"Said Clement of Alexandria:-'The use of all that is in the world ought to be common to all men. But by injustice one man has called this his own, another that. So has come division among men.'

"Jerome held all profit unjust. Augustine considered all 'business' evil, as 'turning men from seeking true rest, which is God.'

"Pope Leo I had rejected these extreme doctrines but the mood of the Church continued unsympathetic to commerce, suspicious of all speculation and profit, hostile to all 'engrossing,' 'forestalling,' and 'usury' -- by which last term the Middle Ages meant any interest charge whatever.

"Said Ambrose:-'Usury is whatever is added to the capital' and Gratian embodied this blunt definition in the canon law of the Church.

"The councils of Nicaea (325), Orleans (538), Macon (585), and Clichy (626) had forbidden the clergy to lend money for gain.

"The capitularies of Charlesmagne for 789 and the Church councils of the ninth century, extended the prohibition to laymen. The revival of Roman law in the twelfth century emboldened Irnerius and the 'glossators' of Bologna to defend interest and they were able to quote Justinian's Code in its behalf.

"But the Third Council of the Lateran (1179) renewed the prohibition and decreed 'that manifest usurers shall not be admitted to communion, nor, if they die in sin, to Christian burial. No priest shall accept their alms.

"Innocent III must have taken a more lenient view. In 1206 he advised that in certain cases a dowry 'should be committed to some merchant' so that an income might be derived frm it 'by honest gain.'

"A borrower would sell land cheap to the lender, leave him the usufruct as interest, and later repurchase the land.

"Or the landowner sold to the lender some or all of the annnual rents or revenues of his land. If, for example, A sold to B for $100 the rents of a parcel yielding $10,000 a year, B was in effect lending A $100 at ten per cent.

"Many monasteries invested their funds by buying such 'rent charges' -- above all in Germany where the word for interest, Zins, grew out of the medieval Latin for rents, census.

"Towns borrowed money by deeding to the lender a share in their revenues. Individuals and institutions, including monasteries, lent money in return for secret gifts or fictitious sales.

"Pope Alexander III complained in 1163 that 'many of the clergy' (chiefly monastic) 'while they shrink from common usury as from a thing too plainly condemned, do notwithstanding lend money to others who are in need, take their possessions in pledge, and receive the fruits therefrom accruing beyond the principal lent.

"Some borrowers pledged themselves to pay 'damages' increasing for every day or month of delay in repaying a loan. The date of payment was placed so early as to make such concealed interest inevitable. On this basis the Cahorsians lent money to certain monasteries on terms equivalent to sixty per cent per year.

"Many banking firms openly lent at interest and claimed immunity on the theory that the law applied only to individuals. The cities of Italy made no excuses for paying interest on their government bonds.

"In 1208 Innocent III remarked that if all usurers were excluded from the Church as canon law demanded, all churches mmight as well be closed.

"The Church reluctantly adjusted herself to realities.

"St. Thomas Aquinas, about 1250, courageously formulated a new ecclesiastical doctrine of interest:-the investor in a business enterprise might legitimately share in the gain if he actually shared in the risk or the loss. Loss was interpreted to include any delay in the repayment of the loan beyond a stipulated date.

"Two letters of Gregory I refer to a corporation of soap makers at Naples and to another of bakers at Otranto.

"In the law code of the Lombard King Rotharis we read of magistri Comacini -- apparently master masons from Como, who speak of one another as collegantes -- colleagues of the same collegium.

"Associations of transport workers are mentioned in seventh century Rome and in tenth century Worms.

"The ancient guilds continued in the Byzantine Empire. In Ravena we find references to many scholae or economic associations -- in the sixth century to bakers -- in the ninth to notaries and merchants -- in the tenth to fishermen -- in the eleventh victualers. We hear of artisan ministeria in ninth century Venice and of a gardeners' schola in eleventh century Rome.

"Doubtless most of the ancient guilds in the West succumbed to the barbarian invasions and the resulting reruralization and poverty. But some seem to have survived in Lombardy.

"They included only independent merchants and master workmen. They excluded all persons dependent upon others.

"They were frankly institutions in restraint of trade. They usually persuaded their towns to keep out, by a high protective tariff or elsewise, goods competitive with their own. Such alien goods, if allowed to enter the town, were sold at prices fixed by the affected guild.

"In many cases a merchant guild obtained from commune or king a local or national monopoly in its line or field. The Paris Company for the Transit of Merchandise by Water almost owned the Seine.

"By city ordinance or economic pressure the guild usually compelled craftsmen to work only for the guild or with its consent and to sell its products only to or through the guild.

"The greater guilds became powerful corporations. They dealt in a variety of goods -- purchased raw materials wholesale -- provided insurance against losses -- organized the food supply and sewage disposals of their towns -- paved streets -- built roads and docks -- deepened harbors -- policed highways -- supervised markets -- regulated wares, hours, conditions of labor, terms of apprenticeship, methods of production and sale, and prices of materials and wares.

"Four or five times a year they fixed a 'just price' that in their judgment gave fair stimulus and reward to all parties concerned. They weighed, tested, counted all products bought or sold in their trade and area, and did their best to keep inferior or dishonest goods from the market.

"They banded together to resist robbers, feudal lords and tolls, refractory workmen, tax levying governments.

"But the craft guilds in turn became an aristocracy of labor. They tended to restrict mastership to masters' sons. They underpaid their journeymen who in the fourteenth century weakened them with repeated revolt and they raised ever higher barriers against entry into their membership or their towns.

"They were excellent organizations for an industrial age when difficulties of transportation often narrowed the market to local buyers and capital accumulations were not yet suffiently rich and fluid to finance large scale undertakings. When such funds appeared the guilds -- merchant or craft -- lost control of the market and therefore of the conditions of work.

"The question of heredity versus environment affects the cities, as well as the guilds, of Europe. Were they the lineal descendants of Roman municipalities or new concretions deposited by the stream of economic changes?

"Many Roman cities maintained their continuity through centuries of chaos, poverty, and decay. But only a few in Italy and southeastern France kept the old Roman institutions and fewer still the old Roman law.

"North of the Alps, barbarian laws had overlaid the Roman heritage. In some measure the political customs of the German tribe or village had seeped even into ancient municipalities. Most transalpine towns belonged to feudal domains and were ruled by the will and appointees of their feudal lords.

"Municipal institutions were alien, feudal institutions natural to the Teutonic conquerors. Outside of Italy, the medieval city rose through the formation of new commercial centers, classes, and powers.

"The feudal town had grown up, usually on elevations, at the junction of roads or along vital waterways or on frontiers.

"Around the walls of the feudal castle or fortified monastery the modest industry and trade of the townsmen or burgesses had slowly developed. When Norse and Magyar raids subsided, this extramural activity expanded, shops multiplied and merchants and craftsmen, once transient, became settled residents of the town.

"In war, however, insecurity returned. The extramural population built a second wall of wider circumference than the feudal moat to protect itself, its shops, and its goods.

"At Le Mans, Cambrai, and Reims the ruling bishops, by excommunication or force, succeeded in suppressing the communes set up by the citizens.

"At Noyon, however, the bishop of his own accord gave a charter to the town.

"St. Quentin freed itself in 1080, Beauvais in 1099, Marseille in 1100, Amiens in 1113.

"At Laon in 1115 the citizens took advantage of their corrupt bishop's absence to establish a commune. On his return he was bribed to take oath to protect it. A year later he induced King Louis VI to suppress it.

"The struggle continued for a century.

"At Vezelay the people killed Abbot Arnaud and set up a commune.

"Orleans rose in 1137 but failed.

"Louis VII granted Sens a charter in 1146 but revoked it three years later on petition of the abbot within whose domains the city lay. The populace killed the abbot and his nephew but failed to re-establish the commune.

"The bishop of Tournai fought a civil war for six years to overthrow the commune. The pope excommunicated all the citizens.

"On Easter Sunday of 1194 the people of Rouen sacked the houses of the cathedral canons. In 1207 the city was put under a papal interdict.

"In 1235 at Reims the stones brought into the city to rebuild the cathdral were seized by the populace and were used for missiles and barricades in a revolt against the highest ecclesiastic in Gaul. He and his canons fled and did not return until two years later when the pope induced Louis VII to abolish the commune.

"Many cities of France never succeeded until the Revolution in establishing their freedom. But in north France most of the cities were freed between 1080 and 1200 and under the stimulus of liberty entered upon their greatest age.

"At the call of the bell from the town campanile, the citizens flocked to assemble and chose their municipal officers. The cities formed their own communal militia, defended themselves lustily, defeated the trained troops of the German emperor at Legnano and fought one another to mutual exhaustion.

"Though the administrative councils soon narrowed their membership to a merchantile aristocracy, the municipal assemblies were the first representative government since Tiberius. They, rather than Magna Carta, were the chief parent of modern democracy.

"The atavistic relics of feudal or tribal law -- compurgations, duels, ordeals -- were replaced by the legal and orderly examination of witnesses. The werbild or blood price gave way to fines, imprisonment or corporal punishment.

"The law's delays were reduced, legal contracts replaced feudal status and loyalties and a whole new body of business law created a new order in European life.

"The young democracy leaped at once to a semisocialistic state-managed economy.

