The burghers, or commons, become an influential class.
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, Mediæval 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."
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.
General use of Latin in the Middle Ages.
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;[159] 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 clergymen 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 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.