The History of Civilization in Europe

Full text of "The history of civilization in Europe"

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FRANgOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. 
Photogravure from a tortrait painted by Delaroche. 
■^>-^ip^b*A^. 
Copyright, 1899, 
By the colonial PRESS. 
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION 
FRANCOIS Pierre Guillaume Guizot was born at Nismes, 
the fourth of October, 1787. His father was a dis- 
tinguished advocate of that city, who took a prominent 
part in the revolution which overthrew the throne of Louis 
XVI. In the spring of 1794, having protested against the vio- 
lence of the revolutionary tribunal, he died upon the scaffold. 
The care of Madame Guizot provided the boy with a classical 
education in the schools of the city of Geneva, and at the age 
of nineteen he went to Paris to study law. But he had no taste 
for the profession, and, with the help of the Minister from 
Switzerland, his friend and patron, he devoted himself to lit- 
erary pursuits. At the age of twenty-five he was appointed 
adjunct Professor of History in the University of Paris, and 
two years later accepted the position of general secretary in the 
Bureau of the Ministry of the Interior. Henceforth his Hfe was 
divided between history and politics, and in both he achieved 
the highest distinction. 
Let us briefly review his political career. Before he was 
thirty he was an active agent in negotiating the terms for 
re-establishing the monarchy under Louis XVIII. on the 
accession of Louis Philippe in 1830, he was called to assist 
in forming a Cabinet and became Minister of the Interior. 
Compelled to resign in a few months, he was elected deputy, 
and sustained the cause of constitutional government in the 
National Assembly. Two years later he was recalled to the 
royal counsels as Minister of Public Instruction. During the 
few years of his administration he did much for public educa- 
tion in France, and it is said that the germinal ideas of all 
progress made since are to be found in his suggestions and 
enterprises. He reformed the primary schools, and put new 
spirit into their conduct by a law which established over ten 
thousand primary schools in destitute parishes. He planned 
iv GUIZOT 
the creation of four universities to be centres of light and 
learning for the provinces of France. He made great efforts 
for the advancement of historical science and the improvement 
of historical teaching. The Society of French History was 
founded by him, and he began the publication by the govern- 
ment of the great Collection des Documents relatifs a I'histoire 
de France. 
When the fall of the Cabinet compelled his retirement, he 
resumed his literary labors, and in 1836 was elected a member 
of the French Academy. It was during this period that he 
was invited by the American Government to edit a French 
edition of the " Letters of Washington." In 1839, his friends 
having been recalled to power, Guizot was appointed Minister 
to England. He was the first Protestant sent to England as 
Minister since the time of Henry IV. He had written ably 
upon EngHsh history. He had been known in politics as a 
liberal conservative, a defender of constitutional monarchy 
against despotism and radicalism. The reception given to 
him was, therefore, very warm. But within eighteen months 
he was recalled to enter a new Cabinet. He took the portfolio 
of foreign affairs, and for seven years was practically the 
leader of the French Government. His rule ended in disaster, 
for both his foreign and his home policy were definitely re- 
jected by the French people. In foreign affairs he exerted an 
influence which in 1845 caused him to be hailed by a com- 
petent observer as " the man to whom perhaps more than to 
any other it is owing that Europe is now at peace." This 
policy of concession was very unpopular in France. But it 
was the home policy of Guizot, adhered to with the obstinacy 
of unchangeable conviction unwilling to make any adjust- 
ment to new circumstances or thoughts, which brought about 
his fall from power, and dragged down with him the French 
King. The ministry, although continuously supported by a 
majority of the Chambers, steadily lost the confidence of the 
nation, and this situation made evident the narrow basis of the 
French throne. 
In 1842, one-third of the members of the Chamber of Depu- 
ties were salaried functionaries of the government, and the 
representatives of France had been chosen by about 225,000 
electors. Ten attempts to change this situation were made in 
six years, and lost, in the Chamber of Deputies. Then the 
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION v 
Opposition organized a popular protest, which in a few months 
developed into threatened insurrection. Guizot urged the king 
to establish his authority by the use of the army. Louis Phi- 
lippe hesitated, and when the streets of Paris were filled with 
masses of people shouting " Long live Reform! " *' Down with 
Guizot!" he abdicated. Guizot fled to England, whence he 
returned the next year. 
