39 It was the same in the other great houses. And all of this was possible because the great monasteries began to utilize a hired labour force, who not only were more productive than the monks had bee...
As for the fall of the Spanish Empire, ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they carefully buil...
Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past. At least in principle, if not always in fact, Christian doctrines could always be modifie...
Coins and precious metals, food, slaves, and luxury goods flowed to Rome; little came back except tax collectors and soldiers.
Given these attitudes and lack of attendance, it is hardly surprising that the German masses (and most Europeans) were ignorant of even basic Christian facts.
In any event, there was no fall into Dark Ages. Instead, once freed of the bondage of Rome, Europe separated into hundreds of independent statelets.16 In many of these societies progress and increased...
In contrast, a number of innovations can plausibly be attributed to the Little Ice Age: glass windowpanes, storm doors, skis, ice skates, sunglasses (first used for preventing snow blindness), distill...
It is difficult to know how anyone, even the most bitter anti-Catholic, could truly have believed any of this! By itself, the biography of Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) makes a travesty of all these cl...
No doubt Western modernity has its limitations and discontents. Still, it is far better than the known alternatives—not only, or even primarily, because of its advanced technology but because of its f...
Recalling his days as a student in Paris from about 1205 to 1210, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry wrote: Simple fornication was held to be no sin. Everywhere, publicly, close to their brothels, prostitutes...
The Byzantine governor assembled an army considerably larger than that of the Normans and rebels. He then sent a herald to the opposing camp offering either the Normans’ safe return to Lombard territo...
The Mormon definition of life makes the earthly sojourn basically an educative process. Knowledge is necessary to mastery, and the way to deification is through mastery, for not only does education ai...
The need for loans often was so great and so widespread that Italian banks opened branches all across the Continent. Although many bishops, monastic orders and even the Roman hierarchy ignored the ban...
Today, little has changed in European religious life. State churches still dominate all of Europe’s ‘Protestant’ nations, with the negative consequences that will be seen in the next chapter. Church a...
When the Bishop of Gloucester systematically tested Church of England diocesan clergy in 1551, of 311 pastors, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, and 27 did not know the author of the Lord’s P...
Capitalism was a very Catholic invention: it first appeared in the great monastic estates, way back in the ninth century.
The Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese.
Current Muslim memories and anger about the Crusades are a twentieth-century creation, prompted in part by 'post-World War I British and French imperialism and post-World War II creation of the state...
About all that Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and Anabaptists agreed upon was the divinity of Jesus and the wickedness of the pope.
As suggested by this definition, not all nations are states and not all states are nations.
Showing 81 to 100 of 145 results