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中英对照文本 翻译：Mangosteen 校对：FungChuh No period of history is more misunderstood or underappreciated than The Middle Ages, the ten centuries from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the start of the Renaissance in the 15th. 没有哪个历史时期比中世纪受到更多的误解或低估，中世纪指的是从 5 世纪罗马帝国衰亡到 15 世纪文艺复兴开始的十个世纪。 This is especially true between the year 1000, when global warming brought grapes to England and grain to the coasts of Greenland, doubling the population and reviving town life all across the Europe, and 1348, after the warming had ended and the Black Death arrived from the east. 尤其是从 1000 年，当时全球变暖将葡萄带到了英国，将谷物带到了格陵兰海岸，使得人口翻倍，振兴了整个欧洲的城镇生活，到 1348 年，暖化结束后，黑死病从东方袭来这段时期。 Let's take a closer look at these years. 让我们深入了解一下这些年。 We'll make a good start by dispelling some nonsense. 通过消除某些谬论，我们会取得一个良好的开端。 The people of the Middle Ages did not believe the earth was flat. 中世纪的人们不相信地球是平的。 They knew it was round. 他们知道它是圆的。 The ancients said it was round, the Fathers of the Church said it was round; 古人说它是圆的，教会的神父说它是圆的。 they saw its shadow during an eclipse of the moon, and the shadow was round; 他们看到月食时地球的阴影，而阴影是圆的。 they saw masts of ships sinking below the horizon -- round! 他们看到船桅沉没在地平线以下——圆的！ More nonsense: the Middle Ages were cheerless. 更荒谬的：中世纪是阴郁的。 Quite the reverse! 恰恰相反！ They were full of color, of celebrations involving everybody in town; 中世纪缤纷多彩，城内尽是所有人都可以参与的庆祝活动。 they invented the carnival; 他们发明了嘉年华。 they revived popular drama, which had lain dormant for a thousand years; 他们复兴了沉寂一千年之久的流行戏剧。 whatever they did, whether it was sinning or fighting or repenting or falling in love, or traveling thousands of miles to Rome or to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher they did it with energy and gusto. 无论他们做什么，不管是犯戒律或斗殴或忏悔或是陷入爱河，或是跨越上千英里去罗马或圣墓教堂，他们都是带着干劲和热情去做。 What do we owe to the Middle Ages? 我们受到中世纪的什么影响呢？ How about the university? 大学？ Medieval man invented it. 是中世纪的人发明了它。 For the first time in the history of the world, you could go to Paris or Bologna or Padua or Oxford or Prague or Cologne and study under masters of law, medicine, philosophy, and theology, and your degree -- designating you as a master or a doctor -- would hold good anywhere in Europe. 世界有史以来第一次，你能够去巴黎或博洛尼亚或帕多瓦或牛津或布拉格或科隆师从法学，医学，哲学和神学大师，并且你的学位——指定你是硕士还是博士——在欧洲任何地方都会得到承认。 It was an international community of scholars. 它是个学者的国际社区。 A young Thomas Aquinas, born in southern Italy at the beginning of the 13th century, would travel to Cologne to study philosophy under the philosopher-biologist Albert the Great, then to Paris where he taught theology and philosophy, then to Rome, and back to France -- and this sort of thing was the rule among scholars, not the exception. 年轻的托马斯·阿奎那，他出生于 13 世纪初的意大利南部，游历到科隆学习哲学，师从哲学家-生物学家大阿尔伯特，之后去了巴黎教授神学和哲学，接着去罗马，再返回法国——这样的做法是学者们的规矩，而非例外。 托马斯·阿奎那：欧洲中世纪经院派哲学家和神学家。他是自然神学最早的提倡者之一，也是托玛斯学派的创立者，成为天主教长期以来研究哲学的重要根据。 大阿尔伯特（Albertus Magnus，约 1200 年－1280 年 11 月 15 日）是一位中世纪欧洲重要的哲学家和神学家，他是多明我会神父，由于他知识丰富而著名，他提倡神学与科学和平并存。 How about modern science? 现代科学？ Thomas's teacher Albert was a biologist. 托马斯的老师阿尔伯特是名生物学家。 Why should that surprise us? 我们为什么要觉得意外？ Medieval man believed that God made the world as an ordered whole. 中世纪的人相信上帝创造了世界，一个有序的整体。 