ECCLESIASTIC FEUDALISM 



It was but natural, that Platonic-Aristotlean 

 philosophy should become the favorite of these 

 religious thinkers, and that under their influence, 

 astronomy should assume the form of astrology, 

 and chemistry that of alchemy. 



Nor were economic and political conditions 

 favorable to the inductive modes of scientific re- 

 search. In the first place, the Huns began their 

 westward and southward march in 374, two years 

 after Ulfila had translated the Bible into Gothic. 

 And in 410, five years after the completion of the 

 VULGATE by Jerome, the Visigoths pillaged Rome. 

 The Huns were beaten on the Catalaunian fields 

 in 415, but in 455, the Vandals paid a visit to 

 Rome. The struggle between the East-Roman 

 and West-Roman empires, the continued inva- 

 sions of barbarians from the North, of the 

 Arabs from the East, kept Europe in a state of 

 restless ferment. And this condition of things 

 continued from century to century, so long as 

 feudalism, the successor of Roman slavery, en- 

 dured. Later we have the Moors in the South, 

 the Turks in the East, the Norsemen in the 

 North; the crusades, beginning in 1,095; tne 

 raids made in the interest of the Mediterranean 

 merchant towns against the Turks. All these 

 disturbances discouraged education at the ex- 