"The commune minted its own currency -- orderd and supervised public works -- built roads, bridges, and canals -- paved some city streets -- organized the food supply -- forbade forestalling, engrossing,or regrading -- brought seller and buyer into direct contact at markets and fairs -- examined weights and measures -- inspected commodities -- punished adulteration -- controlled exports and imports -- stored grain for lean years -- provided grain at fair prices in emergencies -- and regulated the prices of essential foods and beer.

"When it found that a price set too low discouraged the production of a desirable commodity, it allowed certain wholesale prices to seek their own level through competition but established courts or 'assizes' of bread and ale to keep the retail price of these necessities in constant relation with the cost of wheat or barley.

"Periodically it published a list of fair prices. It assumed that for every commodity there must be a 'just price' combining costs of materials and labor. The theory ignored supply and demand and fluctuations in the value of currency.

"Some communes, like Basel or Genoa, assumed a monopoly of the trade in salt. Others, like Nurenberg brewed their own beer or stored corn in municipal granaries.

"The flow of goods was imepeded by municipal protective tariffs -- in some cases by requiring transient merchants to expose their goods for sale in the town before passing through.

"As in our century, these regulations were often circumvented by the sublety of refractory citizens. 'Black markets' were numerous.

"The municipalities, eager to get new 'hands,' announced that any person living in a town for 366 days without being claimed, identified and taken as a serf, became automatically free and would enjoy the protection of the commune's laws and power.

"In 1106 Florence invited all the peasants of the surrounding villages to come and live there as freemen. Bologna and other towns paid feudal lords to let their serfs move into the city.

"A large number of serfs escaped or were invited to open new lands east of the Elbe where they became automatically free.

"Those who remained on the manor showed a troublesome resistance to feudal dues long sanctioned by time.

"Emulating the town guilds, many serfs formed rural associations -- confreries, conjurations -- and bound themselves by oath to act together in refusing feudal dues. They stole or destroyed seignorial charters that recorded their bondage or obligations. They burned down the castles of obstinate seigneurs. They threatened to abandon the domain if their demands were not met.

"In 1100 the villeins of St. Michel-de-Beauvais announced that they would thereafter marry any woman they pleased and would give their daughters to any man who pleased them. In 1102 the serfs of St. Arnoul-de-Crepy refused their abbot lord the traditional heriot, or death due, or to pay a fine for letting their daughters marry outside the domain.

"Similar rebellions broke out in a dozen towns from Flanders to Spain.

"The rising population of the towns, the increase of wealth, the new facilities of finance and trade expanded and enriched the rural economy.

"New industries creatd a demand for industrial crops -- sugar cane, aniseed, cumin, hemp, flax, vegetable oils and dyes.

"The nearness of populous towns promoted cattle raising, dairy farming, and market gardening.

"From thousands of vineyards in the valleys of the Tiber, the Arno, the Po, the Guadalquivir, the Tagus, the Ebro, the Rhone, the Gironde, the Garonne, the Loire, the Seine, the Mozelle, the Meuse, the Rhine, and the Danube wine flowed along the rivers and over land and sea to console the toilers of Europe's fields, workshops, and counting rooms.

"Even England, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, made wine. To feed the hungry towns, where fast days were numerous and meat was costly, great fleets went out into the Baltic and North Seas to bring in herring and other fish.

"By and large the later aristocracies in England, France, Germany and northern Italy were descendants of the conquerors and remained conscious of this blood relationship even amid their wars.

"In the eleventh century there were three classes:-the nobles, who fought -- the clergy, who prayed -- and the peasants, who worked.

"The division became so traditional that most men thought it ordained by God Most peasants, like most nobles, assumed that a man should patiently continue in the class into which he had been born.

"The economic revolution of the twelfth century added a new class -- the burgesses or bourgeoisie -- the bakers, merchants, and master craftsmen of the towns.

"It did not yet include the professions. In France the classes were called etats -- estates or states -- and the bourgeoisie was reckoned as the tiers etat, or 'third estate.' It controlled municipal affairs and won entry nto the English parliament, the German Diet, the Spanish Cortes, and the States-General -- the rarely convened national parliament of France.

"But it had, before the eighteenth century, little influence on national policy. The nobles continued to rule and administer the state although they were now a minor force in the cities. They lived in the country (except in Italy,) scorned city dwellers and commerce, ostracized any of their class who married a bourgeois, and were certain that an aristocracy of birth is the only alternative to a plutocracy of business, or a theocracy of myths, or a despotism of arms.

"The proletariat of servants, apprentices, and hourneymen had little education and no political power and lived in a poverty sometimes more dismal than the serf's. A thirteenth century day laborer in England received some two pence per day -- roughly equivalent, in purchasing power, to two dollars in the United States of America in 1948.

"A carpenter received four and one eighth pence ($4.12) per day -- a mason three and one eighth, an architect twelve pence plus traveling expenses and occasionaly gifts.

"Prices, however, were commensurately low. In England in 1300 a pound of beef cost a farthing (twenty one cents) -- a fowl one penny (eighty four cents) -- a quarter of wheat five shillings, nine and one half pence.

"The work day began at dawn and ended at dusk -- sooner on the eve of Sunday or a feast day. There were some thirty feast days in the year but in England probably not more than six exempted the people from toil.

"They suffered further through their chaotic internal strife -- their ruthless exploitation of the surrounding countryside -- their narrow municipal patriotism -- their conflicting policies and currencies -- their petty wars upon one another in Flanders and Italy and their inability to organize themselves into an autonomous confederation that might have survived the growth of the royal power.

"After 1300 several French communes petitioned the king to assume their governance.

"Even so the economic revolution of the thirteenth century was the making of modern Europe.

"It eventually destroyed a feudalism that had completed the function of agricultural protection and organization and had become an obstacle to the expansion of enterprise. It transformed the immobile wealth of feudalism into the fluent resources of a world wide economy.

"It provided the machinery for a progressive development of business and industry which substantially increased the power, comfort, and knowledge of European man. It brought a prosperity that in two centuries could build a hundred cathedrals any one of which presumes an amazing abundance and variety of means and skills.

"Its production for an extending market made possible the national economic systems that underlay the growth of the modern states. Even the class war that it let loose may have been an added stimulant to the minds and energies of men.

"When the storm of the transition had subsided, the economic and political structure of Europe had been transformed.

"The peasants grew poorer and surrendered to serfdom. The manual workers of the cities lived in noisome slums whose dark filth harbored uncounted crimes. Vague semicommunistic movements of revolt agitated the proleterian flux but have been forgotten in the careless repetitiousness of time.

"Meanwhile the capture of Palestine by the Crusaders had opened Syrian ports to Latin commerce. Constantinople lost to the rising cities of Italy a third of its maritime trade. Christian and Moslem alike aspired to capture this treasury of a millenniunm's wealth. A good Moslem, visiting the city in Manuel's heyday, prayed:-'May God in His generosity and grace deign to make Constantinople the capital of Islam!'

"And Venice, daughter of Byzantium, invited the chivalry of Europe to join her in raping the Queen of the Bosporus.

"The Latin kingdom of Constantinople, established by the Fourth Crusade, endured but fifty-seven years (1204-61).

"While Turks, Kurds, and Mongols ruled Armenia proper, the new state maintained its independence for three centuries.

"In a reign of thirty-four years Leo II repelled the attacks of the sultans of Aleppo and Damascus -- took Isauria -- built his capital at Sis (now in Turkey) -- made alliances with the Crusaders -- adopted European laws -- encouraged industry and commerce -- gave privileges to Venetian and Genoese merchants -- founded orphanages, hospitals, and schools -- raised his people to unparalleled prosperity -- earned the name of Magnificent -- and was altogether one of the wisest and most beneficent monarchs in medeival history.

"His son-in-law Hethum I, finding the Christians unreliabe, allied himself with the Mongols and rejoiced at the expulsion of the Seljuqs from Armenia. But the Mongols became converts to Mohammedanism, warred on Lesser Armenia, and reduced it to ruins.

"In 1335 Armenia was conquered by the Mamluks and the country was divided among feudal lords.

"The remainder of European Russia was divided into sixty-four principalities -- chiefly Kiev, Volhynia, Novgorod, Suzdalia, Smolensk, Ryazan, Chernigov, and Pereyaslav. Most of the principalities acknowledged the suzerainty of Kiev.

"When Yaroslav, Grand Prince of Kiev, died, he distributed the principalities, according to their importance, among his sons in order of their seniority. The eldest received Kiev and by a unique rota system it was arranged that at any princely death each princely survivor should move up from a lesser to a greater province.

"In the thirteenth century several principalities were further split into 'appanages' -- regions assigned by the princes to their sons. In the course of time, these appanages became hereditary and formed the basis of that modified feudalism which would later share with the Mongol invasion the blame for keeping Russia medieval while western Europe advanced.

"In this period, however, the Russian towns had a busy handicraft industry and a richer trade than they would have in many later centuries.

"The power of each prince, although usually inherited, was limited by a popular veche or assembly and by a senate of nobles (boyarskaya duma). Administration and law were mostly left to the clergy.

"These, with a few nobles, merchants and money lenders, almost monopolized literacy. With Byzantine texts or models before them, they gave Russia letters and laws, religion and art. Through their labors the Russkaya Pravda, Russian Right or Law, first formulated under Yaroslav, rceived emendation and definitive codification.

