MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY PART I THE MIDDLE AGES BY PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE OF GREECE," "ROME: ITS RISE AND FALL," BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON The Athenæum Press PREFACE THIS book is a revision of the first half of my Medieval and Modern History, the earliest impression of which was published sixteen years ago. It will be followed shortly by a companion volume entitled The Modern Age, which will contain the revised and extended text of the second half of the original work. In the present volume the general perspective of the earlier work has not been essentially modified; but the emphasis has in places been slightly shifted, and the narrative carefully revised, so that it should embody the latest positive results of those scholarly researches which during recent years have been so active and so fruitful in the field of medieval history. The principles governing the selection and presentation of historical facts have been the principles adopted in the writing of the Medieval and Modern History. Purely political, dynastic, and military matters have been kept in subordination to religious, moral, intellectual, and social interests. Unity has been impressed upon the narrative by keeping prominent the great ideals of the medieval time, especially the ideals of the Papacy and the Empire, and by laying upon the Renaissance, which is viewed as essentially an intellectual movement and as the unconscious goal of mediæval endeavor and life, an emphasis corresponding to that laid upon the Reformation and the Political Revolution in modern history. |