THE NEW DAWN
In every part of the Western world we see the leading nations
settling down at the beginning of the sixteenth century within
boundaries nearly the same as those which define them at the
beginning of the twentieth. And for the most part those boundaries
remain, in spite of the upheaval caused by the Great War.
There is, however, one notable exception, namely Italy. The very
idea of a united Italy does not seem to have been in men's minds
until later. The country which we now know by that name was then, as
we have seen, divided between five principal States, Milan, Venice,
Florence, the Papal State, and Naples with Sicily.
Government in the rich and powerful cities was constantly changing
hands. In Rome itself, where the situation was made more difficult
and complicated than anywhere else, because of the Pope and his claim
to governing power, the changes were bewildering. The power of the
aristocracy was much broken in the middle of the fourteenth century
when Rienzi, "Last of the Tribunes," led the democracy. Rienzi was
the friend of Petrarch, and Bulwer Lytton has made him the hero of an
exciting novel. But the Pope returned to Rome from Avignon in 1367,
and though there were for a while rival Popes in Avignon and in Rome,
yet by the end of the century the republican government of Rome had
been overthrown and the Pope had gained supremacy.
He never really lost it. At one moment in the {226} fifteenth
century the forces of the King of Naples took and sacked Rome itself.
At another the Pope had to flee before his own barons. But he soon
came back. One of his successors only saved himself from these same
barons, or their descendants, by the aid of Naples. Nevertheless by
the end of the century, which is the date of the end of the present
story, the power of the nobles had received what really was its death
blow. In Florence and in Rome their chiefs were simultaneously
massacred. The Papal power was finally established.
Venice, as we have seen, was for a while by far the strongest and the
most wealthy of the Italian States. But now the new naval power in
the Mediterranean, the power of the Turks, was limiting and
diminishing her strength, and shortly before the end of the fifteenth
century two Portuguese navigators made a discovery of which the
effect was to limit and diminish her wealth. If you will look at the
map of the world you will see how far the Continent of Africa extends
southwards, and you must understand that at the time about which our
story is telling us now, no one knew how far southward this Continent
stretched. Hitherto no navigator had come to its southern end. Many
had gone sailing, sailing, south, but still that land was always
there, on their left hand, on the eastern side, until these
Portuguese navigators, Bartolomeo Diaz and Vasco da Gama, sailed yet
further than any before them, came to the southern end of the great
Continent, and found an open sea over which they might sail eastward.
They had rounded what afterwards was named the Cape of Good Hope.
And what difference did that make to Venice? It made this
difference--that whereas she had been the gate from the East, the
port by which the riches and products of the East came into the
Western world, this discovery that man could go sailing eastward,
after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, meant {227} the opening of a
new door through which those rich products could be brought to
Western Europe. And it was a more convenient way of bringing them,
because it did not require all the old long overland travel, perhaps
from India through Asia Minor, and then the putting of the
merchandise on shipboard to be carried to Venice, and then again the
unshipping at Venice and the overland carriage again. This overland
route was one way. Another was by way of ports on the Red Sea and
thence across the Isthmus of Suez to the Mediterranean. Instead of
all this complicated business, there might now be the one shipping in
some port, say of India, and the unshipping, perhaps in Lisbon.
[Sidenote: India and America]
Thus the East was opened to the West, and almost at the same moment a
new and further West was opened with the discovery of America by
Christopher Columbus (after whom that great land is sometimes called
Columbia) and by that Vespucci, whose baptismal name was Amerigo,
after whom it is more commonly called.
Thus immensely, in two opposite directions, was the scene of the
great story extended. And the discoveries to which men's minds were
turned were not only those about the geography of the world they
lived in, and the way in which its continents and its seas were
shaped. Their minds began to turn with a new interest to art, to
learning and to the beauty of the world.
All through this great story we have seen how wonderfully Rome, in
spite of perpetual changes in her government and continual fighting
between the various parties trying to get the upper hand, led the
world, at one time dominating all by the organisation of her Empire,
at another bending the spirits of men and directing their actions by
the influence of the Church.
{228}
All over Italy, for many a century, the like contentions and changes
in government were frequent, and it was in the very midst of the
turbulence and of the fighting of city against city that Dante,
greatest of Italian poets, and among the very greatest of all time,
came into fame and wrote his "Divine Comedy." He was chief
magistrate of Florence in 1300, born of {229} a family that favoured
the Guelphs and married to a lady of a family very strongly disposed
to the Ghibellines. So he had his full share in the troubles of the
times.
