Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/12

 during centuries, been woven again and again into histories of Europe, but how few people have ever read them in their own rugged simplicity! And yet a great document is a far greater monument of a crisis in history than is any description of a battle or characterization of a man. It is the corner stone, the last development after many battles, the crystallization of all that has ebbed and flowed during long constitutional struggles. A constitution, for instance, can not lie; a treaty can not give a garbled view of a transaction—it is the letter of the law. And how much do such documents tell us! Is not the Magna Carta at once a summary of all the wrongs of all the men of England, and a record of the remedies applied? Can the inner life lived for centuries in monasteries possibly be understood without reading the Rule of Benedict? Can the bitterness and venom of the war of the investitures, or of the other struggles between the Papacy and the Empire, ever be comprehended by one who has not seen the letters of Gregory VII., of Frederick Barbarossa, of Boniface VIII.?

And if, through reading original documents, one gains a clearer insight into the truth itself, how much more critical — and how much more appreciative—does one become towards modern writers. Let one of my readers compare a chapter of Milman's "Latin Christianity" with documents here given in the book on Church and State. Nothing can be more instructive than such an exercise. One can examine at leisure the materials with which the historian worked— his methods will be clear from knowing with what he had to deal; the documents themselves will be illumined by his intelligence and learning. A guide book is only of real worth to those who are, to some extent, familiar with the scenes described.

It is necessary here to say a few words: first, as to why I have chosen the middle ages for my field of operations; and secondly, as to why I have selected these particular