"The Russian Church was given full jurisdiction over religion and the clergy, marriage, morals, and wills. She had unchecked authority over the slaves and other personnel on her extensive properties.

"The feudal anarchy of the West had its rival in the tribal and princely anarchy of the East. Between 1054 and 1224 there were eighty three civil wars in Russia, forty six invasions of Russia, sixteen wars by Russian states upon non-Russian peoples and 293 princes disputing the throne of sixty four principalities.

"In 1113 the impoverishment of the Kievan population by war, high interest charges, exploitation and unemployment aroused revolutionary rioting. The infuriated populace attacked and plundered the homes of the employers and moneylenders and occupied the offices of the government for a moment's mastery.

"The municipal assembly invited Prince Monomalth of Pereytaslavl to become Grand Prince of Kiev. He came reluctantly and played a role like Solon's in the Athens of 594 B.C. He lowered the rate of interest on loans, restricted the self-sale of bankrupt debtors into slavery, limited the authority of employers over employees and by these and other measures -- denounced as confiscatory by the rich and as inadequate by the poor -- averted revolution and reorganized peace.

"He labored to end the feuds and wars of the princes and to give Russia political unity. But the tqsk was too great for his twelve years of rule.

"After his death the strife of princes and clases was resumed.

"Meanwhile the continued possession of the lower Dniester, Dnieper, and Don by alien tribes and the growth of Italian commerce at Constantinople in the Black Sea and in the ports of Syria diverted to Mediterranean channels much of the trade that formerly had passed from Islam and Byzantium up the rivers of Russia to the Baltic states.

"The wealth of Kiev declined and its martial means or spirit failed. As early as 1096 its barbarian neighbors began to raid its hinterland and suburbs, plundering monasteries and selling captured peasants as slaves.

"Population ebbed from Kiev as a danger spot and man power further fell.

"In 1169 the army of Andrey Bogolyubski sacked Kiev so thoroughly and enslaved so many thousands of its inhabitants that for three centuries the 'mother of Russian cities' almost dropped out of history.

"Founded in 1156, Moscow was in this age a small village serving Suzdalia (which ran northeast from Moscow) as a frontier post on the route from the cities of Vladimir and Suzdal to Kief. Andrey Bogolyubski fought to make his principality of Suzdalia supreme over all Russia. He died by the hand of an assassin while campaigning to bring Novgorod, like Kiev, under his sway."

"They came from Turkestan through the Caucasus, crushed a Georgian army there, and pillaged the Crimea. The Cumans, who had for centuries warred against Kiev, begged for Russian aid, saying:-'Today they have seized our land, tomorrow they will take yours.' Some Russian princes saw the point and led several devisions to join the Cuman defense.

"The Mongols sent envoys to propose a Russian alliance against the Cumans. The Russians killed the envoys. In a battle on the banks of the Kalka River, near the Sea of Azov, the Mongols defeated the Russian Cuman army, captured several Russian leaders by treachery, bound them, and covered them with a platform on which the Mongol chieftains ate a victory banquet while their aristocratic prisoners died of suffocation (1223).

"The Mongols retired to Mongolia and busied themselves with the conquest of China while the Russian princes resumed their fraternal wars.

"In 1237 the Mongols returned under Batu, a great nephew of Jenghiz Khan. They were 500,000 strong and nearly all mounted. They came around the northern end of the Caspian, put the Volga Bulgars to the sword and destroyed Bolgar, their capaital.

"Baru sent a message to the Prince of Ryazan:-'If you want peace, give us the tenth of your goods.' He answered:-'When we are dead, you may have the whole.' Ryazan asked the principalities for help. They refused it. It fought bravely and lost the whole of its goods.

"The irresistible Mongols sacked and razed all the towns of Ryazan, swept into Suzdalia, routed its army, burned Moscow and besieged Vladimir. The nobles had themselves tonsured and hid in the cathedral as monks. They died when the cathedral and all the city were given to the flames.

"Suzdal, Rostov, and a multitude of villages in the principality were burned to the ground (1238). The Mongols moved on toward Novgorod. Turned back by thick forests and swollen streams, they ravaged Chernigov and Pereyaslavl, and reached Kiev. They sent envoys asking for surrender. The Kievans killed the envoys. The Mongols crossed the Dnieper, overrode a weak resistance, sacked the city, and killed many thousands.

"Thence Batu and his successors kept most of Russia under domination for 140 years. The Russian princes were allowed to hold their lands but on condition of annual tribute -- and an occasional visit of homage over great distances -- to the khan of the Horde, or even to the Great Khan in Mongolian Karakorum. The tribute was colleced by the princes as a head tax that fell with cruel equality upon rich and poor and those who could not pay were sold as slaves.

"The princes resigned themselves to Mongol mastery for it protected them from social revolt. They joined the Mongols in attacking other peoples, even Russian principalities.

"Many Russians married Mongols and certain features of Mongolian physiognomy and character may have entered the Russian stock. Some Russians adopted Mongol ways of speech and dress.

"Made a dependency of an Asiatic power, Russia was largely severed from European civilization.

"The absolutism of the khan united with that of the Byzantine emperors to beget the 'Autocrat of All the Russias' in later Muscovy.

"Recognizing that they could not keep Russia quiet by force alone, the Mongol chieftains made peace with the Russian Church, protected her possessions and personnel, exempted them from taxation, and punished sacrilege with death. Grateful or compelled, the Church recommended Russian submission to the Mongol masters and publicly prayed for their safety.

"To find security amid alarms, thousands of Russians became monks, gifts were showered upon religious organizations, and the Russian Church became immensely rich amid the general poverty.

A spirit of submissiveness was developed in the people and opened a road to centuries of despotism. Nevertheless it was Russia, bending under the Mongol whirlwind, that stood as a vast moat and trench protecting most of Europe from Asiatic conquest. All the fury of that human tempest spent itself upon the Slavs -- Russians, Bohemians, Moravians, Poles -- and the Magyars.

"But to the native Bulgar, Rumanian, Hungarian, or Yugoslav his nation is the product of a thousand years' struggle to win independence from encompassing empires, to maintain a unique and colorful culture, to express the national character, uninhibited in architecture, dress, poetry, music, and song.

"For 168 years Bulgaria, once so powerful under Krum and Simeon, remained subject to Byzantium.

"In 1186 the discontent of the Bulgar and Vlach (Wallachian) population found expression in two brothers, John and Peter Asen, who possessed that mixture of shrewdness and courage which the situation and their countrymen reuired.

"Summoning the people of Trnovo to the church of St. Demetrius, they persuaded them that the saint had left Greek Salonika to make Trnovo his home and that under his banner Bulgaria could regain liberty. They succeeded and amiably divided the new empire between them, John ruling at Trnovo, Peter at Preslav.

"The greatest monarch of their line and in all Bulgarian history, was John Asen II. He not only absorbed Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and Albania. He governed with such justice that even his Greek subjects loved him. He pleased the popes with allegiance and monastic foundations. He supported commerce, literature, and art with enlightened laws and patronage. He made Trnovo one of the best adorned cities of Europe and raised Bulgaria in civilization and culture to a level with most of the nations of his time.

"His son Sava served the nation as archbishop and statesman and became one of its most revered saints. The country was still poor and even the royal palaces were of wood. It had a flourishing port, Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) but this was an independent city-state which in 1221 became a Venetian protectorate.

"During these centuries Serbian art, Byzantine in origin, achieved a style and excellence of its own. In the monastery church of St. Panteleimon at Nerez the murals reveal a dramatic realism unusual in Byzantine painting and anticipate by a century some methods of treatment once thought original to Duccio and Giotto. Amid these and other Serbian murals of the twelfth or thirteenth century appear royal portraits individualizd beyond any known Byzantine precedent.

"Medieval Serbia was moving toward a high civilization when heresy and persecution destroyed the national unity that might have withstood the Turkish advance.

"North of the Balkans lay another medley of peoples -- Bohemians, Poles, Lithuanians, Livonians, Finns, and each, with life giving pride, hung the world upon its own national history.

"In the earlier Middle Ages the Finns, distant relatives of the Magyars and the Huns, dwelt along the upper Volga and Oka. By the eighth century they had migrated into the hardy scenic land known to outsiders as Finland and to Finns as Suomi, the Land of Marsh.

"Their raids upon the Scandinavian coasts induced the Swedish King Eric IX to conquer them in 1157. At Uppsala Eric left a bishop with them as a germ of civilization. The Finns killed Bishop Henry and then made him their patron saint.

"They hunted, fished, kept bees, tilled the soil, and left letters and arts to the less vigorous posterity for whom they toiled. All but the Estonians remained pagan until the twelfth century when the Germans brought Christianity and civilization to them with fire and sword.

"Finding that Christianity was being used by the Germans as a means of infiltration and domination, the Livonians killed the missionaries, plunged into the Dvina to wash off the stain of baptism, and returned to their native gods.

"Innocent III preached a crusade against them. Bishop Albert entered the Dvina with twenty-three men-of-war, built Riga as his capital and subjected Livonia to German rule.

"Two religious military orders, the Livonian Knights and the Teutonic Knights, completed the conquest of the Baltic states for Germany, carved out vast holdings for themselves, converted the natives to Christianity, and reduced them to serfdom.

