In England, where a Norman dynasty and Norman aristocracy established themselves, the unifying process was astonishingly rapid. The country was comparatively shielded from Papal interposition by distance. A series of vigorous and able monarchs prevented pure feudalism from ever getting developed; it resulted that in the thirteenth century baronage and people made common cause in imposing not feudalism, but constitutional control over the kings. In France, the victory of the crown over feudalism was far slower; the feudatories were too powerful, and among them were the kings of England, as dukes or counts of great territories within France. The Hundred Years’ War was, in fact, not so much a contest for the French crown as a struggle between the French kings and their mightiest vassals. It was not till the English had been finally expelled that Louis XI. was enabled to make the crown supreme in France. There, as in England, the monarchy never submitted to the Papacy; it was so far victorious in that struggle that in the fourteenth century the seat of the Roman pontificate was transferred to Avignon, and the Pontiff himself became literally the creature of France.

Christendom and the Crusades

Spain and Byzantium alike remained for the most part outside the general European current. They were the buffers between Christendom and Islam. In the Spanish Peninsula the Moors were held more or less at bay, but the land was not freed from their dominion till the close of the fifteenth century. Byzantium held the Turks at bay till the middle of the same century; then she fell for ever. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, Christendom carried on against Islam the long contest of the Crusades; but the warriors who took part in those wars neither fought nor organised as though themselves forming an organic body; the Christian hosts in Palestine were mere miscellaneous gatherings, united only in the temporary fits of enthusiasm. The Holy Sepulchre was gained, but within a century it was lost again; the crusading cause was one to which not states, but individuals only, devoted themselves. Conquest would have been possible only if the Crusaders had gone forth prepared to make their own homes in Asia. The East could not be held by garrisons with no abiding interest there.

Islam, then, held, and more than held, its own against the West; while during these same centuries it swept east and south through the passes of the Punjab into India, establishing Turk and Afghan kingdoms over most of the great peninsula; though the vast bulk of the population there held to the Hinduism which, born of the earlier Brahmanism, had almost expelled the Buddhist religion, which, however, had established itself permanently in Further India and China.

Empire, Feudalism, & Papacy

The might of Islam could have been overthrown only by a united Christendom, and for that the disintegrating forces were too great. England and, more slowly, France freed themselves from feudalism. But Christendom required one head. If the Papacy had stood by the empire, feudalism might have been broken down, and the emperor have become that head. But the Papacy aimed at supremacy for itself—the spiritual power was at war with the temporal. Anti-imperial factions claimed the support of the Church; the efforts at consolidation of the great Hohenstaufen Emperors, Barbarossa and Frederick II., were unsuccessful. The empire itself became only a congeries of kingdoms and dukedoms, counties, bishoprics, free cities, and leagues of cities, under the Austrian house of Hapsburg; while Rome, mighty from the days of Gregory VII. to Innocent III., lost its prestige in the captivity at Avignon and by the Great Schism which followed. In England Wycliffe’s voice was raised; on the south-east of the empire the Hussite wars raged, premonitory of the Reformation.

End of the Middle Ages

In 1453 Constantinople fell, and the Turk was permanently established in the east of Europe. As a counterstroke, in the west, not forty years later, the Moorish dominion in Spain was wiped out, Spain emerging as a united Christian kingdom. Before the end of the century Columbus and Gama had discovered America, and virtually rediscovered India. Across the ocean a new, almost unlimited field for expansion, for enterprise, for rivalry had been opened to the European peoples. Already in the realms of intellect old forgotten knowledge had been gradually recovered by the Renascence, the revival of learning and letters; with the intellectual expansion and the invention of the printing press paths to new knowledge were being opened. Men were shaking themselves free from the shackles of authority and tradition. Hence, the sixteenth century witnessed that revolt of half Western Christendom from Rome which we call the Reformation; in its essence, though by no means in its form at the first, a revolt against the interposition of any human authority between the individual man and his Maker. With that revolt political and national divisions were inextricably blended, while the whole was complicated by the new conditions of political supremacy created by the New World.

