Contemptus mundi, the "contempt of the world" and worldly concerns, is a theme in the intellectual life of both Classical Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 and of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, both in its mystical vein and its ambivalence towards secular life, that figures largely in the Western world's history of ideas

History of ideas

The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history...

. In inculcating a turn of mind that would lead to a state of serenity untrammeled by distracting material appetites and feverish emotional connections, which the Greek philosophers called ataraxia

Ataraxia

Ataraxia is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a lucid state, characterized by freedom from worry or any other preoccupation.For the Epicureans, ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person...

, it drew upon the assumptions of Stoicism

Stoicism

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...

 and a neoplatonism

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...

 that was distrustful of deceptive and spurious appearances. In the familiar rhetorical polarity in Hellenic philosophy between the active and the contemplative life, which Christians, who expressly rejected "the World, the Flesh

Flesh (theology)

In Christianity, the word "flesh" is used in English as a metaphor to describe sinful tendencies. A related turn of phrase identifies certain sins as "carnal" sins, from Latin caro, carnis, meaning "flesh." Saint Paul makes this connection in Romans 7:18, in which he says:In religious language,...

 and the Devil", might exemplify as the way of Martha

Martha

Martha of Bethany is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem...

 and the way of Mary, contemptus mundi assumed that only the contemplative life was of lasting value and the world an empty shell, a vanity

Vanity

In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but...

.

In classical Antiquity

In the classical canon, Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

's Tusculanae Disputationes, essays on achieving Stoic

STOIC

STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...

 stability of emotions, with rhetorical subjects such as "Contempt of death", was taken up definitively by Boethius in his Consolations of Philosophy

Consolation of Philosophy

Consolation of Philosophy is a philosophical work by Boethius, written around the year 524. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and is also the last great Western work that can be called Classical.-...

, during the troubled closing phase of Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...

. The Latin tradition of dispraise of the public world adapted by Christian moralists, focused especially on the fickleness of Fortune

Fortuna

Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...

, and the evils exposed in the Latin satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 became a mainstay of Christian penitential literature.

In the Patristic tradition

Among early Christians, Eucherius of Lyon

Eucherius of Lyon

Saint Eucherius, bishop of Lyon, was a high-born and high-ranking ecclesiastic in the Christian Church of Gaul. He is remembered for his letters advocating extreme self-abnegation. Henry Wace ranked him "except perhaps St. Irenaeus the most distinguished occupant of that see".On the death of his...

, an aristocratic and high-ranking ecclesiastic in the fifth-century Christian Church of Gaul, wrote to his kinsman a widely-read letter de contemptu mundi, an expression of the despair for the present and future of the world in its last throes. Contempt for the world provided intellectual underpinnings for the retreat into monasticism

Christian monasticism

Christian monasticism is a practice which began to develop early in the history of the Christian Church, modeled upon scriptural examples and ideals, including those in the Old Testament, but not mandated as an institution in the scriptures. It has come to be regulated by religious rules Christian...

: when Saint Florentina

Saint Florentina

Saint Florentina is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church. Born towards the middle of the sixth century in Cartagena, Hispania, she and her family were actively engaged in furthering the best interests of Christianity....

, of the prominent Christian family of Hispania, founded her convent, her rule written by her brother Leander of Seville

Leander of Seville

Saint Leander of Seville , brother of the encyclopedist St. Isidore of Seville, was the Catholic Bishop of Seville who was instrumental in effecting the conversion to Catholicism of the Visigothic kings Hermengild and Reccared of Hispania .-Family:Leander and Isidore and...

 explicitly cited contempt for the world: Regula sive Libellus de institutione virginum et de contemptu mundi ad Florentinam sororem.

Medieval contemptus mundi

The medieval trope

Trope (literature)

A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

of contemptus mundi, drawing upon these converging traditions, pagan philosophy and Christian ascetic theology

Asceticism

Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...

, was fundamental to a medieval education. A classic Christian expression is Bernard of Cluny

Bernard of Cluny

Bernard of Cluny was a Benedictine monk of the first half of the 12th century, a poet, satirist, and hymn-writer, author of the famous verses De contemtu mundi, "On Contempt for the World"....

's bitter 12th-century satire De contemptu mundi, founded in a deep sense of the transitory nature of secular joys and the abiding permanency of the spiritual life. His text made one of the Auctores octo morales

Auctores octo morales

The Auctores octo morales was a collection of Latin textbooks, of an elementary standard, that was used for pedagogy in the Middle Ages in Europe. It was printed in many editions, from the end of the fifteenth century...

, the "eight moral authors" that formed the central texts of medieval pedagogy.

In the early 12th century, when Abelard allegorized two contrasting figures to dispute De eodem et diverso, they were Philosophia and Philocosmia, "philosophy" and the "love of the world". Abelard's contemporary, Henry of Huntington, in the dedicatory letter to his Historia Anglorum referred in passing to "those who taught the contempt of the world in schools".

An aspect of contempt for this world reflects upon the ephemerality of all life, expressed in the literary rhetorical question of ubi sunt

Ubi sunt

Ubi sunt is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?"...

. Even as worldly a pope as Innocent III

Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni....

 could write an essay "On the Misery of the Human Condition", De miseria humanae conditionis, which Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

 is reputed to have rendered in English, in a translation now lost. The theme had political ramifications within the Roman Church, as it was inextricably bound up with questions of apostolic poverty

Apostolic poverty

Apostolic poverty is a doctrine professed in the thirteenth century by the newly formed religious orders, known as the mendicant orders, in direct response to calls for reform in the Roman Catholic Church...

 which was roundly condemned, in the instance of the Humiliati

Humiliati

The Humiliati were an Italian religious order of men formed probably in the 12th century. It was suppressed by a Papal bull in 1571 though an associated order of women continued into the 20th century.-Origin:Its origin is obscure...

, as heretical

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

.

The waning of the dominant attitude of contemptus mundi that had informed elite culture, a development that gathered impetus during the second half of the 14th century, was a precursor to the emergence of the modern secular ethos, encouraging men to study material things with greater lucidity than before, as Georges Duby

Georges Duby

Georges Duby was a French historian specializing in the social and economic history of the Middle Ages...

 has observed, noting the turn taken in painting and sculpture toward the realistic

Realism

Realism, Realist or Realistic are terms that describe any manifestation of philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers, whether in philosophy itself or in the applied arts and sciences. In this broad sense it is frequently contrasted with Idealism.Realism in the...

 delineation of aspects of material life.

Early Modern culture

The theme of contemptus mundi continued to inform European poetry into the Early Modern period.Contemptus mundi is a running theme in the poetry of William Drummond of Hawthornden

William Drummond of Hawthornden

William Drummond , called "of Hawthornden", was a Scottish poet.-Life:Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian. His father, John Drummond, was the first laird of Hawthornden; and his mother was Susannah Fowler, sister of William Fowler, poet and courtier...

, and Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy The Anatomy of Melancholy The Anatomy of Melancholy (Full title: The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections...

wand the devotional verse of Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing...

 would serve as further examples. The recurrence of bubonic plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

 offered a concrete visitation of the frailty of this life for devotional texts, as early as John Donne

John Donne

John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

.

In modern times contemptus mundi has been criticized as a pastoral of fear by the historian Jean Delumeau

Jean Delumeau

Jean Delumeau is a French historian specializing in the Catholic church history and author of several books regarding the subject...

, and M. B. Pranger found the trope "Speaking of God after Auschwitz" to function as a "modern form of contemptus mundi".