Quotes About History

Lynn Thorndike

Germania of Tacitus

The chief extant monument of feudalism is the stone castle.

machicolations.

His rear guard was destroyed in the passes by the Christian Basques inhabiting that locality. Among the slain was Hruodland, one of Charles's chief friends and lieutenants and the hero of the later Song of Roland. Later in his reign Charles was more successful and established the Spanish March, a strip of land extending as far south of the Pyrenees as the important seaport of Barcelona. Mark or march was the name for a frontier territory.

The poets of other countries learned from the troubadours many lessons in literary form; their refining influence upon manners was also widely felt and their attitude toward woman was generally adopted.

in 212 A.D. making citizens of all freemen in the Empire

prose histories in the Castilian tongue began to appear.

Alfonso the Wise of Castile (1252-1284)

Lynn Thorndike

In Spain, for instance, where the Visigoths ruled for more than two hundred years, there is not a single building left to illustrate their architecture, just as scarcely a word in the Spanish language can be traced back to their tongue.

relations between the crusaders and the Byzantine emperor were seldom cordial.

It has been said that the medieval universities "affected the progress and intellectual development of Europe more powerfully, or perhaps rather more exclusively, than any schools in all likelihood will ever do again.

We therefore owe our universities to the Middle Ages.

despite its shortcomings the First Crusade was one of the most daring and brilliantly successful military expeditions recorded in history.

The fact that this medieval France was almost entirely surrounded by rivers – for a little stream, la Thève, forms its northern boundary – probably gave rise to the expression, Île de France.

Probably the most lasting result of the crusades was the trade which the Italian cities established with the Orient

For example, the resemblance between the word for "bride" and the verb meaning "to steal away" in Indo-Germanic languages is taken as evidence of marriage by capture in early times

Among the oldest craft gilds in Germany were the weavers of Mainz (1099), the fishermen of Worms (1106), the shoemakers of Würzburg (1128), the makers of bed-ticks and the turners of Cologne, and the cobblers, tailors, and painters of Magdeburg from the twelfth century.

Human activity and hence history may be conveniently subdivided under five captions: political, economic, social, religious, and cultural.

In England, as on the Continent, two stages of invasion are distinguished; the first, from about 787 to 855, a purely destructive one of plunder and rapine; the second, of occupation.

About the middle of the ninth century were composed the False Decretals, purporting to have been collected from the documents of early popes.

Abbey of Cluny

The poor Slavs during this period were still more invaded than invading, harassed as they were from the east by the mounted nomads and from the north by the Swedish slave-traders. The mortality in the slave trade at that time was even greater than in the later African slave trade with America. About nine Slavs died on the way for every one who was sold as a slave. Yet they continued to increase in population.