A Short History of the Hundred Years War - The struggle for power in France from 1328-1453 (Illustrated)
(The Hundred Year’s War was neither one self-contained war...)
The Hundred Year’s War was neither one self-contained war, nor did it last for a hundred years. Instead it is a title of convenience to refer to a series of military conflicts that spanned the late Medieval period, from 1337 to 1453. The opposing factions in the conflicts were the House of Plantagenet, which ruled the Kingdom of England, and the House of Valois, which ruled the Kingdom of France. These two fiercely ambitious families used their kingdoms to either gain or maintain control over the Kingdom of France.
This short history of the Hundred Years’ War reveals the complexities involved in the outbreak of the war, the seemingly endless military campaigns, and the critical results that would contribute to the end of the Medieval period.
(The long conflict between France and England, to which hi...)
The long conflict between France and England, to which historians have given the name of "The Hundred Years' War," interests us chiefly as an illustration on a great scale of the transition from the mediæval, feudal order of society to the modern, national idea of political organization. Its nearer causes were largely feudal, and its methods were still, to a great extent, those of the earlier period. Its remoter causes, however, and the motives that kept it alive are to be sought on both sides in a steadily growing sense of national unity and national honor. Under the feudal régime it may fairly be said that it mattered little to the landholding aristocracy whether it were under the sovereignty of one king or another. The thing it really cared about was whether its privileges were such as it had a right to expect, and whether these privileges were likely to be fully and honorably maintained. So long as this was the case the barons found their profit and their glory in standing by their king in those undertakings which had a certain national character. But if their rights were tampered with, or if another sovereign offered equal guaranties of privilege, they easily took advantage of the flexible feudal arrangements to shift their allegiance...
The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua: A Critical Study (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua: A ...)
Excerpt from The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua: A Critical Study
Meyer, H., Lupold von Bebenburg; Studien eu seinen Schriften, 1909. Studien und Darstellungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte VII.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from An Introduction to the Study of the Middle A...)
Excerpt from An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages
The period of time of which this book treats is that lying between the greatest splendor of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what may properly be called the Middle Ages. It is a period which has often been passed over lightly by historians or dismissed with a sneer as the Dark Ages of the world. And this was done in spite of the fact that perhaps the greatest historian, all things considered, who has ever written in the English language, chose just this period for his theme. It is not improbable that the very title of Gibbon's great work may have done its part toward creating a false impres sion of the time he describes. If one comes to our period as a time of Decline and Fall merely, one can hardly fail to carry away from the study of it a depressing sense of gloom and wretchedness. Gibbon himself, great his torian as he was, did not succeed in avoiding this danger. His splendid narrative is on the whole a mournful one. We feel ourselves to be dealing with the wild movements of men, either half brutal or wholly brutalized. We see a magnificent edifice crumbling to decay, but we are not impressed with the elements of life contained in this very process.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
("The period of which this volume treats differs fundament...)
"The period of which this volume treats differs fundamentally both from that which precedes and from that which follows it. In each of those periods we are able to fix our attention upon a certain well-defined set of institutions which completely control its activities. In the former, the strictly medieval, we see Europe wholly under the sway of two vast ideas, feudalism and the Roman church system. In the latter, the purely modern period, Europe has almost wholly lost those ideas and has come out into the familiar political structure of a family of independent national states and into the freer air of religious toleration, if not yet of religious liberty. Between these two lies the period which is the subject of our present study. It is a chapter in human history of which no brief general description can be given. It is impossible to point to any peculiar institutions that govern its life. As we try to unfold the tangled thread of its history we seem to find only confusion and disorder... There we are conscious of a mighty civilization passing away and of another just vaguely taking shape in rude barbaric forms which, however, contain the germs of a new and more vigorous life." - Ephraim Emerton
Contents: The Principle of the Modern State. Louis IX and the French State. The New Empire. The New Papacy (1300-1409). The Rise of a Middle Class. Popular Movements in the North. Switzerland. Germany. Flanders. France. The Italian Republics to 1300. The Hundred Years' War (1328-1453). The Age of the Councils. The Age of the Despots in Italy. Florence. Venice. Naples and Sicily. The Papal State. The Italian Expedition of Charles VIII. The Renaissance in Italy. The Northern Renaissance. The Renaissance in France.
