 CHAPTER 30 THE NORSEMEN Why the people of the tenth century prayed the Lord to protect them from the fury of the Norsemen. In the third and fourth centuries the Germanic tribes of Central Europe had broken through the defenses of the Empire that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the Germans to be the plundered ones. They did not like this at all, even if their enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway. What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not know, but once they had discovered the advantages and pleasures of a buccaneering career there was no one who could stop them. They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful, Frankish, or Frisian village situated on the mouth of a river. They would kill all the men and steal all the women. Then they would sail away in their fast sailing ships, and when the soldiers of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene the robbers were gone and nothing remained but a few smoldering ruins. During the days of disorder which followed the death of Charlemagne, the Norsemen developed great activity, their fleets made raids upon every country, and their sailors established small independent kingdoms along the coast of Holland and France and England and Germany, and they even found their way into Italy. The Norsemen were very intelligent. They soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and gave up the uncivilized ways of the early Vikings or sea kings who had been very picturesque but also very unwashed and terribly cruel. Here you see a picture of the home of the Norsemen which is a small lake surrounded by mountains and trees. Early in the 10th century a Viking by the name of Rolo had repeatedly attacked the coast of France. The king of France, too weak to resist these northern robbers, tried to bribe them into being good. He offered them the province of Normandy if they would promise to stop bothering the rest of his domains. Rolo accepted this bargain and became Duke of Normandy. Here you see a picture of one of the Norsemen ships and the title of the picture is the Norsemen go to Russia. But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his children. Across the channel only a few hours away from the European mainland they could see the white cliffs and green fields of England. Before England had passed through difficult days. For two hundred years it had been a Roman colony. After the Romans left it had been conquered by the Angles and the Saxons, two German tribes from Schleswig. Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country and had established the kingdom of Knut. The Danes had been driven away and now it was early in the 11th century another Saxon king Edward the Confessor was on the throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he had no children. The circumstances favored the ambitious dukes of Normandy. Here you have a picture of a tower on the cliffs overlooking the channel. And it's titled the Normans look across the channel. In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Normandy crossed the channel defeated and killed Harold of Wessex who had taken the crown at the Battle of Hastings and proclaimed himself king of England. In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognized as king of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining? Really you see a picture of a map of Europe and the north part of Africa and it's called the world of the Norsemen and it shows all the places that they took over. End of Chapter 30, recorded by Michelle Crandall, Fremont, California, April 2009. Chapter 31 of The Story of Mankind. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik von Lohn. Chapter 31. Feudalism. How Central Europe, attacked from three sides, became an armed camp and why Europe would have perished without those professional soldiers and administrators who were part of the feudal system. The following then is the State of Europe in the year 1000 when most people were so unhappy that they welcomed the prophecy for telling the approaching end of the world and rushed to the monasteries that the day of judgment might find them engaged upon devout duties. At an unknown date the Germanic tribes had left their old home in Asia and had moved westward into Europe. By sheer pressure of numbers they had forced their way into the Roman Empire. They had destroyed the Great Western Empire, but the Eastern part, being off the main route of the Great Migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued the traditions of Rome's ancient glory. During the days of disorder which had followed, the true dark ages of history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era, the German tribes had been persuaded to accept the Christian religion and had recognized the Bishop of Rome as the Pope or a spiritual head of the world. In the ninth century the organizing genius of Charlemagne had revived the Roman Empire and had united the greater part of Western Europe into a single state. During the tenth century this empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a separate kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the rulers of this Federation of States then pretended that they were the direct heirs of Caesar and Augustus. Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not stretch beyond the moat of their royal residence while the Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their prophet. To increase the misery of the masses of the people the triangle of Western Europe, look at page 128 please, was forever exposed to attacks from three sides. On the south lived the ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged by the Northmen. The eastern frontier, defenseless except for the short stretch of the Carpathian mountains, was at the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs, and Tartars. The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream of the good old days that were gone forever. It was a question of fight or die and quite naturally people preferred to fight. Forced by circumstances Europe became an armed camp and there was a demand for strong leadership. Both king and emperor were far away. The frontiersmen, and most of Europe in the year 1000 was frontier, must help themselves. They willingly submitted to the representatives of the king who were sent to administer the outlying districts, provided they could protect them against their enemies. Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities, each one ruled by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as the case might be, and organized as a fighting unit. These dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the king who had given them their feudum, hence our word feudal, in return for their loyal services and a certain amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow, and the means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal or imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great independence, and within the boundaries of their own province they assumed most of the rights which in truth belonged to the king. But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the people of the eleventh century objected to this form of government. They supported feudalism, because it was a very practical and necessary institution. Their lord and master usually lived in a big stone house, erected on the top of a steep rock or a built between deep moats, but within sight of his subjects. In case of danger, the subjects found shelter behind the walls of the baronial stronghold. Notice why they tried to live as near the castle as possible, and it accounts for the many European cities which began their career around a feudal fortress. But the night of the early Middle Ages was much more than a professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that day. He was the judge of his community, and he was the chief of police. He caught the highwaymen and protected the wandering peddlers who were the merchants of the eleventh century. He looked after the dykes, so that the countryside should not be flooded, just as the first noble men had done in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before. He encouraged the troubadours who wandered from place to place, telling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the great wars of the migrations. Besides, he protected the churches and the monasteries within his territory, and although he could neither read nor write—it was considered unmanly to know such things—he employed a number of priests, who kept his accounts, and who registered the marriages and the births and the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal domains. In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong enough to exercise those powers which belonged to them because they were anointed of God. Then the feudal knights lost their former independence. Reduced to the rank of country squires, they no longer filled a need, and soon they became a nuisance. But Europe would have perished without the feudal system of the Dark Ages. There were many bad knights, as there are many bad people to-day, but generally speaking, the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful service to the cause of progress. During that era the noble torch of learning and art which had illuminated the world of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was burning very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the monks, civilization would have been extinguished entirely, and the human race would have been forced to begin once more, where the cave-man had left off. CHAPTER 32 SHIVELRY It was quite natural that the professional fighting men of the Middle Ages should try to establish some sort of organization for their mutual benefit and protection. Out of this need for close organization, knighthood or chivalry was born. We know very little about the origins of knighthood, but, as the system developed, it gave the world something which it needed very badly, a definite rule of conduct which softened the barbarous