It’s called Christendom. It was the child of the Catholic Church.
In every material way, it was far poorer than we are today.
And yet it produced beauty on a scale we can barely imagine. Indeed, we still take many of our vacations to see it.
Why? Because for all its flaws, it was oriented to God.
We are not. We are oriented to ourselves. Even many of the popular forms of Christianity have largely been reduced to therapeutic psycho babble that can barely stand to hear the testimony of their ancestors, which uniformly speak of a far more intense and sacrificial faith than the one they have concocted for themselves.
A faith that—as the cathedrals testify—despite having far less in material wealth, nonetheless produced far more beauty.