3) We come to the High Middle Ages, 1200-1300. Here all the basic motifs are elaborated and brought into the great systems of the Scholastics, of Gothic art, and of feudal life.
4) From 1300 on, we come into the period of the disintegration of the Middle Ages, from 1300-1460, the Late Middle Ages. If I call it an age of “disintegration,” I don’t want to depreciate the tremendous surge of new motifs which developed there and made both the Renaissance and Reformation possible. Thus, to repeat: 1) The period of transition, 600-1000.
2) The Early Middle Ages, 1000-1200.
3) The High Middle Ages, 1200-1300.
4) The Late Middle Ages, 1300-1450.
The first series of problems we will discuss are the main cognitive attitude, the main theological attitude – 1 don’t speak of systems, but of attitudes. There are three of them, and they were always present and inf luential.
1) Scholasticism: , the main and determinative cognitive attitude of the whole Middle Ages. It is the methodological explanation of Christian doctrine. It is derived from “school, of course, and means “school philosophy,” philosophy as it was treated in the school. Today “school” has connotations of separation from life; “scholasticism” even more so. When we hear the word “scholasticism” we think of lifeless systems, (as thick as a horse is heavy, as was said of one of these Scholastics), and no one can read them, since they have nothing to do with reality. There was a distortion of Scholasticism in the late Middle Ages, but that Scholasticism really is the theological interpretation of all problems of life of these people. Therefore we have an extremely rich Scholastic literature, that has tremendously influenced the whole spiritual life of the Middle Ages.
