A Plea for Medieval Studies

Extract

One would think that it was unnecessary to commend the study of history to Catholics, and that they would be quick to recognize the historical action of the Church upon the world of secular society as the chief formative influence in European civilization. Especially interesting would be the study of the “Middle Ages,” as those centuries witnessed some of the most specific developments of essentially Christian ideas.

By the Norman Conquest the Church in England was invigorated ; the development of Feudalism was more than counterbalanced by the creation of the system of Law and Administration ; while the conflict between Church and State, which everywhere took place, assumed in England an exceedingly interesting and important form. Nowhere was the idea of Liberty better understood or more strenuously vindicated than by such champions as Becket, Langton and De Montfort. Imagination might sometimes be stimulated by the thought that we ourselves have seen history made, and that the recent startling changes in the map of Europe bring it back again to a strange resemblance of what it was five hundred years ago.