[Illustration: COLUMBUS.]
Second only to him among the poets of Italy was Petrarch, his
disciple. Petrarch is famous as the inventor of the "sonnet" form of
verse. He was a student of the ancient classical literature of which
the very existence seems to have been almost forgotten since the
inroads of the Goths.
Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, a collection of prose stories
which may perhaps be regarded as the foundations of the modern novel,
was a contemporary and a friend of Petrarch. Our own poet Chaucer,
born a quarter of a century later, was indebted to him for some of
the stories which he told in verse form. Boccaccio, even more than
Petrarch, was a lover of the classical literature of Greece, of the
Iliad and the Odyssey.
[Sidenote: The Renaissance]
In this revival of a love for the ancient literature, and in the
works in verse and prose which these great artists created, we cannot
trace that they were influenced by the troubadours and trouvères of
more than a century earlier. They went back further, to the best
models of antiquity. Therefore we have to regard these wonderful
Italians as the true originators of that new interest in learning and
in all the arts which received the name of the Renaissance, or new
birth. For its full growth and development it had to wait until the
dawn of the sixteenth century. By that time the art of printing had
been invented. Learning in all its branches had received a great
impetus at all the universities in every country in Europe. The
first English printing press was set up by Caxton, who brought it
from Flanders in 1476.
Though the new birth of literature was thus delayed, some of the
greatest of the Italian painters {230} were hard at work during the
fifteenth century. Cimabue, indeed, who may be said to have been the
first of the real Italian painters, since all before him had followed
the stiff Byzantine style, dates back to the latter half of the
thirteenth. Ghirlandajo, his pupil, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da
Vinci, Titian, the great Venetian painter, and many more of great
fame, were at work before the fifteenth century closed.
Even in a story sketched in its most bare outlines, as is this, and
told with as few names and as few dates as possible, it seemed
necessary to mention some of these glorious artists and to realise
that the end was at hand of those Middle Ages which have also been
called Dark Ages, because of the dark ignorance and barbarity in
which humanity at that time was plunged. Some of the goldsmith's and
silversmith's work of the day was very finely executed, and many of
the finest painters and sculptors themselves did not scorn to work at
the jeweller's craft. But the real glory which lightens the general
darkness of the Middle Ages, is the splendour of the
architecture--the cathedrals and churches, the public buildings and
the palaces of the great nobles. The richness of the church
architecture in our own country we have shortly noticed already, and
all over the world beautiful and noble structures were raised in
those troubled ages when most of the arts were little studied.
Generally the building is in one or other of the successive varieties
of the Gothic style. In Spain we see many traces of the Eastern
taste of the Moslems for towers and domes and "minarets," as those
slender towers with their balconies for prayer are called. Asiatic
influence is found, though far less often, in some Italian buildings
also.
[Sidenote: The nations in 1500 A.D.]
Now we may do well to take a look round the world, the scene of this
greatest of all stories, and see to what condition we have traced its
progress at this point of time--say A.D. 1500 or a year or two before
or after {231} that central date. We see, regarding it as a whole,
that the nations have been engaged, after the break-up that followed
the ruin of the Roman Empire, in framing their territories into
something like the shape which we may find on the map now. And
generally they have followed the same course, have gone through the
same struggles and changes, in their way towards assuming that shape.
For at first they split up into a number of small independent bodies,
each under the rule of a lord. Nominally there was an overlord, but
his sovereignty for a while was not very effective. It was but
gradually that he made it real. Some of the nations differed from
others in their local conditions. Thus Spain, rather cut off by the
Pyrenees from the main story, had its own peculiar difficulties with
the Moslems. The sovereignty of Italy, with its five principal
States, was complicated by the claims of Pope and Emperor, of Guelph
and Ghibelline and of the different city States asserting each its
independence. But on the whole, what we are able to see is a
tendency for the sovereign overlord gradually to make his power good
over the lesser lords, and so to produce something like those
national unities which we find now.
The position of Spain, to take that outlying part of the big story
first, is that she has just succeeded in overthrowing the Moors in
their last Spanish stronghold in Granada. She has almost completed
national unity by the marriage of Isabella, the Queen of Castile,
with Ferdinand, the King of Aragon. Then, with all her long
sea-coast and the sea-going habits of its inhabitants, she will
become for a while the greatest naval power in the world and play a
leading part in the story. Portugal is independent of her and is
opening up the trade with the East round the Cape of Good Hope.
Italy, as we have seen, is split into the five principal States, and
has far to go yet before she can be one nation.
