James Harvey Robinson

“ To Luther, on the other hand, man was utterly corrupt, and incapable of a single righteous wish or deed. His will was enslaved to evil, and his only hope lay in the recognition of his absolute inability to better himself, and in a humble reliance upon God's mercy. By faith only, not by conduct, could he be saved. Erasmus was willing to wait until every one agreed that the Church should be reformed. Luther had no patience with an institution which seemed to him to be leading souls to destruction by inducing men to rely upon their good works. ”

“ The Capetian territory bristled with hostile castles, permanent obstacles to commerce between the larger towns and intolerable plagues to the country people. In short, the king of France, in spite of the dignity of his title, no longer dared to move about his own narrow domain. He to whom the most powerful lords owed homage could not venture out of Paris without encountering fortresses constructed by noble brigands, who were the terror alike of priest, merchant, and laborer. Without money or soldiers, royalty vegetated within its diminished patrimony. ”

“ When the traveler in France or Germany comes upon the picturesque ruins of a mediæval castle, perched upon some rocky cliff, accessible from one side only, and commanding the surrounding country, he cannot but see that those massive walls, with their towers and battlements, their moat and drawbridge, were never intended as a dwelling place for the peaceful household of a private citizen, but rather as the fortified palace of a ruler. ”

“ In the first place, a king always retained some of his ancient majesty. He might be weak and without the means to enforce his rights and to compel his more powerful subjects to meet their obligations toward him. Yet he was, after all, the king, solemnly anointed by the Church as God's representative on earth. He was always something more than a feudal lord. The kings were destined to get the upper hand before many centuries in England, France, and Spain, and finally in Italy and Germany, and to destroy the castles behind whose walls their haughty nobles had long defied the royal power. ”

“ His marvelous court at Versailles became the model and the despair of other less opulent and powerful princes, who accepted his theory of the absolute power of kings but could not afford to imitate his luxury. By his incessant wars of aggression he kept Europe in turmoil for over half a century. The distinguished generals who led his newly organized troops, and the wily diplomats who arranged his alliances and negotiated his treaties, made France feared and respected by even the most powerful of the other European states. ”

“ Maria Theresa's ambassador at Paris was so skillful in his negotiations with the French court that in 1756 he induced it, in spite of its two hundred years of hostility to the house of Hapsburg, to enter into an alliance with Austria against Prussia. Russia, Sweden, and Saxony also agreed to join in a concerted attack on Prussia. Their armies, coming as they did from every point of the compass, threatened the complete annihilation of Austria's rival. It seemed as if the new kingdom of Prussia might disappear altogether from the map of Europe. ”

“ For seven hundred years no one in Italy has known Greek literature, and yet we agree that all language comes from the Greeks. How greatly would familiarity with that language advantage thee in promoting thy knowledge and in the mere increase of thy pleasure? There are teachers of Roman law to be found everywhere, and thou wilt never want an opportunity to continue that study, but there is but one teacher of Greek, and if he escapes thee there will be no one from whom thou canst learn. ”

“ No one should flatter himself that he has grasped the elements of the history of western Europe unless he can trace in a clear, if general, way the various stages by which the states which appear now upon the map of Europe—the French republic, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the kingdoms of Italy, Great Britain, and Spain—have grown out of the disorganized Europe of the ninth century. ”

“ While Voltaire was successfully inculcating free criticism in general, he led in a relentless attack upon the most venerable, probably the most powerful, institution in France, the Roman Catholic church. The absolute power of the king did not greatly trouble him, but the church, with, as he deemed, its deep-seated opposition to a free exercise of reason and its hostility to reform, seemed to him fatally to block all human progress. ”

“ How great a blessing after the anarchy of the past to put all responsibility upon one who showed himself capable of concluding a long war with unprecedented glory for France and of reëstablishing order and the security of person and property, the necessary conditions for renewed prosperity! How natural that the French should welcome a despotism to which they had been accustomed for centuries, after suffering as they had under nominally republican institutions! ”

