the West succeeds when it looks outside itself and stagnates when it looks inward, as many people do when hindered by confidence to make their way in the world. Sir John Glubb’s The Fate of Empires essay illustrates the typical lifespans of the world’s great empires. Sifting through for those empires that emerged in the West, we find six major Western empires according to Glubb: Ancient Greek empire, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, and the current hegemon, the American Empire. What is apparent from these is the long gap between the fall of the Roman Empire (180 AD according to Glubb) and the rise of the Spanish Empire (1500 AD), over 1300 years without a superpower in the West. Before this gap, empires existed unbroken from Greek ascendance through Roman decline; in the modern era, the Spanish, British, and American empires have formed a continuous inheritance of Western hegemony.

A case could well be made for the Holy Roman Empire as deserving of occupying a significant (and long-lasting) exception to this gap; nonetheless, even with its inclusion, the overall sparsity of Western power in the Middle Ages remains apparent. What is difficult to ascertain is whether the gap of Western empires is a cause or a symptom of the coincident decline in the West’s missionary character — in the Middle Ages, the West’s attention turned inward to, as we have mentioned, solidify its character and unify its parts into a coherent character. Nonetheless, this inner formation (perhaps necessary) cost the West territorial and worldwide influence typically wielded by empires; the West could only emerge again as a world power when it began to look outside itself in the Age of Exploration.

Heart of the West: Morality

On a moral level, the West of course remains on Christianity as the core of ethics. Allowing for a more transparent historical term, we might say more precisely that the West rests on Judeo-Christian values. The basic moral stances are well contained in the Jewish root of the West; however, the Church has since steadily elaborated and applied this morality to the broad array of ways man has come to offend God, especially in an age now where technology is outpacing our law and philosophy.

Value for Life

Nonetheless, from Christianity the West has assumed a number of far-reaching moral codes that, despite their clarity, have taken time to reconcile with the political, economic, and militaristic arms of society. One such clear moral combat was on issues of life between the early Christians and the Greek and Roman practices of abortion, infanticide, and slavery. Because Christians believe man to be made in the image of God — imago Dei — all innocent life should be protected, and Man’s primacy in the natural world was established. As Christians rose to power, abortion and infanticide were relatively quickly eliminated. Slavery, because it was so intertwined into the economy and worldwide cultural norm, was much slower — not facing significant abolition efforts until the British Empire’s crackdown on the Atlantic slave trade in the 1800s. However, even through the Middle Ages, there was already significant Church pressure to reduce slavery in Christendom. Slavery, as we know it today, did not exist in mainland Western Europe through the Middle Ages to any great degree. It was an exception in parts of Italy, Spain, and the Byzantine Empire; instead, serfdom replaced slavery as the “lowest” rung on the labor ladder. This serfdom, although it still limited significant freedoms by today’s standards, looked nothing like the New World plantations, racialization, and maltreatment. Serfdom, though not yet providing true political freedom, was a massive step forward after millennia of slavery across the world.

Care for the Poor

Going further, the Church assumed the primary role of caretaking for the poor, weak, and marginalized in society. While this practice of charity began very early in the Church, this role as the benefactor of the downtrodden accelerated during the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In a great testament to its fortitude, the Catholic Church remained standing throughout the fall of the empire around it. This role of the Church would plant concern for the lowest in society across the West, in many instances growing into a political notion of welfare.

Universal Moral Law

Another major moral cornerstone of the West is the idea of a universal and singular moral law, including natural law, that extends to all people, regardless of their nation, tribe, or creed. The West believes these universal moral laws transcend borders and understanding. This results in a perceived duty by Western powers to intervene in other sovereign nations where egregious oppression and violence occur (e.g. the British Empire vs. the slave trade in the 1800s). This Western intervention (partly influenced by its missionary character) even extends to situations where the judged foreign society is ignorant of its own misdeeds. The Aztec sacrifice of their own citizens to appease their gods is an example, where a core religious ritual (thought to be a good in the native society) worked to only harden the conviction of the Spaniards in overthrowing the Aztec Empire.

