The Empire and the Papacy 918-1273

The absence of any existing text-book, narrating with any approach to fulness the history of the period with which this work is concerned, induced the writer to think that the most useful course that he could pursue would be to cover as much of the w ... Read more

The absence of any existing text-book, narrating with any approach to fulness the history of the period with which this work is concerned, induced the writer to think that the most useful course that he could pursue would be to cover as much of the whole ground as his space allowed. Finding that there was not room to treat all the aspects of European history with the same fulness, the author resolved to limit himself to the central struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, and to the events directly connected with it. He has therefore only busied himself with the affairs of Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, and the Slavonic kingdoms of the East so far as they stand in direct relation to the main currents of European history. The history of the Mohammedan Powers has been treated in the same way, and even Christian Spain has only been allowed a very small number of pages. This necessary limitation has afforded more room for the main purpose of the writer, which has been to narrate, with some amount of detail, the political and ecclesiastical history of the chief states of Southern and Western Europe, and in particular of Germany, Italy, France, and the Eastern Empire. Less