He retired to his country place of Val-Richer, in Normandy, 
and bore his fall with the utmost dignity. Excluded from 
politics, he devoted himself to literary labors, to the cause of 
public education, and to the interests of the French Protestant 
Church. In September, 1874, when he was eighty-six, it be- 
came evident that death was at hand. " Adieu, my daughter," 
he said to his child kneeling at the foot of his bed. " Au 
revoir, my father," she answered. The dying man raised him- 
self on the pillows : " No one is more sure of it than I," he 
said, and sank back into silence and death. 
Few men who have achieved marked distinction have owed 
so little to circumstances and so much to industry and native 
ability as Guizot. He won by the gravity of his manners and 
the evidences of sound judgment the friends to whom he owed 
his early opportunities for distinction. His advancement in 
the service of the public educational system of France was 
more than justified by his services. His entry into political 
life was made natural, and almost inevitable, by the manifest 
power of his political pamphlets, and he developed by labor 
and practice a dignified and sonorous eloquence which made 
Rachel say she would gladly have acted in tragedy with him. 
His rise to the head of the French Government was the natural 
result of great public services, of unwavering fidelity to his 
political principles, and the ability with which he advocated 
them. 
He won in letters a distinction as great as that which he 
achieved in politics. And It is more enduring. Few historians 
would include M. Guizot among the list of the great ministers 
of France. But still fewer critics would be willing to exclude 
him from the list of the great writers of France. It is doubtful 
whether he anticipated this result of his labors, or whether 
he would have been pleased If he had, for it has been said of 
him with some justice that " his books of history were never 
to him anything but a means of action, a method of spreading 
vi GUIZOT 
his ideas." This attitude, perhaps, imposed upon his treatment 
of history something of the same narrow horizon which Um- 
ited his political usefulness by limiting his political sympathies. 
In the great spectacle of European history nothing really in- 
terested him except in so far as it contributed to the rise of 
the middle classes, and the development of the sort of govern- 
ment which gave them the largest political influence. His 
writing of history was Hke his political conduct, a logical de- 
velopment of his political principles. 
The list of his writings is a long one. It includes : " A His- 
tory of Civilization in France,'* four volumes ; " Washington/* 
six volumes ; " A History of the English Revolution," six vol- 
umes ; " Parliamentary History of France," five volumes ; 
" Memoirs," eight volumes ; " History of France," five vol- 
umes ; " Meditations and Moral Studies," " Shakespeare and 
His Times," " Corneille and His Times," " Love in Marriage." 
The essay upon the " History of Civilization in Europe " is the 
best known and most often reprinted of his works, and shows 
plainly some of the marked characteristics of his historical 
method. It was written as an introduction to his larger and 
more valuable work, " The History of Civilization in France," 
and first delivered as a course of lectures at the Sorbonne in 
Paris. 
These works of Guizot were introduced to English readers 
in 1845 by an article from John Stuart Mill, in the " Edinburgh 
Review." He spoke of them as " speculations, which even in 
this unfinished state may be ranked with the most valuable 
contributions yet made to universal history," and points out 
that, on such a topic as the cause of the fall of the Roman 
Empire, " the difference between what we learn from Gibbon 
and what we learn from Guizot is a measure of the progress 
of historical inquiry between them." 
If a writer with the capacity of Gibbon, or even of Guizot, 
for the constructive treatment of large themes, should write 
a history of European civilization now, the diflference between 
his work and that here printed would undoubtedly be a meas- 
ure of the progress of historical inquiry in the last fifty years. 
For the increase of historical knowledge causes the master- 
pieces of one generation to be republished with foot-notes for 
the next. Many modern historians would question the pos- 
sibility of sketching the history of European civilization ia 
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION vii 
an essay. The increase of knowledge, the change in historical 
method, the prevailing taste in some leading schools of his- 
tory, would lead many others to criticise the historical work 
of Guizot in various respects. But of those qualified to criti- 
cise the essay on the " History of Civilization in Europe," very 
few would undertake to replace by a better one the only short 
sketch of the general progress of European history which has 
ever achieved any large measure of fame. 
Paul van Dyke. 
CONTENTS 
FIRST LECTURE. 
