CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES 75 



medicine; its surgical section is celebrated for its excellence and has had 

 great influence on the medical science of both Arabia and the Occident. — 

 The Byzantine Empire and its culture eventually succumbed to the Turks, 

 but before that it had had time to exercise considerable influence upon west- 

 ern European civilization, especially by spreading a wider knowledge of 

 classical Greek literature and thereby paving the way for the great cultural 

 regeneration of the Renaissance. 



Western culture 

 The western Roman Empire, unlike its eastern neighbour, fell a prey to 

 hordes of migratory peoples and was dissolved by them into a number of 

 minor states with constantly changing frontiers and unsettled internal con- 

 ditions. The only one of the kingdoms founded under these circumstances 

 which attained a successful development was that of the Franks, which at 

 one time, under Charlemagne, embraced a large part of the western Roman 

 territory and more as well. After his death his empire fell to pieces and out 

 of its ruins gradually arose the national states of western Europe which still 

 exist today. During the centuries of migration both material prosperity and 

 intellectual culture in the western Roman countries were destroyed. The last 

 remains of classical culture found a refuge in Ireland; there in the sixth and 

 seventh centuries were read and copied not only Latin, but Greek authors, 

 and thence culture spread to England, at that time conquered by the Anglo- 

 Saxons. In Charlemagne's time these two countries possessed the highest 

 intellectual development and it was from there that the Emperor summoned 

 learned men, with whose aid he raised the standard of culture in his own 

 country and created what was called a "renaissance" in the field of classical 

 studies. After his death, however, western Europe was ravaged by a fresh 

 barbaric invasion by the Danes, which destroyed culture exactly where it 

 had hitherto been most highly developed -^ in Ireland, England, and France. 

 The most decadent period of the Middle Ages really set in during the ninth 

 and tenth centuries, just when the Arabic culture was most flourishing. 



The one power that kept men together in that unhappy period was the 

 Catholic Church; it gave consolation and support in time of trial and was 

 able to induce minds broken down by misfortune to strive after ideals. As a 

 unifying cultural force it came to take the place of what the Empire had once 

 been, and so Rome became once more the capital of the world. But while 

 the Church thus gave to culture fresh vitality, it at the same time set rp nar- 

 row limitations for its development; it demanded absolute subjection, to 

 the extent that not only did religious sentiment have to choose the paths 

 the Church prescribed, but even the human intelligence had to adhere to its 

 dogmas and doctrines as proved truths. These had been drawn up by the ec- 

 clesiastical Fathers of the first centuries of the Christian era, whose writings 

 the priests and monks of the early Middle Ages read without interpreting 



