One may safely say that the first millenary strove, if not
exactly to set aside the original principle of Christianity, yet to bind
it by dogma in such a way that it often became completely obscured. A
long training was necessary before the immature nations of barbarians
were fit to become citizens of the spiritual world, before they could
fully assimilate the new traditions and grasp their innermost meaning,
which by this very fact became altered and modified. This process of
education came to a temporary conclusion about the year 1100. At last
the European nations had outgrown the guardianship of the Church with
its antiquated methods; a new, a creative epoch was dawning; the
civilisation of Europe, opposed to all barbarism and orientalism, rose
like a brilliant star on the horizon of the world. Spontaneous feeling
for the race, for nature and for the divine verities had again become
possible.
I shall have to exceed the limits of my subject in this chapter, for I
propose showing the seeds from which, in the time of the Crusades, the
new soul of the European, throwing off the lethargy of the first
Christian millenary, began to grow with extraordinary vigour and
rapidity; that new soul which experienced a wider, if not deeper,
unfolding in the period of the Renascence, and to this day pervades and
fertilises our spiritual life.
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