Opening paragraphs.....................Part Two

Winter completes an age
With its thorough levelling;
Heaven's tourbillions of rage
Abolish the watchman's tower
And delete the cedar grove.
As winter completes an age,
The eyes huddle like cattle, doubt
Seeps into the pores and power
Ebbs from the heavy signet ring;
The prophet's lantern is out
And gone the boundary stone,
Cold the heart and cold the stove,
Ice condenses on the bone;
Winter completes an age

Thus the perspicacious W. H. Auden in For the Time Being.  Like seasons, ages are seldom so precise as to end abruptly, while allowing another age to commence.  Few events of European history have been as final as the Black Death in bringing to an end one age (which we might call the Innocently Playful Medieval) and bringing into view another (which we might call the Colder Late Medieval-Early Renaissance).  But even at this interstice, old forms and old mental states hang on, while new forms and new mental states peek uncertainly into view.  Locality often determines how boldly or timidly the new will come to supplant the old;  and localities can find their integrity, even their ancient right to existence, open to question.  ("this village has always been crown territory."  "But which crown, England or France's?" "Which religion, Christian or Muslim?"  "Oh, and where, pray, is the boundary stone, the definitive separation between Us and Them?")
-Thomas Cahill,  Heretics and Heroes:  How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World