{232}
France has unified herself, and so has England, but we have to notice
this difference between the conditions of the one and of the other,
that in France the king has made himself despotic over his nobles and
all his people.
England, no longer hampered by the possession of any territory on the
Continent except the single city of Calais, which will be lost to her
in the course of the century to follow, is more fortunate than France
in that her nobles have won from the king a more liberal
constitution, based upon Magna Carta. She will attain a freedom
equal to that of France by less terrible means, though not without
wars of Royalists and Puritans and the beheading of a king.
Scandinavian countries have for a time, as we have seen, been of the
greatest importance in our story, pouring forth swarms of Northmen to
make settlement and conquest in all quarters of the known world, but
it has not been as nations, but rather in companies of sea-going
raiders, that they have so wrought. For the moment those nations are
not in the forefront of the world story.
Neither have the German States formed themselves as yet into any
formidable nation. The power, always rather vague and ill-defined,
of the Emperor has much decreased, and Switzerland and other States
have shaken themselves free of it.
The Turk is pressing Austria and Hungary very hard. He holds, for a
time, large provinces which had been Austria's, and which will be
hers again, and, besides, he has established himself in that
territory which is now the Balkan States and Greece, and is in
possession of all that he now has of Asia Minor, with Egypt and the
northern African coast in addition.
Poland, though she too has felt the Turkish pressure, has become a
strong kingdom, and Russia, from her capital of Moscow, is growing in
power after {233} combining with those Tartar tribes which at one
time threatened to destroy her.
And in all the years of the story with which this volume deals, we
see that there has been one force constantly working, through all the
time and over all the scene except where the Moslem has
prevailed--the force of the Church. It is a divided force, for
Eastern Christendom looks to the Patriarch of the Greek Church as its
head; but the more important and powerful West looks to the Pope at
Rome.
[Sidenote: The new dawn]
We have brought the story through some of the darkest times that
mankind has known. Art and culture have nearly been destroyed under
the barbarian invasions and the years of fighting. Now the
Renaissance, the new birth of learning and of art, is at hand.
Already we have seen hints of it and hopes of it, like flowers coming
out in early spring, only to be nipped by late frost. There was that
wonderful music of the troubadours of the Langue d'oc in the
thirteenth century, with the ruder and less accomplished art of the
trouvères in Northern France, of the minnesingers in Germany, and of
the English minstrels.
But it is in Italy only that we can say that the Renaissance has
arrived--in that land where the great painters have been at work,
where Dante has sung his divine comedy, where Petrarch has written
his sonnets, and where the despots of the cities have employed
artists and architects to adorn the little States over which they
tyrannised. Moreover, through nearly all Europe, and even in the
gloom of the Dark Ages itself, there has been the most wonderful
building of churches and cathedrals, of abbeys and ecclesiastical
edifices, here and there of kings' palaces and of buildings for
public use. Our England, too, has had her poets, of whom the chief
is Chaucer rhyming his {234} "Canterbury Tales," his "Romaunt of the
Rose," and other beautiful pieces.
[Illustration: A SHIP OF THE TIME OF COLUMBUS. (From _The History of
Everyday Things_ (Quennell), by permission of Messrs. B. T. Batsford,
Ltd.)]
But except in Italy, these early promises of art and of literature
have not been followed up. They are only now, that we leave the
story, on the very edge of larger fulfilment. The Dark Ages are
dispelled. The dawn comes glimmering out of Italy, northwards. And
the scene of the story is being expanded vastly. Columbus has
touched America. Da Gama has circled the Cape of Good Hope. The
world as known to Western men is about to spread itself to far more
than double its former size. We have come to a new world-stage with
new plays and new players.
