10th century

“ If we could affix to each century as characteristic a presentment as those portraits do of the steel-clad hero of Towton, or the be-wigged, be-buckled courtier of George the Second, our object would be gained. We should see a whole history in a glance at a century’s face. If it were peculiarly marked by nature or accident, so much the more easy would it be to recognise the likeness. If the century was a warlike, quarrelsome century, and had scars across its brow ”

“ So far have we followed the memorable fifth century, the century, I repeat, in whose first years, if at any time, modern history begins, the century at whose end the existing nations of Europe are still not in being, but at whose beginning they have taken, so to speak, the first feeble steps towards coming into being. ”

“ If we accept the usual historical division which places the Middle Ages during the thousand years between the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Fifth Century and the fall of the Grecian Empire of Constantinople, about the middle of the Fifteenth, the Thirteenth Century must be considered the culmination of that middle age. It is three centuries before the Renaissance, and to most minds that magical word represents the beginning of all that is modern, and therefore all that is best, in the world. ”

“ Whatever the division in men's minds as to the relation between the close of the century and a race's history, and the precise moment at which the old century ends and the new begins, one thing in 1800 was radiantly clear to all men—the glory and the wonder, the endless peace and felicity not less endless, which the opening century and the new age dimly portended or securely promised to humanity. ”

“ If this suggestion is followed, the Hundred Years’ War and the history of the papacy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may serve to introduce the Renaissance if a discussion of the latter is preceded or followed by a general summary of the political situation in Europe at the opening of the sixteenth century, with special reference to those powers, both new and old, which are to dominate in the new period. ”

“ The sixteenth century cannot be compared with the nineteenth century in the variety and scope of scientific discoveries; but, compared with the ages which had preceded it, it was a memorable epoch, marked by the simultaneous breaking up of the darkness of mediaeval Europe, and the bursting forth of new energies in all departments of human thought and action. ”

“ My darlings, this morning we will glance at some of the relics of what was once called the 'Christian Era,' subsequently designated by historians as 'The Age of Blood and Malevolence,' but which is, nevertheless, always of importance in the world's library from its having been the first link in the long unbroken chain of eras of civilization. If time will permit we will take from the twenty-first century to the fifteenth. ”

“ Properly considered, the eighth century is the most important and memorable which Europe has ever seen. During its course the geographical limits, the ecclesiastical polity, and the feudal system within and under which our western group of nations was destined to live for five or six centuries, were provisionally settled and determined. ”

“ Walsh's book, The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, will startle many readers, but we respectfully commend to the open-minded his presentation of that great epoch. A century that witnessed such extraordinary achievements in architecture, in arts and crafts, in education, and in literature and law, as did the Thirteenth, is not to be lightly dismissed or unfavorably compared with periods nearer our own. ”

“ In the widespread shifting of levels which has taken place in the last hundred years, affecting directly and indirectly the moral progress of all classes of society, certain important elements have entered which cannot be overlooked in the present discussion, and which in future ages must stand as preëminently characteristic of the nineteenth century and the Anglo-Saxon ascendency. ”

“ Another instructive theme which this Institution proposes, on a future occasion, to embrace in its course of lectures, is the history of the 16th century. Passing over the Reformation—the great event certainly of this period—it was about this time that the struggles among the different nations of Europe gave rise, and by degrees gave consolidation, to the system of the balance of power. ”

“ Just as the history of the church and the world as a whole is distributed into ancient and modern, so the special history of the Germano-Roman world can and must be distributed into ancient and modern, the dividing boundary of which is the Reformation of the 16th century. ”

“ The sixteenth century was drawing to its close,—a century marked by the ravages of religious revolution, and destined to be for ever honoured or deplored according as men may think of it as the age of reformation or of decay. ”

“ It is dangerous to attempt to characterise the work of whole centuries in single phrases; but there are cases, and this seems to be one of them, where the progress of a movement can be marked out with approximate accuracy, and its stages defined, in such a way. The three centuries, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth, with which we have been principally occupied, had each its special form of contribution to the movement which we have called the Christian Renaissance. The fifteenth century was the age of collection: the documents were brought together, and the great libraries formed. ”

“ The centuries prior to the age of Gregory VII and of William the Conqueror may, on account of their disorder and ignorance, be properly called the "dark ages," although they beheld some important stages in the transformation of Europe. The later Middle Ages, on the contrary, were a time of rapid and unmistakable progress in almost every line of human endeavor. Indeed by the end of the thirteenth century a great part of those changes were well under way which serve to make modern Europe so different from the condition of western Europe under the Roman Empire. ”

“ The fifteenth century, the last century of an age, was a backwater in education as in literature. The great revival was to come. The fifteenth century was indeed a century of revolution in so far as under the almost placid surface of continuity and conformity, there were forces of revolt at work, probing, accumulating knowledge and experience, perhaps unconsciously, for the day of liberation and change. ”

“ In some cases, as in France, the change in institutions was immediate and sweeping; in others, as in Germany and Italy, the transformation was more gradual; but in all, the old state of things was doomed.
The thirty years or so just preceding the Revolution are those that most concern us in this study, though we shall often have occasion to look back to the early eighteenth century — and sometimes to the seventeenth.
To realize the conditions under which men lived in the eighteenth century is not easy. ”