Another even more interesting characteristic of the West is how its universal moral yardstick applies across time itself. This results in a harsh judgement by the West on the sins of its own past as well as those of allies and enemies. It is partially thanks to the “great conversation” — that continuous stream of thought and critique in the western canon — that this occurs, as later Western philosophies, religious developments, and artistic moments compare and contrast themselves against their predecessors. The idea of the universal moral law is taken so seriously in the civilization that birthed it, that the West often suffers under the weight of its own judgement. However, perhaps it’s this self-judgement (assuming Christianity as the source of its morality) which enables the West to rapidly improve by purging itself of ideas that might hinder it in the long run, such as the collective, authoritarian forms of government which only briefly reigned in central Europe in the 20th century.

Moral Absolutes

Worth noting too, is that the West’s moral law assumes a basis in moral absolutism. That despite the efforts of the post-modern philosophers of late, the core of the West’s moral judgements lie in recognizing good vs evil, just vs. unjust, and true vs false. The Biblical basis for the fundamental Western morality has no place for a morality seeing everything as simply another shade of grey. Church teaching and Western law recognize caveats reducing culpability in wrongdoings, but they do not confuse the wrongdoing as merely a difference in perspective.

Enlightenment Values

Lastly on the character of the West, the immense influence of Enlightenment values must be named. However, much of these values are not new in the history of the West, but rather a collection of previously-known values which during this period began to reform the basis of political thought. Individual liberty, religious tolerance, “progress”, natural rights, constitutional governments, separate of church and state — none of these ideas were bona fide inventions of the Enlightenment thinkers, but their organization as a coherent political codex was the spark for their adoption by Western governments over the next centuries, as old political orders gave way to new, more democratic forms of governance. Many of these ideas origins and early political implementations may be argued as not what we think of them as today (for example, how the modern idea of separation of church and state may differ from its original intention), but we can write of these another day.

Let’s turn instead to the political character of the West…

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No holiday has such a well-defined catalog of music as Christmas. Classics like “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Let it Snow” are blasted ad-infinitum on radio stations, at grocery stores, and in malls throughout the country.

But these modern tunes often hide the real meaning of Christmas, focusing only on the material aspects of the…

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“The West” and “Western Civilization” are terms often used to delineate between our civilization and the rest, but what lines do they really draw between the global civilizations? Where does the “West” end and the “East” (or any other formulation of other civilization) begin?

The classical formulation defines the West as essentially derivative of three cities: Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome — or in terms of their results: Greek philosophy, Christianity, and Roman law.

But these are just the ideas that shaped the West. To say they are sufficient to define the West is to reduce an entire civilization down to its ideas. Rather the West is, like any civilization, rooted in a certain time and place. Then, to understand Western Civilization, we must first look to the peoples that built and places that influenced the West as we know it today.

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Roots of the West

The history of the West, like that of any civilization is a complex affair; the roots of the West lie in the pre-civilizational states inside Europe and its periphery. In the classical, distilled description of the West’s origins, historians typically point first to Athens, to the Homeric age sometime around 2800 BC.

One might wonder why not begin further back to the pre-Greek Mycenaeans, but if a useful description of anything’s origins are to be found, they must be limited, even artificially by a figurative line in the sand. That line for the history of the West is ~2800 BC. Practically, this is when the body of Greek literature in the Western canon begins; therefore, Homer is a fitting place for the first root of the West. Books could be (and have been) written on the stage set by the Greeks for Western Civilization, but historian Christopher Dawson summarizes the influence of the Greeks well:

“It is from the Greeks that we derive all that is most distinctive in Western as opposed to Oriental culture – our science and philosophy, our literature and art, our political thought and our conceptions of law and of free political institutions.”

The next root of the West, still in line with the classical formulation, is from a people once wandering the deserts of the Middle East in search of a home, arriving at last to their Promised Land, and building a nation around Jerusalem. It’s from them that we inherit a Judaic spirituality, forms of sacrifice and ritual, and the moral foundation of the West. Most importantly, it’s from the Jewish conception of God that later Christendom and the West would recognize its summum bonum, its highest good that set the tone and proper ordering of all things.

Erring on the side of inclusion (but welcoming debate), smaller roots of the West extend in all directions from these two foundational cities of Athens and Jerusalem. Influences from the proto-European tribes of the Germanics, steppe peoples from north of the Black Sea (even out to the Russian tundra), and Nordics interacted, fought, and mingled with peoples of the Mediterranean at various points in the West, particularly throughout the first millennium after Christ. From the South, the vibrant and ancient culture of the Egyptians and pre-Islamic Arabs influenced the West in philosophy, science, and religious mixtures, including that of Manichaeism (from modern-day Iran) and Gnosticism. These later religious ideas, though influential for a time in the Mediterranean, didn’t so much form fundamental parts of the later West by their adoption, but rather in the West’s antagonism to their ideas. The West reacted to these foreign ideas with clarifications on orthodox Christian teaching and sensitivities to nuanced theological points that persist into the politics and culture of today. Hence, the West (and likely every civilization/culture) was partly shaped by external influences by the very act of combatting them.