"Heartened by this success, the Teutonic Knights advanced into Russia, hoping to win at least its western provinces for Germany and Latin Christianity

"One group called itself Polanic -- 'people of the fields' -- and tilled the valleys of the Warthe and the Oder.

"Another, the Mazurs, dwelt along the Vistula.

"A third, the Pomorzanic ('by the sea') -- gave its name to Pomerania.

"In 963 the Polish prince Miesko I, to avoid conquest by Germany, confided Poland to the protection of the popes. Thenceforth Poland, turning its back upon the semi-Byzantine Slavdom of the East, cast in its lot with western Europe and Roman Christianity.

"Mieszko's son, Boleslav I conquered Pomerania, annexed Breslau and Cracow and made himself the first King of Poland.

"Boleslav III divided the kingdom among his four sons. The monarchy was weakened. The aristocracy parceled the land into feudal principalities and Poland fluctuated between freedom and subjection to Germany or Bohemia.

"In 1241 the Mongol avalanche came down upon the land, took Cracow, the capital, and leveled it to the ground. As the Asiatic flood receded a wave of German immigration swept into western Poland, leaving there a strong admixture of German language, laws, and blood. At the same time Boleslav V welcomed Jews fleeing from pogroms in Germany and encouraged them to develop commerce and finance.

"He was not imposing -- a small fair skinned man with yellow hair and a red beard that won him in Italy the name of Barbarossa. But his head was clear and his will was strong.

"His life was spent in labors for the state. Although he suffered many defeats, he brought Germany again to the leadership of the Christian world. Carrying in his veins the blood of both the Hohenstaufens and the Welfs, he proclaimed a Landfried, or Peace of the Land, conciliated his enemies, quieted his friends, and sternly suppressed feuds, disorder, and crime.

"His contemporaries described him as genial and ever ready with a winning smile. But he was a 'terror to evildoers,' and the barbarism of his penal laws advanced civilization in Germany. His private life was justly praised for decency.

"However, he divorced his first wife on grounds of consanguinity and married the heiress of the count of Burgundy, winning a kingdom with his bride.

"Anxious for papal coronation as emperor, he promised Pope Eugenius III aid against the rebellious Romans and the troublesome Normans in return for the imperial ointment.

"Arrived at Nepi, near Rome, the proudn young king met the new pontiff, Hadrian IV and omitted the customary rite by which the secular ruler held the pope's bridle and stirrup and helped him to dismount. Hadrian reached the ground unaided, and refused Frederick the 'kiss of peace' and the crown of empire until the traditional ritual should be performed.

"For two days the aides of Pope and King disputed the point, hanging empire on protocol. Frederick yielded. The Pope retired and made a second entry on horseback.

"No German ruler since Henry IV had taken this title literally. But Frederick now sent to each of the northern Italian cities a podesta to govern it in his name. Some cities accepted, some rejected, these alien masters.

"Loving order more than liberty, and perhaps anxious to control the Italian outlets of German trade with the East, Frederick set out in 1159 to subdue the rebellious towns which loved liberty more than order. He summoned to his court at Roncaglia the learned legists who were reviving Roman law at Bologna.

"He was pleased to learn from them that by that law the emperor held absolute authority over all parts of the Empire, owned all property to it, and might modify or abrogate private rights wherever he though it desirable for the state.

"Pope Alexander III, fearing for the temporal rights of the papacy, and citing the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne, repudiated these claims. When Frederick insisted on them, excommunicated him.

"The cries of Guelf and Ghibelline now passed into Italy to denote respectively the supporters of the Pope and those of the Emperor. For two years Frederick besieged obdurate Milan. Capuring it at last, he burned it to the ground.

"Angered by this ruthlessness and galled by the exactions of the German podestas, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Ferrara, Mantua, Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Milan formed the Lombard League.

"At Legnano, in 1176, the troops of the League defeated Frederick's German army and forced him to a six years' truce. A year later Emperor and Pope were reconciled. At Constance Frederick signed a treaty restoring self government to the Italian cities.

"Feudalism triumphed in thirteenth-century Germany at the very time when it was succumbing to the royal power in France. The bishops, whom the earlier emperors had favored as a foil to the barons, had become a second nobility, as rich, powerful and independent as the secular lords.

"By 1263 seven nobles -- the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, the dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, the count palatine, and the margrave of Brandenburg -- had been entrusted by the feudality with the authority to choose the king. These electors hedged in the powers of the ruler, usurped royal prerogatives, and seized crown lands. They might have acted as a central government and given the nation unity. They did not.

"Between elections they went their several ways. No German nation existed yet. There were only Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians, Franks. . .There was as yet no national parliament but only territorial diets, Landtage.

"A Reichstag, or Diet of the Commonwealth, established in 1247, languished feebly in the Interregnum and acquired prominence only in 1338. A corps of ministeriales -- serfs or freedmen sppointed by the king -- provided a loose bureaucrcy and continuity of government.

"No one capital centered the country's loyalty and interest. No one system of laws governed the realm. Despite the efforts of Barbarossa to impose Roman law upon all Germany, each region kept its own customs and code.

"In 1225 the laws of the Saxons were formulated in the Sachsenspiegel, or Saxon Mirror.

"In 1275 the Schwahenspiegel codified the laws and customs of Swabia. These codes asserted the ancient right of the people to choose their king and of the peasants to keep their freedom and their land.

"The manners of the people were still crude, their laws chaotic, their morals half Christian, half pagan, and their Christianity half a cover for territorial robbery. Their wealth and comforts could compare, city for city, with those of Flanders or Italy.

"But their peasantry was industrious and fertile -- their merchants enterprising and adventurous -- their aristocracy the most cultured and powerful in Europe -- their kings the secular heads of the Western world -- ruling a realm from the Rhine to the Vistula, from the Rhone to the Balkans, from the Baltic to the Danube, from the North Sea to Sicily.

"Helped by his minister, Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, he organized a strong government, cleaned his seas of pirates, and enriched Denmark by protecting and encouraging trade.

"In 1167 Absalon founded Copenhagen as a 'marker haven' -- Kjoebenhavn. Waldemar II replied to German aggression by conquering Holstein, Hamburg, and Germany northeast of the Elbe. 'For the honor of the Blessed Virgin' he undertook three 'crusades' against the Baltic Slavs, captured northern Estonia and founded Reval.

"In one of these campaigns he was attacked in his camp and escaped death, we are told, partly by his own valor, partly through the timely descent from heaven of a red banner bearing a white cross. This Dannebrog, or Dane's Cloth, becxame thereafter the battle standard of the Danes.

"In 1223 he was taken prisoner by Count Henry of Schwarin and was released, after two and a half years, only on his surrendering to the Germans all his Germanic and Slav conquests except Rugen.

"He devoted the remainder of his remarkable life to internal reforms and the codification of Danish law. At his death Denmark was double its present area, included southern Sweden and had a populaton equal to that of Sweden (300,000) and Norway (200,000).

"Life was still primitive. Hunting and fishing, as well as agriculture, were primary sources of sustenance. Vast forests had to be cleared -- wild animals had to be brought under control -- waters had to be channeled to productive courses -- harbors had to be built -- men had to harden themselves to cope with a nature that seemed to resent the intrusion of man.

"Cistercian monks played a noble role in this agelong war, cutting timber, tilling the soil, and teaching the peasants improved methods of agriculture.

"One of the many heroes of the war was Earl Birger, who served Sweden as prime minister from 1248 to 1266, abolished serfdom, established the reign of law, founded Stockholm (c. 1255), and inaugurated the Folkung dynasty by putting his son Waldemar on the throne.

"Bergen grew rich as the outlet of Norway's trade and Visby, on the island of Gotland, became the center of contact between Sweden and the Hanseatic League.

"William set up or deposed knights and earls, bishops and archbishops and abbots. He did not hesitate to jail great lords and to assert his right over ecclesiastical appointments against the same powerful Gregory VII who was in these years bringing the Emperor Henry IV to Canossa.

"To prevent fires he ordered a curfew -- i.e. a covering or extinction of hearth fires and therefore in winter retirement to bed -- by eight p.m. for the people of England.

"To finance his spreading government and conquests he laid heavy taxes upon all sales, imports, exports, and the use of bridges and roads. He restored the Danegeld which Edward the Confessor had abolished.

"When he learned that some Englishmen, to elude his fingers, had placed their money in monastic vaults, he had all monasteries searched and all such hoards removed to his own treasury.

"The able and pliant Lanfranc was brought in from Caen and was made Archbishop of Canterbury and first minister to the King. He found the Anglo-Saxon clergy addicted to hunting, dicing, and marriage and replaced them with Norman priests, bishops, and abbots.

"He drew up a new monastic constitution, the Customs of Canterbury, and raised the mental and moral level of the English clergy.

"Probably at his suggestion William decreed the separation of ecclesiastical from secular courts, ordered all spiritual matters to be submitted to the canon law of the Church and pledged the state to enforce the penalties fixed by ecclesiastical tribunals.

"Tithes were levied upon the people for the support of the Church. But William required that no papal bull or letter should be given currency or force in England without his approval and that no papal legate should enter England without the royal consent.

"A new people and class were imposed upon the Danes who had displaced the Anglo-Saxons who had conquered the Roman Britons who had mastered Celts. Centuries would elapse before the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic elements would reassert themselves in British blood and speech.

"The Normans were akin to the Danes but in the century since Rollo they had become Frenchmen. With their coming the customs and speech of official England became for three centuries French.

