Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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From the triumphs of Hildebrand and his successors sprang the religious revivals that enriched the Middle Ages with all that was fairest and most poetical in the life of those times. The Cistercians and the Carthusians revived the ideals of St. Benedict, with special precautions against the dangers before which the old Benedictine houses had succumbed. The orders of Canons Regular sought to unite the life of the monk with the work of the clerk. They paved the way for the more complete realisation of their ideal in the thirteenth century, when the mendicant orders of Friars arose under Francis and Dominic. From the monastic movement sprang a revival of spiritual religion and a renewed interest in the world of thought and art. ⁴ The artistic impulses of the time found their highest expression in the vast and stern Romanesque minsters of the older orders, and in the epic literature of the chansons de geste. The transition during the twelfth century from Romanesque to Gothic architecture, and the parallel change in vernacular literature from the epic to the romance, mark a new development in the European spirit. Side by side with them went the great intellectual renascence of the same momentous century. While an Anselm sought to enlist philosophy in the service of the Church, an Abelard began to question the very sources of authority. In Abelard the intellectual movement outgrew its monastic parentage, and in his conflict with Bernard the dictator of Christendom, the old and the new spirit came into the sharpest antagonism. ⁵ The systematic schoolmen of later ages had neither the independence of Abelard nor the limitation of Bernard. Learning passed from monastic to secular hands, but the scholastic philosophy was already enlisted on the side of the Church, and active as was its intelligence, it henceforth worked within self-appointed limits. Side by side with the revival of philosophy, came the work of Irnerius and Gratian, the revival of the systematic study of Civil Law, and the building up of the great structure of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. ⁶ From the multiplication of students and studies sprang the organisation of teachers and learners into the universities. ⁷ From the ignorance and barbarism of the tenth century, there is a record of continuous progress until the end of our period. Yet the thirteenth century does not only illustrate the crowning glories of the Middle Ages: it suggests new modes of thought that indicate that the Middle Ages themselves are passing away. The triumph of the Church bore with it the seeds of its own ruin, in the world of thought as well as in the world of action. The Crusades and the Latin rule in the East.