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In "Decline of the West", Oswald Spengler described the first centuries CE as an age of "second religiousness". The term can refer to a whole plethora of phenomena: from the rise of universal redemptory religions like Christianity and Manichaeism (as compared to the pragmatic cults of the Classical period) over ascetic and proto-monastic (hermits) lifestyle ideals (as compared to an allegedly more hedonistic and materialistic age preceding them) to a contemplative tendency in philosophy (Stoa, Neoplatonism)

1.) Was there really such a trend?
2.) If so, then what could have stopped or substituted this development?
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