Free The History of the Renaissance World by Susan Wise Bauer

text of the Catholic church tradition (and remained part of Church law until 1918). But it was a triumph for ancient philosophy; useful though it was, the Concordance was a rationalization of spiritual decisions. It brought order by treating Church authority as a simple human system. 12
    And in Paris, the cleric Peter Lombard was already hard at work, lecturing and writing, developing a system of theology that would become his most famous book: the Sentences . Lombard, twenty years younger than Abelard, had come to the cathedral school of Reims in 1136, bearing a fulsome letter of recommendation from none other than Bernard of Clairvaux. By 1145, Peter Lombard was teaching at the school of Notre Dame in Paris; fifteen years later, the Sentences were being read in every cathedral school of note. 13
    “A most excellent work,” wrote Lombard’s contemporary Alberic of Trois Fontaines; “sane doctrine, commended by all,” commented the historian William of Tyre, who studied with Lombard for six years. The Sentences were the first major attempt by a Western theologian to link every Christian doctrine together into a coherent, logical whole. Using scripture and the Church fathers side by side, applying logic and dialectic to resolve contrary opinions, Peter Lombard created theological categories: Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology (the study of Christ, of salvation, of the Church, of the Last Things). The Sentences provided not just a scheme for organizing theology but also a methodology: discussion, debate, systematization.
    This was undoubtedly not what Bernard of Clairvaux had intended for his protégé. “The faith of the pious believes,” Bernard had written, in his condemnation of Abelard. “It does not discuss.” But Lombard’s work had given birth to the new discipline of systematic theology. In the next century, the Sentences would become the classic text for students of divine matters, shaping an entire generation of the Church with the exact tools that Bernard had feared. 14

Chapter Eight

    The New Song

    Between 1141 and 1165,
the Song adjust to exile,
while the Jin struggle to rule an empire
    I N THE TWENTY YEARS since the Shaoxing Treaty, Emperor Gaozong of the Song had gained little power: no additional lands, no towns recaptured from the Jin, no treaties made with other countries. His court, now established at Lin’an, was vexed by problems that could not be solved. *
    For one, his older brother Song Qinzong, taken captive in 1127 and deported to the north, was still alive and in Jin hands. His existence meant that Song Gaozong’s authority could easily be emptied of power; the Jin could always play their trump card, send Song Qinzong back home and fatally disrupt the Song chain of command.
    In addition, the court was divided about what to do next. Many of Song Gaozong’s advisors agitated for an all-out assault on the north; others recommended peace and prudence; most were heavily critical of the actions taken by the Song emperors, Gaozong’s own predecessors, just before the loss of Kaifeng.
    Song Gaozong found a path through this complicated landscape by prioritizing one thing above all else: the security and stability of the imperial court. He refused to provoke the Jin. He was conservative, and he was conciliatory, and he was careful; and as a result, he lived to the unlikely age of eighty.
    But his policies changed the Song. The new world of the Southern Song was one in which they did not fight, but philosophized; painted and wrote poetry, rather than agitating; traded, rather than fought; looked inward, rather than outward towards the rest of the world. The Southern Song flourished without victory. 1
    The inward focus produced a boom inside the Song borders. Markets and fairs grew up in the countryside. Paper money, used for the first time a century before, circulated widely. Satin weave, with its smooth surface, was manufactured in cities to the south; in fact, the name satin