customs of the day, and made life more livable than it had been during the five hundred years of the Dark Ages. It was not an easy task to civilize the rough frontiersmen who had spent most of their time fighting Muhammadians and Huns and Norsemen. Often they were guilty of backsliding, and having vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and charity in the morning, they would murder all their prisoners before evening. But progress is ever the result of slow and ceaseless labor. And finally, the most unscrupulous of knights was forced to obey the rules of his class or suffer the consequences. These rules were different in the various parts of Europe, but they all made much of service and loyalty to duty. The Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble and beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful performance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue of the fighting man. A young knight, therefore, was asked to swear that he would be faithful as a servant to God and as a servant to his king. Furthermore, he promised to be generous to those whose need was greater than his own. He pledged his word that he would be humble in his personal behavior, and would never boast of his own accomplishments, and that he would be a friend of all those who suffered, with the exception of the Muhammadians, whom he was expected to kill on site. Around these vows, which were merely the ten commandments expressed in terms which the people of the Middle Ages could understand, there developed a complicated system of manners and outward behavior. The knights tried to model their own lives after the example of those heroes of Arthur's round table, and Charlemagne's court, of whom the troubadours had told them, and of whom you may read in many delightful books, which are enumerated at the end of this volume. They hoped that they might prove as brave as Lancelot and as faithful as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity, and they spoke careful and gracious words that they might be known as true knights, however humble the cut of their coat or the size of their purse. In this way the order of knighthood became a school of those good manners, which are the oil of the social machinery. Chivalry came to mean courtesy, and the feudal castle showed the rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat, how to ask a lady for a dance, and the thousand and one little things of everyday behavior which helped to make life interesting and agreeable. Like all human institutions, knighthood was doomed to perish as soon as it had outlived its usefulness. The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells, were followed by a great revival of trade. Cities grew overnight. The townspeople became rich, hired good schoolteachers, and soon were the equals of the knights. The invention of gunpowder deprived the heavily armed chivalier of his former advantage, and the use of mercenaries made it impossible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he became a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his armor were sold to pay his debts. But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into the hands of a number of men. Washington carried it during the hopeless days of Valley Forge. It was the only defense of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people, who had been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the besieged fortress of Cartoon. And I am not quite sure, but that it proved of invaluable strength in winning the Great War. End of Chapter 32, recorded by Michele Crandall, Fremont, California, April 2009. Chapter 33 of The Story of Mankind. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Chapter 33. Pope vs. Emperor. The strange double loyalty of the people of the Middle Ages, and how it led to endless quarrels between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperor. It is very difficult to understand the people of bygone ages. Your own grandfather, whom you see every day, is a mysterious being who lives in a different world of ideas and clothes and manners. I am now telling you the story of some of your grandfathers who are twenty-five generations removed, and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write without rereading this chapter a number of times. The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple and uneventful life. Even if he was a free citizen, able to come and go at will, he rarely left his own neighborhood. There were no printed books and only a few manuscripts. Here and there a small band of industrious monks taught reading and writing and some arithmetic, but science and history and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and Rome. Before people knew about the past they had learned by listening to stories and legends. Such information, which goes from father to son, is often slightly incorrect in details, but it will preserve the main facts of history with astonishing accuracy. After more than two thousand years the mothers of India still frighten their naughty children by telling them that Ixander will get them, and Ixander is none other than Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year 330 before the birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through all these ages. The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a textbook of Roman history. They were ignorant of many things which every schoolboy today knows before he has entered the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a name to you, was to them something very much alive. They felt it, they willingly recognized the Pope as their spiritual leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of the Roman superpower. And they were profoundly grateful when Charlemagne and afterwards Otto the Great revived the idea of a world empire and created the Holy Roman Empire, that the world might again be as it always had been. But the fact that there were two different heirs to the Roman tradition placed the faithful burgers of the Middle Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the medieval political system was both sound and simple. While the worldly master, the emperor, looked after the physical well-being of his subjects, the spiritual master, the Pope, guarded their souls. In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The emperor invariably tried to interfere with the affairs of the church, and the Pope retaliated and told the emperor how he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind their own business in very unceremonious language, and the inevitable end was war. Under those circumstances what were the people to do? A good Christian obeyed both the Pope and his king, but the Pope and the emperor were enemies. Which side should a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful Christian take? It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the emperor happened to be a man of energy, and was sufficiently well provided with money to organize an army, he was very apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope in his own palace if need be, and force his holiness to obey the imperial instructions, or suffer the consequences. But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Even the emperor or the king, together with all his subjects, was excommunicated. This meant that all churches were closed, that no one could be baptized, that no dying man could be given absolution, in short, that half of the functions of medieval government came to an end. More than that the people were absolved from their oath of loyalty to their sovereign, and were urged to rebel against their master. But if they followed this advice of the distant Pope and were caught, they were hanged by their nearby liege-lord, and that, too, was very unpleasant. Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position, and none fared worse than those who lived during the latter half of the eleventh century, when the emperor Henry IV of Germany and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-round battle which decided nothing and upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty years. In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a strong movement for reform in the church. The election of the Popes thus far had been a most irregular affair. It was to the advantage of the Holy Roman emperors to have a well-disposed priest elected to the Holy Sea. They frequently came to Rome at the time of election, and used their influence for the benefit of one of their friends. In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of Pope Nicholas II the principal priests and deacons of the churches in and around Rome were organized into the so-called College of Cardinals, and this gathering of prominent churchmen, the word cardinal meant principal, was given the exclusive power of electing the future Popes. In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest by the name of Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in Tuscany as Pope, and he took the name of Gregory the Seventh. His energy was unbounded. His belief in the supreme powers of his holy office was built upon a granite rock of conviction and courage. In the mind of Gregory the Pope was not only the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest court of appeal in all worldly matters. The Pope who had elevated simple German princes to the dignity of the Emperor could depose them at will. He could veto any law passed by Duke or King or Emperor, but whosoever should question a papal decree let him beware for the punishment would be swift and merciless. Gregory sent ambassadors to all the European courts to inform the potentates of Europe of his new laws and asked them to take due notice of their contents. William the Conqueror promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age of six had been fighting with his subjects, had no intention of submitting to the papal will. He called together a college of German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the sun, and then had him deposed by the