Medieval history

“ If his reign marks the dividing line between ancient and medieval history, it is not only by virtue of its political facts but also because it begins the age of the education of the northern races, fitting them in time to rule the world as the Romans had done before them. ”

“ But my friend says, exaggeration is no argument, an answer which, by-the-by, may tell either way: ancient, and modern and medieval history, as you call them, have the same subject-matter, they are connected by certain visible and tangible lines of recorded fact, and they are, as yourself admit, acts of one great drama. ”

“ This triumph of the common people over a reigning monarch is one of the most striking passages in medieval history. It comes about a half century after the close of the Thirteenth, and is evidently the direct result of the great practical forces that were set in movement during that wonderful period, when the mighty heart of humanity was everywhere bestirring men to deeds of high purpose and far-reaching significance. ”

“ It is no paradox to say that Modern History, including Medieval History in the term, is co-extensive in its field of view, in its habits of criticism, in the persons of its most famous students, with Ecclesiastical History. ”

“ The ideas of medieval and modern life are of medieval and modern growth, or if connected with antiquity, connected by a new birth of culture, a re-discovery, a re-creation, not a continuous impulse of vitality. ”

“ One of the largest and plainest facts of medieval history is the change of literature in the twelfth century, and the sudden and exuberant growth and progress of a number of new poetical forms; particularly the courtly lyric that took shape in Provence, and passed into the tongues of Italy, France, and Germany, and the French romance which obeyed the same general inspiration as the Provençal poetry, and was equally powerful as an influence on foreign nations. ”

“ The vital interest of Medieval and Modern History lies in England, France and Germany, as certainly as that of the ancient lies in the East, in Greece and Italy; no small part of that of the future lies in the further Western world. The actors in the medieval and modern drama are the new nations, nations that were unheard of before the decline of the Roman empire began, and which inherited from the civilisation of that empire only the ecclesiastical culture, not the political system, or even the political map, which that system had laid out. ”

“ The history of French civilization of the fifteenth century, on the contrary, does not permit us to forget the Middle Ages. France had been the mother-land of all that was strongest and most beautiful in the products of the medieval spirit. All medieval forms—feudalism, the ideas of chivalry and courtesy, scholasticism, Gothic architecture—were rooted here much more firmly than ever they had been in Italy. ”

“ MEANING OF THE RENAISSANCE LATER PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE AGES The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, covering the later period of the Middle Ages, are commonly known as those of the Renaissance. This French word means Rebirth or Revival. It is a convenient term for all the changes in society, law, and government, in science, philosophy, and religion, in literature and art which gradually transformed medieval civilization into that of modern times. ”

“ It is one of the most striking characteristics of our day that in it alone, of all periods of the world’s history, the arts of all preceding times are studied and their history understood; and strange would it be if, while traversing every land to glean vestiges of its bygone arts, we should neglect to acquaint ourselves with that noble style which prevailed among our own forefathers, and whose glorious monuments surround us on every side. ”

“ The history of medieval thought falls naturally into two broad divisions, each of which is brought to a close not by the creation of a new method or system from native resources, but by the introduction of fresh materials for study from without. ”

“ Modern History tells how the last four hundred years have modified the medieval conditions of life and thought. In comparison with them, the Middle Ages were the domain of stability, and continuity, and instinctive evolution, seldom interrupted by such originators as Gregory VII. or St. Francis of Assisi. Ignorant of History, they allowed themselves to be governed by the unknown Past; ignorant of Science, they never believed in hidden forces working onwards to a happier future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But once again it is here the preparatory stages with which we deal: the full process in English history, for instance, belongs to a later volume where William the Conqueror and his Domesday Book give us firmer ground for a new starting-point. But if it is more difficult, it is as essential, to study the stages of the more elusive preparation. It is the meeting-ground of old and new: the history in which the new, with toil and effort, with discipline and and suffering, grows stronger and richer as it masters the old and is mastered by it. ”

“ They were the first great effort of medieval life to go beyond the pursuit of selfish and isolated ambitions; they were the trial-feat of the young world, essaying to use, to the glory of God and the benefit of man, the arms of its new knighthood. ”

“ Pauli's History of the Present Century, of which the third volume has just appeared, furnishing by far the most accurate and well-proportioned view of recent history, and anticipating, I do not question it, most of the conclusions of the next generation, as to the great men and great events on which we have looked too closely to see them in their due proportion and relations. There is scarcely a nook of our ancient and medieval history which the Germans are not now exploring. ”

“ England, France, Germany, the East, regions that have but a shadowy existence in the background of the pictures in which living Egypt, Rome, and Asia stand before us, after thousands of years of death, in the bright colouring and lifelike grouping of yesterday; these are the area in which the modern historian seeks and finds the interests of his pursuit. ”

“ If their histories were to have any life at all, it must be the life of the drama or the dramatic narrative, and not that of the philosophical history, or even of those medieval chronicles, which, however unphilosophical, are still obliged by the greatness of their subject to dwarf the individual actors in comparison with the greatness of Kingdoms, Church, and Empire. ”

