Thinking about this a bit more: this is a notably Catholic take on Christian history. To Protestants, the Middle Ages were not a sheltered time, by a time when the Christians they would sympathize with were persecuted. The Orthodox, too, would tend to see the Middle Ages as a time when a schismatic movement drove the Christian heartland into a dystopia of crusades and inquisitions. Both would tend to see the breaking of the Catholic stranglehold as a liberation of genuine Christianity.
I can see all three sides of this debate at once. I admire the High Middle Ages, yet I think the 11th-century papal revolution was a wrong turn. I like the tolerant pluralism that Protestantism ultimately precipitated, and I regard it as a triumph rather than a defeat for Christianity. But I don't admire the Protestant reformers or agree with the Protestant doctrines.
Probably no Christian other than a Catholic could quite look back on the high Middle Ages and think, mainly, "Why can't we have nice things anymore?" Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" is a good window on a different, still thoroughly Christian, perspective on that history.
A Catholic won't try to acquit herself of thinking like a Catholic, and yet, I think the "Can we still have nice things?" question is being asked in various ways by all sorts of people, certainly including Protestants and Orthodox and also many non-Christians. "Modernity broke it all!" is by no means a distinctively Catholic view (most definitely not nowadays!).
They wouldn't all look back on the Middle Ages as The Good Time. Of course people themselves are often very muddled and inconsistent as to which time or times they regard as good. I've known quite a few people who simultaneously seem to think that modernity destroyed everything and that the 1950s was a delightful golden age. I could maybe think of some ways to semi-reconcile those intuitions, but, definitely some tensions there that people haven't always worked through.
You might be interested in what I've written about philhellenism as a kind of parallel to the philo-medievalism to which you're gesturing. For about a thousand years, all told, philhellenism + love of ancient Rome was a cultural force in Europe, sometimes -- especially during the Renaissance -- to the point where a complete revival of the ancient world at the expense of the Middle Ages was the principal obsession of elites for generations. It continued all the way down to the 20th century, when the elites of a British Empire on which the sun never set were trained for their careers by learning the long dead languages of Greece and Rome. And somehow it worked! It worked very well. My post explores why.
I would like to foster a similarly passionate philo-medievalism in today's information class elites, in spite of the evident moral superiority of modernity in crucial ways, such as science, religious freedom, and greater respect for human rights (at least in the better places). I think it actually comes very naturally for passionate admirers of the past to take the good and leave the bad, and end up combining the best of both. So the more obsessive and intense the admiration of the past, the better!
It's interesting to think of the Middle Ages as a "hothouse." In terms of intellectual challenges to faith, that's kind of true. No alternatives to Christianity then, like there were before, or have been since. But the metaphor doesn't capture the way the challenges came from *within.*
Thinking about this a bit more: this is a notably Catholic take on Christian history. To Protestants, the Middle Ages were not a sheltered time, by a time when the Christians they would sympathize with were persecuted. The Orthodox, too, would tend to see the Middle Ages as a time when a schismatic movement drove the Christian heartland into a dystopia of crusades and inquisitions. Both would tend to see the breaking of the Catholic stranglehold as a liberation of genuine Christianity.
I can see all three sides of this debate at once. I admire the High Middle Ages, yet I think the 11th-century papal revolution was a wrong turn. I like the tolerant pluralism that Protestantism ultimately precipitated, and I regard it as a triumph rather than a defeat for Christianity. But I don't admire the Protestant reformers or agree with the Protestant doctrines.
Probably no Christian other than a Catholic could quite look back on the high Middle Ages and think, mainly, "Why can't we have nice things anymore?" Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" is a good window on a different, still thoroughly Christian, perspective on that history.
A Catholic won't try to acquit herself of thinking like a Catholic, and yet, I think the "Can we still have nice things?" question is being asked in various ways by all sorts of people, certainly including Protestants and Orthodox and also many non-Christians. "Modernity broke it all!" is by no means a distinctively Catholic view (most definitely not nowadays!).
They wouldn't all look back on the Middle Ages as The Good Time. Of course people themselves are often very muddled and inconsistent as to which time or times they regard as good. I've known quite a few people who simultaneously seem to think that modernity destroyed everything and that the 1950s was a delightful golden age. I could maybe think of some ways to semi-reconcile those intuitions, but, definitely some tensions there that people haven't always worked through.
Also: https://matiane.wordpress.com/2019/05/12/the-five-deaths-of-the-faith-from-the-everlasting-man-by-g-k-chesterton/
You might be interested in what I've written about philhellenism as a kind of parallel to the philo-medievalism to which you're gesturing. For about a thousand years, all told, philhellenism + love of ancient Rome was a cultural force in Europe, sometimes -- especially during the Renaissance -- to the point where a complete revival of the ancient world at the expense of the Middle Ages was the principal obsession of elites for generations. It continued all the way down to the 20th century, when the elites of a British Empire on which the sun never set were trained for their careers by learning the long dead languages of Greece and Rome. And somehow it worked! It worked very well. My post explores why.
I would like to foster a similarly passionate philo-medievalism in today's information class elites, in spite of the evident moral superiority of modernity in crucial ways, such as science, religious freedom, and greater respect for human rights (at least in the better places). I think it actually comes very naturally for passionate admirers of the past to take the good and leave the bad, and end up combining the best of both. So the more obsessive and intense the admiration of the past, the better!
https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/philhellenism-the-european-gentlemen
It's interesting to think of the Middle Ages as a "hothouse." In terms of intellectual challenges to faith, that's kind of true. No alternatives to Christianity then, like there were before, or have been since. But the metaphor doesn't capture the way the challenges came from *within.*
Some of them! Others not! I'll say more about that when I talk about the Greengrass book.
Very interesting. Might be fun to compare notes: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-16-the