Council of Worms. The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand that the German princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler. The German princes, only too happy to be rid of Henry, asked the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them elect the new Emperor. Gregory left Rome and travelled northward. Henry, who was no fool, appreciated the danger of his position. At all costs he must make peace with the Pope, and he must do it at once. In the midst of winter he crossed the Alps and hastened to Canossa where the Pope had stopped for a short rest. Three long days from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth of January, of the year 1077, Henry, dressed as a penitent pilgrim but with a warm sweater underneath his monkish garb, waited outside the gates of the castle of Canossa. Then he was allowed to enter and was pardoned for his sins, but the repentance did not last long. As soon as Henry had returned to Germany he behaved exactly as before. Again he was excommunicated. For the second time a Council of German Bishops deposed Gregory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps, he was at the head of a large army, besieged Rome, and forced Gregory to retire to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent outbreak decided nothing. As soon as Henry was back in Germany the struggle between Pope and Emperor was continued. The Hohenstaufen family, which got hold of the Imperial German throne shortly afterwards, were even more independent than their predecessors. Gregory had claimed that the Popes were superior to all kings because they, the Popes, at the day of judgment, would be responsible for the behavior of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God a king was one of that faithful herd. Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Redbeard, set up the counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his predecessor by God himself, and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a campaign which was to add these lost provinces to the northern country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor during the Second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilliant young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilization of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian world of the north, for the boorish German knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went on a crusade, and took Jerusalem from the infidel, and was duly crowned as king of the holy city. Even this act did not placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that king Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis. This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV, and the last of the Hohenstalfens tried to regain the kingdom, and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years later the French, who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular in Sicily, were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian Vespers, and so it went. The quarrel between the Popes and the emperors was never settled, but after a while the two enemies learned to leave each other alone. In the year 1273 Rudolf of Hapsburg was elected emperor. He did not take the trouble to go to Rome to be crowned. The Popes did not object, and in turn they kept away from Germany. This meant peace, but two entire centuries which might have been used for the purpose of internal organization had been wasted in useless warfare. It is an ill wind, however, that bloweth no good to someone. The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing, had managed to increase their power and their independence at the expense of both emperors and Popes. When the rush for the Holy Land began they were able to handle the transportation problem of the thousands of eager pilgrims who were clamoring for passage, and at the end of the crusades they had built themselves such strong defenses of brick and of gold that they could defy Pope and emperor with equal indifference. Church and state fought each other, and a third party, the medieval city, ran away with the spoils. End of Chapter 33, read on October 22, 2008, in San Diego, California. All these different quarrels were forgotten when the Turks took the Holy Land, desecrated the holy places, and interfered seriously with the trade from east to west. Europe went crusading. During three centuries there had been peace between Christians and Muslims, except in Spain and in the Eastern Roman Empire, the two states defending the gateways of Europe. The Muhammadians, having conquered Syria in the 7th century, were in possession of the Holy Land, but they regarded Jesus as a great prophet, though not quite as great as Muhammad, and they did not interfere with the pilgrims who wished to pray in the church which St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of the Holy Grave. But early in the 11th century, a Tartar tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the Seljuks or Turks, became masters of the Muhammadian state in western Asia, and then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took all of Asia Minor away from the Eastern Roman emperors, and they made an end to the trade between east and west. Alexis, the emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian neighbors of the west, appealed for help and pointed to the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take Constantinople. The Italian cities which had established colonies along the coast of Asia Minor and Palestine, in fear for their possessions, reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Christian suffering. All Europe got excited. Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Rheims, who had been educated at the same famous cloister of Clooney which had trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory. The primitive agricultural methods of that day, unchanged since Roman times, caused a constant scarcity of food. There was unemployment and hunger, and these are apt to lead to discontent and riots. Western Asia in older days had fed millions. It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration. Therefore, at the Council of Clermont in France in the year 1095, the Pope arose, described the terrible horrors which the infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land, of a glowing description of this country which ever since the days of Moses had been overflowing with milk and honey, and exhorted the knights of France and the people of Europe in general to leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks. A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent. All reasons stopped. Men would drop their hammer and saw, walk out of their shop, and take the nearest road to the east to go and kill Turks. Men would leave their homes and go to Palestine and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian piety. Fully 90 percent of those enthusiasts never got within sight of the Holy Land. They had no money. They were forced to beg or steal to keep alive. They became a danger to the safety of the high roads, and they were killed by the angry country people. The first crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, resulting bankrupts, penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice, following the lead of half-crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter Without Ascent, began their campaign against the infidels by murdering all the Jews whom they met by the way. They got as far as Hungary, and then they were all killed. Here you see a picture of hundreds of crusaders marching in the first crusade. This experience taught the church a lesson. Enthusiasm alone would not set the Holy Land free. Organization was as necessary as goodwill and courage. A year was spent in training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert Duke of Normandy, Robert Count of Flanders, and a number of other noblemen, all experienced in the Art of War. In the year 1096, this second crusade started upon its long voyage. At Constantinople, the knights did homage to the Emperor. For, as I have told you, traditions die hard, and a Roman Emperor, however poor and powerless, was still held in great respect. Then they crossed into Asia, killed all the Muslims who fell into their hands, stormed Jerusalem, massacred the Muhammadan population, and marched to the Holy Sipulchre to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and gratitude. But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops. Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn killed the faithful followers of the cross. Here you see a picture of a map of Europe and the Middle East and the northern part of Africa, and it's the map of the world of the crusades where they took place. During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took place. Gradually, the crusaders learned the technique of the trip. The land voyage was too tedious and too dangerous. They preferred to cross the Alps and go to Genoa or Venice, where they took ship for the east. The Genoese and the Venetians made this trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very profitable business. They charged exorbitant rates, and when the crusaders, most of whom had very little money, could not pay the price, these Italian profiteers kindly allowed them to work their way across. In return for a fare from Venice to Acre, the crusader undertook to do a stated amount of fighting for the owners of his vessel. In this way, Venice greatly increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in Greece, where Athens became a Venetian colony, and in the islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes. Here you see a picture of a Moorish temple and it's where the crusaders take Jerusalem. All this, however, helped little in settling the question of the Holy Land. After the first enthusiasm had worn off, a short crusading trip became part of the liberal education of every well-bred young man, and there never was any lack of candidates for service in Palestine. But the old zeal was gone. The