(The period of time of which this book treats is that lyin...)
The period of time of which this book treats is that lying between the greatest splendor of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what may properly be called the Middle Ages. It is a period which has often been passed over lightly by historians or dismissed with a sneer as the Dark Ages of the world. And this was done in spite of the fact that perhaps the greatest historian, all things considered, who has ever written in the English language, chose just this period for his theme. It is not improbable that the very title of Gibbon's great work may have done its part toward creating a false impression of the time he describes. If one comes to our period as a time of Decline and Fall merely, one can hardly fail to carry away from the study of it a depressing sense of gloom and wretchedness... It is only when we realize that this is a period of decay only in the sense in which the leaf decays, that it may make the ground fruitful for more abundant life, that we are able to see its true meaning. If we can do this, then what had before seemed blind forces of destruction become agents working together in the making of a new and fairer civilization. It is the purpose of this book to dwell upon these elements of construction, to show how they originated, and how they were tending to produce the life of the great period which was to follow.
The Late Middle Ages - A History of Europe from 1250-1450 Quintessential Classics (Illustrated)
(The period of which this volume treats differs fundamenta...)
The period of which this volume treats differs fundamentally both from that which precedes and from that which follows it. In each of those periods we are able to fix our attention upon a certain well-defined set of institutions which completely control its activities. In the former, the strictly mediæval, we see Europe wholly under the sway of two vast ideas, feudalism and the Roman church system. In the latter, the purely modern period, Europe has almost wholly lost those ideas and has come out into the familiar political structure of a family of independent national states and into the freer air of religious toleration, if not yet of religious liberty.
Between these two lies the period which is the subject of our present study. It is a chapter in human history of which no brief general description can be given. It is impossible to point to any peculiar institutions that govern its life. As we try to unfold the tangled thread of its history we seem to find only confusion and disorder. It reminds one in many ways of that other and even greater confusion that lies between the records of Rome and those of the Germanic Middle Ages. There we are conscious of a mighty civillization passing away and of another just vaguely taking shape in rude barbaric forms which, however, contain the germs of a new and more vigorous life. So here again we find two opposing currents in the stream of human history, and already at the beginning of our study it is clear which of them is destined to prevail. The vast, picturesque structure of the Middle Ages has done its service and is beginning to crumble. In every direction the resistless forces of the modern world are undermining its foundations or with bolder front are beating in open assault against its walls. To the careful student there is neither disorder nor confusion in the process. It is simply a natural development working out its results by the method of inevitable compensation. In the earlier transition – that from Rome to the Middle Ages – the shock of change is the greater because there is a change also in the race which is to be the bearer of the world's civilization. That whole transition may be summed up dramatically in the contrast of Roman and Teuton. Not only do institutions disappear, but the very race which created them disappears also as a historical unit. A new Europe is brought into the ken of history by a new race actually, in physical fact, emerging out of the darkness and taking its place in the great procession of historic peoples. In the present transition there is no such dramatic moment. The nations which make the modern world are the same that had brought mediæval culture to its height. They have simply been going through a process of education and are now just beginning to see the meaning of it. The new succeeds the old through the silent working of development. Not that this period is without its great conflicts. There is enough of the dramatic in the sharp contrast of ideas and in the clashing of ancient rights with newly asserted claims to make every chapter of this transition alive with vivid interest...
Ephraim Emerton was an American educator, author, translator, and historian prominent in his field of European medieval history.
Background
He was born in Salem, Massachussets, the youngest of the four sons of James and Martha Mosely (West) Emerton, and a brother of James Henry Emerton.
