It is very important to note that in the twelfth century the vernacular becomes important in literature and in preaching. {An} awakening of the common man begins. {There is} growth of a new economy—the merchants and craftsmen of the towns. Physically speaking, life is primitive compared to ours—castles, walled towns, difficulty of communications, {a} dangerous life, lack of comforts we are used to (but this lack is not felt). {There is an} essential simplicity of the times: {a} unity of culture; as it stands, everybody has the same beliefs, the same outlook. Yet the individual is less lost in the crowd than today where we talk so much of individuality. In the Middle Ages there is much less standardization. In the overall agreement on essentials, there is also much more room for accidental differences and individual development within the unified framework of the whole. Note, for instance, hermits, pilgrims, monks, wanderers, crusaders, craftsmen, jongleurs, wandering clerics, poets, etc.; {there is} plenty of latitude for variegated types, all accepted as natural. {There is a} vitality of the culture and of the individual—{ a} vitality in every field—earthiness and spirituality. {It is} unfortunate {that there is} vitality in the realm of sin as well as in the realm of sanctity (n.b. religion penetrates everything). The Middle Ages can then appear as an age of extremes, but is it really? Fundamentally there is a certain psychological balance in the Middle Ages, which we have lost today. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of medieval society, man could develop tremendously in it, once he found favorable conditions. Hence, though there is much violence, and the age must not be idealized, the Middle Ages is on the whole a healthy period, and with all its lacks, this is a great advantage. Our age, on the other hand, is spiritually and psychologically unhealthy, and our lack of health comes precisely from the things which we imagine give us an advantage over the Middle Ages—our “progress”—but this is material rather than spiritual. The Middle Age is balanced because the material and spiritual levels of man’s life are more or less in harmony, whatever their shortcomings. One feels that though the problems of the age were great, the men of those times loved and flourished in the midst of their problems. With us, they are separated by an abyss.
-The Cistercian Fathers and their monastic theology : initiation into the monastic tradition 8 / by Thomas Merton ; edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell ; preface by James Finley.
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