ABSTRACT
The industrial and commercial activity of the East, of Moorish Spain and Sicily, created European commerce and manufactures. These gave rise to the wealth and power of the merchant classes and the commercial cities; the Burgher communities became strong enough to defy the feudal powers, and the new force of free republics and communes overthrew the tyranny and lawlessness of the barons. The first parts of Europe to emerge from barbarism were those most directly under the influence of Moorish culture: the Spanish Marches of Catalonia, Provence, and Sicily. Spanish and Provencal poetry is the birth-song of European literatures, awakening poetic echoes throughout Europe, from the Minnesingers of Germany to pre-Dantesque Italy, calling the ‘vulgar tongues’ of the new Europe to literary life. The course, not only of political history, but of European development and culture would doubtless have been very different had he, as was his dream, united Europe under a new empire with its capital in Italy.
