Category: History - Medieval/Middle Ages
One of the most important steps in the expansion of the Roman Republic was the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar just before the middle of the first century B.C. Through this conquest Rome entered deliberately upon the policy of extending her dominion northward from the Medite...
One of the most important steps in the expansion of the Roman Republic was the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar just before the middle of the first century B.C. Through this co...
28. CHAPTER II.The earliest invasion of the Roman Empire which resulted in the permanent settlement of a large and united body of Germans on Roman soil was that of the Visigoths in the year 37...
29. CHAPTER III.The Huns, a people of Turanian stock, were closely related to the ancestors of the Magyars, or the modern Hungarians. Their original home was in central Asia, beyond the great w...
30. CHAPTER IV.The most important historical writer among the early Franks was a bishop whose full name was Georgius Florentius Gregorius, but who has commonly been known ever since his day as...
31. CHAPTER V.The Venerable Bede, the author of the passage given below, was born about 673 in Northumberland and spent most of his life in the Benedictine abbey of Jarrow on the Tyne, where...
32. CHAPTER VI.In tracing the history of the great ecclesiastical institution known as the papacy, the first figure that stands out with considerable clearness is that of Leo I., or Leo the Gr...
33. CHAPTER VII.The Koran comprises all of the recorded speeches and sayings of the prophet Mohammed and it has for nearly fifteen centuries been the absolute law and gospel of the Mohammedan r...
34. CHAPTER VIII.During the seventh and eighth centuries the Merovingian line of Frankish kings degenerated to a condition of weakness both pitiable and ridiculous. As the royal family became le...
35. CHAPTER IX.Biographical writings make up a not inconsiderable part of mediaeval literature, but unfortunately the greater portion of them are to be trusted in only a limited degree by the...
36. CHAPTER X.The broad empire of Germanic peoples built up by Charlemagne was extremely difficult to hold together. Even before the death of its masterful creator, in 814, it was already sho...
37. CHAPTER XI.The earliest recorded visit of the Danes, or Northmen, to England somewhat antedates the appearance of these peoples on the Frankish coast in the year 800. In 787 three Danish v...
38. CHAPTER XII.Among the early Germans the settling of disputes and the testing of the guilt or innocence of an accused person were generally accomplished through the employment of one or both...
39. CHAPTER XIII.The history of the feudal system in Europe makes up a very large part of the history of the Middle Ages, particularly of the period between the ninth and the fourteenth centurie...
40. CHAPTER XIV.The Northmen, under the leadership of the renowned Rollo, got their first permanent foothold in that important part of France since known as Normandy in the year 911 [see p. 171...
41. CHAPTER XV.Throughout the earlier Middle Ages the Benedictine Rule [see p. 83] was the code under which were governed practically all the monastic establishments of western Europe. There w...
42. CHAPTER XVI.Hildebrand, who as pope was known as Gregory VII., was born about the year 1025 in the vicinity of the little Tuscan town of Soana. His education was received in the rich monast...
43. CHAPTER XVII.Within a short time after the death of Mohammed (632) the whole country of Syria, including Palestine, was overrun by the Arabs, and the Holy City of Jerusalem passed out of Chr...
44. CHAPTER XVIII.The reign of King John (1199-1216) was an era of humiliation, though in the end one of triumph, for all classes of the English people. The king himself was perhaps the most unwo...
45. CHAPTER XIX.Louis IX., or St. Louis, as he is commonly called, was the eldest son of Louis VIII. and a grandson of Philip Augustus. He was born in 1214 and upon the death of his father in 1...
46. CHAPTER XX.In the times of the Carolingians the small and scattered towns and villages of western Europe, particularly of France, were inhabited mainly by serfs and villeins, i.e., by a de...
47. CHAPTER XXI.The modern university is essentially a product of the Middle Ages. The Greeks and Romans had provisions for higher education, but nothing that can properly be termed universitie...
48. CHAPTER XXII.From the twelfth century onwards one of the most conspicuous features of the internal development of the mediaeval Church was the struggle to combat worldliness among ecclesiast...
49. CHAPTER XXIII.Two of the most effective weapons at the service of the mediaeval Church were excommunication and the interdict. By the ban of excommunication the proper ecclesiastical authorit...
50. CHAPTER XXIV.With the election of Frederick Barbarossa as emperor, in 1152, a new stage of the great papal-imperial combat was entered upon, though under conditions quite different from thos...
51. CHAPTER XXV.Our chief contemporary source of information on the history of the Hundred Years' War is Jean Froissart's _Chronicles of England, France, and the Adjoining Countries, from the L...
52. CHAPTER XXVI.The question as to when the Middle Ages came to an end cannot be answered with a specific date, or even with a particular century. The transition from the mediaeval world to the...
53. CHAPTER XXVII.The fourteenth century was an era of religious decline in England, as indeed more or less generally throughout western Europe. The papacy was at its lowest ebb, unable to comman...