Reference studies in medieval history / [James Westfall Thompson].

  • Thompson, James Westfall, 1869-1941.
Date:
[1923-1924]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reference studies in medieval history / [James Westfall Thompson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    anything Roman, but furnishing the main root out of which the most modern democratic institutions have sprung. Their German blood mingled with that of the older inhabitants of Gaul, of Italy, of Spain, and of Britain, and out of this new nations sprang. These, with the people that had remained at home in the old Germanic lands, henceforth formed one group of nations closely allied, not only by blood, but sharing in the main the same institutions and the same mental culture. It was a new world, whatever its debts to an older one that had passed away, and a world that is still in full vigor.”1 In government and law, in social conditions, in culture, the Middle Ages developed institutions and ideas that would have astonished the Greeks and Romans. The state of antiquity was a “city state”; even the Roman Empire was a vast aggregation of cities. Medieval Europe devel¬ oped nations and national monarchy. Rome solved the problem of an efficient centralized government. But government which gave simul¬ taneous and due expression to both central and local interests is the inherit¬ ance of modern times through the achievement of the Middle Ages. The principle and the practice of representation was the greatest political invention of the Middle Ages. This inventive faculty of the Germanic mind also made notable contribution to the history of private institutions. It was as Josef Kohler has written, “a stroke of genius in Germanic law to provide for a commerce in risks, to treat dangers as objects to be dealt with in business.Insurance (a Germanic device) is one of the corner stones of modern culture.”2 The same observation is true of the joint-stock company, which is a medieval business invention, “An institution” to quote Kohler again, “whose rise throws everything else into the shade, and with whose financial power the world, one might say, can be conquered.”3 In a very wonderful paragraph in that chapter at the opening of his Short History of England in which he is tracing the stream-life of the English race, the English historian, John Richard Green, has written: “It is with a reverence such as is stirred by the sight of the headwaters of some mighty river that we look back.” So it is of all past history to the thoughtful student. That is the spirit in which we should regard medieval history. The Middle Ages are the source whence have flowed many of the waters of our modern life. They have bequeathed unto us a splendid heritage. The earliest stream came from Greece and Rome; next, that which flowed out of Palestine, and, finally, that shining flood which emerged out of the dark forests east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, the rich Germanic traditio. Lesser affluents to this magnificent stream of history have been those derived from Celtic, especially Irish, and from Mohammedan sources. It is for us to honor our ancestry that posterity may do justice unto us. Every race has its own mission, its own tasks, its own standards, its own delights. Happy shall be the student who has the imagination and the spirit to think, to feel, to understand the past. For all human development com¬ prehends the past, the present, and the future. 1 Keutgen, op. cit.} p. 95. 2 Philosophy of Law, p. 175. Hbid.y p. 183.