They accepted
this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this,
of course, they differed radically from modern people who accept
nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own
financial and political situation.
To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world
hereafter--a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone
and suffering--meant something more than empty words
or vague theological phrases. It was an actual fact and the
mediaeval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their
time preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble
death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient
Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and effort,
we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well.
But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with
his grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady
companion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his
scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at dinner--he smiled
at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl
out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising
yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when
you were very young, instead of listening to the fairy stories
of Anderson and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your
days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of
Judgment.
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