Contemptus Mundi
The Waning Contempt for the Folly of Material Life
Contemptus Mundi, “the contempt of the world” was an essential part of the ancient and medieval European worldview. The “world” is the realm of the material body and senses, the realm of the temporary and the limited. The body is limited by its inevitable death, and the senses are limited by the inability of sensual pleasure to bring peace or satisfaction. Contempt for the world doesn’t mean avoiding the fulfillment of material duties and desires – no one can escape that. It means refusing that the demands of the temporary drown out our aspirations for the eternal. It can be found in the ancient Stoic ideal of ataraxia – a mind that is undisturbed by the demands of the world and the senses. It was a mainstay of the intellectual life of Medieval Christian Europe, and formed an essential part of the education of the elite of society, including those who will occupy positions of great material power and responsibility. The “Auctores octo morales” were eight Latin textbooks used extensively as the foundation of most medieval educations. One of those eight textbooks was Bernard of Cluny’s “De Contempto Mundi” (On the Contempt of the World) a 12 century satirical poem in which the author bitterly criticizes the folly of materialistic people, points out hypocrisy in the church and exalts the charm of virtue and the sweetness of a God fearing life. By the late 15th century, the dawn of the modern world had come, and contemptus mundi waned as a dominant influence in elite culture, ushering in an era in which those with the privilege of wealth, power and education would turn their total attention to the realm of the temporary, first to study it as scientists, and later to master it as techno-industrialists. A few centuries later, the very notion of the eternal is considered ridiculous, only of interest to uneducated sentimentalists.
ā-brahma-bhuvanāl lokāḥ
punar āvartino ‘rjuna
mām upetya tu kaunteya
punar janma na vidyate
From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kuntī, never takes birth again. (Bg 8.16)