"Feudalism was imported from France into England with its trappings, chivalry, heraldry and vocabulary. Serfdom was more deeply and mercilessly imposed than ever in England before. The Jewish moneylenders who came in with william gave a new stimulus to English trade and industry.

"The closer connection with the Continent brought to England many ideas in literature and art. Norman architecture achieved its greatest triumphs in Britain. The new nobility brought new manners, fresh vitality, a better organization of agriculture. The Norman lords and bishops improved the administration of the state.

"The government was centralized. Though it was through despotism, the country was unified. Life and property were made more secure and England entered upon a long period of internal peace.

"But there is no limit to the number of intermediate middlings. After the Conqueror's death his eldest son Robert received Normandy as a separate kingdom.

"A younger son, William Rufus (the Red, 1087-1100), was crowned King of England on promising good behavior to his anointer and minister Lanfranc. He ruled as a tyrant until 1093, fell sick, promised good behavior, recovered, and ruled as a tyrant until he was shot to death, while hunting by an unknown hand.

"The saintly Anselm, who succeeded Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury, withstood him patiently and was sent back to France.

"A third son of the Conqueror, Henry I, recalled Anselm.

"The prelate-philosopher demanded an end to the royal election of bishops. Henry refused. After a tedious quarrel it was agreed that English bishops and abbots were to be chosen by cathedral chapters or the monks in the presence of the king and should do homage to him for their feudal possessions and powers.

"Henry loved money and hated waste. He taxed heavily but governed providently and justly. He kept England in order and at peace except that with one battle -- at Tinchebrain in 1106 -- he restored Normandy to the British crown.

"So ended the Norman and began the Plantagenet dynasty. Henry was a man of strong temper, eager ambition, and proud intellect, half inclined to atheism. Nominally master of a realm that reached from Scotland to the Pyrenees, including half of Frence, he found himself apparently helpless in a feudal society where the great lords, armed with mercenaries and fortified in castles, had pulverized the state into baronies.

"With awesome energy the youthful king gathered money and men, fought and subdued one lord after another, destroyed the feudal castles and established order, security, justice, and peace. With a masterly economy of cost and force he brought under English rule an Ireland conquered and despoiled by Welsh buccaneers.

"But this strong man, one of the greatest kings in England's history, was shattered and humbled by encountering in Thomas a Becket a will as inflexible as his own and in religion a power then mightier than any stte.

"Thomas was born in London about 1118 of middle-class Norman parentage.

"His precocious brilliance of mind caught the eye of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury who sent him to Bologna and Auxerre to study civil and canon law. Returning to England he entered orders and soon rose to be Archdeacon of Canterbury.

"But, like so many churchmen of those cenbturies, he was a man of affairs rather than a clergyman. His interest and skill lay in administration and diplomacy. He showed such ability in these fields that at the age of thirty-seven he was made secreatary of state.

"For a time he and Henry accorded well. The handsome chancellor shared the intimacy and knightly sports, almost the wealth and power of the King. His table was the most sumptuous in England. His charity to the poor was equaled by his hospitality to his friends. In war he led in person 700 knights, fought single combats, planned campaigns.

"Son of the adventurous, impulsive, irrepresible Eleanor, he followed in her steps rather than in those of the somber and competent Henry. Born in Oxford in 1157, he was delegated by his mother to administer her dominion in Aquitaine. There he imbibed the skeptical culture of Provence, the 'gay science' of the troubadours and was never afterward an Englishman.

"He loved adventure and song more than politics and administration. He crowded a century of romance into his forty-two years and gave to the poets of his time the compliment of imitation as well as the encouragement of patronage.

"The first five months of his reign were spent in gathering funds for a crusade. He appropriated for the purpose the full treasure left by Henry II. He removed thousands of officials and reappointed them for a consideration. He sold charters of freedom to cities that could pay and acknowledged Scotland's independence for 15,000 marks -- not that he loved money less but adventure more.

"Within half a year of his accession he was off to Palestine. He cared as little for his own safety as for others' rights. He taxed his realm to the utmost and squandered revenue in luxury, feasting and display.

"Early in 1193 Leopold surrendered him to the Emperor Henry VI who held a grudge against Henry II and Richard. Despite the law, generally recognized in Europe, against the detention of a Crusader, Henry VI kept the King of England prisoner in a castle at Durnstein on the Danube and demanded for him from England a ransom of 150,000 marks ($15,000,000) -- double the whole annual revenue of the British crown.

"In the meantime Richard's brother, John, tried to seize the throne. Resisted, he fled to France and joined Philip Augustus in attacking England. Philip, violating a pledge of peace, attacked and seized English possessions in France and offered great bribes to Henry VI to keep Richard prisoner. Richard fretted in comfortable durance and wrote an excellent ballad appealing to his country for random.

"Through this turmoil Eleanor governed successfully as regent with the wise counsel of her justiciar Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury but they found it hard to raise the ransom. Finally released (1194), Richard hurried to England, levied taxes and troops and led an army across the Channel to avenge himself and Britain against Philip. Tradition holds that he refused the sacraments for years lest he be required to forgive his faithless enemy.

"He recovered all the territory that Philip had captured and resigned himself to a peace that allowed Philip to live. In the interlude he quarreled with a vassal, Adhemar, Viscount of Limoges, who had found a cache of gold on his land. Adhemar offered Richard a part, Richard demanded all, and besieged him.

"Archbishop Walter made him swear a coronation oath that his throne was held by the election of the natiion (i.e. the nobles and prelates) and the grace of God. But John, having been false to his father, his brother, and his wife was not sorely hampered by one more vow.

"Like Henry II and Richard I he gave little evidence of religious belief. It was said that he had never taken the Eucharist since coming of age, not even on his coronation day. The monks charged him with atheism and told how, having caught a fat stag, he had remarked:-'How plump and well fed is this animal! and yet, I dare swear, he never heard Mass' --which the monks resented as an allusion to their corpulence.

"He was a man of much intellect and little scruple, an excellent administrator, 'no great friend to the clergy,' and therefore, said Holinshed, a bit maligned by monastic chroniclers -- not always in the wrong, but often alienating men by his sharp temper and wit, his scandalous humor, his proud absolutism and the tax exactions to which he felt driven in defending Continental England against Philip Augustus.

"In 1199 John secured permission from Pope Innocent III to divorce Isabel of Gloucester on grounds of consanguinity and soon thereafter he married Isabella of Angouleme despite her betrothal to the Count of Lusignan. The nobility of both countries took offense and the count appealed to Philip for redress.

"About the same time the barons of Anjou, Touraine, Poitou and Maine protested to Philip that John was oppressing their provinces. By feudal fealties going back to the cession of Normandy to Rollo, the territorial lords of France, even in provinces owned by England, acknowledged the French king as their feudal suzerain.

By feudal law John, as duke of Normandy, was vassal to the king of France. Philip summoned his royal vassal to come to Paris and defend himself against divers charges and appeals. John refused. The French feudal court declared his possessions in France forfeited and awarded Normandy, Anjou and Poitou to Arthur, Count of Brittany, a grandson of Henry II.

"Arthur laid claim to the throne of England, raised an army, and besieged at Mirabeau Queen Eleanor who, thought eighty, led a force in defense of her unruly son. John rescued her, captured Arthur, and apparently ordered his death. Philip invaded Normandy. John was too busy honeymooning at Rouen to lead his troops.

"John now quarreled with Innocent. On the death of Hubert Walter the King persuaded the older monks of Canterbury to elect John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, to the vacant see. A group of younger monks chose Reginald their subprior, as archbishop. The rival candidates hurried to Rome seeking papal confirmation.

"Innocent rejected them both and appointed to the see Stephen Langton, an English prelate who for the past twenty-five years had lived in Paris and was now a professor of theology in the university there. John protested that Langton had no preparation for the office of primate of England, a position involving political as well as ecclesiastical functions.

"Ignoring John's demurrers, Innocent, at Viterbo in Italy, consecrated Stephen archbishop of Canterbury. John defied Langton to set foot on English soil, threatned to burn the cloisters over the heads of the rebellious Canterbury monks and swore 'by the teeth of God' that if the Pope laid an interdict on England he would banish every Catholic clergy man from the land and would put out the eyes and cut off the nose of some of them for good measure.

"The interdict was pronounced. All religious services of the clergy in England were suspended except baptism and extreme unction. Churches were closed by the clergy, church bells were silenced and the dead were buried in unconsecreated ground. John confiscated all episcopal or monastic properties and gave them to laymen.

"Innocent excommunicated the King. John ignored the decree and waged successful campaigns in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

"He neglected his second wife to beget illegitimate children upon careless mistresses -- jailed Jews to milk their money from them -- allowed some imprisoned prelates to die of hardships -- alienated nobles by adding insults to taxes -- and strictly enforced the unpopular forestry laws.

"In 1213 Innocent used his last resort. He promulgated a decree of deposition against the English King, released John's subjects from their oath of allegiance, and declared the King's possessions to be now the lawful spoil of whoever could wrest them from his sacrilegious hands.

"Philip Augustus accepted the invitation, assembled an impressive army and marched to the Channel coast. John prepared to resist invasion but now he discoveed that the nobles would not support him in a war against a Pope armed with physical as well as spiritual force.

