The opening · free to read
“_Les gens que vous tuez se portent assez bien._”
And you might add that in a book on the end of the Middle Ages, it is strange to find not a line on the Loss of Constantinople, and not a chapter on the invention of Printing or the Discovery of America.
What can I do but acknowledge my incompleteness? Nay, I will even confess to you that I have my private doubts whether the Middle Ages are over yet—whether any period comes to an end at a given epoch, but does not rather still subsist, diminished yet puissant, stealing in unnoticed currents along the vast veins and secret fabric of the world. In many a turn of thought and habit, in many a disregarded constitution—in May Day and Manor Court, in the Land laws and the Judenhetze—the Middle Ages are not over yet. Here and there they reappear and startle us in unexpected corners. That form of Nature which we know as History is, like every other evolution of Nature, too complex to be accurately fixed in words. Words only give the vague surroundings; they are the ill-fitting, ready-made clothes of a thought.
Therefore, despite their official end, we may doubt whether we be done with the Middle Ages. And yet you will agree with me that the personages of my essays belong no longer wholly to the age in which they lived. Something came to an end then; something slowly began. Race of Cain and race of Abel, mystics lost in ecstasy, or captains of prey and plunder,—yet Eckhart, the forerunner of Hegel, and the sinister Giangaleazzo dreaming in a different fashion the dream of Count Cavour, was each unconsciously a precursor of the Modern Age.
The Beguines, bringing the dissolvent of mysticism to the authority of Rome; the Pope, in quitting his true capital for Avignon; the Cardinals by opening the Schism: these, between them, have invented the Reformation.... Giangaleazzo Visconti, when he made his daughter of Orleans his heir, prepared the battles of Marignano and Pavia, and condemned Francis I. to his captivity in Spain. Even as the Feud of Orleans and Burgundy began the long rivalry of Francis and the Emperor, the great descendants of those angry houses.... Meanwhile the numerous invasions of Italy under the Dukes of Orleans, and still later, the triumphal journey of Charles VIII., brought back to France the splendour of the Renaissance. Thus Hallam closes the Middle Ages with the taking of Naples, in 1494. However this be, if you are indulgent, dear Master, you may consider my essays a very humble and inadequate Introduction to the study of your Sixteenth Century.
Perhaps I am the only reader who will have learned anything from the little book. And, after all, I am contented that it should be so. It is so much pleasanter to learn than to instruct; and in learning one meets with so many friends and helpers. I cannot tell you here of all who have befriended me, but I must at least mention to you the names of Canon Creighton, unfailing critic and sympathizer; of Mr. Bryce, who reached out an experienced hand to me and spared me several more mistakes in Feudal Law; of Mr. H.F. Brown of Venice, who procured me my Venetian transcripts; of Professor Villari and Professor Paoli of Florence (it was the latter who taught me Palæography); and of Comte Albert de Circourt of Paris, in whom I have found a quite invaluable adviser and correspondent,—for probably no historian in Europe is so familiar with the Lombard schemes of Louis d’Orléans as he.
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