CHAPTER IX 

 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE TO 1450 A.D. 



It cannot be too emphatically stated that there is no historical 

 evidence for the theory which connects the new birth of Europe with 

 the passing away of the fateful millennial year and with it, the awful 

 dread of a coming end of all things. Yet, although there was no breach 

 of historical continuity at the year 1000, the date will serve as well as 

 any other that could be assigned to represent the turning-point of 

 European history, separating an age of religious terror and theological 

 pessimism from an age of hope and vigor and active religious en- 

 thusiasm. . . . The change which began to pass over the schools of 

 France in the eleventh century and culminated in the great intellectual 

 Renaissance of the following age, was but one effect of that general 

 revivification of the human spirit which should be recognized as con- 

 stituting an epoch in the history of European civilization not less 

 momentous than the Reformation or the French Revolution. . . . 

 The schools of Christendom became thronged as they were never 

 thronged before. A passion for inquiry took the place of the old 

 routine. The Crusades brought different parts of Europe into con- 

 tact with one another and into contact with the new world of the East, 

 with a new Religion and a new Philosophy, with the Arabic Aris- 

 totle, with the Arabic commentators on Aristotle, and eventually even 

 with Aristotle in the original Greek. . . . Whatever the causes of 

 the change, the beginning of the eleventh century represents, as nearly 

 as it is possible to fix it, the turning-point in the intellectual history of 

 Europe. Rashdall. 



THE CRUSADES. From the time of Mohammed's hegira 

 from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. to the siege of Vienna by his 

 followers in 1683 a period of more than 1000 years Europe 

 stood in constant dread of Mohammedan conquest. Fifteen years 

 after the hegira, Jerusalem was captured by Omar, and remained 

 under Mohammedan control till the end of the first Crusade, since 

 which time it has been sometimes in Christian, sometimes in 

 Mohammedan, possession. Toleration of Christians in the Holy 



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