crusaders, who had begun their warfare with deep hatred for the Mohamedians and great love for the Christian people of the Eastern Roman Empire and Armenia, suffered a complete change of heart. They came to despise the Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them and frequently betrayed the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians, and all the other Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the virtues of their enemies who proved to be generous and fair opponents. Here you see a picture of the desert outside of Jerusalem with a picture of the crusaders' grave. Of course it would never do to say this openly, but when the crusader returned home, he was likely to imitate the manners which he had learned from his Heathenish foe, compared to whom the average Western knight was still a good deal of a country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new foodstuffs, such as peaches and spinach, which he planted in his garden and grew for his own benefit. He gave up the barbarous custom of wearing a load of heavy armor, and appeared in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the traditional habit of the followers of the prophet, and were originally worn by the Turks. Indeed the crusades, which had begun as a punitive expedition against the Heathen, became a course of general instruction in civilization for millions of young Europeans. From a military and political point of view, the crusades were a failure. Jerusalem and a number of cities were taken and lost. A dozen little kingdoms were established in Syria and Palestine and Asia Minor, but they were reconquered by the Turks, and after the year 1244, when Jerusalem became definitely Turkish, the status of the Holy Land was the same as it had been before 1095. But Europe had undergone a great change. The people of the West had been allowed a glimpse of the light and the sunshine and the beauty of the East. Their dreary castles no longer satisfied them. They wanted a broader life. Neither church nor state could give this to them. They found it in the cities. CHAPTER 35 THE MEDEVAL CITY Why the people of the Middle Ages said that city air is free air? The early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of pioneering and of settlement. A new people who thus far had lived outside the wild range of forest, mountains, and marshes, which protected the northeastern frontier of the Roman Empire, had forced its way into the plains of western Europe and had taken possession of most of the land. They were restless, as all pioneers have been since the beginning of time. They liked to be on the go. They cut down the forests, and they cut each other's throats with equal energy. Few of them wanted to live in cities. They insisted upon being free. They loved to feel the fresh air of the hillsides fill their lungs while they drove their herds across the windswept pastures. When they no longer liked their old homes, they pulled up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures. The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the courageous women who had followed their men into the wilderness survived. In this way they developed a strong race of men. They cared little for the graces of life. They were too busy to play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry. They had little love for discussions. The priest, the learned man of the village, and before the middle of the thirteenth century, a layman who could read and write was regarded as a sissy, was supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical value. Meanwhile, the German chieftain, the Frankish baron, the Northman duke, or whatever their names and titles, occupied their share of the territory which once had been part of the Great Roman Empire, and among the ruins of past glory they built a world of their own which pleased them mightily and which they considered quite perfect. They managed the affairs of their castle and the surrounding country to the best of their ability. They were as faithful to the commandments of the church as any weak mortal could hope to be. They were sufficiently loyal to their king or emperor to keep on good terms with those distant but always dangerous potentates. In short they tried to do right and to be fair to their neighbors, without being exactly unfair to their own interests. It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves. The greater part of the people were serfs or villains, farmhands, who were as much a part of the soil upon which they lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared. Their fate was not particularly happy, nor was it particularly unhappy. But what was one to do? The good Lord who ruled the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered everything for the best. If he in his wisdom had decided that there must be both knights and serfs, it was not the duty of these faithful sons of the church to question the arrangement. The serfs therefore did not complain, but when they were too hard driven they would die off like cattle which are not fed and stabled in the right way, and then something would be hastily done to better their condition. But if the progress of the world had been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would still be living after the fashion of the twelfth century, saying abracadabra when we tried to stop a toothache and feeling a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help us with his science, which most likely was of Mohammedan or Hedanish origin, and therefore both wicked and useless. When you grow up you will discover that many people do not believe in progress, and they will prove to you by the terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that the world does not change. But I hope that you will not pay much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors almost a million years to learn how to walk on their hind legs. Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts developed into an understandable language. Writing, the art of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, without which no progress is possible, was invented only four thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are making progress at an unheard of rate of speed. Perhaps we have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical comforts of life. That will change in due course of time, and we shall then attack the problems which are not related to health and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general. But please do not be too sentimental about the good old days. Many people who only see the beautiful churches and the great works of art which the Middle Ages have left behind grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly civilization with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of backfiring motor-trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago. But these medieval churches were invariably surrounded by miserable hovels compared to which a modern tenement house stands forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero who went in search of the Holy Grail, were not bothered by the odor of gasoline, but there were other smells of the barnyard variety, odors of decaying refuse which had been thrown into the street, of pig-sties surrounding the bishop's palace, of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats from their grandfathers, and who had never learned the blessing of soap. I do not want to paint too unpleasant a picture, but when you read in the ancient chronicles that the king of France, looking out of the windows of his palace, fainted at the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris, when an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of an epidemic of the plague or of smalpox, then you begin to understand that progress is something more than a catch word used by modern advertising men. No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not have been possible without the existence of cities. I shall therefore have to make this chapter a little longer than many of the others. It is too important to be reduced to three or four pages devoted to mere political events. The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria had been a world of cities. Greece had been a country of city-states. The history of Phoenicia was the history of two cities called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman Empire was the hinterland of a single town. Writing, art, science, astronomy, architecture, literature, the theatre, the list is endless, have all been products of the city. For almost four thousand years the wooden beehive, which we call a town, had been the workshop of the world. Then came the great migrations. The Roman Empire was destroyed, the cities were burned down, and Europe once more became a land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During the Dark Ages the fields of civilization had lain fallow. The crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It was time for the harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the burgers of the free cities. I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries, with their heavy stone enclosures, the homes of the knights and the monks who guarded men's bodies and their souls. You have seen how a few artisans, butchers and bakers, and an occasional candlestick-maker, came to live near the castle, to tend to the watts of their masters, and to find protection in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these people to surround their houses with a stockade, but they were dependent for their living upon the goodwill of the mighty senior of the castle. When he went about they knelt before him and kissed his hand. Then came the crusades, and many things changed. The migrations had driven people from the northeast to the west. The crusades made millions of people travel from the west to the highly civilized regions of the southeast. They discovered that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more comfortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient. After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they be supplied with those articles, the peddler with his pack upon his back, the only merchant of the dark ages, added these goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few excrucators to protect him against the crime-wave, which followed this great international war, and went forth to do business upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of another lord, he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business was profitable all the same, and the merchants continued to make his rounds. Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods which they had always imported from afar could be made at home. They turned part of their homes into a workshop. They seized to be merchants and became manufacturers. They sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns. The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms, eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged to pay in cash, and the manufacturer and the merchant began to own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position in the society of the early Middle Ages. It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money. In a modern city one cannot possibly live without money. All day long you carry a packet full of small disks of metal to pay your way. You need a nickel for the street car, a dollar for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined money from the time they were born to the day of their death. The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which had succeeded the empire, was an agricultural business. The city of Greece and Rome laid enough grain and enough sheep and enough cows for his own use. The medieval night was a country squire and was rarely forced to pay for materials in money. His estates produced everything that he and his family ate and drank and wore on their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the banks of the nearest river. In eggs in faggots. But the crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thousands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel bills. At home he could pay with products of his farm, but he could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cartload of hams with him to satisfy one of the Brenner pass. These gentlemen insisted upon cash. His lordship therefore was obliged to take a small quantity of gold with him upon his voyage. Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it from the Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards who had turned professional moneylenders who seated behind their exchange table, commonly known as his estate that they might be repaid in case his lordship should die at the hands of the Turks. That was a dangerous business for the borrower. In the end the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the knight became a bankrupt who hired himself out as a fighting man to a more powerful and more careful neighbor. His grace could also go to that part that too was bad business but was there a way out? Some of the people of the little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money. They had known the young lord all his life. His father and their fathers had been good friends. They would not be unreasonable in their demands. Very well his lordship's clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note to the best known merchants for the nearby churches and discussed this demand. They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to ask for interest. In the first place it was against the religious principles of most people to take interest and in the second place it would never be paid except in agricultural products and of these the people had enough and to spare. But suggested the tailor who spent his day in the river. Suppose that we ask some favour in return for our money. We are off on to fishing but his lordship won't let us fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred duckets and that he gives us in return a written guarantee allowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets the hundred which he needs but we get the fish and it seems such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces. He signed the death warrant of his own power. His clerk drew up the agreement. His lordship made his mark for he could not sign his name and departed for the east. Two years later he came back dead brook. The townspeople were fishing in the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed his lordship. He told that the mission of merchants visited the castle. They were very polite. They congratulated his lordship upon his safe return. They were sorry his lordship had been annoyed by the fisherman but as his lordship might perhaps remember he had given them permission to do so himself. And the tailor produced the charter which had been kept in the safe of the jeweler ever since the master had gone to the Holy Land. Finally he had signed his name to certain documents which were now in the possession of Salvestro de Medici, the well-known banker. These documents were promissory notes and they were due two months from date. Their total amount came to 340 pounds Flemish gold. Under these circumstances the noble knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and his proud soul. Instead he suggested another little loan. After three days they came back and said yes. They were only too happy to be able to help their master in his difficulties but in return for the 345 golden pounds would he give them another written promise another charter that they the townspeople might establish a council of their own to be elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city said council to manage civic affairs his lordship was confoundedly angry but again he needed the money he said yes and signed the charter next week he repented he called his soldiers and went to the house of the jeweler and asked for the documents which his crafty subjects had cajoled out of him under the pressure of circumstances he took them away and burned them the townspeople stood by and said nothing but when next his lordship needed money to pay for the dowry money after that little affair at the jeweler his credit was not considered good he was forced to eat humble pie and offer to make certain reparations before his lordship got the first installment of the stipulated sum the townspeople were once more in possession of all their old charters and a brand new one which permitted them to build a city hall and a strong tower where all the charters used their violence on the part of the lord and his armed followers this in a very general way is what happened during the centuries which followed the crusades it was a slow process this gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city there was some fighting a few tailors and jewelers were killed and a few castles went up in smoke but such occurrences were not common to maintain themselves they were forever forced to exchange charters of civic liberty in return for ready cash the cities grew they offered an asylum to run away serfs who gained their liberty after they had lived a number of years behind the city walls they came to be the home of the more energetic elements of the surrounding country districts they were proud of their new importance and expressed their power where centuries before the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt had taken place they wanted their children to have a better chance in life than they had enjoyed themselves they hired monks to come to their city and be school teachers when they heard of a man who could paint pictures upon boards of wood they offered him a pension if he would come and cover the walls of their chapels and their town hall with scenes from the holy scriptures meanwhile the city halls of his castle saw all this upstart splendor and regretted the day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign rights and prerogatives but he was helpless the town's people with their well-filled strong boxes snapped their fingers at him they were free men fully prepared to hold what they had gained by the sweat of their brow in 1885 read on October 23rd, 2008 in San Diego, California their right to be heard in the royal councils of their country as long as people were nomads wandering tribes of shepherds all men had been equal and had been responsible for the welfare and safety of the entire community but after they had settled down and some had become rich and others had grown poor the government was apt to fall into the hands of those who were not obliged to work for their living and who could devote themselves to politics and education and the lands on both sides and descriptions of the spreading of the idea of popular sovereignty I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in Mesopotamia and in Greece and in Rome it occurred among the Germanic population of western Europe as soon as order had been restored the western European world was ruled in the first place by an emperor who was elected and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary and very little actual power it was ruled by a number of kings who sat upon shaky thrones the everyday government was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelots their subjects were peasants or serfs there were few cities there was hardly any middle class but during the 13th century after an absence of almost a thousand years the middle class had neared upon the historical stage and its rise in power as we saw in the last chapter had meant a decrease in the influence of the castle folk thus far the king in his ruling domains had only paid attention to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops but the new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the crusades forced him to recognize the middle class or suffer of the cities if they had followed their hidden wishes would have his leaf consulted their cows and their pigs as the good workers of their cities but they could not help themselves they swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded but not without a struggle in England during the absence of Richard the lion-hearted who had gone to the holy land but who was spending the greater part of his crusading voyage in an empire of Richard who was his inferior in the art of war but his equal as a bad administrator John had began his career as a regent by losing Normandy and the greater part of the French possessions next he had managed to get into a quarrel with Pope Innocent III the famous enemy of the Hohenstaffens the Pope had ex-communicated John as Gregory the 7th had ex-communicated the emperor Henry IV two centuries in the year 1213 John had been obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV had been obliged to do in the year 1077 undismayed by his lack of success John continued to abuse his royal power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner of their anointed ruler and forced him to promise that he would be good and would never again interfere with the ancient rights of his subjects all this happened on a little island in the Thames near the village on the 15th of June of the year 1215 the document to which John signed his name was called the Big Charter the Magna Carta it contained very little that was new it restated in short and direct sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated the privileges of his vassals it paid little attention to the rights if any of the vast majority of the people the peasants it was a charter of great importance because it defined the powers of the king with more precision than had ever been done before but it was still a purely medieval document it did not refer to common human beings unless they happened to be the property of the vassal which must be safeguarded against royal tyranny just as the baronial woods and cows were protected against an excess of zeal on the part of the royal foresters a few years a very different note in the councils of his majesty John who was bad both by birth and inclination solemnly had promised to obey the great charter and then had broken every one of its many stipulations fortunately he soon died and was succeeded by his son Henry the third who was forced to recognize the charter anew meanwhile Uncle Richard the crusader had cost the country a great deal of money and the king was obliged that he might pay his obligations to the Jewish moneylenders the large landowners and the bishops who acted as counselors to the king could not provide him with the necessary gold and silver the king then gave orders that a few representatives of the cities be called upon to attend the sessions of his great council they made their first appearance in the year 1265 they were supposed to act only as financial experts who were not supposed to take part in the general debate but to give advice exclusively upon the question of taxation gradually however these representatives of the commons were consulted upon many of the problems and the meeting of noblemen bishops and city delegates developed into a regular parliament or place which means in English where people talked before important affairs of state were decided upon but the institution of such a general advisory board with certain representative powers was not an English invention as seems to be the general belief and government by a king and his parliament was by no means restricted to the British Isles you will find it in every part of Europe in some countries like France the rapid increase of the royal power after the middle ages reduced the influence of the parliament to nothing in the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been admitted to the meeting of the French parliament but five centuries passed before this parliament was strong enough to assert the rights of the middle class the so-called third estate and break the power of the king then they made up for lost time and during the French revolution abolished the king the clergy and the nobles and made the representatives of the common people the rulers of the land in Spain the Cortes the king's council had been open to the commoners as early as the first half of the 12th century in the German empire a number of important cities had obtained the rank of imperial cities whose representatives must be heard in the imperial diet here you see a picture of a city among the Alps and it says it's the home of the Swiss Liberté in Sweden representatives of the people attended the sessions of the Reichstag at the first meeting of the year 1359 in Denmark the Danehof the ancient national assembly was re-established in 1314 and although the nobles often regained control of the country at the expense of the king and the people the representatives of the cities were never completely deprived of their power in the Scandinavian country the story of representative government is particularly interesting in Iceland the all thing the assembly of all free landowners who managed the affairs of the island began to hold regular meetings in the 9th century and continued to do so for more than a thousand years in Switzerland the free men of the different cantons defended their assemblies against the attempts of a number of feudal neighbors with great success finally in the low countries in Holland the councils of the different dukes and counties were attended by representatives of the third estate as early as the 13th century here you see a picture of folk gathered around a table having a political discussion and it's the abjuration of Philip II in the 16th century a number of these small provinces rebelled against their king abjured his majesty in a solemn meeting of the estates general removed the clergy from the discussions broke the power of the nobles and assumed full executive authority over the newly established republic of the united seven Netherlands for two centuries the representatives of the town councils ruled the country without a king without bishops and without noblemen the city had become supreme and the good burgers had become the rulers of the land end of chapter 36 recorded by Michelle Crandall Fremont California April 2009 chapter 37 of the story of mankind this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the story of mankind by Hendrik van Loon chapter 37 the medieval world what the people of the middle ages thought of the world in which they happened to live dates are a very useful invention we could not do without them but unless we are very careful they will play tricks with us they are apt to make history too precise for example when I talk of the point of view of medieval man I do not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476 suddenly all the people of Europe said ah now the Roman Empire has come to an end and we are living in the middle ages how interesting you could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne who were Romans in their habits in their manners in their outlook upon life on the other hand when you grow up you will discover that some of the people in this world passed beyond the stage of the caveman all times and all ages overlap and the ideas of succeeding generations play tag with each other but it is possible to study the minds of a good many true representatives of the middle ages and then give you an idea of the average man's attitude toward life and the many difficult problems of living first of all remember that the people of the middle ages never thought of themselves as free born citizens who could come and go at will and shape their fate according to their ability or energy or luck on the contrary they all considered themselves part of the general scheme of things which included emperors and serfs popes and heretics heroes and swashbucklers rich men, poor men, bigger men and thieves they accepted this divine ordinance and asked no questions in this of course they differed radically from modern people who accept nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own financial and political situation to the man and woman of the 13th century the world hereafter a heaven of wonderful delights and a hell of brimstone and suffering meant something more than empty words or vague theological phrases it was an actual fact and the medieval burgers and knights spent the greater part of their time preparing for it we modern people regard a noble death after a well spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient Greeks and Romans after three score years of work and effort we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well but during the Middle Ages the king of terrors with his grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady companion he woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at dinner he smiled at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl out for a walk if you had heard nothing but hair-raising yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when you were very young instead of listening to the fairy stories of Anderson and Grimm you too would have lived all your days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of judgment that is exactly what happened to the children of the Middle Ages they lived in a world of devils and spooks and only a few occasional angels sometimes their fear of the future filled their souls with humility and piety but often it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and sentimental they would first of all murder all the women and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood of innocent victims they would pray that a merciful heaven would come to their homes yay they would do more than pray they would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most wicked of sinners but the next day they would once more butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy in their hearts of course the crusaders were knights and obeyed a somewhat different code of manners from the common men but in such respects the common man was just the same as his master he too resembled a shy horse with a shadow or a silly piece of paper capable of excellent and faithful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when