{235}
INDEX
Adrian, English Pope, 152
Adrianople, battles at, 28, 220
Africa, Count of, 34 _et seq._
Agincourt, battle at, 199
Albigenses, the, 161, 172 _et seq._
Alfred the Great, 118 _et seq._
Alphonso VII., 179
Amerigo, 227
Angevins, the, 150
Angli, 38
Anglo-Saxons, the, 39 _et passim_
Angora, 218
Aragon, 179
Architecture, in Dark Ages, 230
Armour, changes in, 187
Attila at Chalons, 36
Augusti, the two, 24
Augustine, St., 61
Austria, 144, 214 _et seq._
Avars, 143
Avebury, 98
Bagdad, Caliphs at, 74, 75
Baldwin, Eastern Emperor, 167
Bannockburn, battle at, 184
Barbarians, the, 8, 17 _et seq._
Basques, the, 38
Belisarius, 44, 47, 49, 53
Berbers, 68, 73
Birmingham, 114
Black Death, the, 185
Boadicea, 38
Boccaccio, 192, 229
Bosworth Field, battle at, 202
Britain, 2 _et passim_
Bruce, Robert, 184
Brythons, 3
Burgundi, 49, 53
Burgundy, boundaries of, 160
Burgundy, Duke of, 160; murdered, 200
Byzantium, 2 _et passim_
Cade, Jack, 201
Cærleon, 11
Cæsar, Julius, 2
Cæsars, the two, 24
Caliphs, the, 71
Canterbury, a great city, 112
Canute, 121
Cape of Good Hope, 226
Capets, the, 128
Carthage, 35
Castile, kingdom of, 177
Caxton, 229
Chapmen, the, 111
Charlemagne, 52, 64, 77, 90 _et passim_
Charles Martel, 87
Charles the Bold, 204
Chaucer, 192, 229
Chester, 11
Church, the, its power, 129 _et passim_; its growing wealth, 130,
131; its favour to Crusades, 131; its increasing strength, 169; evils
in the, 172
Celts, the, 3 _et passim_
Ceorls, 20, 107 _et seq._
Cid Campeador, the, 133
Cimabue, 230
Claudius, 3
Clientes, 82
Clovis, 49, 80
Colchester, 5
College of Cardinals, 153
Colonna, the, 166
Columbus, 180, 227
Comitatus, 82
Common land, 107
Constantine, the Great, 25; donation of, 65, 152
Constantinople, 25 _et passim_; taken by Crusaders, 167; taken by
Turks, 221.
Cordova, Moorish capital, 177; taken by Ferdinand III., 177
Counts, the, 81
Cracow, capital of Poland, 213
Crécy, battle at, 185
Crusades, 131 _et seq._
Curia, the, 89
Dacia, 8, 28
Dante, 192, 228
Danegeld, the, 120 _et seq._
Danes, the, 64, 111, 118 _et seq._
Days of the week, 41
Decius, 15, 28
Diocletian, 24
Domesday Book, 96
Druids, their religion, 41
Dukes of duchies, 88
Earls of the shires, 117
Edward IV., 203, 204
Edward the Black Prince, 180
Egbert, 94, 112
Empire, the divided, 22 _et seq._
England, 39 _et passim_
English, the, 3, 17
Eorls, 20, 108 _et seq._
Ethelred, 121
Everlasting League, the, 215
Excommunication, its effect, 168
Farmers in England, 186
Ferdinand and Isabella, 180
Feudal System, the, 82 _et seq._
France, kingdom of, 126
Frankish clergy, their value, 78
Franks, the, 14, 33, 37 _et passim_; the Ripuarian, 80; the Salian, 80
Frederick II., 168
Frisians, the, 63
Gallic Empire, the, 15
Game laws of Canute, 147
Gaul, 2, 3, 14
Gauls, 8
Genoa, 166
Germans, 26 _et passim_
Germany, kingdom of, 126
Ghibelline, 165
Ghirlandajo, 230
Goidels, the, 4
Gothic arch, 100, 190; architecture, 191; furniture, 102; house, how
built, 100
Goths, 15 _et passim_
Granada, Moorish kingdom, 179
Guelph, 165
Gunpowder, 203
Habsburgs, the, 214 _et seq._
Hadrian, 6, 10
Harold, 122 _et seq._
Henry II., 149
Henry III., 182
Henry IV., 197
Henry V., 197, 199
Henry VII., 202
Heptarchy, the, 92
Holy Island, 42, 62
Homage, 135
Hundred Court, the, 93
Hundred Years' War, the, 184
Hungary, 143, 144 _et passim_
Huns, 26 _et passim_
Huss, 195, 217
Iberians, the, 8
Immunities, 81, 85
Indo-Europeans, the, 22
Indulgences, 172
Inquisition, the, 173
Investitures, 152
Iona, 42, 62
Ireland, conquest of, 151; gold in, 99
Islam, 70
