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This book explores ecclesiastical history and the history of Western civilization more generally by focusing on the tenth-and early eleventh-century Latin Church, or more precisely the millennial Church. It challenges the narrative linking ecclesiastical revival to the Gregorian Reform and argues that the rise of the West began well before the mid-eleventh century. It presents ecclesiastical reform as a central part of the post-Carolingian, postinvasion revival and suggests that the Church embodied and defined a rising Europe. It shows that the achievements associated with Gregorian Reform in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries rested on earlier ones. The book offers insights into the Christendom that was inherited by the mid-eleventh-century Latin reformers and puts the millennial Church as well as the resurgence of the Latin West in their appropriate contexts.

This chapter examines how millennial Latin Christians attempted to approach their God through a specifially Christian theological perspective. It begins by discussing the contemplative spirituality of Abbot John of Fécamp, who declares in Confessio Theologica: “There are many types of contemplation which the soul devoted to you, O Christ, can profit from and enjoy … Behold, O Lord, when my soul longs for the divine vision, and, reaching out to capture you, meditates and sings of your glory, the burden of the flesh is less heavy, the tumult of thoughts ceases, the weight of our mortality and the well-rehearsed pattern of our anxieties fade … ” This chapter proceeds by exploring spirituality in the tenth and eleventh centuries; how the proliferation of private Masses in the millennial Church potentially turned the Mass into a private prayer; Eucharistic spirituality and the liturgy of the hours; how statues and images functioned in individual spirituality; devotional use of crosses and crucifixes; saints as models of spirituality; and nature as God's art.

This chapter examines public acts of worship in the millennial Church. In Regularis Concordia, Aethelwold of Winchester states that “monks and nuns vied with one another in following in the footsteps of the saints; for they were united in one faith, though not in one manner of monastic usage.” The liturgy animated the ecclesiastical revival. In the new churches, architecture, art, treasures, and worshippers were all intended to praise God as a liturgical ensemble. This is not always obvious to today's tourists, who encounter medieval churches as public monuments and see liturgical artifacts in museums. It is further obscured by the failure of the liturgy to consistently dictate architectural forms. This chapter first provides an overview of Church liturgy before discussing the Mass, the principal medieval act of worship, and the liturgy of the hours. It also considers the role of processions in the millennial Church's attempts to Christianize the world.