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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 433
Canterbury to rise to that eminence from a combination ofper^ sonal holiness oflife with theological eminence the profound
Thomas Bradwardine, who sowed much seed that was long in
coming to harvest should have died of the pestilence a few
weeks after his consecration. The mid'fburteenth is century a
dividing line, not by reason of the plague but because all over
western Europe currents of thought were beginning to flow
that would stream far beyond the dates that have been chosen
to mark the end of the middle ages. Yet it is also true that in
England, at least, and in the English Church, time seemed to
stand still in the fifteenth century in some such way as, in late
August or early September, the course of nature seems to
slacken and windless days pass without apparent change over
the rich countryside till the inevitable storms ofautumn come.
Such a comparison is no more than a fancy, but it is at the
beginning ofthe epoch offormalized government, unspiritual
but not visibly decaying, undisturbed (after Lollardy had been
driven underground) by opposition from without or reform
from within, that we may end this brief survey.
7. The Spiritual Achievement
Much of this short survey has been concerned with the insti'
national framework of religion. What, we may ask, was the
spiritual life for which alone all this outward show existed, or
should have existed, and which alone gave to it any religious
value and real significance? The historian cannot be God's spy;
the Spirit bloweth where He listeth, we know not why nor
whence. Nevertheless we can say that certain epochs have been
notable for the external manifestation of spiritual power, and
others for its absence. The period of awakening and reform
from 1000 to 1250 was undoubtedly one ofremarkable spiritual
renewal and achievement; thenceforward, for more than two
centuries, the August sunshine waned to December.
Speaking very loosely, we may call the century and a half
from 1070 to 1216 the monastic period ofEnglish spirituality;
the period,
that is, when the monastic ideals and virtues not