Identifier: medivalmodernh01myer (find matches)
Title: Mediæval and modern history
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Myers, P. V. N. (Philip Van Ness), 1846-1937
Subjects: Middle Ages History, Modern
Publisher: Boston, London, Ginn & company
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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nd with peasants, and wrote down at night what had been toldhim during the day. The book was his life work ; he beganit, he tells us, at the age of twenty, and in the collection ofmaterial for it took greater pleasure than in anything else, The inimitable Chro?iicles have an added value from the agein which they were written. It was, as we have learned, atransition period. Feudalism was fast passing away, and chiv-alry was beginning to feel the dissolving breath of a new era.But as the forests never clothe themselves in more gorgeouscolors than when already touched by decay, so chivalry neverarrayed itself in more splendid magnificence than when aboutto die. In the age of Edward III and the Black Prince it dis-played its most sumptuous and prodigal splendor. And this isthe age which the rare genius of Froissart has painted for us.^ 2 The most worthy predecessors of Froissart in the field of vernacular his-torical writing were Villehardouin (about 1160-1213), whose attractive chronicle
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The Beginnings of Spain 405 III. Spain 352. The Beginnings of Spain. —When, in the eighth cen-tury, the Saracens swept like a wave over Spain, the mountainsof Asturias and Cantabria in the northwest corner of the penin-sula afforded a refuge for the most resolute of the Christianchiefs who refused to submit their necks to the Moslem yoke.These brave and hardy warriors not only successfully defendedthe hilly districts that formed their asylum, but graduallypushed back the invaders, and regained control of a portion ofthe fields and cities that had been lost. This work of reconquest was greatly furthered by Charlesthe Great, w^ho, it will be recalled, drove the Saracens out of allthe northeastern portion of the country as far south as theEbro, and made the subjugated district a province of hisempire, under the name of the Spanish March. By the opening of the eleventh century several little Christianstates, among which we must notice especially the states ofCastile and Aragon because o

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