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EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES BY IERNE L. PLUNKET M.A. Oxon. AUTHOR OF ‘THE FALL OF THE OLD ORDER’, ‘ISABEL OF CASTILE’, ETC. OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1922 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai HUMPHREY MILFORD Publisher to the University Printed in England...
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PREFACE
PREFACE
The history of Mediaeval Europe is so vast a subject that the attempt to deal with it in a small compass must entail either severe compression or what may appear at first sight reckless omission. The path of compression has been trodden many times, as in J. H. Robinson’s Introduction to the History of Western Europe , or in such series as the ‘Periods of European History’ published by Messrs. Rivingtons for students, or text-books of European History published by the Clarendon Press and Messrs.
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I THE GREATNESS OF ROME
I THE GREATNESS OF ROME
‘ Ave, Roma Immortalis! ’, ‘ Hail, Immortal Rome! ’ This cry, breaking from the lips of a race that had carried the imperial eagles from the northern shores of Europe to Asia and Africa, was no mere patriotic catchword. It was the expression of a belief that, though humanity must die and personal ambitions fade away, yet Rome herself was eternal and unconquerable, and what was wrought in her name would outlast the ages. In the modern world it is sometimes necessary to remind people of their citi
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II THE DECLINE OF ROME
II THE DECLINE OF ROME
The years of Rome’s greatness seemed to her sons an age of gold, but even at the height of her prosperity there were traces of the evils that brought about her downfall. An autocracy, that is, the rule of one man, might be a perfect form of government were the autocrat not a man but a god, thus combining superhuman goodness and understanding with absolute power. Unfortunately, Roman emperors were representatives of human nature in all its phases. Some, like Augustus, were great rulers; others, t
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III THE DAWN OF CHRISTIANITY
III THE DAWN OF CHRISTIANITY
When Augustus became Emperor of Rome, Jesus Christ was not yet born. With the exception of the Jews, who believed in the one Almighty ‘Jehovah’, most of the races within the boundaries of the Empire worshipped a number of gods; and these, according to popular tales, were no better than the men and women who burned incense at their altars, but differed from them only in being immortal, and because they could yield to their passions and desires with greater success. The Roman god ‘Juppiter’, who w
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IV CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
IV CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
Constantine the Great was born at a time when the Empire was divided up between different emperors. His father, Constantius Chlorus, ruled over Spain, Gaul, and Britain; and when he died at York in A.D. 306, Constantine his eldest son succeeded to the government of these provinces. The new Emperor, who was thirty-two years old, had been bred in the school of war. He was handsome, brave, and capable, and knew how to make himself popular with the legions under his command without losing his dignit
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VI THE RISE OF THE FRANKS
VI THE RISE OF THE FRANKS
The historian Tacitus, whose description of the German tribes we have already quoted, had told the people of Gaul that, unless these same Germans were kept at bay by the Roman armies on the Rhine frontier, they would ‘exchange the solitude of their woods and morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul’. ‘The fall of Rome,’ he added, ‘would be fatal to the provinces, and you would be buried in the ruins of that mighty fabric.’ This prophetic warning proved only too true when Vandal and Visigoth
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VII MAHOMET
VII MAHOMET
Christianity, first preached by humble fishermen in Palestine, had become the foundation of life in mediaeval Europe. Some three hundred years after Constantine the Great had made this possible another religion, ‘Islam’, destined to be the rival of Christianity, was also born in the East, in Arabia, a narrow strip of territory lying between the Red Sea and miles of uninhabitable desert. On the sea-coast of Arabia were some harbours, inland a few fertile oases, where towns of low, white stone hou
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
