I've been looking at a book I've had on my shelves since time immemorial: "Breakthrough - Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New Translation", by Mathew Fox. In his introductory chapter, Fox relies extensively on Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror - The Calamitous 14th Century" in which some of the main points regarding the situation in 14th Century Europe are: 1.. An increasingly sharp division of rich and poor: With control of the raw materials and tools of production, the owners of land and other resources were able to reduce wages in classic exploitation. Population had grown substantially during the relatively prosperous 12th and 13th Centuries, but the good times were brought to a halt early in 14th Century when calamitous rain and flooding and the onset of colder weather brought on extensive starvation throughout Europe. The growing poor could not look after themselves and felt an increasing sense of injustice. A spirit of revolt became prevalent. 2.. Corruption in high places: A second evident movement that characterized these troubled times was the rapid demise of credibility of the institutions of the day. An example that Tuchman develops is that of knighthood. Once considered the protectors of the people, the defenders of the weak, knights were now part of the problems of the time. They themselves became the oppressors, and the violence and lawlessness of the sword had become a major agency of disorder. With notable exceptions, the priesthood had also become notoriously corrupt. 3.. Radical movements: In such a period of cultural upheaval and social disintegration many persons who cared about the common good became disillusioned with the structures that were failing so many and with institutional leaders who nevertheless clung to their own privilege and power. In 1320 the misery of the rural poor in the wake of the famines burst out in a strange hysterical mass movement called the Pastoureaux, for the shepherds who started it. . . The Pastoureaux spread the fear of insurrection that freezes the blood of the privileged in any era when the mob appears. 4.. A spirit of despair, guilt, and the end times: A sense of frustration grew into a sense of hopelessness and despair that began to take over much of the human spirit at this time of "eschatological heave" (Norman Mailer's expression for America in the late sixties). A world was indeed coming to an end-the world of papal and temporal power equitably balanced; a world of intellectual integrity and creativity; a world of economic solidarity and development; a world of institutional credibility; a world of common values mythologized in knighthood, religious life, or law; a world of a common, shared language. I don't want to make too much of all of this, but it does sound a little like the world of today. The institutions may have changed but the processes seem more than a little similar. "A Distant Mirror", the name of Tuchman's book, may indeed be very appropriate.
Ed
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