He was descended from John Emmerton, who was living in what is now Essex, Massachussets, in 1736; a Captain Ephraim Emmerton was a Salem privateersman in the Revolution.
James Emerton was an apothecary, and the family was "moderately well off. " The son dedicated his first book "to my father, who made the scholar's life possible for me. "
Education
Young Emerton passed in regular course through the grammar and high schools of Salem and four years in Harvard College, where he was graduated A. B. in 1871, one of the youngest men in his class, but without academic distinction.
He was a reporter on the Boston Advertiser, August 1871-April 1872; a law student with Ives & Lincoln of Salem, April-September 1872; in October 1872, he entered the Boston University Law School and the law office of Chandler, Thayer & Hudson in Boston; in January 1873, he was appointed private secretary to Henry Lillie Pierce, mayor of Boston.
Having devoted a long year to the grand tour, he entered the University of Leipzig for the winter semester of 1874-75 as a student of history.
Emerton's doctoral dissertation, Sir William Temple und die Tripleallianz vom Jahre 1668 (1877), appears to have been written at Berlin, but he returned to Leipzig for the degree examination, which he passed August 7, 1876.
Career
Returning to America, Emerton was added to the Harvard staff by President Eliot and devoted his working years to the service of the university: instructor in history and German, 1876-78, instructor in history, 1878-82, first Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History, 1882-1918, then professor emeritus until his death.
While his teaching covered an immense ground, his interests came to center more and more around the rise of the papacy and the Renaissance and Reformation. His advocacy and use of the seminary or "practice-school" method of teaching had great influence.
He published while teaching Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1899) and Unitarian Thought (1911). Far more widely known were his textbooks on medieval history, of which An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (1888) did, perhaps, more than any other one book to revolutionize the study of the subject in America.
Emerton's chief work after retirement from teaching was in translation, for which his unusual command of pure and vigorous English qualified him well. Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (1925) turns into our tongue, with shrewd commentaries, treatises of Coluccio Salutati, Bartolus, and other political thinkers.
This was followed by The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII (1932) and The Letters of Saint Boniface, published posthumously in 1940. A critical study, The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua (1920), should also be named. Emerton was one of the founders of the American Historical Association in 1895.
His contributions to learned societies and periodicals were always meaty, but space forbids mention here of more than two: "Fra Salimbene and the Franciscan Ideal" (Harvard Theological Review, October 1915); and "Personal Recollections of Charles William Eliot" (Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March 1924), the most just and penetrating analysis of Eliot's personality to be found in print in any form.
A great number of these magna minora are included in a bibliography of Emerton prepared by the present writer [George W. Robinson] and still (1942) in manuscript.
Not a profound Latinist, he took special precautions for a time to insure correctness in his translations from medieval authors. A more curious gap was a certain lack of familiarity with the text of the Scriptures.
Of this it is probable that he was quite unaware.
The home of the Emertons in Cambridge was at 19 Chauncy Street.
(Excerpt from The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua: A ...)
book
book
Religion
He was president of the American Society of Church Historians, 1921, and of the Cambridge Historical Society, 1921-27.
Views
Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (1925) turns into our tongue, with shrewd commentaries, treatises of Coluccio Salutati, Bartolus, and other political thinkers.
Membership
He was president of the American Society of Church Historians, 1921, and of the Cambridge Historical Society, 1921-27.
Personality
He was of hardly medium stature, with shrewd twinkling blue eyes and an apple-tinted face. He was a genial, kindly man, with a strong gift for friendship. Robust common sense, a vein of humor, and keen judgment of character marked him both in letters and in life. He was a man of wide learning, but no one could be expected to possess equal mastery of every part of a field so vast as his.
Connections
Emerton married Sibyl Clark of Cambridge, April 18, 1877. She died January 3, 1935. An only daughter, Clara Browning Emerton, born September 25, 1881, died a few years before her parents.