Guardini argues that "unless we free ourselves of the evaluations made by the minds of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment we cannot really understand the Middle Ages. The judgment then leveled were made under the pressure of a polemic which has succeeded in distorting the truth even to our own day. Equally distorted was the glorified Middle Ages of the Romantics who gave the period a frankly 'canonical' character it never possessed. The excessive enthusiasm of the Romantics has prevented many a man from arriving at a balanced view of medieval Christendom" (p. 22).

Guardini asks "to what extent did it [the Middle Ages] allow for the development of human dignity?" His answer: "The medieval achievement was so magnificient that it stands with the loftiest moment of human history" (p. 23). Obviously this was not because of the empirical observations or its theoretic advances to master the world found in the medieval world. Guardini writes that medieval humans 'chose to plunge into truth by way of meditation; then he drew from his meditations the spiritual laws governing all reality. The roots of all truths were given him by authority: the roots of divine truth by Scripture and the Church; of natural truth by the thought of antiquity" (pp. 23-24).

Theologically, Guardini turns to analyze the dynamics of the "philosophical-theological Summae" (p. 25). In terms similar to Peter Candler (who draws upon Michel de Certeau), Guardini argues that the Summae were not encyclopaedias "to determine what being must 'be'; they were an attempt to determine what being must 'mean.' The meaning expressed in the Summae arose not alone from its content; it arose equally from the very mode of statement and amplification. . . . the very construction of a quaestio as it was used to pose a problem guaranteed clarity of investigation, an adequate weighing of pro and con and of the relations between the problem and previous thought. To the quaestio was given a formal aesthetic value comparable with that of a sonnet or a fugue. A quaestio was not simply a medium by which truth could be read by the mind understanding it; it was a truth formed and shaped by mind to speak to mind. Artistic form then embodied another yet certain truth about the world. It was simply the truth that reality itself was ordered harmoniously in being, that it could be formed and fashioned by the artistic genius of man. A complete Summa in its articles, its questions and its parts was a structured unity within which the human spirit could linger and take its repose. A Summa was not only a book of science; it was a 'space,' vast in its ontology--deep and ordered--wherein the human spirit found its proper place and exercised that self-discipline necessary to experience security" (pp. 25-6). One learned how to have the masters form one's intellect to move in and out of various statements so that all life might ultimately find the end of its form in God's revelation to us in Jesus Christ, experienced in the gathering of the church in prayer and worship.

One did not have to "make one's meaning" or even "find one's meaning" in life. Life was known as inherently meaningful; one partook of this meaning -- or resisted it -- by the very fact of living. Authority, not the consumerist will, framed human life: "As long as medieval man was gripped by his own vision of existence, as long as he heard its music sounding in the depths of his heart, he never experienced authority as shackling. It was a bridge leading to the absolute; it was the flag of the world. Authority provided medieval man with the opportunity to construct an order whose magnificence of form, intensity of manner and richness of life were such that he would have judged our world as paltry" (pp. 25-26).

Guardini ends the chapter with interesting reflection: "authority is needed not only by the childish but also in the life of every man, even the most mature. Integral to the full grandeur of human dignity, authority is not merely the refuge of the weak; its destruction always breeds its burlesque -- force" (p. 26). Perhaps this explains the irrationality of the modern rejection of the medieval. The modern replaced authority with force, and then imported a notion of force back upon what the medieval saw as authority, and then gave this force to an absolutist state. In trying to learn to protect ourself from coercive force, we have learned to extract ourselves from legitimate authority, an authority that finds its end in what is good -- except as it allows us to exercise sufficient force to manipulate and master reality to a particular end, good or not.