“ We see everywhere, in fact, signs of the great contest which in one form or another runs through the whole of the twelfth century, and gives its main interest in our eyes to the English history of the time,—the struggle between the iron organization of medieval feudalism and those nascent forces of modern civilization which were fated in the end to shatter and supersede it. ”

“ The peoples of medieval Europe owed much to the courage and martial spirit, the genius for government, and the reverence for law, of the Normans. In one of the most significant movements of the Middle Ages—the crusades—they took a prominent part. ”

“ It was not history alone, but theology and science also, that languished under the sudden revival of classical learning; men lost themselves in the history of early Rome who might have told us something worth knowing about their own England ”

“ It needed much to free the flame of intelligence from the heaps of medieval antiquities accumulated for centuries by the learned, and the Middle Ages were abhorred during the Renaissance, even when they were investigated. ”

“ The history of the medieval cities offers one of the most striking illustrations of the power of ideas and principles upon the destinies of mankind, and of the quite opposed results which are obtained when a deep modification of leading ideas has taken place. ”

“ It is impossible to condense into a few sentences the extremely varied history of the processes of transformation undergone by the medieval drama in Europe during the two centuries—from about 1200 to about 1400—in which it ran a course of its own, and during the succeeding period, Progress of the medieval drama in Europe.in which it was only partially affected by the influence of the Renaissance. ”

“ New chapters have been added, especially the fine chapter on the theory of the medieval empire; a profounder learning has given a new substance, and a deeper understanding has informed the whole theme. ”

“ No doubt it is not meant to imply that what we call the Middle Ages is to be ignored. But it inevitably tends to stifle a belief in historical continuity, a faith in which is the soul of historical inquiry as generally understood in the present day. That modern labour-conditions shew a powerful reaction against medieval, is obvious: that medieval conditions have not influenced the modes of this reaction, is to me incredible. ”

“ Too many people still think that the Middle Ages are merely a stagnant pit which lies between the heights of classical and of Renaissance civilization, and that all our legacy from the past was carried over the bridges which Renaissance thinkers threw across the medieval pit to the firm ground of Graeco-Roman learning. ”

“ He does not hesitate to attribute a great many marvelous happenings to practically the same forces as the medieval people formulated for them, though they would disagree utterly in the purposes attributed to these events. ”

“ They would find their lives rather limited and unsatisfactory if they could do none of these things, and yet the basic idea of every one of these activities was worked out in the Middle Ages and not in ancient Greece or Rome. Our civilization has roots in the Middle Ages as well as in the classical period, and the medieval roots often contribute more nourishment than the classical ones. The story of medieval civilization is worth knowing, and it is that story which is told, in its barest outlines, in this book. ”

“ We appraise them rather by their most heroic exploits and their most enduring work. We must apply the same test to the medieval nations; we must judge of them by their philosophy and law, by their poetry and architecture, by the examples that they afford of statesmanship and saintship. In these fields we shall not find that we are dealing with the spasmodic and irreflective heroisms which illuminate a barbarous age. ”

“ Go where we will throughout England, there is no spot which is not bound up with our history. Nameless barrows, ruined castles, battlefields now reaped by the sickle instead of the sword, all proclaim the changes our country has undergone. ”

“ Why was classic literature utterly neglected? Why did no great scholars arise, even in the Church? The new races looked in vain for benefactors. Even the souvenirs of the old Empire were lost. Nearly all the records of ancient greatness perished. The old cities were levelled to the ground. Nothing was built but monasteries, and these were as gloomy as feudal castles at a later date. The churches were heavy and mournful. Good men hid themselves, trying to escape from the miserable world, and sang monotonous chants of death and the grave. ”

“ The highest medieval achievements are the fruit of deep reflection, of persevering and concentrated effort, of a self forgetting self in the service of humanity and God. In other words, they spring from the soil, and have ripened in the atmosphere, of a civilised society. ”

“ The great fact of all modern history is the breaking up of the feudal and ecclesiastical system of the middle ages, and the introduction, as political and social elements of weight, of the middle and industrial classes. ”

“ The life of an heroic age—that is, of an older stage of civilisation than the common European medieval form—was interpreted and represented by the men of that age themselves with a clearness of understanding that appears to be quite unaffected by the common medieval fallacies and "idolisms." ”

“ You gaze upon arms and relics which figured in all the battles and pilgrimages, the desperate strifes and extravagant pageants of our ancestors; you behold things which link your fancies to all the romantic ages of European history. You forget the present; and exist amid forests, the stern strength of castles and the venerable quiet of convents. You are ready to listen to the distant bell of the abbey; for news of the crusaders; you expect as you ride through the woods, to stumble upon the abode of the hermit. ”

“ The historian may busy himself deciphering hieroglyphics on an Egyptian obelisk, describing a mediæval monastery, enumerating the Mongol emperors of Hindustan or the battles of Napoleon. He may explain how the Roman Empire was conquered by the German barbarians, or why the United States and Spain came to blows in 1898, or what Calvin thought of Luther, or what a French peasant had to eat in the eighteenth century. We can know something of each of these matters if we choose to examine the evidence which still exists; they all help to make up history. ”

“ But at present the people are medieval, not only in their system of government and their religion, their inquisition, their witchcraft, their incantations, their ordeals by fire and boiling oil, but in every aspect of their daily life. ”