The Mediaeval Mind: A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages. Vol. 1 1

The Middle Ages They seem so far away intellectually so preposterous, spiritually so strange. Bits of them may touch our sympathy, please our taste their window-glass, their sculpture, certain of their stories, their romances, as if those straitened ages really were the time of romance, which they were not, God knows, in the sense commonly taken. Yet perhaps they were such intellectually, or at least spiritually. Their terra - not for them incognita, though full of mystery and pall and vaguer glory - was not the earth. It was the land of metaphysical construction and the land of spiritual passion. There lay their romance, thither pointed their veriest thinking, thither drew their utter yearning. Is it possible that the Middle Ages should speak to us, as through a common humanity? Their mask is by no means dumb in full voice speaks the noble beauty of Chartres Cathedral. Such mediaeval product, we hope, is of the universal human, and therefore of us as well as of the bygone craftsmen. Why it moves us, we are not certain, being ignorant, perhaps, of the building's formative and earnestly intended meaning. Do we care to get at that? There is no way save by entering the mediaeval depths, penetrating to the rationale of the Middle Ages, learning the doctrinale, or emotionale, of the modes in which they still present themselves so persuasively. Preface to the fourth edition vii Contents xv Book I. The Groundwork Genesis of the Mediaeval Genius 3 The Latinizing of the West 23 Greek philosophy as the antecedent of the Patristic apprehension of fact 33 Intellectual interests of the Latin fathers 61 The Latin transmitters of Antique and Patristic though 88 The barbaric disruption of the empire 110 The Celtic strain in Gaul and Ireland 124 Teuton qualities : Anglo-Saxon, German, Norse 138 The bringing of Christianity and antique knowledge to the Northern peoples 169 BOOK II. The Early Middle Ages Carolingxan period : the first stage in the appropriation of the patristic and antique 207 Mental aspects of the Eleventh Century: Italy 239 Mental aspects of the Eleventh Century: France 282 Mental aspects of the Eleventh Century: Germany ; England ; Conclusion 308 Phases of Mediaeval Growth 331 The growth of Mediaeval Emotion 346 Book III. The Ideal and the Actual: the Saints The reforms of Monasticism 369 The Hermit Temper 384 The quality of love in Saint Bernard 408 St. Francis of Assisi 431 Mystic visions of Ascetic Women 458 The Spotted Actuality 487 The World of Salimbene 510 Book IV. The Ideal and the Actual: The Society Feudalism and Knighthood 537 Romantic Chivalry and Courtly Love 574