THE MIDDLE AGES AND DURING THE REVIVAL. 65 



centuries which are illumined by so many marvels passes 

 all comprehension. If, owing to the deluge of Germanic 

 barbarism, it can justly be applied to the centuries which 

 immediately followed the break-up of the Roman empire, 

 it is wholly inapplicable to those ages which preceded the 

 Revival. And, as we have already hinted, it is a rather 

 misleading appellation even if applied to the earlier period. 

 The wretched social conditions of the times, the anarchy 

 prevailing in the political arena, the sway of a powerful 

 Church dominated by ambition and superstition, made the 

 mediaeval era as unlike ours as possible ; but these defects, 

 arising from the dislocation of the ancient world, did not 

 necessarily involve the whole of the mediaeval era in darkness. 

 Why, the lay world and the Church itself were hardly ever 

 without great and brilliant intellects. The defects lay in 

 the general situation. The world had a new civilisation 

 to elaborate, and its various elements the sacerdotal, the 

 monarchical, the aristocratic, and the democratic trying 

 each in turn to be completely dominant, and never suc- 

 ceeding, made the process of gestation very fitful and slow. 

 The conflict was unavoidable and beneficial, leading as it 

 did to two results unattainable any other way, and which 

 no other civilisation had as yet effected : it endowed Europe 

 with immense and durable mental and physical energy ; it 

 brought in the live-and-let-live principle of government 

 that is, it conduced either to the welding of the elements 

 just mentioned to form a new society, or to the conciliation 

 of these elements so as to permit them to exist side by side 

 in the same society. 



Now, whether a period which produced men like 

 Urban II., d. 1099, Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, 



Henry IV. of Germany, noi, Albertus Magnus, 1280, 

 Abelard, 1 142, Roger Bacon, 1292, 



Barbarossa, 1190, Duns Scotus, 1308, 



Innocent III., 1216, Dante, 1321, 



Frederick II. of Germany, 1250, Petrarca, 1374, 



Innocent IV., 1254, Boccaccio, 1375, 



Clement IV,, 1268, Wiclif, 1387, 



Louis IX., 1270, Chaucer, 1400, 



