When, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the towns of Northern Europe began to extend their commercial connections, the greatest drawback to their trade was the general insecurity and disorder that everywhere prevailed. The trader who entrusted his goods designed for the Italian market to the overland routes was in danger of losing them at the hands of the robber nobles, who watched all the lines of travel, and either robbed the merchant outright, or levied an iniquitous toll upon his goods. The plebeian tradesmen, in the eyes of these patrician barons, had no rights which they felt bound to respect. Nor was the way to Italy by the Baltic and the North Sea beset with less peril. Piratical crafts scoured those waters, and made booty of any luckless merchantman they might overpower, or lure to wreck upon the dangerous shores. This state of things led some of the German cities, about the middle of the fourteenth century, to form, for the protection of their merchants, an alliance called the Hanseatic League. The confederation eventually embraced eighty-five of the principal towns of North Germany. In order to facilitate the trading operations of its members, the League established in different parts of the world trading-posts and warehouses. The four most noted centres of the trade of the confederation were the cities of Bruges, London, Bergen, and Novgorod. The League thus became a vast monopoly, which endeavored to control, in the interests of its own members, the entire commerce of Northern Europe.
Among other causes of the dismemberment of the association may be mentioned the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century, which disarranged all the old routes of trade in the north of Europe as well as in the south; the increased security which the formation of strong governments gave to the merchant class upon sea and land; and the heavy expense incident to membership in the association, resulting from its ambitious projects. All these things combined resulted in the decline of the power and usefulness of the League, and finally led to its formal dissolution about the middle of the seventeenth century.
INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIÆVAL CITIES.—The chartered towns and free cities of the mediæval era exerted a vast influence upon the commercial, social, artistic, and political development of Europe.
They were the centres of the industrial and commercial life of the Middle
Ages, and laid the foundations of that vast system of international
exchange and traffic which forms a characteristic feature of modern
European civilization.
Their influence upon the social and artistic life of Europe cannot be overestimated. It was within the walls of the cities that the civilization uprooted by the Teutonic invaders first revived. With their growing wealth came not only power, but those other usual accompaniments of wealth,— culture and refinement. The Italian cities were the cradle and home of mediæval art, science, and literature.
Again, these cities were the birthplace of political liberty, of representative government. It was the burghers, the inhabitants of the cities, that in England, in France, and in Germany finally grew into the Third Estate, or Commons, the controlling political class in all these countries. In a word, municipal freedom was the germ of national liberty.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.
By the Revival of Learning, in the most general sense, is meant the intellectual awakening of Europe after the languor and depression of the first mediæval centuries. In a narrower sense, however, the phrase is used to designate that wonderful renewal of interest in the old Greek and Latin authors which sprung up in Italy about the beginning of the fourteenth century. We shall use the expression in its most comprehensive sense, thus making the restoration of classical letters simply a part of the great Revival of Learning.
SCHOLASTICISM AND THE SCHOOLMEN.—One of Charlemagne's most fruitful labors was the establishment of schools, in connection with the cathedrals and monasteries, throughout his dominions. Within these schools there grew up in the course of time a form of philosophy called, from the place of its origin, Scholasticism, while its expounders were known as Schoolmen. This philosophy was a fusion of Christianity and Aristotelian logic. It might be defined as being, in its later stages, an effort to reconcile revelation and reason, faith and philosophy. Viewed in this light, it was not altogether unlike that theological philosophy of the present day whose aim is to harmonize the Bible with the facts of modern science.