“ The general characteristic features of each period are the same, although the provincial character sometimes seems to preponderate; the character of each century, at all events, is the same all over Europe, and may also be easily remembered, and as a matter of fact is never forgotten. ”

“ The noted historians of Europe, in describing the conditions, manners, politics, learning and culture, in all their aspects, of early, medieval and modern times, unanimously record that during the ten centuries constituting the Middle Ages, from the beginning of the sixth century of the Christian era till the close of the fifteenth, Europe was in every respect and to an extreme degree, barbaric and dark. ”

“ The middle of the sixteenth century in France is thus marked by a curious blend of those two distinct movements in human history which we call the Renaissance and the Reformation, and the blend is nowhere more picturesque than in the life of Robert Estienne. ”

“ But the eighteenth century, notwithstanding its nearness in time, and the immense mass of information that we have about it, appears strangely remote, separated from us as it is by the great gulf of the French Revolution. The century of which men still vigorous have known many living representatives impresses us as markedly different in temper and point of view from our own. ”

“ The sack of Rome in 410 shook the minds of men as if it were the end of all things. The fifth century was a time of ruin, but also it was a time of new beginnings. Three great events are to be noted in this fifth century: 1. The Western Empire came to an end; 2. The Franks passed over the Rhine into Gaul, and became Christian; 3. The Saxons passed over the 14sea to Britain, and remained heathen until the close of the sixth century. ”

“ If we consider the condition of England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the prevalence of abuses and corruption left by the ignorance or vice of preceding years, and reflect at the same time upon the progressive nature of the people, the practical habit of their minds, and the moral earnestness which they never wholly lost, it is not surprising to find that the century is one of reforms. ”

“ And then those years have comprised the best part of the nineteenth century—a century during which change has been more rapidly at work among all the surroundings of Englishmen than probably during any other century of which social history has to tell. ”

“ The eighteenth century wrought a vast transformation in England, though, owing to the lack of startling events on English soil, the casual reader of English social history too often thinks of the eighteenth century as a time of stagnation. ”

“ It has been said that the seventeenth century saw Versailles; the eighteenth century saw the Earth; and the nineteenth century saw Humanity. Then the very pertinent question is asked, “Which century will see Life?” ”

“ And let those who think the twelfth century too late an age to be interesting, who wish for the law of more primitive times, consider how sound a base for their studies these records are. If once we were certain of our twelfth century we might understand Domesday, if once we understood the state of England on the day when the Confessor was alive and dead, then we might turn with new hopes of success to the Anglo-Saxon dooms and land-books. ”

“ Pre-Renaissance Period: Incidental historical study made in connection with the study of biography and literature.
2. Renaissance Period: Historical studies pursued as auxiliary to the interpretation of the classics.
3. Post-Renaissance Period in Europe.
(a) Heraldry and local, contemporary historical incidents and events taught in Ritterakedemien after 1648.
(b) In Germany, the systematic study of history in schools really dates from about 1806, though an independent status was given history in the universities (particularly in Göttingen) in the 18th century. ”

“ No century had ever witnessed so great a change in manners and position as this. In others we have seen a gradual widening-out of thought and tendencies, all, however, subdued by the universal shadow in which every thing was carried on. But in this the progress was by a sudden leap from darkness into light. In ancient times Europe was held together by certain communities of interest and feeling, of which the chief undoubtedly was the centralization of the spiritual power in Rome. ”

“ For the thirteenth century, while it belongs chronologically to mediæval times, seems nearer in spirit to the Renaissance--shows more of the travail of the birth of our modern mind and life--than the fourteenth, and even more than the greater part of the years of the fifteenth century. ”

“ We take up the story in the early years of the tenth century, when the Dark Ages had not yet run their course. We end it in the closing years of the thirteenth century, when the choicest flowers of mediæval civilisation were already in full bloom. ”

“ As the story of these travels and explorations is really a glorious chapter in the history of the encouragement of things intellectual, as well as an interesting phase of an important origin whose foundations were laid broad and deep in the Thirteenth Century, it must be told here in some detail. Our century was the great leader in exploration and geography as in so many other matters in which its true place is often unrecognized. ”

“ The Revolution which had so lately preceded the opening of the century, and the far more pregnant and eventful Revolution which convulsed Europe at its close, had both of them many bearings, though of course in very different ways, upon the development of religious and ecclesiastical thought in this country. ”

“ For if we omit the Dark Ages, and, turning suddenly from the civilization of classical Greece and Rome, raise the curtain on, say, thirteenth-century England, we are struck by a remarkable transformation. An attempt has been made in previous chapters to trace the general changes of meaning in certain key-words of human thought and feeling, such as God and love, life and death, heaven and hell,... When we reach medieval Europe, it is necessary to add a new class of key-word altogether. ”

“ The first half of the seventeenth century as a whole, compared with the Elizabethan age, was a period of relaxing vigor. The Renaissance enthusiasm had spent itself, and in place of the danger and glory which had long united the nation there followed increasing dissension in religion and politics and uncertainty as to the future of England and, indeed, as to the whole purpose of life. ”

“ Yet the thirteenth century does not only illustrate the crowning glories of the Middle Ages: it suggests new modes of thought that indicate that the Middle Ages themselves are passing away. The triumph of the Church bore 8with it the seeds of its own ruin, in the world of thought as well as in the world of action. ”