his feverish imagination saw a ghost in judging these good people however it is wise to remember the terrible disadvantages under which they lived they were really barbarians who posed as civilized people Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called Roman emperors but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman emperor say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius as King Wumba Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers of Sweden or Denmark they were savages who lived amidst glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the civilization which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed they knew nothing they were ignorant of almost every fact which a boy of twelve knows today they were obliged to go to one single book for all their information that was the Bible but those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of the human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness as a handbook of astronomy zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences this venerable book is not entirely reliable in the 12th century a second book was added to the medieval library the great encyclopedia of useful knowledge compiled by Aristotle the Greek philosopher of the 4th century before Christ why the Christian church should have been willing to accord such high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great whereas they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of their hevenish doctrines I really do not know but next to the Bible Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true Christians his works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout way they had gone from Greece to Alexandria they had then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the 7th century they had followed the Muslim armies into Spain and the philosophy of the great Staggerite Aristotle was a native of Staggera in Macedonia was taught in the Moorish universities of Cordova the Arabic text was then translated into Latin by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get a liberal education and this much-traveled version of the famous books was at last taught at the different schools of north-western Europe it was not very clear but that made it all the more interesting with the help of the Bible and Aristotle the most brilliant men of the Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things between heaven and earth in their relation to the expressed will of God these brilliant men, the so-called scholars or schoolmen were really very intelligent but they had obtained their information exclusively from books and never from actual observation if they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon or on caterpillars they read the Old and New Testaments and Aristotle and told their students everything these good books had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons they did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon they did not leave their libraries and repair to the backyard to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study them in their native haunts even such famous scholars as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons and the caterpillars of western Europe when occasionally an exceptionally curious person like Roger Bacon appeared in the Council of the Learned and began to experiment with magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes and actually dragged the sturgeon and the caterpillar into the lecturing room and proved that they were different from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by Aristotle the schoolmen shook their dignified heads Bacon was going too far when he dared to suggest that an hour of actual observation was worth more than ten years with Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever done the scholars went to the police and said this man is a danger to the safety of the state he wants us to study Greek that we may read Aristotle why should he not be contented with our Latin Arabic translation which has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides of insects he is probably a wicked magician trying to upset the established order of things by his black magic and so well did they bleed their cause that the frightened guardians of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more than ten years when he assumed his studies he had learned a lesson he wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it impossible for his contemporaries to read them a trick which became common as the church became more desperate in its attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would lead to doubts and infidelity this however was not done out of any wicked desire to keep people ignorant the feeling which prompted the heretic hunters of that day was really a very they firmly believed they knew that this life was but the preparation for our real existence in the next world they felt convinced that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to doubt and hence to perdition a medieval schoolman who saw one of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the bible and Aristotle that he might study things for himself felt as comfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child approach a hot stove she knows that he will burn his little fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him back if necessary she will use force but she really loves the child and if he will only obey her she will be as good to him as she possibly can be in the same way the medieval guardians of people's souls while they were strict in all matters pertaining to the faith slaved day and night to render the greatest possible service to the members of their flock they held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal as bearable as possible a serf was a serf and his position would never change but the good lord of the middle ages who allowed the serf to remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his rights that he might live and die as a good Christian when he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care of by the feudal master for whom he had worked the serf therefore who led a monotonous and dreary life was never haunted by fear of tomorrow he knew that he was safe that he could not be thrown out of employment that he would always have a roof over his head a sneaky roof perhaps but a roof all the same and that he would always have something to eat this feeling of stability and of safety was found in all classes of society in the towns the merchants and the artisans established guilds which assured every member of a steady income it did not encourage the ambitious to do better than their neighbors too often the guilds gave protection to the slacker who managed to get by but they established a general feeling of content and assurance among the labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general competition the middle ages were familiar with the dangers of what we modern people call corners when a single rich man gets hold of all the available grain or soap or pickled herring and then forces the world to buy from him at his own price the authorities therefore discouraged wholesale trading and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed to sell their goods the middle ages disliked competition why compete and fill the world with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing men when the day of judgment was near at hand when riches would count for nothing and when the good surf would enter the golden gates of heaven while the bad night was sent to do penance in the deepest pit of inferno in short the people of the middle ages were asked to surrender part of their liberty of thought and action that they might enjoy greater safety from poverty of the body and poverty of the soul and with a very few exceptions they did not object they firmly believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet that they were here to be prepared for a greater and more important life deliberately they turned their backs upon a world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and injustice they pulled down the blinds and distract their attention from that chapter in the Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was to illumine their happiness in all eternity they tried to close their eyes to most of the joys of the world in which they lived that they might enjoy those which awaited them in the near future they accepted life as a necessary evil and welcomed death as the beginning of a glorious day the Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the future but had tried to establish their paradise right here upon this earth they had succeeded in making life extremely pleasant for those of their fellow men who did not happen to be slaves then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages when man built himself a paradise beyond the highest clouds and turned this world into a veil of tears for high and low for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb it was time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction I'll tell you in my next chapter End of Chapter 37 read by Kara Schallenberg on October 23rd, 2008 in San Diego, California How the Crusades once more made the Mediterranean a busy center of trade and how the cities of the Italian peninsula became the great distributing center for the commerce with Asia and Africa There were three good reasons why the Italian cities should have been the first to regain a position of great importance during the late Middle Ages the Italian peninsula had been settled by Rome at a very early date there had been more roads and more towns and more schools than anywhere else in Europe here you see a picture of a map of Europe centered on Italy in the Mediterranean and it's titled medieval trade all the trade routes are marked the barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere but there had been so much to destroy that more had been able to survive in the second place the Pope lived in