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The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1910
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]». Краткое содержание книги:
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 01 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 03 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 04 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 05 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 06 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 07 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 08 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 09 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 10 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 11 — Ancient and Mediæval History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 12 — Modern History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 13 — Religion and Philosophy от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 17 — Poetry and Drama от Неизвестный
The world's greatest books от Mee, Arthur, 1875-1943, joint editor & Hammerton, John Alexander, Sir, 1871-1949, joint editor & McClure, S. S. (Samuel Sidney), 1857-1949, joint editor
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 19 — Travel and Adventure от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index от Неизвестный
V.--Europe
In spite of the Teutonic incursion, Latin remained the basis of language as it survived in Italy, France, and Spain. But the pursuit of letters was practically confined to the clergy and was by them employed almost exclusively in the interests of clerical authority. To this end a multitude of superstitions were encouraged; superstitions which were the cause of not a few strange and irrational outbursts of fanaticism. The monasteries served indeed a useful purpose as sanctuaries in days of general lawlessness and rapine; but the huge weight of evidence is conclusive as to the general corruption of morals among the clergy as among the laity. The common diversion of the upper classes, lay and clerical, when not engaged in actual war, was hunting. An extended commerce was impossible when robbery was a normal occupation of the great.
Gradually, however, a more orderly society emerged. Maritime commerce developed in two separate areas, the northern and western, and the Mediterranean. The first great commerce in the north arises from the manufacture in Flanders of the wool exported from England. And in the fourteenth century England herself began to compete in the woollen manufacture. The German free manufacturing towns established the Great Hanseatic League; but maritime commerce between the Northern and Southern areas was practically non-existent till the fifteenth century, by which time English ships were carrying on a fairly extensive traffic in the Mediterranean. In that area the great seaports of Italy, and in a less degree, of Catalonia and the French Mediterranean seaboard, developed a large commerce. Naturally, however, the law which it was sufficiently difficult to enforce by land was even more easily defied on the sea, and piracy was extremely prevalent.
Governments as well as private persons were under a frequent necessity of borrowing, and for a long time the great money lenders were the Jews. They, however, were later to a great extent displaced by the merchants of Lombardy, and the fifteenth century witnesses the rise of the great bankers, Italian and German.
The structure and furniture of all buildings for private purposes made exceedingly little provision for comfort, offering an extreme contrast to the dignity of the public buildings and the sublimity of ecclesiastical architecture.
During the last three hundred years of our period it is clear that there was a great diminution of the status of servitude and a great increase in the privileges extended to corporate towns. Private warfare was checked and lawless robbery to a considerable extent restrained. It is tolerably clear that the rise of heretical sects were both the cause and the result of moral dissatisfaction, tending to the adoption of higher moral standards. Some of these sects were cruelly crushed by merciless persecution, as in the case of the Albigenses. The doctrines of Wickliffe, however, were never stamped out in England; and the form which they took in Bohemia among the followers of the martyred John Huss had little about them that was beneficial.
The great moral school of the Middle Ages was the institution of chivalry, which existed to animate and cherish the principle of honour. To this a strong religious flavor was superadded, perhaps by the Crusades. To valour and devotion was added the law of service to womanhood, and chivalry may fairly claim to have developed generally the three virtues essential to it, of loyalty, courtesy, and liberality. Resting, however, as it did on the personal prowess and skill of the individual in single combat, the whole system of chivalry was destroyed by the introduction on an extensive scale of the use of firearms.
We turn lastly to the intellectual improvement which may be referred to four points: the study of civil laws the institution of universities; the application of modern languages to literature, and especially to poetry; and the revival of ancient learning. Education may almost be said to have begun with the establishment of the great schools by Charlemagne out of which sprang the European universities. For a long time of course all studies were dominated by that of theology, and the scholastic philosophy which pertained to it. Barren as these pursuits were, they kept alive an intellectual activity which ultimately found fresh channels. The Romance languages developed a new literature first on the tongues of the troubadours and then in Italy--the Italy which gave birth to Dante and Petrarch. It was about the fourteenth century that a new enthusiasm was born for the study of classical authors, though Greek was still unknown. And the final and decisive impulse was given when the invention of printing made the great multiplication of books possible.
STANLEY LANE-POOLE
Egypt in the Middle Ages
Stanley Lane-Poole, born on December 18, 1845, studied Arabic under his great-uncle, Lane, the Orientalist, and, before going up to Oxford for his degree, began his "Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum," which appeared in fourteen volumes between 1875 and 1892, and founded his reputation as the first living authority on Arabic numismatics. In 1883, 1896, and 1897 he was at Cairo officially employed by the British Government upon the Mohammedan antiquities, and published his treatise on "The Art of the Saracens in Egypt" in 1886, in which year he visited Stockholm, Helsingfors, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Constantinople to examine their Oriental collections. He has written histories of the "Moors in Spain," "Turkey," "The Barbary Corsairs," and "Mediæval India," which have run to many editions; and biographies of Saladin, Babar, Aurangzib; of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and Sir Harry Parkes. He has also published a miniature Koran in the "Golden Treasury" series, and written "Studies in a Mosque," besides editing three volumes of Lane's "Arabic Lexicon." For five years he held the post of Professor of Arabic at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he is Litt.D. Mohammedan Egypt, his special subject, he has treated in several books on Cairo, the latest being "The Story of Cairo." But his most complete work on this subject is "The History of Egypt in the Middle Ages," here epitomised by the author.
I.--A Province of the Caliphate
Ever since the Arab conquest in 641 Egypt has been ruled by Mohammedans, and for more than half the time by men of Turkish race. Though now and again a strong man has gathered all the reins of control into his own hands and been for a time a personal monarch, as a rule the government has been, till recent years, a military bureaucracy.
The people, of course, had no voice in the government. The Egyptians have never been a self-governing race, and such a dream as constitutional democracy was never heard of until a few years ago. By the Arab conquest in the seventh century the people merely changed masters. They were probably not indisposed to welcome the Moslems as their deliverers from the tyranny of the Orthodox Church of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire, invincibly intolerant of the native monophysite heresy; and when the conquest was complete they found themselves, on the whole, better off than before. They paid their taxes to officials with Arabic instead of Greek titles, but the taxes were lighter and the amount was strictly laid down by law.
The land-tax of about a pound per acre was not excessive on so fertile a soil, and the poll-tax on nonconformity, of the same amount, was a moderate price to pay for entire liberty of conscience and freedom in public worship guaranteed by solemn treaty. The other taxes were comparatively insignificant, and the total revenue in the eighth century was about £7,000,000. The surplus went to the caliph, the head of the vast Mohammedan empire, which then stretched from Seville to Samarkand, whose capital was first Damascus and afterwards Baghdad.