They learned it both from Scripture and from pagan thinkers such as Aristotle. 他们是从《圣经》和亚里士多德这样的异教思想家那认识到的。 Science did not burst on the scene with Galileo. 科学并不是与伽利略一起突然显现的。 Copernicus died in the sixteenth century, but he was a priest-astronomer at a Polish university founded in the Middle Ages. 哥白尼死于 16 世纪，但他是一家创立于中世纪的波兰大学的神父兼天文学家。 He wasn't even the first man to suggest that the earth orbited the sun. 他甚至不是第一个提出地球围绕太阳转的人。 Others had ventured the suggestion. 其他人大胆提出过这个推测。 Most prominent was the late medieval Nicholas of Cusa -- a philosopher and a cardinal in the Church. 最杰出是中世纪晚期的库萨的尼古拉——一位哲学家兼教会的枢机主教。 尼古劳斯·冯·库斯：文艺复兴时期神圣罗马帝国神学家。生于神圣罗马帝国库斯，他写有许多拉丁文论著，包括宗教和哲学著作。他最著名的论著《有知识的无知》（1440 年）。该书论述了人类对上帝的理解。 How about architecture? 建筑学？ If the Middle Ages were dark and ignorant, how come ordinary people -- masons, carpenters, painters, sculptors, glazers -- erected the most beautiful and majestic buildings to grace the earth, the Gothic cathedrals? 如果中世纪是黑暗愚昧的，那为什么普通人——石匠，木匠，漆匠，雕塑师，玻璃匠——会建造出那美轮美奂，为地球增添了荣光的建筑，哥特式大教堂呢？ Without power tools, with pulleys and winches and scaffolding and their bare hands, they built up lacework in stone and glass, flooding vast interior spaces with color and light; we have nothing to match their complexity and beauty. 没有电动工具，只有滑轮、绞车、脚手架和他们的双手，他们在石头和玻璃上刻出花边，让宽广的室内空间浸没在光与色彩中；我们没有什么能比得上它们那样的复杂性和美感。 And art? 还有艺术？ Studying the ancients, Medieval man produced whole genres of art that the world had never seen. 以古人为师，中世纪人创造了世界上前所未有的全部艺术体裁。 There had never been anything like Dante's Divine Comedy or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or the Arthurian legends of Chretien de Troyes; or the paintings of Giotto, or the astonishingly beautiful and precise work of the illuminators of manuscripts. 之前从未有任何东西像但丁的《神曲》或乔叟的《坎特伯雷故事集》，或克雷蒂安·德·特鲁瓦的《亚瑟王传奇》；或乔托的画作，或美得让人动容，手工精致的泥金装饰手抄本。 克雷蒂安·德·特鲁瓦：12 世纪后期法国行吟诗人。因其创作了有关亚瑟王的作品与圣杯传说而闻名。 乔托·迪·邦多纳（Giotto di Bondone，约 1267 年－1337 年 1 月 8 日）意大利画家与建筑师，被认定为是意大利文艺复兴时期的开创者，被誉为「欧洲绘画之父」、「西方绘画之父」。 What else do we owe to them? 我们还有什么受到了他们影响呢？ Western music -- they invented our musical notation, and western harmony; not to mention the humble carols we enjoy at Christmastime. 西方音乐——他们发明了我们的音乐记谱法和西方和声；更遑论我们在圣诞节时欣赏的谦卑圣歌。 A tradition of local self-government -- witness the chartered towns all over Europe. 地区自治的传统——出现在遍布欧洲的特许城镇。 Free associations of men united for the common good: friars, guildsmen, members of lay orders devoted to good works; people who established schools, orphanages, and hospitals. 人们为共同利益结成自由机构：修士，行会成员，致力于慈善事业的普通信徒；建立学校，孤儿院和医院的人。 Far from the Dark Ages to which it is popularly called, The Middle Ages might better be described as the Brilliant Ages, a startling epoch of progress from science to art, from philosophy to medicine. 与人们普遍称作的黑暗时代远远相反，把中世纪描述为辉煌时代更恰当些，一个从科学到艺术，从哲学到医学都取得进步的惊人时代。 Indeed, in one crucial way, we are less civilized than those who enhanced human existence over a thousand years ago: we dismiss the achievements of our ancestors, and fall short of them; they honored their ancestors, and surpassed them. 实际上，在最为关键的一面，我们不比一千年前那些增进了人类生存的人们文明：我们不屑于我们祖先的成就，辜负了他们；而他们尊重他们的祖先，并且超越了他们。 I'm Anthony Esolen of Providence College for Prager University. 我是普洛威顿斯学院的安东尼·艾瑟伦，为 PragerU 制作。 |
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