Most contentiously, Dawson was generous in ascribing Western roots in the West’s historical nemesis of Islam. While Islam was flourishing across the entire southern Mediterranean, Europe was still seeking recovery from the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Despite limited highs in the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire and the Carolingian renaissance, the West lived in relative poverty in comparison to its Islamic neighbors (eventually pushing into southern France). Dawson wrote that the West wouldn’t regain parity with the Islamic nations until the 13th century, and only surpass them by the 15th century. During these Islamic highs, they made great contributions to mathematics (e.g. the decimal system and algebra from Al Khwarizmi), astronomy, philosophy (e.g. Avicenna), and — like many European monasteries at the time — preserved and translated many works of Greek origin. Islam’s architectural and artistic influences remain obvious around much of Mediterranean Europe to this day. Ironically, it’s against Islam that the West unified in defense, ultimately shaping the Medieval warrior culture of the Crusades.

The last major influence on the West is that of the third great city in the classical definition of the West: Rome. The Roman Empire influenced the West in too many ways to name here, but perhaps an understated way was by acting as a coalescing agent among the many separate influences mentioned above. Roman roads, infrastructure, trade, law, and its institutions provided the mechanical and legal means of bringing together influences from far and wide. This brought cultural influences from the far East, West, North, and South into the heart of Europe.

The next phase of the West was its solidification into Christendom…

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What if each generation played a unique role in the cycle of social, political, and economic ascendence and decline? Further, what if each generation’s characteristics are predictable qualities developed in response to the eras in which they developed? That’s exactly what authors Neil Howe and William Strauss describe in their book The Fourth Turning (1997).

To Howe and Strauss, the Western world has operated on cycles of ~85 years, comprising four eras each lasting approximately 21 years. Each era has its own archetypal persona or mood, ushering in new social, political, economic climates in response to previous conditions. The ultimate climax of the cycle is the Crisis, which unfolds through a gradual weakening of social institutions by the hand of individualism.

Reminding yourself of all the chaos over the last decade, you’ve probably guessed correctly that we’re in the midst of a Crisis era right now — here’s how we got there.

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The Four Eras

The theorists behind The Fourth Turning defined a generation as all people born within a roughly 21-year span, or similarly about one phase of life: childhood (0-20), young adulthood (20-40), middle-aged years (40-60), and old age (60+). While some view U.S. history as a succession of centuries or political waves, Strauss and Howe view it from the standpoint of Anglo-American generations stretching back to 1433. Doing a little math with a 21-year generation, means we are now in the 29th generation since 1433, taking note of course that very few modern Americans’ lineages will actually make it to an “American” ancestor that far. Over those 29 generations, we should have seen now some 7 major crises during every fourth generation.

The particular alignment of the theory in early U.S. history is difficult to pin down, particularly because it is really British history, too. Beginning in the 1400s, the first major crisis (according to Neil/Howe) is the War of the Roses. Moving forward in history, the next crises are the Armada crisis (late 1500s) and Glorious Revolution (late 1600s). Another century forward brings an American audience to more familiar territory with the Revolutionary War (late 1700s). The rest are fairly easy to guess: the U.S. Civil War (1859) and World War II (1940s) — bringing us to a point of unease as we now appear due for another major crisis and war. There is at least enough evidence in the regular occurrence of crises in American history to warrant a deeper exploration: what brings us to the point of crisis roughly each century?

1. The High

The first stage emerging after a fresh crisis is The High. It’s during this time that citizens seek stability; the generations living, working, and possibly fighting during the past crisis know the depth to which society can decay and seek respite from chaos. People turn toward stronger institutions in government, law enforcement, and civil functions, but also typically in churches and communal organizations. Think of the post-WWII high: an American population relieved by the end of the second global war, but also invigorated by its victory returns with high trust in its governing powers and national identity. Strauss and Howe place this era as spanning from 1946 to 1963 in the current cycle. The cracks in this wave, however, are already understood: minority voices, out of step with the majority’s values in government and social organization, feel stifled by an overbearing political and social pressure.

