The Renaissance of Learning in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

The story of the eleventh and twelfth centuries is, at its heart, a story of rebirth. It is a rebirth not in the sense later attached to the secular Renaissance of the fifteenth century, but a rebirth rooted in the life of the Church, nourished by the sacraments, shaped by monastic discipline, and animated by a profound desire to understand God and His creation more deeply. To speak of a 'Renaissance of Learning' in this period is to speak of a Catholic renaissance, a renewal that flowed from the altar, the cloister, and the cathedral school. It is to recognize that the intellectual flourishing of medieval Europe did not arise in spite of the Church but because of her. The centuries that modern textbooks once dismissed as 'dark' were in fact the seedbed of the West’s intellectual tradition, and the light that dawned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was a light kindled by faith.