Italian cities, independence of, 163 _et seq._
Janissaries, the, 219
Jerusalem, kingdom of, 136; regained by Saracens, 138
Jews in Spain, 176
Joan of Arc, 200
Joglars, 157
John, King of England, 150, 159
John of Gaunt, 179, 180
Julian the Apostate, 57
Jutes, 3, 17, 38
Jutland, 3
Knights-errant, 155
Knights of the sword, 141, 212
Kossovo, battle at, 220
Leonardo da Vinci, 230
Lewes, battle at, 183
Lisbon taken from Moors, 137
Lithuanians, the, 211 _et seq._
Lollards, the, 195, 217
Lombard League, the, 164
Lombard Street, 66
Lombards, the, 50, 52
London, 113, 114
Louis XI., 204
Luther, 195, 217
Magna Carta, 150
Magyars, 143
Mahomet, 67 _et seq._
Manchester, 114
Matilda, her claim to crown, 149
Maximilian I., 214
Mayor of Palace, 86
Memoria technica, 50, 51
Mercia, 40
Merovingian kings, 80
Michael Angelo, 230
Minnesingers, 154
Minstrels, 103
Moorish "Conquest" of Spain, 175 _et seq._
Moors, 68 _et seq._
Morgarten, battle of, 216
Moscow, 208
Mote Hill, the, 20
Navarre, 179
Nicopolis, battle at, 220
Nordic, the race, 120
Normandy, its origin, 127
Northmen in Sicily, etc., 134 _et passim_
Northumbria, 40
Novgorod, 210
Odoacer, 46, 47
Orsini, 166
Ostrogoths, 29, 37, 47 _et seq._
Oswi, 42, 62, 63
Ottoman Turks, 218 _et seq._
Paladins, the, 90
Palmyra, Prince of, 15
Papacy, its possessions, 88
Papal State, the, 170
Parliament, beginnings of, 182
Patriarchs, the, 57
Patrocinium, 92
Paul, St., 54, 55
Penda, 42, 61, 62
Pepin, first Carolingian, 87
Persians, the, 22 _et passim_
Peter, St., 54, 55
Peter the Hermit, 134
Petrarch, 192, 229
Petrograd, 210
Philip of France, 159 _et seq._
Picts, 6, 38
Pikemen, the Scottish, 188
Plantagenets, the, 159
Poitiers, battle at, 185
Poles, 211 _et seq._
Pope, the, 54 _et passim_
Pope, two at once, 170
Portugal, kingdom of, 137
Precarium, 83, 92
Ravenna, 52
Renaissance, the, 229
Rent, its origin, 108
Richard, Cœur de Lion, 158
Richard II., his French treaty, 196
Rienzi, 225
Roman citizenship, 9
Roman Empire, 1 _et passim_: boundaries of the, 7; walls of the, 6
Roman legions, 9 _et seq._
Roman posts, 2
Roman roads, 1
Rome, 1 _et passim_
Roncesvalles, battle at, 90
Rudolph, of Habsburgh, 214
Russia, 142 _et passim_
Salian Franks, 48 _et seq._, 79 _et seq._
Sapienza, battle at, 224
Saracens, 58, 67 _et seq._
Saxons, 3 _et passim_
Scotland, a fief of England, 151
Seljuk Turks, 218
Sempach, battle of, 216
Seville regained by Christians, 179
Sleswig, 3, 17, 38
Statute of Mortmain, 194
Stephen, his claim to Crown, 149
Switzerland, its rise, 215
Tacitus, 17
Tapestry, 101
Tartars, 211, 220
Tenterhooks, 102
Tertry, battle at, 86
Teutonic Order, the, 142, 212
Thane, the, 116
Theodoric, 47
Theodosius the Great, 28
Timur, 220
Tithes, their origin, 110
Titian, 230
Toulouse, kingdom of, 33
Tours, battle at, 87
Towton, battle at, 202
Troubadours, 153, 156
Trouvères, 153, 156
Tsar, the, of Moscow, 211
Tudors, the, 203
Turks, the, 132 _et passim_
Valens, 26
Valentinian, 26
Vandals, 31, 32 _et seq._
Vasco da Gama, 226
Vassals, their duties, 84
Venice, its power, 166 _et seq._; defeats Genoa, 223
Visigoths, 29, 31 _et seq._
Wales, Prince of, 183
Wallace, William, 184
Wars of the Roses, 201
Wat Tyler, his rebellion, 195
Watling Street, 99, 119
Wends, Holy War against, 137, 140 _et seq._, 212
Wessex, 40
Westminster Abbey, 191
Westminster, ford at, 97
Whitby, Synod at, 63
William I., his claim to the Crown, 122
William Rufus, 146
Winchester, a great city, 113
Wool, its importance, 110; shipped to Flanders, 188
Wycliffe, 194, 217
York, 11
Zenobia, 15, 16
THE END