spirit of freedom which is felt working through all his papers makes him
the apostle of what would now be called the "new woman."

After him, there comes a lull in reforming ideas. But half a century
later occurs a very curious and sudden outburst of rebellion all over
Europe. From about the middle of the fourteenth century to the early
fifteenth there seemed to be an epidemic of severe social unrest. There
were at Paris, which has always been the nursery of revolutions, four
separate risings. Etienne Marcel, who, however, was rather a tribune of
the people than a revolutionary leader, came into prominence in 1355;
he was followed by the Jacquerie in 1358, by the Maillotins in 1382, and
the Cabochiens in 1411. In Rome we know of Rienzi in 1347, who
eventually became hardly more than a popular demagogue; in Florence
there was the outbreak of Ciompi in 1378; in Bohemia the excesses of
Taborites in 1409; in England the Peasant Revolt of 1381.

It is perfectly obvious that a series of social disturbances of this
nature could not leave the economic literature of the succeeding period
quite as placid as it had found it. We notice now that, putting away
questions of mere academic character, the thinkers and writers concern
themselves with the actual state of the people. Parliament has its
answer to the problem in a long list of statutes intended to muzzle the
turbulent and restless revolutionaries. But this could not satisfy men
who set their thought to study the lives and circumstances of their
fellow-citizens. Consequently, as a result, we can notice the rise of a
school of writers who interest themselves above all things in the
economic conditions of labour. Of this school the easiest exponent to
describe is Antonino of Florence, Archbishop and canonised saint. His
four great volumes on the exposition of the moral law are fascinating as
much for the quotations of other moralists which they contain, as for
the actual theories of the saint himself. For the Archbishop cites on
almost every page contemporary after contemporary who had had his say on
the same problems. He openly asserts that he has read widely, taken
notes of all his reading, has deliberately formed his opinions on the
judgments, reasoned or merely expressed, of his authors. To read his
books, then, is to realise that Antonino is summing up the whole
experience of his generation. Indeed he was particularly well placed for
one who wished for information. Floren