Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/112

 of Cluny ruled the Church. The voice of St. Bernard called the mediaeval world to its duty. The crusades were almost exclusively French; England, for instance, still being in the early years of the Norman conquest.

The son of a Norman princess, Frederick the Second, was brought up as an Italian: this serves to explain his Roman laws and his constitution which was exclusively feudal and yet infinitely superior to the English Magna Charta, with its so-called «liberties ». The French attempt in the 14th century to Francize the empire they at one time claimed for themselves: see, after Otto of Brunswick, educated in France, Henri of Luxemburg, or the half-French Charles IV. In France began a holy realm, with the ninth Louis, then a true monarchy, stronger under Philippe le Bel (a much stronger one than the adventures of Frederick the Redbeard in Italy, which he invaded eleven times though he could never remain as master). The Hundred Years' War was not an Anglo-French conflict, but the struggles of two dynasties for the priceless possession of France: without Joan of Arc it would have been possible to complete the conquest of England, begun by the Norman dynasty, pressed on by the Aquitanian element in the dynasty, by counsellors such as Simon de Montfort, by the French bankers; in England, more than ever in France, lived the French literature of the middle ages.

As regards modern history, not so much the conception as the lines of presentation, must be changed. The 15th century was still mediaeval: what was modern in the reigns of Charles VII and Louis XI? Francis I employed mediaeval forces for the modern purpose of gaining territory, and his realm is still mediaeval. In Europe there was a single absolute monarchy, that of the Turks. The knights of the desert, the mercenaries of the Palaeologues, under