13th century

T.N. Berg Gaffney, S.J.

The casual reader of history will express surprise at the idea of labeling as the greatest the thirteenth century.

Why, he will say, the history of that century consists of a series of petty squabbles and intrigues, the result of rivalries and jealousies on the part of warring claimants to the position of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

You see the struggles of Guelph and Ghibelline for supremacy in Germany and Italy.

But the thirteenth, the great deeds or great names which belong to it can be counted almost on the fingers of one hand.

There are the Crusades of course, and Louis IX of France, the Saint and King, the Magna Charta, and the beginnings of Parliament, and Edward I of England, a number of universities were founded, it is true, and cathedrals built, and, of course, Dante and Giotto belong to that time, and Roger Bacon and St. Dominic, and St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.

And so the names go on multiplying till at length the skeptic comes to believe that, after all, the thirteenth century may well be termed great.

It is clearly impossible to enter into every phase of greatness within the limits of this pamphlet.