PAGE 
Object of the course — History of European civilization — Part taken 
by France in the civilization of Europe — Civilization a fit sub- 
ject for narrative — It is the most general fact in history — ^The 
ordinary and popular meaning of the word civilization — Two 
leading facts constitute civilization: i. The development of 
society; 2. The development of the individual — Demonstration — 
These two facts are necessarily connected the one with the 
other, and sooner or later the one produces the other — Is the 
destiny of man limited wholly within his actual social condi- 
tion? — The history of civilization may be exhibited and consid- 
ered under two points of view — Remarks on the plan of the 
course — The present state of men's minds, and the prospects of 
civilization i 
SECOND LECTURE. 
Purpose of the lecture — Unity of ancient civilization — Variety of 
modern civilization — Its superiority — Condition of Europe at 
the fall of the Roman Empire — Preponderance of the towns — 
Attempt at political reform by the emperors — Rescript of 
Honorius and of Theodosius II — Power of the name of the 
Empire — The Christian church — The various stages through 
which it had passed at the fifth century — The clergy exercising 
municipal functions — Good and evil influence of the church — 
The barbarians — They introduce into the modern world the 
sentiments of personal independence, and the devotion of man 
to man — Summary of the different elements of civilization in 
the beginning of the fifth century 18 
THIRD LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — All the various systems pretend to be legiti- 
mate — What is political legitimacy? — Coexistence of all sys- 
tems of government in the fifth century — Instability in the 
condition of persons, properties, and institutions — There were 
two causes of this: one material, the continuation of the inva- 
sion; the other moral, the selfish sentiment of^ individuality 
peculiar to the barbarians — The germs of civilization have been 
the necessity for order, the recollections of the Roman Empire, 
the Christian church, and the barbarians — Attempts at organ- 
ization by the barbarians, by the towns, by the church of Spain, 
by Charlemagne, and Alfred — The German and Arabian inva- 
sions cease— The feudal system begins 37 
ix 
X GUIZOT 
FOURTH LECTURE. 
PACB 
Object of the lecture — Necessary alliance between facts and doc- 
trines — Preponderance of the country over the towns — Organ- 
ization of a small feudal society — Influence of feudalism upon 
the character of the possessor of the fief, and upon the spirit of 
family — Hatred of the people towards the feudal system — ^The 
priest could do little for the serfs — Impossibility of regularly 
organizing feudalism: i. No powerful authority; 2. No public 
power; 3. Difficulty of the federative system — The idea of the 
right of resistance inherent in feudalism — Influence of feudalism 
favorable to the development of the individual, unfavorable to 
social order 53 
FIFTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Religion is a principle of association — Con- 
straint is not of the essence of government — Conditions of the 
legitimacy of a government: i. The power must be in the 
hands of the most worthy; 2. The liberty of the governed must 
be respected — The church being a corporation and not a caste, 
fulfilled the first of these conditions — Of the various methods 
of nomination and election that existed therein — It wanted the 
other condition, on account of the illegitimate extension of 
authority, and on account of the abusive employment of force — 
Movement and liberty of spirit in the bosom of the church — 
Relations of the church with princes — The independence of 
spiritual power laid down as a principle — Pretensions and efforts 
of the church to usurp the temporal power 70 
SIXTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Separation of the governing and the gov- 
erned party in the church — Indirect influence of the laity upon 
the clergy — The clergy recruited from all conditions of society — 
Influence of the church upon the public order and upon legis- 
lation — The penitential system — The development of the 
human mind is entirely theological — The church usually ranges 
itself on the side of power — Not to be wondered at; the aim of 
religions is to regulate human liberty — Different states of the 
church, from the fifth to the twelfth century— ist. The imperial 
church — 2d. The barbaric church; development of the separat- 
ing principle of the two powers; the monastic order — 3d. The 
feudal church; attempts at organization; want of reform; 
Gregory VII — The theocratical church — Regeneration of the 
spirit of inquiry; Abailard — Movement of the boroughs — No 
connection between these two facts 86 
SEVENTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Comparative picture of the state of the bor- 
oughs at the twelfth and the eighteenth century— Double ques- 
tion — 1st. The enfranchisement of the boroughs — State of the 
towns from the fifth to the tenth century— Their decay and 
regeneration — Communal insurrection — Charters— Social and 
CONTENTS xi 
PAGE 
moral effects of the enfranchisement of the boroughs — 2d. In- 
ternal government of the boroughs — Assemblies of the peo- 
ple — Magistrates — High and low burghership — Diversity of the 
state of the boroughs in the different countries of Europe 104 
EIGHTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture— Glance at the general history of European 
civilization — Its distinctive and fundamental character — Epoch 
at which that character began to appear — State of Europe from 
the twelfth to the sixteenth century — Character of the cru- 
sades — Their moral and social causes — These causes no longer 
existed at the end of the thirteenth century — Effects of the cru- 
sades upon civilization 121 
NINTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Important part taken by royalty in the his- 
tory of Europe, and in the history of the world — True causes of 
this importance — Two-fold point of view under which the insti- 
tution of royalty should be considered — ist. Its true and perma- 
nent nature — It is the personification of the sovereignty of 
right — With what limits — 2d. Its flexibility and diversity — 
European royalty seems to be the result of various kinds of 
royalty — Of barbarian royalty — Of imperial royalty — Of re- 
ligious royalty — Of feudal royalty — Of modern royalty, prop- 
erly so called, and of its true character 135 
TENTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Attempts to reconcile the various social ele- 
ments of modern Europe, and to make them live and act in 
common, in one society, and under one central power — ist. 