At the death of Charlemagne the Empire that he had built up stretched from Denmark to the Pyrenees and the Duchy of Spoletum south of Rome, from the Atlantic on the West to the Baltic, Bohemia, and the Dalmatian coast. It had been a brave attempt to realize the old Roman ideal of all civilized Europe gathered under one ruler; but he himself was well aware that the foundations he had laid were weak, his own personality that must vanish the mortar holding them together. Without his genius and the
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Feudalism
Feudalism
Wherever in the course of history men have gathered together they have gradually evolved some form of association that would ensure mutual interests. It might be merely the tribal bond of the Arabians, by which a man’s relations were responsible for his acts and avenged his wrongs; it might be a council of village elders such as the Russian ‘Mir’, making laws for the younger men and women; it might be a group of German chiefs legislating on moonlit nights, according to the description of Tacitus
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Monasticism
Monasticism
If the study of feudalism is necessary to a knowledge of the material life of the Middle Ages, its spirit is equally a closed book without an understanding of monasticism. What induced men and women, not just a few devout souls, but thousands of ordinary people of all nations and classes from the prince to the serf to forsake the world for the cloister; and, far from regretting this sacrifice, to maintain with obvious sincerity that they had chosen the better part? If we would realize the mediae
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XII THE EARLY CRUSADES
XII THE EARLY CRUSADES
The imperial standards of Constantinople were designed with a two-headed eagle typifying Constantine’s rule over the kingdoms of East and West. Towards the end of the eleventh century this emblem had become more symbolic of the Emperor’s anxious outlook upon hostile neighbours. With Asia Minor practically lost by the establishment of a Mahometan dynasty at Nicea within one hundred miles of the Christian capital, with the Bulgarians at the gates of Adrianople, and the Normans and the Popes in pos
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
When the Emperor Henry IV crossed the ice-bound Alps on his journey of submission to Canossa he was accompanied by a faithful knight, Frederick of Buren, whom he later rewarded for his loyalty with the hand of his daughter and the title Duke of Suabia. Frederick’s son was elected Emperor as Conrad III, 17 the first of the imperial line of Hohenstaufen that was destined to carry on through several generations the war between Empire and Papacy. The Hohenstaufen received their name from a hill on w
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XV LEARNING AND ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
XV LEARNING AND ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The word ‘progress’ implies to modern men and women a moving forward towards a perfection as yet unknown, freshly imagined indeed by each generation: to the Middle Ages it meant rather a peering back through the mist of barbarian invasions to an idealized Christian Rome. Inspiration lay in the past, not merely in such political conceptions as the Holy Roman Empire, but in the domain of art and thought, where too often tradition laid her choking grip upon originality struggling for expression. Th
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
We have seen that Philip Augustus laid the foundations of a strong French monarchy, but his death was followed by feudal reaction, the nobles struggling in every way by fraud or violence to recover the independence that they had lost. Louis VIII, the new king, in order to checkmate their designs, determined to divide his lands amongst his sons, all the younger paying allegiance to the eldest, but each directly responsible for the administration of his own province. Perhaps at the time this was t
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
During fourteen years, from 1314 to 1328, three sons of Philip IV reigned in rapid succession; but with the death of the last the main line of the House of Capet came to an end, and the crown passed to his nephew and namesake Philip of Valois. 26 The latter declared that his claims were based on a clause of the old Salic Law 27 forbidding a woman to inherit landed property, because as it happened Philip IV had left a daughter Isabel, who had married Edward II of England, and their son Edward III
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Spain has been rightly described as ‘one of the most cut up portions of the earth’s surface’. A glance at her map will show the numerous mountain ranges that pierce into the heart of the country, dividing her into districts utterly unlike both in climate and soil. Even rivers that elsewhere in Europe, as in the case of the Rhine and the Danube, act as roads of friendship and commerce, are in Spain for the most part unnavigable, running in wild torrents between precipitous banks so as to form an
