Streams of History: The Middle Ages

Presents the geographical conditions of Europe and their influence on the development of the Teutonic ideal of individual liberty. Then describes the influence of Christianity and the role of the monastery in preserving culture and setting high standards. Explains next how Roman, Christian, and Teutonic ideas mingled together in the development of Feudalism and the Feudal castle. Finally, relates how the crusades united the people of Western Europe in their first great enterprise and reopened the historical roadway to the arts, the ideas, and luxuries of the East. Volume 4 in the 7-volume Streams of History series, which presents a vivid picture of the growth of Western Civilization from the early source of the historic stream back in the Nile, the Tigro-Euphrates and the Indus valleys, and then its widening and deepening as it moves westward. The series highlights the contributions of each culture to the stream of history and shows how its contributions are caught up and carried on to future peoples and nations. The student is led to see how each grows out of that which precedes, and shadows forth what follows, and that the discovery of America, and its subsequent institutional development was the fruitage of a seed which lay deep in the historic soul of Europe.