第111页

But you may be surprised to hear that the
Middle Ages were like a starry night. Let me explain.Have you ever
heard people talking about the Dark Ages? This is the name given
to the period which followed the collapse of the Roman empire
when very few people could read or write and hardly anyone knew
what was going on in the world. And because of this, they loved
telling each other all sorts of weird and wonderful tales and were
generally very superstitious. ‘Dark’, too, because houses in those
days were small and dark, and because the streets and highways
that the Romans had built had all fallen into decay and were overgrown
and their camps and cities had become grass-covered ruins.
The good Roman laws were forgotten and the beautiful Greek
statues had been smashed to pieces. All this is true. And it isn’t
really surprising, given all the dreadful upheavals and war-torn
years of the Migrations.
But there was more to it than that. It wasn’t all dark. It was more
like a starry night. For above all the dread and uncertainty in which
ignorant people lived like children in the dark – frightened of
witches and wizards, of the Devil and evil spirits – above it all was
the bright starlit sky of the new faith, showing them the way. And
just as you don’t get lost so easily in the woods if you can see stars
like the Great Bear or the Pole Star, people no longer lost their way
completely, no matter how much they stumbled in the dark. For
they were sure of one thing: God had given souls to all men, and
they were all equal in his eyes, beggars and kings alike. This meant
there must be no more slaves – that human beings must no longer
be treated as if they were things. That the one, invisible, God the
Creator of the world, who through his mercy saves mankind, asks
us to be good. Not that in those days there were only good people.
There were just as many cruel, savage, brutal and pitiless warriors
in Italy as there were in the lands where the Germans lived, who
behaved in a reckless, ruthless and bloodthirsty manner. But now
when they did so it was with a worse conscience than in Roman
times. They knew they were wicked. And they feared the wrath of
God.
Many people wished to live in strict accordance with God’s will.
They fled the bustling cities and the crowds where the temptation to
do wrong is always present and, like the hermits of India, withdrew
into the desert for prayer and penitence. These were the earliest
Christian monks. They were first seen in the East, in Egypt and in
Palestine. To many of them, what was most important was to do
penance. They had learnt something about it from those Indian
priests who, as you may remember, had special ways of tormenting
themselves.Now some of these monks went and sat on the top of tall
pillars in the centre of towns, where, barely moving, they spent their
lives meditating on the sinfulness of mankind. The little food they
needed was pulled up in a basket. There they sat, above all the
bustle, and hoped it would bring them nearer to God. People called
them Stylites, meaning pillar saints. 


不用多说了