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.
Author(s): Henry Osborn Taylor
Edition: 4
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Year: 1949
Language: English
Pages: 628
City: Cambridge, Mass.
CONTENTS v
BOOK IV. THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: SOCIETY (Continued)
CHAPTER XXV. PARZIVAL, THE BRAVE MAN SLOWLY WISE 3
CHAPTER XXVI. THE HEART OF HELOISE 29
CHAPTER XXVII. GERMAN CONSIDERATIONS: WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE 55
BOOK V. SYMBOLISM
CHAPTER XXVIII. SCRIPTURAL ALLEGORIES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES; HONORIUS OF AUTUN 67
CHAPTER XXIX. THE RATIONALE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: HUGO OF ST. VICTOR 86
CHAPTER XXX. CATHEDRAL AND MASS; HYMN AND IMAGINATIVE POEM 102
BOOK VI. LATINITY AND LAW
CHAPTER XXXI. THE SPELL OF THE CLASSICS 133
CHAPTER XXXII. EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN PROSE 176
CHAPTER ΧΧΧΙII. EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN VERSE 215
CHAPTER XXXIV. MEDIAEVAL APPROPRIATION OF THE ROMAN LAW 260
BOOK VII. ULTIMATE INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
CHAPTER XXXV. SCHOLASTICISM: SPIRIT, SCOPE, AND METHOD 313
CHAPTER XXXVI. CLASSIFICATION OF TOPICS; STAGES OF EVOLUTION 341
CHAPTER XXXVII. TWELFTH-CENTURY SCHOLASTICISM 368
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE UNIVERSITIES, ARISTOTLE, AND THE MENDICANTS 408
CHAPTER XXXIX. BONAVENTURA 432
CHAPTER XL. ALBERTUS MAGNUS 450
CHAPTER XLI. THOMAS AQUINAS 463
CHAPTER XLII. ROGER BACON 514
CHAPTER XLIII. DUNS SCOTUS AND OCCAM 539
CHAPTER XLIV. THE MEDIAEVAL SYNTHESIS: DANTE 555
INDEX 591
