The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273

Finding that there was not room to treat all the aspects of European history with the same fulness, the author resolved to limit himself to the central struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, and to the events directly connected with it. He has therefore only busied himself with the affairs of Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, and the Slavonic kingdoms of the East so far as they stand in direct relation to the main currents of European history. The history of the Mohammedan Powers has been treated in the same way, and even Christian Spain has only been allowed a very small number of pages. This necessary limitation has afforded more room for the main purpose of the writer, which has been to narrate, with some amount of detail, the political and ecclesiastical history of the chief states of Southern and Western Europe, and in particular of Germany, Italy, France, and the Eastern Empire. The expansion of the Latin and Catholic world at the expense of both the Orthodox Greeks and the Mohammedans, stands so much in ivthe forefront of the history of the period that it could not be neglected, though the writer has avoided treating the Crusades in much detail.