ABSTRACT
by the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Christian idea of progress was in full bloom. Both of the strands I have identified as crucial to the European conception of human progress—awareness of steady, cumulative advancement of culture from remote past to distant future and, along with this awareness, belief in a golden age of morality and spirituality ahead, in the future, on this earth—are highly visible in the writings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
