ABSTRACT
The culture—the critical inertial force of intellectual concepts and ethical precepts, which kept the culture vital and resilient against unending assault and contradictions—was mortally imperiled. The dependable classical culture was in manifest and apparently inescapable decline. The relatively recent and novel writings were considered by some of the hoarders among the most central of these writings to be saved. The Carolingian vision of a renewed common culture was beggared across the continent. Cultural decay rapidly became evident on every hand. The mutually supportive developments of universities, in religious belief and practice, and in state-building of the eleventh century, provided a fertile seedbed for the fecund, twelfth-century cultural renascence. The calamity of the fourteenth century did not stop just with the erosion of faith, the continuing devastations of war, and the Turkish onslaught.