"Furious against them and seeing the imminence of defeat, he struck a bargain with Pandulf, the papal legate. If Innocent would withdraw his decrees of escommunication, interdict, and deposition and would change from foe to friend, John pledged himself to return all confiscated ecclesiastical property and to submit his crown and his kingdom to the Pope in feudal vassalage.

"The victory of Philip at Bouvines deprived John of German and other allies to whom he had looked for aid against an expanding France. He returned to England to face an embittered aristocracy. The nobles resented his inordinate taxation for disastrous wars, his violations of precedent and law, his bartering of England for Innocent's forgiveness and support.

"To force the issue, John required of them a scutage -- a money payment in lieu of military service. They sent him instead a deputation demanding a return to the laws of Henry I which had protected the rights of the nobles and limited the powers of the king.

"Receiving no satisfactory answer, the nobles collected their armed forces at Stamford. While John dallied at Oxford they sent emissaries to London who won the support of the commune and the court.

"At Runnymede on the Thames, near Windsor, the forces of the aristocracy encamped opposite the few supporters of the King. There John made his second great surrender and signed (1215) Magna Carta, the most famous document in English history.

The Great Charter deserves its fame as the foundation of the liberties today enjoyed by the English-speaking world. It was indeed limited. It defined the rights of the nobles and the clergy far more than of the whole people. No arrangements were made to implement the pious gesture of Article 60. The Charter was a victory for feudalism rather than for democracy.

"A regency was formed with the earl of Pembroke as its head. Encouraged by this elevation of one of their number, the nobles went over to Henry and sent Louis back to France.

"Henry grew into an artist king, a connoiseur of beauty, the inspiration and financier for the building of Westminster Abbey. He thought the Charter a disintegrating force and tried to abrogate it but failed.

"He taxed the nobles within an inch of revolution always swearing that the latest levy would be the last. The popes needed money, too, and, with the king's consent, drew tithes from English parishes to support the wars of the papacy against Frederick II.

"The memory of these exactions prepared the revolts of Wyecliff and Henry VIII.

"Edward I was less a scholar than his father and more a king ambitious, strong of will, tenacious in war, subtle in policy, rich in strategems and spoils, yet capable of moderation and caution and of farseeing purposes that made his reign one of the most successful in English history.

"He reorganized the army, trained a large force of archers in the use of the longbow and established a national militia by ordering every able-bodied Englishman to possess and learn the use of arms. Unwittingly, he created a military basis for democracy. So strengthened, he conquered Wales, won and lost Scotland, refused to pay the tribute that John had promised the popes and abolished the papal suzerainty over England.

"Through the superimposition of Norman feudal upon Anglo-Saxon local law, English law for the first time became national -- no longer the law of Essex or Mercia or the Danelaw but 'the law and custom of the realm.'

"We can hardly realize now what a legal revolution was implied when Ranulf de Glanville used this phrase. Under the stimulus of Henry II and the guidance of his justiciar Glanville, English law and courts acquired such repute for expedition and equity (tempered with corruption) that rival kings in Spain submitted their dispute to the royal court of England.

"Glanville may have been the author of a Treatise on Laws (Tractatus de legibus) traditionally ascribed to him. In any case it is our oldest textbook of English law.

"Impatient to raise more funds than the lords would vote him, Henry III summoned two knights from each county to join the barons and prelates in the Great Council of 1254.

"When Simon de Montfort, son of a famous Albigensian crusader, led a revolt of the nobles against Henry III in 1264, he tried to win the middle classes to his cause by asking not only two knights from each county but also two leading citizens from each borough or town to join the barons in a national assembly.

"The towns were growing, the merchants had money. It was worth while consulting these men if they would pay as well as talk.

"Edward I profited from Simon's example. Caught in the toils of simultaneous wars with Scotland, Wales, and France, he was constrained to seek the support and funds of all ranks. In 1295 he summoned the 'Model Parliament,' the first complete parliament in English history.

"His writ of summons read:-'What touches all should be approved by all and common dangers should be met by measures agreed upon in common.' So Edward invited two burgesses 'from every city, borough, and leading town' to attend the Great Council at Westminster. These men were chosen by the more substantial citizens in each locality.

"No one dreamed of universal suffrage in a society where only a minority could read. In the 'Model parliament' itself the 'commons' did not at once hold equal powers with the aristocracy. There was as yet no annual Parliament, meeting at its own will as the sole source of law.

"But by 1295 the principle was accepted that no statute passed by Parliament could be abrogated except by Parliament and in 1297 it was further agreed that no taxes were to be levied without Parliament's consent.

"They sat apart and refused to vote supplies except in their provincial assemblies. Ecclesiastical courts continued to try all cases involving canon law and most cases involving any member of the clergy.

"Clerics accused of felonies might be tried by secular authorities but those convicted of crime short of high treason were, through 'benefit of clergy,' handed over to an ecclesiastical court which alone could punish them.

"Moreover, most judges in secular tribunals were ecclesiastics for education in law was largely confined to the clergy.

"Under Edward I the secular courts became more secular. When the clergy refused to join in voting supplies, Edward I, arguing that those who were protected by the state should share its burdens, directed his courts to hear no cause in which a churchman was plaintiff but to try every suit in which a cleric was defendant.

"Houses were of wood, two or three stories high, with gabled roofs. Often the upper story projected beyond the one beneath.

"City law forbade emptying the end products of kitchen, bedroom, or bath through the windows but the remnants of upper stories often yielded to the convenience.

"Most of the slops from the houses found their way into the current of rain water that ran along the curbs. It was forbidden to cast feces, permissible to empty urinals, into this gutter stream. The municipal council did what it could to improve sanitation -- ordered citizens to clean the streets before their homes, levied fines for negligence and hired 'rakers' to gather garbage and filth and cart these to dung boats on the Thames.

"Horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry were kept by many citizens. But this was no great evil, since there were many open spaces and nearly every house had a garden.

"Here and there rose a structure of stone like the Temple Church, Westminster Abbey, or the Tower of London which William the Conqueror had built to guard his capital and shelter distinguished prisoners.

"As Normandy fell away from England, the Norman families in Britain forgot Normandy and learned to love their new land. The mystic and poetic qualities of the Celt remained, especially in the lower classes but were tempered by Norman vigor and earthiness.

"Amid the strife of nations and classes, and the blows of famine and plague, the resultant Briton could still make what Henry of Huntingdon called Anglia plena iocis -- Merry England -- a nation of abounding energy, rude jests, boisterous games, grand fellowship, a love of dancing, minstrelsy, and ale.

"A year later Henry sent John of Salisbury to Rome with a subtle message. Ireland was in a state of political chaos, literary decline, moral debasement, religious independence and decay. Would not the Pope permit Henry to take possession of the individualistic isle and restore it to social order and papal obedience?

"If we may believe Giraldus Cambarensis, the Pope agreed and by the bull Laudabiliter granted Ireland to Henry on condition of restoring orderly government there, bringing the Irish clergy into better cooperation with Rome and arranging that a penny should be paid yearly to the See of Peter for every house in Ireland.

"But he erred in thinking that the forces which he left behind him could sustain oder and peace. His appointees fought one another for the spoils and their aides and troops plundered the country with a minimum of restraint.

"The conquerors did their best to reduce the Irish to serfdom. The Irish resisted with guerrilla warfare and the result was a century of turmoil and destruction.

"In 1315 some Irish chieftains offered Ireland to Scotland where Robert Bruce had just defeated the English at Bannockburn. Robert's brother Edward landed in Ireland with 6000 men.

"Pope John XXII pronounced excommunication upon all who should aid the Scots. But nearly all Irish men rose at Edward's call and in 1316 they crowned him King.

"Two years later he was defeated and slain near Dundalk and the revolt collapsed in poverty and despair.

"Scotland became British but remained free.

"Angles, Saxons and Normans multiplied in the lowlands and reorganized agricultural life on a feudal plan.

"Malcolm III was a warrior who repeatedly invaded England. But his Queen Margaret was an Anglo-Saxon princess who converted the Scottish court to the English language, brought in English speaking clergy and reared her sons in English ways.

"The last and strongest of them, David, made the Church his chosen instrument of rule, founded English speaking monasteries at Kelso, Dryburgh, Melrose and Holyrood, levied tithes (for the first time in Scotland) for the support of the Church and gave so lavishly to bishops and abbots that people mistook him for a saint.

"Under David I, Scotland, in all but its highlands, became an English state.

"But it was not the less independent.

"The English immigrants were transformed into patriotic Scots. From their number came the Stuarts and the Bruces.

"David I invaded and captured Northumberland.

"Malcolm IV lost it.

"William the Lion, trying to regain it, was taken prisoner by Henry II and was freed only on pledging homage to the king of England for the SCottish crown.

"Fifteen years later he bought release from this pledge by helping to finance Richard I in the Third Crusade but the English kings continued to claim feudal suzerainty over Scotland.

"But the older Gaelic Scots strongly resented the surrender. One of them, Sir William Wallace, organized an 'army of the commons of Scotland,' routed the English garrison and for a year ruled Scotland as regent for Ballio.

"Edward returned, and defeated Wallace at Falkirk. In 1305 he captured Wallace and had him disembowled and quartered according to the Engish law of treason.

"A year later another defender was forced into the field.