Attempt at theocratical organization — Why it failed — Four prin- 
cipal obstacles — Faults of Gregory VII — Reaction against the 
domination of the church — on the part of the people — on the 
part of the sovereigns — 2d. Attempt at republican organiza- 
tion — Italian republics — Their defects — Towns in the south of 
France — Crusade of the Albigenses — Swiss confederation — 
Boroughs of Flanders and the Rhine — Hanseatic league — 
Struggle between the feudal nobility and the boroughs — 3d. 
Attempt at a mixed organization — States-general of France — 
Cortes of Spain and Portugal — English Parliament — Peculiar 
state of Germany — 111 success of all their attempts — From what 
causes — General tendency of Europe 148 
ELEVENTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Special character of the fifteenth century — 
Progressive centralization of nations and governments — ist. Of 
France — Formation of the national French spirit — Government 
of Louis XI — 2d. Of Spain — 3d. of Germany — 4th. Of Eng- 
land — 5th. Of Italy — Origin of the external relations of states 
and of diplomacy — Movement in religious ideas — Attempt at 
xii GUIZOT 
PAGS 
aristocratical reform — Council of Constance and Basle — At- 
tempt at popular reform — ^John Huss — Regeneration of litera- 
ture — Admiration for antiquity — Classical school, or free- 
thinkers — General activity — Voyages, discoveries, inventions — 
Conclusion 162 
TWELFTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Diflficulty of distinguishing general facts in 
modern history — Picture of Europe in the sixteenth century — 
Danger of precipitate generalization — Various causes assigned 
to the Reformation — Its dominant character was the insurrec- 
tion of the human mind against absolute power in the intel- 
lectual order — Evidences of this fact — Fate of the Reformation 
in different countries — Weak side of the Reformation — The 
Jesuits — Analogy between the revolutions of religious society 
and those of civil society 176 
THIRTEENTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — General character of the English revolution — 
Its principal causes— It was more political than religious — The 
three great parties in it: i. The party of legal reform; 2. The 
party of the political revolution; 3. The party of the social 
revolution — They all fail — Cromwell — The restoration of the 
Stuarts — The legal ministry — The profligate ministry — The 
revolution of 1688 in England and Europe 190 
FOURTEENTH LECTURE. 
Object of the lecture — Difference and likeness between the prog- 
ress of civilization in England and on the Continent — Pre- 
ponderance of France in Europe in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries — In the seventeenth century by reason of 
the French government — In the eighteenth by reason of 
the country itself — Of the government of Louis XIV — Of his 
wars — Of his diplomacy — Of his administration — Of his legis- 
lation — Causes of his rapid decline — Of France in the eighteenth 
century — Essential characteristics of the philosophical revolu- 
tion — Conclusion of the course 204 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
FACING PAGE 
FRAN9OIS Pierre GuILLAUME GuIZOT . . Frontispiece. 
Photogravure from a painting 
Banquet of Wallenstein's Generals .... 148 
Photogravure from a painting 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE. 
FIRST LECTURE. 
