[Footnote 229: Malastrie, Missions scientifiques.]
[Footnote 230: The Venetian Sanuto penetrated as far as Cambodia; a goldsmith of Paris settled in China; merchants from Breslau and Poland met Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian merchants in the interior of Tartary, etc. See Le Bas, Précis de l'Histoire du Moyen Age.]
The love of knowledge also drew nations together. Learned men did not hesitate to undertake long journeys, to cross the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea, that they might pursue their studies in Italy, (as Fortunatus at Ravenna in the sixth century,) obtain books on medicine, (Richer in the eleventh century,) [Footnote 231] meet English students in Spain, (Peter the Venerable in the twelfth century,) hold converse with some doctor at Bologna, or some monk in a monastery of the Apennines. How could there be no intercourse between the universities of Salamanca, of Pavia, of Oxford, and of Paris, when the same questions were discussed at them all; when the metaphysical heresies which sprang from one were refuted in another five hundred leagues distant; [Footnote 232] when the masters and pupils of Germany, England, Spain, France, and Italy flocked to these schools; from France to Padua, from England to Valencia, and from all countries to Paris, where, almost at the same time, disputations were carried on by Englishmen, Italians, Irishmen, and Germans, who were to be known as Dante, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, Brunetto Latini, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, and St. Thomas Aquinas?
[Footnote 231: Daremberg, ibid.]
[Footnote 232: And there were such close relations between the factions in France and those of England, that, in the fourteenth century, the revolutionary movements in Paris coincided with those in London. See Naudet, Conjuration d Etienne Marcel.]
It has been said that for literature to flourish, a nation must be invigorated by powerful and varied deeds: [Footnote 233] at what epoch was there a more stirring and varied life than in the middle ages?
[Footnote 233: Madame de Staël.]
Follow the continued journeys of the poet-historian Froissart to and fro in every direction, in France and without, now at the foot of the Pyrenees at the Chateau de Foix, and now in Italy, where, at Milan, he meets another poet, Chaucer of England, who had come to visit Genoa, Padua, etc. From Brittany he goes to Flanders, and even to Zealand, where he forms a friendship with a Portuguese lord. He thinks nothing of crossing the water; he goes to England repeatedly, dwells there, and penetrates even to Scotland, then "an unknown land." He traverses France from one end to the other; is in Spain to-day and to-morrow in Germany. Would you not think you were reading the life of a modern individual? He is called a chronicler: a chronicler indeed, and after the manner of the men of our own time; like them, chronicler and tourist, traversing earth and sea to participate in festivities, witness battles, and mingle in courts. [Footnote 234]
[Footnote 234: But with this difference: he did not travel in a cushioned car going at the rate of forty miles an hour, but on horseback, at a good round trot, with spurs on his heels and his luggage behind.]