God was in His heaven and all on the world was understandable, even if, as depicted in the art of Hieronymus Bosch, it consisted of a razor sharp moral line between the pathway to heaven and descent into the impossible to imagine horrors of Hell.
Though life was, in the words of the much later English bard, "nasty, brutish and short", it was not incomprehensible. The first buds of the Renaissance had opened ancient thoughts on music, art, medicine, math and philosophy. Theistic presuppositions were virtually indisputable. Therefore, faith was the prerequisite for understanding but also the instrument by which it was possible. Everywhere the cosmos presented testimony of harmony above and against the strident clamor of discord. Somehow, it all made sense.
Thus in the marvelous polyphony of Josquin des Prey and others the separate strands of flowing music and rhythms intersected to produce harmonious chords. The separate strands of life, like the glorious tapestries of the time, weave in and out of each other, touching and interacting in such a way as to produce beauty beyond the individual contribution. Only God could see the full tapestry or hear the whole melody, but man could reproduce the effect and at least for a brief moment, transcend the blood, muck, gore and sordidness of which much of his life consisted, and be transported into the sphere of ideals, the contemplation of purity and perfection.
For all its faults and ignorance, a certain nostalgia is inescapable. The enlightenment removed, perhaps forever, the hope which characterized that time and man, for all his advances since, is in one respect the more impoverished. In all our striving and specialization, we discover that what we miss is the freedom to be at peace... whether in poverty or a castle.
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