2. The Awakening

The second era is that of the “awakening” where personal autonomy begins to eclipse societal duty and its many expectations. Individual-minded movements, tired of social disciplines, attack the institutions in a bid to become more “true to themselves”. The institutions are believed to stifle individual creativity, spirituality, and bona fide culture. In our current wave, this is captured by the 1960s hippy-culture and runs up through the tax revolts of the early 1980s.

3. The Unraveling

In the third era, the Unraveling, we reach the polar opposite of the first era, the High. Here, institutions are at their weakest, while individualism reigns supreme. The unraveling comes when society, after tasting the fruits of their individual liberties, desires to fully disengage from societal restrictions and seek only their individual fulfillment. The Fourth Turning places this era as beginning in the 1980s and ending shortly after the turn of the millennium. Now, cracks in the social functions are observed: increasing crime, culture wars, and social dysfunction that will mature in the last stage: the Crisis.

4. The Crisis

This is the fourth turning, the era of destructive action, commonly marked by wars, revolutions, and political turmoil. Institutions are remade to defend against external threats to the nation, and individualism is again at odds with national interest. The last crisis in the U.S. began with the economic crash of 1929 and ended with WWII. The authors place this era as beginning in 2008 and ending sometime in the early 2030s. We’ll return to this shortly, as this is where we are now. First, let’s take a look at the generational archetypes that bring about the four turnings…

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Perhaps no other culture has been more loudly chastised for the sin of slavery than Western civilization — and in particular the English speaking world. The British Empire has long been decried as an empire whose wealth was acquired primarily on the backs of the oppressed.

Even decades after their withdrawal, some nations still blame the British for their current economic woes, often citing outlandish statistics that posit Britain stole so much wealth from their counties that they have yet to recover. Take India for example, a nation where it is claimed a whopping $45 trillion in today’s dollars were stolen between 1765 and 1938.

This figure has largely been discredited, and doesn’t pass the smell test when one considers how much infrastructure and resources were invested in India by the British. In the larger context, many of Britain’s colonies were actually money losing operations.

But besides the economic analysis, what cannot be denied is that many of Britain’s policies were net benefits for the peoples they ruled.

Sounds outlandish right?

Well, in many places that the British Empire occupied it raised the standard of living, developed infrastructure, and promoted education for the local populace. And regarding the slavery question, no other nation did more to end slavery than Great Britain. Here’s how…

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Setting the Stage

Britain’s unique position as the global naval power was instrumental in allowing it to combat slavery so effectively. Though empires often have a negative connotation today, it was precisely Britain’s dominance that gave it the authority and resources to wage war against the age-old practice.

Though Great Britain had been a formidable power since the early 17th century, it wasn’t until Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815 that it emerged as the sole global power. By eliminating France from the world’s stage, Britain was left without a serious competitor.

The century following Napoleon’s defeat is sometimes called the “Pax Britannica” because of the relative prosperity enjoyed by Europe during this time. The presence of a single world power created stability and kept conflicts to a minimum. Nearly 100 years passed without a major world conflict.

Specifically it was Britain’s unmatched navy that maintained its dominance across the globe. The British Royal Navy was more than twice the size of the next largest navy. Though their ships weren’t vastly superior to others’, their sailors were at sea almost continuously making them the most experienced in the world.

British ships controlled most of the key trade routes in Asia, North America, and Africa, allowing its merchants and traders an overwhelming advantage compared to other nations — and Britain got incredibly rich off of sea power. But Britain didn’t just use its Naval supremacy to fill its coffers…

A Force For Good

The Royal Navy became a source of peace and stability for the world in a military and economic sense, but British ships were also on the frontline in a very direct way against one of the darkest practices in human history: the slave trade.

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From Native American myths, to medieval Christian legends, to Eastern fables, tales of dragons have been nearly universal across cultures for thousands of years. And they continue to capture our attention unlike any other creature — both real and imagined — as they remain a staple in movies and novels today.

But why? What makes dragons so universally int…

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When hearing the word crusade, the mind leaps to the blazing sun of the Middle East — knights clashing with Saracens outside Jerusalem, the desert heat shimmering on chainmail.

