ABSTRACT
A BIRD’S-EYE view of Western and Central Europe from the eleventh to about the middle of the fourteenth centuries presents an unusually animated panorama.
The towns were arising from the countryside like numerous islands from the sea, and trade and industry were flourishing in them. The Papacy and the Empire were keeping the world in a state of tension by their struggle for supremacy. Multitudes of men were proceeding on pilgrimages to the East, with cross and sword; the great theological schools in Paris, Oxford, and Cologne were drawing upon the whole knowledge of the time in their religious speculations: Scholasticism prepared rich feasts; the plastic arts were fashioning in the Gothic imperishable monuments of the infinite strivings of the time; in Dante’s Divine Comedy poetry was reflecting the movements and deeds, aspirations and thoughts, confusions and promises of those generations and centuries.
