Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/230

 190 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE of the events narrated in this chapter. It is also evident that f the Byzantine Empire had been reduced by the the spread loss of almost all its possessions in Asia and Africa to a comparatively small and weak state, and that Justinian's ideal of a reconstruction of the old Roman Empire would never be realized. Of the Mediterra- nean Basin, which had been entirely included in the Roman Empire, the whole southern half had been lost. And as the Romans had never gained the eastern half of Alexander's empire, so now the eastern end of the Roman Empire was lost too. North Africa, whose history had for so long been a part of European history, now goes its own way; and Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor do not concern us again until the time of the crusades. The spread of Islam was a great blow to Christian- ity. But we have seen that certain heretical sects bene- fited by it. And it was not an unmixed evil for the Pa- pacy, since the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, which were the ones to suffer most, had never really been under papal control, but were likely to be ruled from Constantinople. There was now no danger that the emperor or the patriarch at that city would overshadow the pope. Eastern Christianity had suffered most, leaving the pope undisputed head of the Church in the West. The Papacy and Islam, therefore, grew in strength simul- taneously and independently, and were not until later to lock horns in the crusades. As for intellectual and eco- nomic results, the spread of Arabian Mohammedanism can scarcely be regarded as an evil, since the Arabs quickly attained a high level in these respects, and in Spain, for in- stance, had a civilization superior to that of their Christian neighbors, to whom it was destined in due time to prove an inspiration. So if the Arabs had defeated Charles Martel and the Franks, whose kingdoms were eventually to go to smash anyway, and if they had overrun western Europe as they did the Spanish peninsula, European civilization might have revived the more quickly. But in that case the Papacy would probably never have made its momentous alliance