But one of the longest-running and most territorially enduring crusades didn’t happen under the desert sun at all. It took place in the icy forests and wind-swept coasts of northern Europe. And, at the heart of it stood one of history’s most recognizable orders: the Teutonic Knights.

This is the story of Europe’s forgotten crusade: the Northern Crusades.

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The Broader Crusading Idea

When Pope Urban II first called for a crusade in 1095, the goal was simple in theory: reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom.
But over the next century, the concept of a “crusade” began to change. Papal blessings, indulgences, and the idea of fighting for the faith were soon applied to other enemies of the Church — not only Muslims in the East, but also Moors in Spain, and, eventually, pagans and heretics much closer to home.

By the early 12th century, much of pagan Europe had been converted to Christianity. But one stretch remained stubbornly outside the Christian world: the lands around the Baltic Sea — areas like Prussia, Lithuania, Livonia, and Estonia.

These lands were home to fiercely independent tribes with their own gods, rituals, and warrior traditions. And here, the papacy saw an opportunity: send knights not across the Mediterranean, but into the forests and marshes of the North.

In the 12th century, Popes Eugenius III, Alexander III, and Celestine III issued papal bulls endorsing the Northern Crusades to promote Christianity and fight its enemies among the Baltic, Finnic, and West Slavic peoples. Christian monarchs across Europe responded by sending forces to begin the work of conversion, but it was the mighty Teutonic Order who dominated the show.

The Teutonic Call to the Baltic

But the Teutonic Order began far from the Baltic, around 1190, during the siege of Acre in the Holy Land.

Originally, they were a small German hospital fraternity, tending to sick and wounded pilgrims. Over time, they evolved into a fully militarized order, much like the Templars and Hospitallers — religious warriors bound by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, fighting in the name of Christ.

For decades, the Teutonic Knights fought in the Levant, but as Muslim forces recaptured crusader strongholds and the Holy Land campaign faltered, the Order looked for a new mission. And they found it in an unexpected invitation from Europe’s eastern frontier.

In 1226, Duke Konrad of Masovia, a Polish ruler plagued by constant raids from the pagan Prussian tribes, made a proposal to the Teutonic Order: Help him defend and Christianize these lands, and in return, the Order would be granted territory to rule.

This arrangement was formalized by the Golden Bull of Rimini, issued by Emperor Frederick II, which gave the Knights both papal approval and imperial backing for their campaign.

And so, the Teutonic Knights rode north, trading the dust of the Levant for the snow of the Vistula.

Conquest and Conversion

From their first footholds in Prussia, the Knights waged a relentless series of campaigns against the native tribes.
These were not swift wars. Prussians and Lithuanians knew their own land well— its rivers, swamps, and dense forests — and they fought with skill and tenacity to defend it.

But the Order had something the pagans did not: a steady influx of crusaders from across Europe, siege engineers, and a knack for building stone fortresses that could anchor their control.

The knights followed a pattern of advancing into hostile territory, building fortifications on rivers and trade routes, and launching a series of raids to subdue surrounding tribes. The knights then offered baptism — sometimes willingly accepted but also sometimes imposed, before integrating the lands into the growing monastic state.

It was a crusade every bit as brutal as the wars in the Holy Land. Villages were burned, populations displaced, and pagan temples destroyed. At the same time, churches rose, towns were founded, and the region became tied into the wider network of European trade.

However, the Baltic Crusades were fundamentally different from those in the Middle East…

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Before the first monk preached north of the Baltic, the Norse already lived with gods. Their gods, however, were many, mortal, and incompatible with the Christianity sweeping across Europe.

To the Christian, the Norse paganism was just another polytheistic mythology doomed to fates of the Greek gods and state-sanctioned Roman gods. However, the Norse and Viking culture was something altogether different than the comparatively civilized Mediterranean cultures.

The Vikings were steeped in centuries of clan attitudes, oral traditions, glory as the supreme prize of war, and a slew of gods and rituals to fill the spiritual hole of their people — Thor defended mankind, Odin sacrificed himself for wisdom, Freyja foretold the future of man.

But in Norse beliefs, there were no holy books, little true orthodoxy, and only a loose sense of any universal moral law. Religion was clan memory set to ritual. In these gaps, Christianity could gain a foothold. Here’s how the Vikings became Christians.

