The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages are extrodinarily important for an adequate understanding of the 'story of the world'. These are the 'Christian Centuries', the centuries when the Church, presiding over the ruins of the Western Roman Empire, created a single communion from the warring Barbarians and synthesized the Biblical, Greek, and Roman inheritence into a new culture that would create Europe and give it its identity.

The Medieval outlook was an entire way of understanding reality. The Medievals had a keen sense of the nearness of heaven to earth, not least because of the divine presence in the sacraments. This led them to see this world as an image of heaven, to interpret things and events symbollically, and to understand the human being as a creature created by and destined for God, understandings reflected in the densely symbolic art, architecture, and literature of the period. 

They also had a keen sense of the distance between heaven and earth due to a deep awareness of the pervasiveness of sin and the suffering that was often a part of daily life. This led them to see this world as a preparation for the next, to long for it, and to understand life as an adventure, a quest, or a pilgramage toward their true home and their true selves, as known and judged by God. This led them to take up and transform Greek and Roman ideals of beauty and nobility in the light of the Gospel, and this too is reflected in the art and architecture of the period, in love poetry, in the codes of chivalry and the countless epics and tales of knightly quests, and in subsequent literature reflecting Mediveal themes, such as the works of Lewis and Tolkein. 

This longing for God profoundly shaped the culture, ultimately giving rise to the great monastaries, cathedrals, and cities of Europe and some of the greatest human acheivements in art, architecture, and music. In their effort to bring all of reality within the purview of the Gospel, the Mediveals invented the first hospitals and universities and made great acheivements in philosophy. 

The Renaissance would reverse some of these perspectives even while continuing to depend on them, and the scientific revolution would further undermine this symbolic cosmology. With these changes in perspective, the theological turmoil of the Reformation, the ascendency of the crown over the church in the political order and the emergence and secular state in the early modern period, the Mediveal order was finally brought to an end. Because of their many and lasting acheivements in these fields of life, because subsequent Westerns often defined themselves and their society in opposition to the Middle Ages and its sacramental vision of reality, and because they created the conditions for the Gospel to be carried to the ends of the earth with the discovery of the New World, the Middle Ages left a deep and permanent imprint on the world which continuesto exercise its influence over us in ways visible and invisible.