Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/14

viii governments. And in each country we have only to reckon with a sovereign a few bishops and nobles, and a large uneducated mass of people, not as to-day, with the most far-reaching representation—with an emperor and a diet, a king or queen and a parliament, a president and a senate. And all this simplicity of the times is admirably reflected in the documents that have come down to us. Where have we a treaty in the middle ages that can begin to compare in bulk, or in the number of its articles, with the peace of Westphalia or in the acts of the congress of Vienna? Questions since treated of in thousands of volumes of state papers had never even been broached.

I have tried first of all in this collection to choose the most comprehensive documents, i.e., those which were important not only for the moment, but which, during long periods of time, were pointed to as conclusive. The Rule of Benedict, for instance, has weathered nearly thirteen centuries, and is still observed in places. Magna Carta is, in part, embodied among the still valid statutes of Great Britain. The forged donation of Constantine was made the basis of actual claims at least three hundred years after it was fabricated, and was destined to be believed in until as late as the seventeenth century. The golden bull of Germany was punctiliously followed for three centuries without change.

In the second place, I have striven to give documents which will represent as far as possible the spirit of the time. Popes fulminating anathemas at luckless emperors^ and mustering against them the whole hierarchy of Heaven — this is one well-known mediaeval type. Another is the priest exorcising the water for the ordeal, or blessing the red-hot iron. Emperors bidding feuds to cease, and passing laws for the conduct of knights and bishops, vassals and slaves; popes calling to the crusades, and offering eternal rewards for this and that performance; barons sitting