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Early Attempts

Christianity first came to the Norse by the Vikings’ own hands. The sack of Lindisfarne in 793 is often called the beginning of the Viking Age. Monasteries became easy targets: rich in silver, poor in defense. Monks were slaughtered or enslaved. Churches were burned.

And yet, in this violence came exposure. Christian captives were taken home. They sang psalms, carried crosses, spoke of strange ideas — of mercy, sin, and eternal life. Some converted their captors. The gospel in Viking settlements was kindled but needed time and fuel.

Early evangelization efforts included missionary travels by the Anglo-Saxon monk and bishop Willibrord, whose efforts to convert the Danish king ultimately failed but did result in a few dozen Danes returning with Willibrord to further deepen their faith.

Ebbo, archbishop of Reims and Willerich, later Bishop of Bremen, preached to the Danes in the early 800s — again with little success. The conversion of Viking minds and hearts was going to be difficult.

However, not long after Ebbo, lasting successes were achieved by Ansgar, the “Apostle of the North.” He preached in Denmark and Sweden in the early 9th c., built the first Viking churches in Birka, Hedeby, and Sleswick, and secured Christianity safe practice in Denmark. St. Angar’s missionary work only laid the seeds of the Viking conversion, however, as it would still be another century before the Scandinavian kings would begin to take up the cross themselves.

If Christianity was going to take hold in Scandinavia, it needed a new strategy: convert the centers of Viking power and the people would follow. The real conversion of Scandinavia began with kings instead of peasants.

Converting the Kings

Christianity offered more than salvation to Viking leadership: it offered the tools and prestige of kingship. A Norse chieftain could ascend to the status of a European monarch. A simple baptism meant access to Frankish alliances, literacy, and sacred legitimacy.

To rule by the cross was to rule not as a clan warlord, but as a king with all the majesty of the European mainland kings, like the great Charlemagne.

Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson of Denmark accepted baptism and announced he had “made the Danes Christian.” Harald raised a massive runestone depicting a crucifix to enshrine his conversion. His stone and his father King Gorm the Old’s stone are known today as the Jelling Stones.

Contrary to popular sentiments, leading historians don’t generally believe Christianity was forced upon the Vikings. Rather, the Scandinavian kings willingly adopted it; but whether for true conversion or political advantage remains an open question. Part of the Viking’s conversion resulted from their own conquest, particularly of England, where thousands of Danes settled, married Christians, converted, and softened their clansmen's views toward Christianity. Many converts would then take the faith back to their homelands.

In 995, the Norwegian Olaf Tryggvason, King Olaf I, reformed his ways of raiding Christendom and converted after a Christian seer accurately predicted his own men’s mutiny. He returned to Norway a baptized man and set about converting his kingdom.

But it was another Olaf who brought the Christianization of the Norse world to closer completion. Olaf Haraldsson, later canonized as St. Olaf, combined Christian zeal with statecraft.

Though his direct role is debated among scholars today, he was often credited with implementing Christian law, building churches, and reshaping the role of kingship in Norway. Either way, his quick canonization after his death inspired many conversions throughout his country.

In Sweden, while Ansgar and Unni, the archbishop of Hamburg, had made early attempts, the biggest early inroads were made by 10th century English missionaries. In its early history, articles of toleration were drawn up with the first Christian king of Sweden in the 990s. Episcopal sees were established shortly after in Skara and Sigtuna, and finally an archdiocese established later in 1164 at Uppsala by papal initiative.

One interesting clash between paganism and Christianity in Sweden, according to two sagas of legend and history, was the conflict between Blot-Sweyn and Inge the Elder in the 1080s. When King Inge banned pagan sacrifices at Uppsala, he was forced into exile by his people. The people elected the pagan Blot-Sweyn as king instead. Years later, Inge returned with many huscarls, surrounded the great hall, and set it ablaze, killing Blot-Sweyn as he fled the flames. With Blot-Sweyn gone, Inge resumed power and completed his Christian rule.

Elsewhere, around the year 1000, Iceland supposedly converted by a single vote. Thorgeir, the sole jurist and chief among the pagan faction, contemplated the issue a full day and surprisingly chose that Iceland should become Christian as a whole, but tolerate private pagan rites.

Little by little, stories like these shrouded modern knowledge of conversion process in equal parts of myth and fact. Nonetheless, the end result was the same: a new, Christianized Viking culture.

However, even though the Vikings accepted Christ, habits die slowly…

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