An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent punctuation and spelling in the original have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Click on colored maps to see a larger version.
PAGE FROM AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT
BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON Professor of History in Columbia University
History is no easy science; its subject, human society, is infinitely complex. Fustel de Coulanges
GINN & COMPANY BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON
Entered at Stationers' Hall Copyright, 1902, 1903 BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 612.1
The Athenæum Press
GINN & COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A.
In introducing the student to the history of the development of European culture, the problem of proportion has seemed to me, throughout, the fundamental one. Consequently I have endeavored not only to state matters truly and clearly but also to bring the narrative into harmony with the most recent conceptions of the relative importance of past events and institutions. It has seemed best, in an elementary treatise upon so vast a theme, to omit the names of many personages and conflicts of secondary importance which have ordinarily found their way into our historical text-books. I have ventured also to neglect a considerable number of episodes and anecdotes which, while hallowed by assiduous repetition, appear to owe their place in our manuals rather to accident or mere tradition than to any profound meaning for the student of the subject.
The space saved by these omissions has been used for three main purposes. Institutions under which Europe has lived for centuries, above all the Church, have been discussed with a good deal more fullness than is usual in similar manuals. The life and work of a few men of indubitably first-rate importance in the various fields of human endeavor—Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, Abelard, St. Francis, Petrarch, Luther, Erasmus, Voltaire, Napoleon, Bismarck—have been treated with care proportionate to their significance for the world. Lastly, the scope of the work has been broadened so that not only the political but also the economic, intellectual, and artistic achievements of the past form an integral part of the narrative.