"Robert Bruce, grandson of the Bruce who had claimed the throne in 1286, quarreled with John Comyn, a leading representative of Edward I in Scotland and killed him. Thereby committed to rebellion, Bruce had himself crowned King although only a small group of nobles supported him and the pope excommunicated him for his crime.

"Edward once more marched north but died on the way. Edward II's incompetence was a blessing for Bruce. The nobles and clergy of Scotland rallied to the outlaw's banner.

"His reinforced armies, bravely led by his brother Edward and Sir James Douglas, captured Edinburgh, invaded Northumberland and seized Durham.

"In 1314 Edward II led into Scotland the largest army that the land had ever seen and met the Scots at Bannockburn. Bruce had had his men dig and conceal pits before his position. Many of the English, charging, fell into the morass and the English army was almost totally destroyed.

"Their bards now gave form to the tales of the Maginogion, enriching literature with a mystic melodious tenderness uniquely Welsh.

"Annually the bards and minstrels assembled in a national eisteddfod (from eistedd, to sit) which can be traced back to 1176. Contests were held in oratory, poetry, singing, and the playing of musical instruments.

"South of the Rhine lay the country of Flanders, running from Calais through modern Belgium to the Scheldt. Formally it was a fief held from the French king. Actually it was ruled by a dynasty of enlightened counts, checked only by the proud autonomy of the towns.

"Near the Rhine the people were Flemish, of Low German origin, and spoke a German dialect.

"West of the Lys River they were Walloons -- a mixture of Germans and French on a Celtic base -- and spoke a dialect of French.

"Commerce and industry fattened and disturbed Ghent, Audernaarde, Courtrai, Ypres, and Kassel in the Flemish northeast, and Bruges, Lille, and Douri in the Walloon southwest. In these cities population was denser than anywhere else in Europe north of the Alps.

"In 1300 the cities dominated the counts. The magistrates of the larger communities formed a supreme court for the county and negotiated on their own authority with foreign cities and governments.

"As the proletariat rose in number, resentment, and power, and the counts sided with them as an offset to the bumptious bourgeoisie, the merchants sought support from Philip Augustus of France who promised it in the hope of bringng Flanders effectively under the French crown.

"England, anxious to keep the chief market for her wool out of the control of the French king, allied herself with the counts of Flanders and Hainanlt, the duke of Brabanr, and Otto IV of Germany. Philip defeated this coalition at Bouvines, subdued the counts, and protected the merchants in their oligarchic regime.

"The conflict of power and classes continued. In 1297 Count Guy de Dampierre again allied Flanders with England. Philip the Fair invaded Flanders, imprisoned Guy, and forced him to cede the country to France.

"But when the French army moved to occupy Bruges the commons rose, overcame the troops, massacred rich merchants, and gained possession of the town. Philip sent a large army to avenge this affront. The workers of the towns formed themselves into an impromptu army and defeated the knights and mercenaries of France in the battle of Courtrai.

"In 843 it became the northernmost portion of the buffer state of Lorraine created by the Treaty of Verdun.

"In the ninth and tenth centuries it was divided into feudal fiefs for better resistance to Norse raids.

"The Germans who cleared and settled the heavily wooded district north of the Rhine called it Holland, i.e. Woodland. Most of the people were serfs, absorbed in the struggle to wrest a living from a land that had always to be diked or drained. Half of Holland exists by the taming of the sea.

"But there were cities, too, not quite as rich and turbulent as the Flemish towns but soundly based on steady industry and orderly trade. Dordrecht was the most prosperous. Utrecht was a center of learning. Haarlem was the seat of the Count of Holland. Delft became the capital for a time -- then toward 1250, 'The Hague.'

"Amsterdam made its debut in 1204 when a feudal lord built a fortress chateau at the mouth of the Amstel River. The sheltered site on the Zuider Zee and the pervasive canals invited commerce. In 1197 the city was made a free port where goods could be received and reshipped free of customs duties.

"Thenceforth little Holland played a large part in the economic world. There as elsewhere commerce nourished culture.

"In the third century the Alemanni occupied and Germanized the northern plateau.

"After the collapse of the Carolingian Empire the land was divided into feudal fiefs subject to the Holy Roman Empire. But it is difficult to enslave mountaineers. The Swiss, while acknowledging some feudal dues, soon liberated themselves from serfdom.

"The villages in democratic assemblies chose their own officials and ruled themselves by the ancient Germanic laws of the Alemanni and Burgundians. For mutual protection the peasants neighboring Lake Lucerne formed themselves into 'Forest Cantons' (Waldstatte) -- Uri, Nidwalden, and Schwyz, which later gave its name to the state.

"The sturdy burghers of the towns that had grown along the Alpine passes -- Geneva, Constance, Fribourg, Berne, and Basel -- elected their own officials and administered their own laws.

"Their feudal overlords raised no objection to this so long as basic feudal taxes were paid."

"The Hapsburg counts who, from 1173, held the northern districts, proved an exception to this rule and earned the hatred of the men of Schwyz by attempting to apply feudal dues in full severity.

"In 1291 the three Forest Cantons formed an 'Everlasting League' and swore a confederatio to give one another aid against external aggression or internal disturbance, to arbitrate all differences and to recognize no judge who was not a native of the valley or had bought his office. Lucerne, Zuric, and Constance soon joined the League.

"In 1315 the Hapsburg dukes sent two armies into Switzerland to enforce all feudal dues. In the pass of Morgarten the infantry of Schwyz and Uri, armed with halberds, defeated the Austrian cavalry in'the Marathon of Switzerland.' The Austrian forces withdrew. The three cantons renewed their oath of mutual support and created the Swiss Confederacy.

"It was not yet an independent state. The free citizens acknowledged certain feudal obligations and the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Emperor.

"But there had been strong men before him. Philip I made a secure niche for himself in history by divorcing his wife at forty and persuading Count Fulk of Anjou to cede to him the Countess Bertrade.

"A priest was found to solemnize the adultery as marriage, but Pope Urban II, coming to France to preach the First Crusade, excommunicated the King.

"Philip persisted in sin for twelve years. At last he sent Bertrade away and was shriven. But a while later he repented his repentance and resumed his Queen.

"She traveled with him to Anjou, taught her two husbands amity, and seems to have served both of them to the best of her charms.

"Having grown fat at forty-five, Philip handed over the major affairs of state to his son Louis VI, himself known as Louis the Fat.

"He deserved a better name. For twenty-four years he fought, finally with success, the robber barons who plundered travelers on the roads.

"He strengthened the monarchy by organizing a competent army. He did what he could to protect the peasants, the artisans, and the communes. He had the good sense to make the Abbot Suger his chief minister and friend.

"Suger of St. Denis was the Richelieu of the twelfth century. He managed the affairs of France with wisdom, justice, and farsight. He encouraged and imnproved agriculture. He designed and built one of the earliest and finest master pieces of the Gothic style. He wrote an illuminating account of his ministry and work.

"He labored conscientiously at his royal tasks but his virtues ruined him. His devotion to government appeared to Ealeanor as marital neglect. His patience with her amours added insult to negligence. She divorced him and gave her hand and her duchy of Aquitaine to Henry II of England.

"Disillusioned with life, Louis turned to piety and left to his son the task of building a strong France.

"Philip II Augustus, like a later Philippe, was a bourgeois gentilhomme on the throne -- a master of practical intelligence softened with sentiment -- a patron of learning with no taste for it -- a man of shrewd caution and prudent courage -- of quick temper, and ready amnesty -- of unscrupulous but controlled acquisitiveness -- of a moderated piety that could be generous to the Church, without allowing religion to countermand his politics -- and of a patient perseverance that won what bold adventurousness might never have attained.

"His first wife, Isabella, died in 1189. Four years later he married Ingeborg, a princess of Denmark. These marriages were political and brought more property than romance.

"Ingbeborg was not to Philip's taste. He ignored her after a day. Within the year he persuaded a council of French bishops to grant him a divorce. Pope Celestine III refused to confirm the decree.

"In 1196, defying the Pope, he married Agnes of Meran. Celestine excommunicated him but Philip remained obstinate. He said in a moment of tenderness:-'I had rather lose half my domains than separate from Agnes.'

"Innocent III commanded him to take back Ingeborg. When Philip refused, the invincible Pope interdicted religious services in Philip's domain. Philip, in a rage, deposed all bishops who obeyed the interdict. He mourned:-'Happy Saladin! who had no pope above him.' He threatened to turn Mohammedan. After four years of this spiritual war the people began to grumble with fear of hell.

"He was now strong enough to dominate all the dukes, counts, and seigneurs of his realm. His baillis and seneschals supervised local government. His kingdom had become an international power, not a strip of land along the Seine.

"John of England, so shorn, was not resigned. He persuaded Otto IV of Germany and the counts of Boulogne and Flanders to join him against this swelling France.

"John would attack through Aquitaine (still England's), the others from the northeast. Instead of dividing his forces to meet these separate assaults, Philip led his main army against John's allies and defeated them at Bouvines, near Lille.

"That battle decided many issues. It deposed Otto, secured the German throne to Frederick II, ended Germany hegemony, and hastened the decline of the Holy Roman Empire. It reduced the counts of Flanders to French obedience, added Amiens, Douai, Lille, and St. Quentin to the Frnech crown, and in effect extended northeaastern France to the Rhine.