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
The accession of Rudolf of Habsburg 38 as King of the Romans in 1273 is a turning-point in the history of mediaeval Germany. Hitherto private or imperial ambitions had prevented even well-intentioned emperors from exerting their full strength against anarchy at home; while a few like Frederick II had deliberately ignored German interests. The result had been a steady process of disintegration, perpetuating racial and class feuds; but now at last the tradition was broken and an Emperor chosen who
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
One short period of glory there was in seventy years of gloom—the realized vision of a Roman, Cola di Rienzi, a youth of the people, who, steeped in the writings of classical times, hoped to bring back to the city the freedom and greatness of republican days. From contemporary accounts Rienzi had a wonderful personality, striking looks, and an eloquence that rarely failed to move those who heard him. At Avignon, as a Roman envoy, he gained papal consent to some measures earnestly desired at Rome
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
The final failure of Christendom to preserve Eastern Europe from the infidel may be traced back to the disastrous Fourth Crusade 48 in the thirteenth century, when Venice, for purely selfish reasons, drove out the Greek rulers of Constantinople, and helped to establish a Latin or Frankish Empire. This Empire lasted for fifty-seven years, weak in its foundation, and growing ever weaker like a badly built house, ready to tumble to the ground at the first tempest. It pretended to embrace all the te
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PART II. VOYAGE AND DISCOVERY
PART II. VOYAGE AND DISCOVERY
All through the Middle Ages it had been to the cities of the Mediterranean, first of all to Amalfi and Pisa, then to Marseilles, Barcelona, Genoa, and Venice, that Europe had turned as her obvious medium of communication with the East and all its fabulous wonders. In the thirteenth century a Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, setting forth with his father and uncle, had visited the kingdom of Cathay, or China, and brought back twenty years later not only marvellous tales of the court of Khubla Khan
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Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.
All history is the record of change, either in the direction of social progress or decay; but so gradual is this movement that, like the transition from night to dawn or noon to evening, it is beyond our vision to state the moment when tendencies began or ceased. It is only possible to note the definite changes in their achievement, and then to disentangle the threads by turning back along the twisted chain into which they have been woven. Sometimes in history there have been so many changes wit
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SOME AUTHORITIES ON MEDIAEVAL HISTORY
SOME AUTHORITIES ON MEDIAEVAL HISTORY
Periods of European History. The Dark Ages. C. W. Oman. The Empire and Papacy. T. F. Tout. The Close of the Middle Ages. R. Lodge. Text-Books of European History. Mediaeval Europe. K. Bell. The Renaissance and the Reformation. E. M. Tanner. Epochs of Modern History. The Beginning of the Middle Ages. R. Church. The Normans in Europe. A. H. Johnson. The Crusades. G. W. Cox. Edward III. W. Warburton. Home University Library. Mohammedanism. D. S. Margoliouth. Mediaeval Europe.
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Chronological Summary, 476–1494
Chronological Summary, 476–1494
The Second House of Anjou In Naples * Réné le Bon disinherited his grandson Réné Duke of Lorraine and left his claims to Naples to his nephew Charles—with remainder to the French Crown. In this way Charles VIII was enabled to claim the Neapolitan throne....
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5. The Norman Rulers of Sicily
5. The Norman Rulers of Sicily
The Second House of Anjou In Naples * Réné le Bon disinherited his grandson Réné Duke of Lorraine and left his claims to Naples to his nephew Charles—with remainder to the French Crown. In this way Charles VIII was enabled to claim the Neapolitan throne....
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12. The Paleologi
12. The Paleologi
1 See p. 41 . 2 See p. 43 . 3 See p. 62 . 4 See p. 48 . 5 See Genealogy, p. 377 . 6 See p. 85 . 7 See p. 16 . 8 See p. 95 . 9 See p. 103 . 10 See p. 120 . 11 See p. 115 . 12 See p. 77 . 13 See p. 45 . 14 See p. 143 . 15 See p. 131 . 16 See p. 122 . 17 See p. 152 . 18 See p. 154 . 19 See p. 169 . 20 See p. 115 . 21 See p. 49 . 22 See p. 164 . 23 See p. 199 . 24 See p. 194 . 25 See p. 195 . 26 See Genealogical Table, p. 378 . 27 See p. 55 . 28 The province of Dauphiné,
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