A new feature was after a time introduced into the feudal system by the occasional. calling together of an assembly of the feudal lords by the sovereign—niore, it is true, with the view of sustaining amicable relations with them than for any purpose of the division either of power or responsibility. At first these assemblies were merely festive• .gatherings; but after a time they assumed the form of advisory, and at last of delibera tive meetings, when all legislative enactments were considered and debated. There were even in some of these gatherings traces of representative legislation; they were the. first faint beginnings of the constitutional monarchy of a later age., The convocation of the French states-general, in 1302, was the first positive departure in this direction. The fendal system was now gradually- discarded. The petty feuds of the early part of the middle ages became the great wars of their latter centuries, when the simple feudal compact could not supply such armies as were required. The tendency towards consoli dation began now to be felt, just as that of displacement and separation had held sway after the fall of Rome. Kingdoms grew into enormous possessions and great wealth. Mercenary troops were employed in war, hired from monarchs or states not engaged. In the conflict; and thus the idea of standing armies ready for emergencies grew into being.. In fact, centralization of power hegan to be the law under which kings,. and emperors were conducting their policy, while representation was being made the lever with.which. the people were seeking to gain greater freedom of conscience and of person. This gen eral condition spread through England and Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. In Italy, Lombardy, and Venice arose reptiblican governments; and the anom aly of great cities self-governed appears as one of the extraordinary features of the middle ages. Venice grew great in the arts and in commerce. and the marvelous promise of the period was broken only by intestine quarrels and the factious fights of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and of other powerful Italian families, which, however. resulted in tbe destruction of the franchises of the people, and the foundation ot petty principalities on the ruins of the liberty which had been achieved by the free cities The history of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, during a major part of the middle ages, is that of all Italy after the period when the northern portion of that country was under the control of the German emperors. Their commerce covered the Mediterranean,. the Black sea, and the Adriatic, and extended into the far east by caravans. In the darkest and most barbarous period,Venice conducted an extensive traffic both with the Greek and Saracen regions of the Levant. The crusades, which swept over Europe with an uuexatnpled wave of enthusiasm, enriched and ag,grandized Venice more perhaps than any other city. Her splendor, however, may be dated from the capture of Con stantinople by the Latins in 1204, by an enterprise which, originally intended for the recovery of Jerusalem, was diverted to this more profitable adventure, in which not only the Venetian nations but the French were engaged. In the meantime wars assumed a scientific character, gunpowder was introduced into Europe, probably through the Sara cens, and artillery began to be used in the early part of the 14th century. But incessant revolutions and family feuds tore the Italian republics to pieces, until Florence, the last of then), succumbed under the domination of Lorenzo de' Medici.
Charlemagne, king of the Franks and emperor of the Romans (768-814 A.D.), after his conquest of the Saxons and. the Lombards, was invited into Spain to interpose iu the wars of the Arabs and Moors in that country, and seized and added to his dominions all that tetritory lying between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. The Saracens conquered Spain
in 711 A. D. and left behind them monuments whose ruins attest to this day the wonderful progress of' oriental art under the caliphs. and give evidence of the spirit and enterprise which characterized the Arabs from the time of Mohammed to that of their expul sion from Spain (1492), when they had erected new empires in three-quarters of the globe.
The beginning of the 13th c. had. seen an eruption of barbarians from Chinese Tartary, extending across all Asia and as far as the Euxine, which was not even par alleled by the invasion of Spain by the Saracens, or that of Italy by the savages of the north. Reducing the caliphate of Bagdad, they subverted the governments of Persia, Syria, and Iconium. To them it was owing that the Turks of the latter country, under (Altman, penetrated through Asia Minor into Europe, from whence not all the western powers in six centuries have dislodged them.
The power of the church in the middle ages began in the conversion of Constantine, emperor of the west, who was baptized shortly before his death, 337 A. D. It was gained by slow steps, beginning. with the accumulation of territory, and being extended by assumption of the authority to declare excommunication and interdict. By gaining vast wealth, and by playing upon the fears of weak princes, the bishops gradually encroached upon the rights and privileo-es of the highest potentates of Europe, until the pontifical authority of Rome controlleql nearly every king and emperor from the Adriatic to the North sea. It was this influence that organized the crusades, and that occasioned half the wars that convulsed Europe during a period of ten centuries, yet without which, at this peculiar age of the world, civilizalton, the arts, letters, and commerce alike would have languished or remained unborn. The missionary enterprise of the church, after the discovery of America, populated the western continent, and opened an entire hemisphere to new empire and a new civilization. Devotion to the church prompted the genius of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and gave form to the wonderful conceptions which resulted in the spread of Gothic architecture, the most original, the most compre hensive, and the most symbolic that the world ever saw. It has already been shown how the ceaseless energy and enterprise of the church was the foundation of the advance from barbarism to civilization which characterized central and northern Europe between the 5th and the 12th century. At no other period.in the world's history has there been, such an awakening out of darkness and incapacity into light and power as that which followed the culmination of the strength of the church. Yet it was in the period imme diately succeeding the reformation—the first and fiercest blow struck at the influence and prerogative of the church—that this awakening—renaissance—reached its height. When the middle ages closed, a Protestant queen was on the throne of England, then in. the zenith of power and splendor. Calvin, Luther, and Melanchtlion were defying the pope and making all Europe lino- with tones deeper and further reaching than even those of the Vatican. The schools of fTrt of Antwerp, Venice, Rome, and Siena had revived the genius of the Augustan age, and the newly-discovered power of the press was begin ning that vast dispensation of intelligence which marks the modern period. Meanwhile, Cabot, Vespucius, and Vasco de Gama were sallYng forth to discover new continents; Cortes and Pizarro were destroying the hitherto unknown Aztec civilization; and but a brief time elapsed before the pilgrim fathers planted the first seeds of freedom in America, leading in the new epoch of wars, conquest, legislation, disintegration, and rebuilding, which we call modern history.