“ Now, every nation of Europe has an extensive literature in its own particular tongue, which all can read. Besides admirable translations of all the works of antiquity, there are innumerable masterpieces, like those of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Goethe, which were unheard of four centuries ago. Consequently we can now acquaint ourselves with a great part of the best that has been written in all ages without knowing either Latin or Greek. The Middle Ages enjoyed no such advantage. ”

“ To those who later outgrew the fondness for logic and the supreme respect for Aristotle, scholasticism, with its neglect of Greek and Roman literature, came to seem an arid and profitless plan of education. Yet if we turn over the pages of the wonderful works of Thomas Aquinas, we see that the scholastic philosopher might be a person of extraordinary insight and erudition, ready to recognize all the objections to his position, and able to express himself with great clearness and cogency. ”

“ This responsibility and the weight of the taxes themselves ruined so many landowners that the government was forced to decree that no one should desert his estates in order to escape the exactions. Only the very rich could stand the drain on their resources. The middle class sank into poverty and despair, and in this way the Empire lost just that prosperous class of citizens who should have been the leaders in business enterprises. ”

“ No sooner had Pippin recrossed the Alps than the Lombard king, ever anxious to add Rome to his possessions, again invested the Eternal City. Pope Stephen's letters to the king of the Franks at this juncture are characteristic of the time. The pope warmly argues that Pippin owes all his victories to St. Peter and should now hasten to the relief of his successor. If the king permits the city of the prince of the apostles to be lacerated and tormented by the Lombards, his own soul will be lacerated and tormented in hell by the devil and his pestilential angels. ”

“ Popular discontent, not the exceptionally miserable condition of the French people, accounts for the Revolution.
The real reason why France was the first among the European countries to carry out a great reform and do away with the irritating survivals of feudalism was not that the nation was miserable and oppressed above all others, but that it was sufficiently free and enlightened to realize the evils and absurdities of the old régime. Mere oppression and misery does not account for a revolution, there must also be active discontent ”

“ We gain practically nothing from the mere enumeration of events and dates. The student of history wishes to know how people lived; what were their institutions (which are really only the habits of nations) , their occupations, interests, and achievements; how business was transacted in the Middle Ages almost without the aid of money; how, later, commerce increased and industry grew up; what a great part the Christian church played in society; how the monks lived and what they did for mankind. ”

“ The French prefaced their first constitution by the memorable words: "All citizens being equal before the law, are alike eligible to all public offices and positions of honor and trust, according to their capacity, and without any distinction, except that of their character and ability." This principle, so different from that which had hitherto prevailed, has been recognized in most of the modern European constitutions. The privileges and exceptions which everywhere existed before the French Revolution have been abolished. ”

“ The Roman Empire, which embraced southern and western Europe, western Asia, and even the northern portion of Africa, included the most diverse peoples and races. Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Germans, Gauls, Britons, Iberians,—all alike were under the sovereign rule of Rome. One great state embraced the nomad shepherds who spread their tents on the borders of Sahara, the mountaineers in the fastnesses of Wales, and the citizens of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, heirs to all the luxury and learning of the ages. ”

“ Before the time of Mohammed the Arabs had played no important part in the world's history. The scattered tribes were at war with one another, and each worshiped its own gods, when it worshiped at all. But when the peoples of the desert accepted Mohammed as their prophet and his religion as theirs, they became an irresistible force for the dissemination of the new teaching and for the subjugation of the world. ”

“ During the last four years of Mary's reign the most serious religious persecution in English history occurred. No less than 277 persons were put to death for denying the teachings of the Roman Church. The majority of the victims were humble artisans and husbandmen. The two most notable sufferers were Bishops Latimer and Ridley, who were burned in Oxford. Latimer cried to his fellow-martyr in the flames: "Be of good cheer and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England as shall never be put out!"
Mary's failure to restore the Catholic religion in England. ”