The tripartite schema
Around the 1000 AD, western sources depicted Christian society according to a new system which composed of a threefold people- priests, warriors and peasants. The three made the fabric of society.
Between the 8th and 11th century the aristocracy organized itself into a military class, a typical member of this class being called miles or knight.
In the Carolingian period, the clergy transformed themselves into a clerical caste. The evolution of the liturgy and of religious architecture is an expression of this change.
The conditions of the peasants became more uniform and to sink to the lowest level, that of the serfs.
The tripartite schema was a symbol of social harmony. It was a vivid way of diffusing class struggle and …show more content…
Ancient thought only survived in the middle ages in fragmented form. It was pushed out of shape and humiliated by Christian thought.
What the middle ages knew of the ancient culture had been bequeathed to it by the late Empire, which had rechewed, impoverished and dissected graeco-roman literature, science thought and art in such a way that the barbarized early middle ages could assimilate it more easily. Science was watered down into verses full of legends and moralizing lessons. The animals were changed into symbols.
The sources of medieval Christian thought were the treatises and poems of the third or fourth century such as the Historiae contra Paganos by Orosius who turned history into a vulgar apologia, the Psychomachia of Prudentius who reduced moral life to a combat between vices and virtues and Julianus Pomerius Treatise on the contemplative Life, which taught contempt for the world and for secular activities. The bible succumbed to exegesis. Thus, there was clearly an intellectual …show more content…
The west front of Ely Cathedral exemplifies this development. It was principally the widespread introduction of a single feature, the pointed arch, which was to bring about the change that separates Gothic from Romanesque. The technological change permitted a stylistic change which broke the tradition of massive masonry and solid walls penetrated by small openings, replacing it with a style where light appears to triumph over substance. The Gothic style was a totally new style in its day that transformed castles, churches, and