"It left John helpless against his barons and forced him to sign Magna Carta. It weakened monarchy anbd strengthened feudalism in England and Germany while it strengthened monarchy and weakened feudalism in France.

"And it favored the growth of the French communes and middle classes which had vigorously supported Philip in peace and war.

"Having trebled the royal domain, Philip governed it with devotion and skill.

"Half the time at odds with the Church, he replaced ecclesiastics in council and administration with men from the rising lawyer class.

"He gave charters of autonomy to many cities, encouraged trade by privileges to merchants, alternately protected and plundered the Jews, and fattened his exchequer by commuting feudal services into money payments. The royal revenue was doubled from 600 to 1200 livres ($240,000) a day.

"In his reign the facade of Notre Dame was completed and the Louvre was built as a fortress to guard the Seine.

"History remembers him chiefly for having married the admirable Blanche of Castile and begetting by her the one man in medieval history who like Ashoka in ancient India succeeded in being at once and in fact a saint and a king.

"Louis IX was twelve, his mother was thirty-eight, when Louis VIII died. Daughter of Alfonso IX of Castile, granddaughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche lived up to her royal blood. She was a woman of beauty and charm, energy, character, and skill. At the same time she impressed her age by her untarnished virtue as wife and widow and her devotion as the mother of eleven children.

"France honored her not only as Blanche la bonne reine, but equally as Blanche la bonne mere. She freed many serfs on the royal estates, spent great sums on charity, and provided dowries for girls whose poverty discourged love.

"She helped to finance the building of Chartres Cthedral and it was through her influence that its stained glass showed Mary not as virgin but as queen.

"She loved her son Louis too jealously and was ungenerous to his wife. She trained him sedulously to Christian virtue and told him that she would rather see him dead than have him commit a mortal sin.

"But it was not her doing that he became a devotee. She herself rarely sacrificed policy to sentiment. She joined in the cruel Albigensian Crusade to extend the power of the crown in southern France. For nine years, while Louis grew up, she governed the realm.

"And seldom has France been better ruled. At the outset of her regency the barons revolted, thinking to recapture from a woman the powers they had lost to Philip II. She overcame them with wise and patient diplomacy. She resisted England ably and then signed a truce on jhust terms.

"She found him a wife and he settled down. He became a model of conjugal fidelty and parental energy. He had eleven children and took an intimate share in their education.

"Gradually he abandoned luxury, lived more and more simply, and consumed himself in government, charity, and piety.

"He interfered resolutely to repress injustices of lord to man and in several cases severely punished barons who had executed men without due trial.

"When Enguerrand de Coney hanged three Flemish students for killing some rabbits on his estate, Louis had him locked up in the tower of the Louvre, threatened to hang him, and released him on condition tht he build three chapels where Masses were to be said daily for his victims -- that he give the forest where the young scholars had hunted to the abbey of St. Nicholas -- that he lose on his estates the rights of jurisdiction and hunting -- that he serve three years in Palestine -- and pay the King a fine of 12,300 pounds.

"Louis forbade feud vengeance and private feudal war and condemned the judicial duel. As trial by evidence replaced trial by combat, the baronial courts were progressively superseded by the royal courts, organized in each locality by the bailiffs of the King. The right of appeal from baronial judges to the central royal court was established and in France, as in England, the thirteenth century saw feudal law give way to a common law of the realm.

"He avoided war as long as possible but when aggression threatened he organized his armies efficiently, planned his campaigns, and -- in Europe -- carried them through with energy and skill to an honorable peace that left no passion for revenge.

"As soon as the safety of France was assured, he adopted a policy of conciliation which accepted the compromise of opposed rights while rejecting the appeasement of unjust claims.

"He restored to England and Spain territory that his predecessors had seized. His councilors mourned, but peace endured and France remained free from attack even during the long absences of Louis on crusades. Said William of Chartres:-'Men feared him because they knew that he was just.'

"From 1243 to 1270 France waged no war against a Christian foe. When her neighbors fought one another, Louis labored to reconcile them, scorning the suggestion of his council that such strife should be fomented to weaken potential enemies.

"Queen Blanche, whom he left, despite her sixty years, as regent with the fullest powers, wept as they parted. 'Most sweet fair son, fair tender son, I shall never see you more.'

"He was captured in Egypt and was held for a ransom that Blanche with great difficulty raised and paid. But when, defeated and humbled, he returned to France, he found his mother dead.

"In 1270, weak with illness, he set out again, this time for Tunisia. It was not so quixotic an enterprise as its failure made it out to be. Louis had allowed his brother, Charles of Anjou, to lead a French army into Italy not only to check German domination there, but also in the hope that Sicily might be made a base for a French invasion of Tunisia.

"Shortly after reaching Tunisia the great crusader, older in body than in years, died of dysentery. Twenty seven years later the Church cannonized him. Generations and centuries looked back to his reign as the Golden Age of France and wondered why an inscrutable Providence would not send them his like again.

"The long reigns of Philip Augustus and Louis IX gave her government continuity and stability while England suffered the negligent Richard I, the reckless John and the incompetent Henry III, and while Germany disintegrated in the wars between the emperors and the popes.

"By 1300 France was the strongest power in Europe.

"Philip IV was called le Bel for his handsome figure and face, not for his subtle statecrart and pitiless audacity.

"His aims were vast -- to bring all classes -- nobles and clergy as well as townsmen and serfs -- under the direct law and control of the king -- to base French growth on commerce and industry rather than on agriculture -- and to extend the boundaries of France to the Atlantic, the Pyrenees, the Mediteranean, the Alps, and the Rhine.

"He chose his aides and councilors not from the great eccelesiastics and barons who had served French kings for four centuries past, but from the lawyer class that came to him impregnate with the imperial ideas of Roman law.

"Pierre Flotte and Guillaume de Nogarer were brilliant intellects careless of morals and precedents. Under their guidance Philip rebuilt the legal structure of France, replaced feudal with royal law, overcame his foes by shrewd diplomacy and in the end broke the power of the papacy and made the pope in effect a prisoner of France.

"He tried to detch Guienne from England but found Edward I too strong for him.

"He commuted for money the military obligations of the barons to the crown.

"He repeatedly debased the coinage and insisted on taxes being paid in bullion or in honest coin.

"He exiled the Jews and the Lombards and destroyed the Templars to confiscate their wealth.

"He forbade the export of precious metal from his realm.

"He laid heavy taxes upon exports, imports, and sales and a war tax of a penny upon every livre of private wealth in France.

"Finally, without consulting the pope, he taxed the wealth of the Church which now owned a quarter of the land of France. The results belong to the story of Boniface VIII.

"When the old Pope, broken by the struggle, died, Philip's agents and money secured the election of a Frenchman as Clement V and the removal of the papacy to Avignon.

"In this period great universities were organized in Paris, Orleans, Angers, Toulouse and Montpellier.

"It began with Roscelin and Abelard and culminated in the zenith of the scholastic philosophy.

"It was the age of the Gothic ecstasy -- of the majestic cathedrals of St. Denis, Chartres, Notre Dame, Amiens, and the Reims, and of Gothic sculpture in its most spiritual perfection.

"Frenchmen were forgivably proud of their country, their capital and their culture. A national unifying patriotism was replacing the provincialism of the feudal era.

"The popes gave the name and privileges of crusaders to Christians who would help drive back the Moors in Spain. Some Templars came from France to help the cause.

"Three Spanish military religious orders -- the Knights of Calatrava, of Santiago, of Alcantara -- were formed in the twelfth century.

"In 1118 Alfonso I of Aragon captured Saragossa.

"In 1195 the Christians were defeated at Alarcos.

"In 1212 they almost wiped out the main Almohad army at Las Navas de Tolosa. The victory was decisive.

"Moorish resistance broke down and one by one the Moslem citadels fell -- Cordova (1236), Valencia (1238), Seville (1248), Cadiz (1250).

"Fernando III reunited Leon and Castile -- pushed the Catholic frontier to Granada -- made Seville his capital -- the great mosque his cathedral -- the Alcazar his residence.

"The Church considered him a bastard at his birth and made him a saint after his death.

"His son Alfonso X was an excellent scholar and an irresolute king.

"Attracted by the Moorish learning that he found in Seville, Alfonso el sabio, the Wise, braved the bigots by hiring Arab and Jewish, as well as Christian, scholars to translate Moslem works into Latin for the instruction of Europe.

"He established a school of astronomy, whose 'Alfonsine Tables' of heavenly bodies and movements became standard for Christian astronomers.

"He organized a corps of historians who wrote under his name a history of Spain and a vast and general history of the world.

"He composed some 450 poems, some in Castilian, some in Galician-Portuguese. Many were set to music and survive as one of the most substantial monuments of medieval song.

"His literary passion overflowed in books written or commissioned by him on draughts, chess, dice, stones, music, navigation, alchemy, and philosophy.

"Apparently he ordered a translation of the Bible to be made directly from the Hebrew into Castilian. With him the Castilian languge assumed the pre-eminence from which it has since ruled the literary life of Spain.

"He was in effect the founder of Spanish and Portuguese literature, of Spanish historiography, of Spanish scientific terminology.

"He tarnished a brilliant career by inriguing to secure the throne of the Holy Roman Empire.

"He spent much Spanish treasure in the attempt. He sought to replenish his coffers by raising taxes and debasing the coinage.