Italy and as the head of a vast political machine which owned land and serfs and buildings and forests and rivers and conducted courts of law he was in constant receipt of a great deal of money the papal authorities had to be paid in gold and silver as did the merchants and ship owners of Venice and Genoa the cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural products of the north and the west must be changed into actual cash before the debt could be paid to Rome this made Italy the one country where there was a comparative abundance of gold and silver finally during the crusades the Italian cities had become the point of embarkation for the crusaders and had profiteered to an almost unbelievable extent and after the crusades had come to an end these same Italian cities remained the distributing centers for those oriental goods upon which the people of Europe spent their time they had spent in the near east of these towns few were as famous as Venice Venice was a republic built upon a mud bank thither people from the mainland had fled during the invasions of the barbarians in the fourth century surrounded on all sides by the sea they had engaged in the business of salt making salt had been very scarce during the middle ages and the price had been high for hundreds of years Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of this indispensable table commodity I say indispensable because people like sheep fall ill unless they get a certain amount of salt in their food the people had used this monopoly to increase the power of their city at times they had even dared to defy the power of the popes the town had grown rich and had begun to build ships which engaged in trade with the orient during the crusades these ships were used to carry passengers to the holy land and when the passengers could not pay for their tickets in cash they were obliged to help the venetians who were forever increasing their colonies in the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor and in Egypt by the end of the 14th century the population had grown to 200,000 which made Venice the biggest city of the middle ages the people were without influence upon the government which was the private affair of the families they elected a senate and a doge or duke but the actual rulers of the city were the members of the famous council of ten who maintained themselves with the help of the highly organized system of secret servicemen and professional murderers who kept watch upon all citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous to the safety of their high handed and unscrupulous committee of public safety the other extreme of government the democracy of very turbulent habits was to be found in Florence this city controlled the main road from northern Europe to Rome and used the money which it had derived from this fortunate economic position to engage in manufacturing the Florentines tried to follow the example of Athens noblemen, priests and members of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs this led to great civic of Hewell people were forever being divided into political parties and these parties fought each other with intense bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated their possessions as soon as they had gained a victory in the council after several centuries of this rule by organized mobs the inevitable happened a powerful family made itself master of the city and governed the town and the surrounding country after the fashion of the old Greek tyrants they were called the Medici the earliest Medici had been physicians Medicus is Latin for physician hence their name but later they had turned banker their banks and their pawn shops were to be found in all the more important centers of trade even today our American pawn shops display the three golden balls which were part of the coat of arms of the mighty house of the Medici who became rulers of Florence and married their daughters to the kings of France and buried in graves worthy of a Roman Caesar then there was Genoa the great rival of Venice where the merchants specialized in trade with Tunis and Africa and the grain depots of the Black Sea then there were more than 200 other cities some large and some small each a perfect commercial unit all of them fighting their neighbors and rivals with the undying hatred of neighbors who are depriving each other of their profits since the products of the Orient and Africa had been brought to these distributing centers they must be prepared for the voyage to the west and the north Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseille from where they were reshipped to cities along the Rome which in turn served as the marketplaces of northern and western France Venice used the land route to northern Europe this ancient road led across the Brenner Pass the old gateway for the barbarians to Italy past Innsbruck the merchandise was carried to Basel from there it drifted down the Rhine to the North Sea and England or it was taken to Augsburg where the Fugger family who were both bankers and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by shaving the coins with which they paid their workmen looked after the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the cities of the Baltic and of Gotland which looked after the needs of the northern Baltic and dealt directly with the Republic of Novgorod the old commercial center of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16th century here you see a picture of an onion-domed church titled Great Novgorod the little cities on the coast of northwestern Europe had an interesting story of their own the medieval world ate a great deal of fish there were many fast days and then people were not permitted to eat meat for those who lived away from the coast and from the rivers this meant a diet of eggs or nothing at all but early in the 13th century a Dutch fisherman had discovered a way of curing herring so that it could be transported to distant points the herring fisheries of the northern sea then became of great importance but sometime during the 13th century this useful little fish for reasons of its own moved from the North Sea to the Baltic and the cities of that inland sea began to make money all the world now sailed to the Baltic to catch herring and as that fish could only be caught during a few months each year the rest of the time it spends in deep water raising large families of little herrings the ships would have been idled during the rest of the time unless they had found another occupation they were then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Russia to southern and western Europe on the return voyage they brought spices and silks and carpets and oriental rugs from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and Hamburg and Bremen out of such simple beginnings they're developed an important system of international trade which reached from the manufacturing cities of Bruges and Ghent where the almighty guilds fought pitched battles with the kings of France and England and established a labor tyranny which completely ruined both the employers and the workmen in northern Russia which was a mighty city until Tsar Ivan who distrusted all merchants took the town and killed 60,000 people in less than a month's time and reduced the survivors to beggary that they might protect themselves against pirates and excessive tolls and annoying legislation the merchants of the north founded a protective league which was called the Hansa the Hansa which had its headquarters in Lubeck was a voluntary association of 7100 cities the association maintained a navy of its own which patrolled the seas and fought and defeated the kings of England and Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the privileges of the mighty Hanseatic merchants here you see a picture of a Hansa ship I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the wonderful stories of this strange commerce which was carried on across the high mountains and across the deep seas amid such dangers that every voyage became a glorious adventure but it would take several volumes and it cannot be done here besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle Ages to make you curious to read more in the excellent books of which I shall give you a list at the end of this volume the Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you has been a period of very slow progress the people who were in power believed that progress was a very undesirable invention of the evil one to be discouraged and as they happened to occupy the seats of the mighty it was easy to enforce their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth into the forbidden region of science but they fared badly and were considered lucky when they escaped with their lives in a jail sentence of 20 years in the 12th and 13th centuries the flood of international commerce swept over western Europe as the Nile had swept across the valley of ancient Egypt it left behind a fertile sediment of prosperity prosperity meant leisure hours and these leisure hours gave both men and women a chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in literature and art and music then once more was the world filled with that divine curiosity which has elevated man from the ranks of those other mammals who are his distant cousins and the cities of whose growth and development I have told you in my last chapter offered a safe shelter to these brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain of the established order of things they set to work they opened the windows of their cloistered and studious cells a flood of sunlight entered the dusty rooms and showed them the cobwebs which had gathered during the long period of semi-darkness they began to clean house next they cleaned their gardens then they went out into the open fields outside the crumbling town walls and said this is a good world we are glad that we live in it at that moment the middle ages came to an end and a new world began end of chapter 38 recorded by Michelle Crandall Fremont, California May 2009