W. Robert Godfrey

And so it was not an age of faith in terms of a profound penetration of the minds and hearts of common people with the truths of Christianity.

So we come back to saying, what is it?

Well, it's the Middle Ages, which means it's between two things.

And historians have been very helpful on this point.

What are the Middle Ages between?

Well, they're between the old period, the ancient period, and the modern period.

You notice none of those adjectives tell you anything.

Old, between, and modern don't actually tell you the substance of what went on in those periods.

It simply says, and is accurate as far as it goes, that these are three periods with somewhat differing emphases, somewhat different characters.

and they can be distinguished from one another.

What I would like to suggest to you is that the Middle Ages are important for us, not just as a way of getting to the Reformation, but as a period in which there was profound thinking, profound building of institutions, remarkable political events that shape us down to this day,

and therefore on their own terms are very worth knowing and studying and reflecting on.

It is a period of history that continues to influence the world in which we live, continues to illustrate for us, if nothing more than that, issues with which we still have to grasp.

So it is a period that it is worth investing time and energy and thought to try to understand.

It is, I think, the best way to see it, a thousand-year period of an experiment in Christian civilization.

Because one of the characteristics of this medieval period is that it was an effort to create a society in which Christianity would be the dominant influence.

That was at least the ideal.

It wasn't the ideal of every individual.

and it certainly wasn't the way every individual thought or acted.

But that was sort of the overriding ideal that drove most of the actions, most of the thinking in the Middle Ages.