An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages (375-814) / by Ephraim Emerton.

  • Emerton, Ephraim, 1851-1935.
Date:
[1888], ©1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages (375-814) / by Ephraim Emerton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    know how to carry out their thought into practice in such a way as to give men great organized institutions. They have left us a splendid inheritance in works of art and literature, in philosophy and in the history of political experiments. They never succeeded in found- ing a united Greek state. The Italians, on the other hand, especially the Romans, had the gift of practical politics. Their mission was to give law and order to the South of Europe. Of the Northern nations, hut one claims our attention. The Kelt gave way whenever he was brought into contact with another race. The Slav has not yet risen to be conscious of his power. The German alone of Northmen has taken rank with Greek and Roman in the work of civilization. His part has been to take the best of what they had given him and to work it over into permanent institutions. Our book has to do with a time when Greek culture had lost its hold upon Western Europe, when the politi- cal institutions which the Romans had founded were passing away, and when the Germans were beginning to take up the work of civilization. Our main interest is in the transition from Roman to German institutions. Before we come to this main topic it will be well for us to recall to mind the process by which the Roman Empire of the fourth century after Christ had come to be the thing it was. The Romans were a small and feeble branch of the How the Italian race, settled in a not very beautiful Romans had or healthful region on the lower course of the conquered the . . world. river liber. 1 heir outward history for seven u. 750 B.C. hundred years is one of steady and uninter- rupted conquest. Beginning in their immediate neigh-