TIME-TABLE OF THE WORLD: A.D. 1000 to 1500

Development of Feudalism. The Rise and Decadence of the Papacy. The Crusades. Holy Roman Empire. The Organisation of England, France, and Spain. The Renaissance

A.D.
1000

The Non-Christian World

Christendom

A.D.
1000

Mahmud of Ghazni. Beginning of Mohammedan invasions of India.

Scandinavian power: Canute, King of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and England.
Franconian line of emperors; Burgundy reunited to Empire.
Dynasty of Hugh Capet in France.

1050

1050

Power of the Seljuk Turkish Dynasty.

ENGLAND: The Norman conquest, 1066.
Norman conquests in Sicily and S. Italy.
Power of the Empire under Henry III.
Pontificate of Gregory VII. (Hildebrand).
Beginning of the struggle between Papacy and Empire (Henry IV.)
First Crusade.

1100

1100

Development of Papal power.
ENGLAND: Organisation of central government under Henry I. checked under Stephen.
Norman kingdom of Sicily.
Conrad, first Hohenstaufen emperor. Beginning of Guelphs (Papal) and Ghibellines (Imperial).

1150

1150

Establishment of Mohammedan (Ghori) dynasty at Delhi.
Conquests of the Saracens under the Seljuk Saladin.
Third Crusade (Cœur-de-Lion).

The Angevin dominion of Henry II., comprising half France.
ENGLAND: End of feudal anarchy. Maximum power of Crown. Henry worsted in the struggle with the Church.
Chivalry typified in Richard Cœur-de-Lion.
Frederick Barbarossa emperor, 1155–1190.
City development. Lombard League; and German Free Cities.
Advance of Moors in Spain.

1200

1200

Genghis Khan: Tartar conquests in Asia and irruption into Europe.
Buddhism obsolescent in India.

Highest power of Papacy, under Innocent III.
Francis of Assisi: institution of Mendicant Friars.
ENGLAND: Magna Charta; contest of Crown and Barons. Loss of Angevin dominion.
FRANCE: Development of central power under Louis VIII. and IX.
Institution of the Teutonic knights.
Break up of the Eastern Empire. Venice.

1250

1250

Rise of the Ottoman (Othman) Turks.
Khublai Khan in Eastern Asia.

Decadence of Imperial power. First Habsburg emperor.
End of the Crusading period.
ITALY: Rise of Florence. Dante. Giotto.
ENGLAND: Establishment of Parliament (Montfort and Edward I.). Organisation of the English nation.

1300

1300

Mameluke Sultans in Egypt.

The Papacy “in captivity” at Avignon.
Independence of Scotland.
Independence of Switzerland.
Ottoman Turks establish a footing in Europe.
ENGLAND AND FRANCE: Beginning of the 100 Years’ War.

1350

1350

Rise of the Ming dynasty in China: expulsion of Mongols.

Conquests of Timur the Tartar (Tamerlane)

The Jacquerie in France.
The Great Schism: period of dual Papacy.
ENGLAND: Peasant revolt. Failure of Richard II.’s attempt at absolutism. Wycliffe.
Union of Lithuania with Poland.

1400

1400

Empires of Mexico and Peru.

End of Great Schism. Hussite wars.
English conquest of France, and subsequent expulsion. Increasing powers of Parliament.
Invention of printing press.

1450

1450

1500
A.D.

Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus; and of Cape route to India by Vasco da Gama.

Turks capture Constantinople.
ENGLAND: Wars of the Roses, 1455–1485.
Maritime greatness of PORTUGAL.
SPAIN consolidated under Ferdinand and Isabella.
FRANCE consolidated under Louis XI.
ENGLAND consolidated under Henry VII. Establishment of absolutism under constitutional forms.
Revival of learning. Humanists. Savonarola.

1500
A.D.