Medioevo: Authority and guardianship

The Middle Ages, or Middle Ages, is the historical period located between Antiquity and Modernity, that is, between the V and XV centuries, respectively.

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In this context, each historical period has been mediated, conditioned, or governed by a general form of thought, which guides most of the manifestations of man in each particular moment. To that doctrinal and conditioning element of the beliefs and the human behavior, and of the own social institutions, of any scope, denominated paradigm to him.

Thus, in the Middle Ages, the paradigm or cultural basis that guided human activities was, without a doubt, the theocentric worldview that placed God as the center of all things, and the Earth , the place where man lived the greatest creation of God, could not be but in the center of the Universe, where the Sun and the other planets revolved around that.

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The conception of the divine creation and a Universe with the Earth as center was, of course, the thesis of the Church that rigorously defended and applied it to guide and protect the activity of man who to do the opposite he would be subjected and punished by the highest authority that the Church represented.

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This is how medieval society was a society under the authority and doctrinaire tutelage of the Church that under the theocentric conviction denied man any chance to inquire about the reality to which he should only contemplate passively under penalty of receiving punishment It was pertinent on the part of the Church since any trace of uncertainty, regarding nature, was synonymous with disrespect for the Revealed that the word of the Church represented and no one should doubt.

In this order of ideas, to reach the knowledge of reality it was enough to follow the orientations and the laws that "the great men" would have discovered, for example, the Aristotelian laws of the movement that would last for centuries until they were refuted, and displaced, after the valiant experiments of Galileo Galilei at the beginning of Modernity, about six centuries ago.

In short, the medieval worldview was characterized by its theocentric conviction, by making its affirmation of Faith in God the central element in the ordering of the world and of reality. Thus, things are and occupy their place in the world in relation to and in reference to God, in this way they acquire their value and meaning. The Authority of the Church will ensure that everything is oriented in terms of theocentrism and what it implies.

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