Trade regulated by the towns (thirteenth the seventy towns which at one time and another were included in the confederation, we find Cologne, Brunswick, Dantzig, and other centers of great importance. The union purchased and controlled settlements in London, the so-called Steelyard near London Bridge, at Wisby, Bergen, and the far-off Novgorod in Russia. They managed to monopolize nearly the whole trade on the Baltic and North Sea, either through treaties or the influence that they were able to bring to bear. The League made war on the pirates and did much to reduce the dangers of traffic. Instead of dispatching separate and defenseless merchantmen, their ships sailed out in fleets under the protection of a man-of-war. On one occasion the League undertook a successful war against the king of Denmark, who had interfered with their interests. At another time it declared war on England and brought her to terms. For two hundred years before the discovery of America, the League played a great part in the commercial affairs of western Europe; but it had begun to decline even before the discovery of new routes to the East and West Indies revolutionized trade. It should be observed that, during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, trade was not carried on between nations, but by the various towns, like Venice, Lübeck, Ghent, by nations or Bruges, Cologne. A merchant did not act or trade as an inde to fifteenth century), not individuals. pendent individual but as a member of a particular merchant guild, and he enjoyed the protection of his town and of the treaties it arranged. If a merchant from a certain town failed to pay a debt, a fellow-townsman might be seized where the debt was due. At the period of which we have been speaking, an inhabitant of London was considered a foreigner or an alien in Bristol, just as was the merchant from Cologne or Antwerp. Only gradually did the towns merge into the nations to which their people belonged.1 1 Reference, Munro, Mediaval History, Chapter XIV, where the subject of this chapter is treated in a somewhat different way. The increasing wealth of the merchants could not fail to raise them to a position of importance in society which they had not hitherto enjoyed. Their prosperity enabled them to vie with the clergy in education and with the nobility in the luxury of their dwellings and surroundings. They began to give some attention to reading, and as early as the fourteenth century many of the books appear to have been written with a view of meeting their tastes and needs. Representatives of the towns were called into the councils of the king, who was obliged to take their advice along with their contributions to the support of the government. The rise of the burgher class alongside the older orders of the clergy and nobility, which had so long dominated the life of western Europe, is one of the most momentous changes of the thirteenth century. General Reading. - GIBBINS, History of Commerce in Europe (The Macmillan Company, 90 cents), the best short account of the subject, with good maps of trade routes. INGRAM, History of Slavery and Serfdom (Black, London, $2.00), especially Chapters IV and V. CUNNINGHAM, Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects, Vol. II, Medieval and Modern Times (The Macmillan Company, $1.25), is very suggestive. There are several excellent accounts of the economic situation in England in the Middle Ages, which, in many respects, was similar to the conditions on the continent. CHEYNEY, Industrial and Social History of England (The Macmillan Company, $1.40); GIBBINS, The Industrial History of England (Methuen, $1.00), and a more elaborate treatise by the same writer, Industry in England (Methuen, $3.00); CUNNINGHAM, Outlines of English Industrial History (The Macmillan Company, $1.50), and much fuller by the same writer, Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Middle Ages (The Macmillan Company, $4.00). All these give excellent accounts of the manor, the guilds, the fairs, etc. See also JESSOPP, Coming of the Friars, second essay, "Village Life Six Hundred Years Ago." General use CHAPTER XIX THE CULTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES 97. The interest of the Middle Ages lies by no means exclusively in the statesmanship of kings and emperors, their victories and defeats; in the policy of popes and bishops; or even in feudalism and Europe's escape from it. Important as all these are, we should have but a very imperfect idea of the period which we have been studying if we left it without considering the intellectual life and the art of the time, the books that were written, the universities that were founded, and the cathedrals that were built. To begin with, the Middle Ages differed from our own time in the very general use then made of Latin, both in writing and speaking. In the thirteenth century, and long after, all books that made any claim to learning were written in Latin; the professors in the universities lectured in Latin, friends wrote to one another in Latin, and state papers, treaties, and legal documents were drawn up in the same language. The ability of every educated person to make use of Latin, as well as of his native tongue, was a great advantage at a time when there were many obstacles to intercourse among the various nations. It helps to explain, for example, the remarkable way in which the pope kept in touch with all the clergy men of western Christendom, and the ease with which students, friars, and merchants could wander from one country to another. There is no more interesting or important revolution than that 1 In Germany the books published annually in the German language did not exceed those in Latin until after 1680. by which the language of the people in the various European countries gradually pushed aside the ancient tongue and took its place, so that even scholars scarcely ever think now of writing books in Latin. In order to understand how it came about that two languages, the Latin and the native speech, were both commonly used in all the countries of western Europe all through the Middle Ages, we must glance at the origin of the modern languages. These all fall into two quite distinct groups, the Germanic and the Romance. Those German peoples who had continued to live outside of the Roman Empire, or who, during the invasions, had not settled far enough within its bounds to be led, like the Franks in Gaul, to adopt the tongue of those they had conquered, naturally adhered to the language they had always used, namely, the particular Germanic dialect which their forefathers had spoken for untold generations. From the various languages spoken by the German barbarians, modern German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic are derived. It The second group of languages developed within the territory which had formed a part of the Roman Empire, and includes modern French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. has now been clearly proved, by a very minute study of the old forms of words, that these Romance languages were one and all derived from the spoken Latin, employed by the soldiers, merchants, and people at large. This differed considerably from the elaborate and elegant written Latin which was used, for example, by Cicero and Cæsar. It was undoubtedly much simpler in its grammar and doubtless varied a good deal in different regions;-a Gaul, for instance, could not pronounce the words like an Italian. Moreover, in conversation people did not always use the same words as those in the books. For example, a horse was commonly spoken of as caballus, whereas a writer would use the word equus; it is from Earliest examples of the Germanic languages. Gothic. caballus that the word for horse is derived in Spanish, Italian, and French (caballo, cavallo, cheval). As time went on the spoken language diverged farther and farther from the written. Latin is a troublesome speech on account of its complicated inflections and grammatical rules, which can be mastered only after a great deal of study. The people of the Roman provinces and the incoming barbarians naturally paid very little attention to the niceties of syntax and found easy ways of saying what they wished.1 Yet several centuries elapsed after the German invasions before there was anything written in the language of conversation. So long as the uneducated could understand the correct Latin of the books when they heard it read or spoken, there was no necessity of writing anything in their familiar daily speech. But the gulf between the spoken and the written language had become so great by the time Charlemagne came to the throne, that he advised that sermons should be given thereafter in the language of the people, who, apparently, could no longer follow the Latin. The Strasburg oaths are, however, about the first example. which has come down to us of the speech which was growing into French. 2 98. As for the Germanic languages, one at least was reduced to writing even before the break-up of the Empire. An eastern bishop, Ulfilas (d. 381), had undertaken to convert the Goths while they were still living north of the Danube before the battle of Adrianople. In order to carry on his work, Ulfilas translated a great part of the Bible into Gothic, using the Greek letters to represent the sounds. With the single exception of the Gothic, there is no example of writing 1 Even the monks and others who wrote Latin in the Middle Ages were unable to follow strictly the rules of the language. Moreover, they introduced many new words to meet the new conditions and the needs of the time, such as imprisonare, imprison; utlagare, to outlaw; baptizare, to baptize; foresta, forest; feudum, fief, etc. 2 See above, pp. 94-95. |