Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Other than this following significant quibble, this essay by Richard Fernandez is monitory, I believe:
The Middle Ages were a phenomenon of some 900 years’ duration distinguished in three very different periods, succeeding one another almost predictably:
1- Early Middle Ages (700-1000): sometimes called dark ages, but seeds for germination (Benedictines) and early flowering (Charlemagne crowned Easter Sunday 800) were planted.
2- High Middle Ages (1000-1300): flowering and fruiting of Christian culture: crusades, gothic architecture, the great mendicant orders (Sts. Francis and Clare of Assisi and Dominic of Spain), private schools and universities, general enthusiasm for monasteries (aka society’s R&D centers), first legal checks on absolutism, Scots and German independence, etc, early music notations and experimentations. A very colorful, widely happy, enthusiastic time, the times today we mean when speaking wistfully of the Middle Ages as a time of romance, strength and self-confidence. When everything worked to most people’s satisfaction, rough but strong and ready for challenges.
3- Late Middle Ages (1300-1600): gradual decline in confidence, rise of legalisms, feudal indenture, failure to unite to answer continuing Moslem attacks (although the most serious, at Vienna, was averted by, seemingly, divine providence, inspiring Martin Luther to write A Mighty Fortress [Vienna] Is Our God), although Moslems are driven from the Iberian Peninsula and Columbus is sent on discovery to the west. But generally, Late Middle Ages were a time of a common ecclesial power waning and a secular but distributed (not common) power waxing, giving waring city states, also early rise of scientific method via nominalist philosophy (Abelard), regrettably, which gave the scientific (mathematical, technological, engineering) spirit and method an anti-religious bias from the start, even though its actual start was Franciscan (Bacon).
The Church Reformation of the 16th Century commenced the ending of the Late Middle Ages. The Thirty Years War of 1615/18 to 1645/48 ended the Late Middle Ages and the 900-year Middle Ages phenomenon with it. The Age of Church Reformation, which commenced circa 1500 and established itself by 1600, remains ours today. Eras or ages of kairotic time are like fans in that they start up gradually and wind down gradually. And they overlap: a new fan is starting up while an old fan is winding down.
Update 1: Trump Will Face A Huge Challenge With U.S. Intelligence If He Wins
Update 2: The Battle Over Al-Azhar
Update 3: Ron Dreher: Trump Can’t Save American Christianity
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
