A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [147]
Nevertheless, patristic mulishness could not diminish the glory of the armada’s achievement. The power of the medieval mind was forever broken. Medieval certitude had been weakened by the Renaissance. Nationalism, humanism, rising literacy, the new horizons of trade—all these had challenged blind, ritualistic allegiance to the assumptions of a thousand years. But Magellan’s voyage exposed its central myth. Europe was no longer the world, and the world was no longer the center of the universe. Since the earth was revolving daily, heaven and hell could not be located where they had been thought to be, and in rational minds there was a growing skepticism that either of them existed. God without heaven was inconceivable, at least the medieval God was, but here reason ended. Christendom found the prospect of a godless world intolerable. Because faith in a higher power was needed, it would be necessary to find, or even to fabricate, another Creator, a new King of Kings and Lord of Lords — “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer” (“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”), Voltaire would write in 1770.
He insisted that it was unnecessary. He scorned l’infâme, as he called the Church, but not God’s existence—“toute la nature crie qu’il existe.” Yet he protested too much. Doubt plagued Voltaire. Strong, ardent, and devout men have been struggling with its challenge for nearly five centuries. They have met with varying degrees of success. Worldwide there are now a billion Christians alive. Confidence in an afterlife, however, is another matter. The specter of skepticism haunts shrines and altars. Worshipers want to believe, and most of the time they persuade themselves that they do. But suppressing doubt is hard. Secular society makes it harder. Hardest of all is the sense of loss, the knowledge that the serenity of medieval faith, and the certitude of everlasting glory, are forever gone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHIES are useful guides for readers who want to learn more, but they can be deceptive. Traditional bibliographical structure is sometimes misleading; the order of the works which are cited is determined by the alphabetical order of the first letter in scholars’ last names. Furthermore, every entry appears as the equal of every other, which is an affront to common sense. A writer of history may have used only a single anecdote from one source, while another source served as the underpinning of his entire book.
Let me set down those works which have been the underpinning of this volume. First—for their scope and rich detail—are three volumes from Will Durant’s eleven-volume Story of Civilization: volume 4, The Age of Faith; volume 5, The Renaissance; and volume 6, The Reformation. The events of those twelve centuries, from the sack of Rome in A.D. 410 to the beheading of Anne Boleyn in 1536, emerge from Durant’s pages in splendid array.
Another towering monument of historicism is the eight-volumed The New Cambridge Medieval History, particularly volume 1, The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms; volume 5, Contest of Empire and Papacy; volume 6, Victory of the Papacy; volume 7, Decline of Empire and Papacy; and volume 8, The Close of the Middle Ages. This great work leads to the equally comprehensive The New Cambridge Modern History, fourteen volumes, especially volume 1, The Renaissance: 1493–1520, and volume 2, The Reformation, 1520–1559. Other general works which I found useful were the three volumes of Sidney Painter’s A History of the Middle Ages, 284–1500,