William Manchester And The Medieval Mind - 1254 Words

William Manchester divides the period of time from A.D. 400 to roughly the 1600s into three parts in A World Lit Only By Fire. The first part, entitled â€Å"The Medieval Mind,† is how the standards of living and the overall wellbeing of the people living in that time were and how education was virtually nonexistent. The book then shifts to the second section, entitled â€Å"The Shattering,† this section describes the intellectual movements and activities, such as the Protestant Reformation, that ended up destroying the Medieval Mindset and replacing it with a mindset that questions everything about authority. The third and final section of Manchester’s novel is entitled, â€Å"One Man Alone.† This section focuses on Magellan and the three year voyage of†¦show more content†¦The Church was beginning to replace imperial Rome when Rome fell in A.D. 476 and shortly after in A.D. 493 the Franks were the first people as a nation to accept Christ and be baptized. As the Church gained traction, one of the key concepts that they wanted to expunge was the influence of pagan religions. St. Augustine wrote The City of God about the actions of the Roman people on the very topic that the people because of their sins had gotten themselves into their own mess. Another way that the Church helped to expunge pagan influences was to build churches and cathedrals on pagan temples. They also came up with religious feasts to replace pagan feasts that would be going on at the same time. Another problem that had arisen for the Holy See was the struggle with royalty. An example, is when Gregory VII excommunicated Emperor Henry IV and he was only absolved by spending three days and nights prostrate outside the papal castle. A great wound to the Vatican that was self-inflicted was when Pope Clement V moved the papacy to France where it remained for nearly sixty years before Pope Gregory XI returned it to Rome. This altercation led to a problem, for the next near ly forty years, there were two Vicars of Christ, one in Rome and an antipope in France. As earlier stated mostly all of the people at this time were illiterate so they never really knew what was going on since they were unable to read or write. There was also no concept of