The Crusades were one of the great movements matured by the
newly-awakened metaphysical yearning. The same spirit in another,
profounder, way, manifested itself in the efforts of religious reform
which were being made here and there. "The appearance and spread of
heresy has always been the gauge by which the religious life of the
individual must be measured," says Buettner very pertinently in his
preface to his edition of Eckhart. For the first time since the days of
Christ true religious feeling was again quickening the hearts of men;
the ecclesiastical dogma, which until then had represented absolute
truth, no longer satisfied their need. Soon opposition, timidly at
first, made itself felt. Laymen ventured to interfere in the domain of
religion. All knowledge--and consequently all tradition and
religion--had been for a thousand years the exclusive possession of the
clergy; those laymen who had any culture at all knew a little Latin and
a few scholastic propositions. All this was changing.
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