History of Political Ideas (CW21) : University of Missouri Press : 9780826211545 : 0826211542 : 31 May 1998 : In The Later Middle Ages, the third volume of his monumental History of Political Ideas, Eric Voegelin continues his exploration of one of the most crucial periods in the history of political thought. Illuminating the great figures of the high Middle Ages, Voegelin traces the historical momentum of our modern world in the core evocative symbols that constituted medieval civilization. These symbols revolved around the enduring aspiration for the sacrum imperium, the one order capable of embracing the transcendent and immanent, the ecclesiastical and political, the divine and human. The story of the later Middle Ages is that of the "civilizational schism"&;the movement in which not only the reality but the aspiration for the sacrum imperium gradually disappeared and the unification of faith and reason dissolved. His recognition of this civilizational schism provides Voegelin wit