The medieval
trope of
contemptus mundi, drawing upon these converging traditions, pagan philosophy and Christian
ascetic theology, was fundamental to a medieval education. A classic Christian expression is
Bernard of Cluny's bitter 12th-century satire
De contemptu mundi, founded in a deep sense of the transitory nature of secular joys and the abiding permanency of the spiritual life. His text made one of the
Auctores octo morales, the "eight moral authors" that formed the central texts of medieval pedagogy. In the early 12th century, when
Adelard of Bath (c. 1080 - 1152) allegorized two contrasting figures to dispute
De eodem et diverso; they were
Philosophia and
Philocosmia, "love of wisdom" and the "love of the world". Adelard's contemporary,
Henry of Huntington, in the dedicatory letter to his
Historia Anglorum referred in passing to "those who taught the contempt of the world in schools". An aspect of contempt for this world reflects upon the ephemerality of all life, expressed in the literary rhetorical question of
ubi sunt. Even as worldly a pope as
Innocent III could write an essay "On the Misery of the Human Condition",
De miseria humanae conditionis, which
Geoffrey Chaucer is reputed to have rendered in English, in a translation now lost. The theme had political ramifications within the Roman Church, as it was inextricably bound up with questions of
apostolic poverty which was roundly condemned, in the instance of the
Humiliati, as
heretical. The waning of the dominant attitude of
contemptus mundi that had informed elite culture, a development that gathered impetus during the second half of the 14th century, was a precursor to the emergence of the modern secular ethos, encouraging men to study material things with greater lucidity than before, as
Georges Duby has observed, noting the turn taken in painting and sculpture toward the
realistic delineation of aspects of material life. ==Early modern culture==