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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
In this section there is no attempt to exploit fully such sources as Matthew Paris or Jocelin of Brakelond. The latter is, in fact, altogether avoided; his chronicle is so brief, so accessible in The King's Classics, and casts so many different sidelights on Church life under the Angevins, that it should be read in its entirety.
A DYING WORLD
The whole Middle Ages may be looked upon as a long process of suffering and convalescence from the barbarian invasions, which influenced European thought down to and beyond the Reformation. Men's minds were constantly haunted by the Apocalypse and the more dismal chapters of the Prophets; much of the unprogressiveness of the Middle Ages in certain directions may be traced to this numbing belief in the imminence of the Last Judgment. The following four extracts will suffice, out of very many which might be chosen; one of the passages in which Roger Bacon records his despair of the present world may be found in A Medieval Garner, p. 342.
(a) St Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ezech. c. II. Hom. vi. § 21 (Migne, P.L. vol. 76. 1009).
I ask, what is there now in this world to please us? Everywhere we see sights of mourning and hear the groans of men. Cities are ruined, towns are desolate, fields lie waste; the land hath become a wilderness.
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