ABSTRACT
More orthodox in origin, though sharing with Catharism a rejection of worldly wealth, were contemporary movements. In the pages of the ancients and especially of Cicero, however, lay a reasoned defence of the life of action, a view of civic responsibility as a noble and public-spirited duty, a doctrine of wealth which made riches a sign of honour and munificence a virtue. In one field the growing pedantry proved fruitful. The first generations of humanists consciously and unconsciously emphasized the links between the contemporary world and the ancient world of Greece and Rome. This involved a new and momentous series of historical categories, for time was divided into three parts, ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ being separated by ten centuries when it was felt that the human spirit had been relatively dormant. Long before the discovery of a vast new world, to which the Gospel could not have been carried, the spiritual content of the term Christendom had been attenuated.
