it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines.
The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages. All
historians agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and stagnation
merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were
being founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. High
above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the
town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral.
Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and mighty gentlemen of the
city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own strength (by way
of their recently acquired riches) were struggling for more power with
their feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just become
aware of the important fact that "numbers count" were fighting the high
and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The king and his shrewd advisers
went fishing in these troubled waters and caught many a shining bass
of profit which they proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the
surprised and disappointed councillors and guild brethren.

To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening when the badly
lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute,
the Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their songs
of romance and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair women.
Meanwhile youth, impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the
universities, and thereby hangs a story.

The Middle Ages were "internationally minded." That sounds difficult,
but wait until I explain it to you. We modern people are "nationally
minded." We are Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and
speak English or French or Italian and go to English and French and
Italian universities, unless we want to specialise in some particular
branch of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn
another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow. But the people
of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely talked of themselves
as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians. They said, "I am a citizen of
Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa." Because they all belonged to one and
the same church they felt a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all
educated men could speak Latin, they possessed an international language
which removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up in
modern Europe and which place the small nations at such an enormous