Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/695

 RISE OF ABSOLUTISM 639 a national feeling and a religious revolt that were to disrupt the Church and work great political and social changes. Since the great medieval Church had been the one domi- nating and constant factor all through the Middle Ages, this Protestant Revolt in a way marked their close. The passing of the Middle Ages was in many respects a matter not to be regarded without regret; A writer who was not a Roman Catholic and who knew both medi- Passin of eval and modern history, Bishop Stubbs, of the medieval Church of England, the great authority on the medieval development of the English constitution, has thus compared the thirteenth with the sixteenth century : ' ' The sixteenth century, as a century of ideas, real, grand, and numerous, is not to be compared with the thirteenth cen- tury. The ideas are not so pure, not so living; nor so re- ined. The men are not so earnest, so single-hearted, so lovable by far. Much doubtless has been gained in strength of purpose and much in material progress ; but compare the one set of men with the other as men, and the ideas as ideas, and the advantage is wonderfully in favor of the semi-barbarous age above that of the Renaissance and the Reformation." 1 ^t EXERCISES AND READINGS Frederick III. Stubbs, Germany in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 184-204. The Attempt to Reform the Constitution of the Empire (1486- Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 1, including a good character sketch of Frederick III. A BURGUNDIAN COURT BANQUET OF 1 454. Putnam, Charles the Bold, pp. 49~5 6 - Philip the Good's Castle at Hesdin. J. F. Kirk, Charles the Bold, vol. 1, p. 187 et seq. The Swiss Confederation in the Later Fifteenth Century. Coolidgeon Switzerland history, in nth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, bottom of page 251 to top of page 254. The French Army in the Time of Charles VII. Munro and Seilery, Medieval Civilization, pp. 547~74-