ancient societies which most closely resembled the new ones created in medieval Italy and the Low Countries. The 'world empires' of Rome, Byzantium, and Baghdad receded, to be followed by a plethora of authorities in western Europe, so complex that it cannot easily be described. Though the claims and achievements of the emperors and popes, who sought to dominate western Christendom in the high Middle Ages and to re-create a 'world empire' were great, Europe was never effectively subjected to them or indeed to total sovereignty by any power over even a limited area.

The history of the Middle Ages thus leaves us, above all, with a sense of the extraordinary vigour and creativity which derives from the fragmentation of power and wealth into innumerable centres, competing and expanding into different and unexpected directions. The places where political fragmentation was most complete, such as Tuscany, the Low Countries, and the Rhineland, were perhaps the most creative. That division of authority was caused partly by small political units, partly by the overlapping of royal power, independent cities, strong seigneurs, and finally ecclesiastical authority, which competed everywhere with lay authority. Hence the multifarious creativity of medieval Europeans.

The wealth and cultural diversity of medieval Europe foreshadow the modern world. It can, of course, be dangerous to look for the ideas of the present in the past. The unique individuality of a life or a movement must never be forgotten: the historian's aim is to emphasize them. We hope that the profusion of remote ways of life presented in this book, and often difficult to understand, will prevent the reader from falling into that trap and leave him with an awareness of the remoteness and complexity of the medieval past. At the same time we study the past because it is interesting in the present. Abelard and St Francis would not attract us if we could not to some extent share their hopes and fears. We hope that the modern inhabitants of London or California will recognize their ancestors in this book and find some help in understanding the origins of the world in which they live now.

GEORGE HOLMES

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