Cosmic Souls in the Latin West in the Twelfth Century

A wind of change swept Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The waterwheel gave rise to a minor industrial revolution. Innovations in agriculture meant that the efficiency of food production increased considerably; a side effect of which was that there were now more people who were not so tied to the land who had time to develop themselves in other ways, including scholarship. Towns grew and their populations became more literate. At the same time libraries were enlarged by mandate in the monasteries of the Cistercian and Carthusians; Fulda in Germany held two thousand volumes in the twelfth century. Perhaps even more important was the increase of libraries and book production in the major European cities and towns under the auspices of secular leaders. In the Church the creation of new religious orders reflected a heightened impulse to serve God by rebuilding churches and reinvigorating service to the laity. An innovation in clerical orders was born in the friar who took the idea of the monastic ecclesiastic out of the cloister and into the community in order to work for a Church that was seeking to be more laity facing.