GENTLEMEN: I am deeply affected by the reception 
you give me, and which, you will permit me to say, 
I accept as a pledge of the sympathy which has not 
ceased to exist between us, notwithstanding so long a sepa- 
ration. Alas! I speak as though you, whom I see around 
me, were the same who, seven years ago, used to assemble 
within these walls, to participate in my then labors; because 
I myself am here again, it seems as if all my former hearers 
should be here also; whereas, since that period, a change, a 
mighty change, has come over all things. Seven years ago we 
repaired hither, depressed with anxious doubts and fears, 
weighed down with sad thoughts and anticipations; we saw 
ourselves surrounded with difficulty and danger; we felt our- 
selves dragged on toward an evil which we essayed to avert 
by calm, grave, cautious reserve, but in vain. Now, we meet 
together, full of confidence and hope, the heart at peace, thought 
free. There is but one way in which we can worthily man- 
ifest our gratitude for this happy change; it is bringing to 
our present meetings, our new studies, the same calm tran- 
quillity of mind, the same firm purpose, which guided our con- 
duct when, seven years ago, we looked, from day to day, to 
have our studies placed under rigorous supervision, or, indeed, 
to be arbitrarily suspended. Good fortune is delicate, frail, 
uncertain; we must keep measures with hope as with fear; 
convalescence requires well nigh the same care, the same cau- 
tion, as the approaches of illness. This care, this caution, this 
moderation, I am sure you will exhibit. The same sympathy, 
the same intimate conformity of opinions, of sentiments, of 
ideas, which united us in times of difficulty and danger, and 
which at least saved us from grave faults, will equally unite us 
in more auspicious days, and enable us to gather all their fruits. 
I rely with confidence upon your cooperation, and I need noth- 
ing more. 
The time between this our first meeting and the close of 
the year is very limited; that which I myself have had, 
I 
}*|S : GUIZOT 
wherein to meditate upon the Lectures I am about to deliver, 
has been infinitely more limited still. one great point, there- 
fore, was the selection of a subject, the consideration of which 
might best be brought within the bounds of the few months 
which remain to us of this year, within that of the few days 
I have had for preparation; and it appeared to me that a 
general review of the modern history of Europe, considered 
with reference to the development of civilization — a general 
sketch, in fact, of the history of European civilization, of its 
origin, its progress, its aim, its character, might suitably oc- 
cupy the time at our disposal. This, accordingly, is the subject 
of which I propose to treat. 
I have used the term European civilization, because it is 
evident that there is an European civilization ; that a certain 
unity pervades the civilization of the various European states ; 
that, notwithstanding infinite diversities of time, place and cir- 
cumstance, this civilization takes its first rise in facts almost 
wholly similar, proceeds everywhere upon the same principles, 
and tends to produce well nigh everywhere analogous results. 
There is, then, an European civilization, and it is to the sub- 
• ject of this aggregate civilization that I will request your 
attention. 
Again, it is evident that this civilization cannot be traced 
back, that its history cannot be derived from the history of 
any single European state. If, on the one hand, it is mani- 
festly characterized by brevity, on the other, its variety is no 
less prodigious ; it has not developed itself with completeness, 
in any one particular country. The features of its physiog- 
nomy are wide-spread; we must seek the elements of its 
history, now in France, now in England, now in Germany, 
now in Spain. 
We of France occupy a favorable position for pursuing the 
study of European civilization. Flattery of individuals, even 
of our country, should be at all times avoided ; it is without 
vanity, I think, we may say that France has been the center, 
the focus of European civilization. I do not pretend, it were 
monstrous to do so, that she has always, and in every direc- 
tion, marched at the head of nations. At different epochs, 
Italy has taken the lead of her, in the arts ; England, in politi- 
cal institutions ; and there may be other respects under which, 
at particular periods, other European nations have manifested 
a superiority to her; but it is impossible to deny, that when- 
ever France has seen herself thus outstripped in the career of 
civilization, she has called up fresh vigor, has sprung forward 
with a new impulse, and has soon found herself abreast with, 
or in advance of all the rest. And not only has this been the 
peculiar fortune of France, but we have seen that when the 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 3 
civilizing ideas and institutions which have taken their rise 
in other lands have sought to extend their sphere, to become 
fertile and general, to operate for the common benefit of Euro- 
pean civilization, they have been necessitated to undergo, to 
a certain extent, a new preparation in France; and it has been 
from France, as from a second native country, that they have 
gone forth to the conquest of Europe. There is scarcely any 
great idea, any great principle of civilization, which, prior to 
its diffusion, has not passed in this way through France. 
And for this reason : there is in the French character some- 
thing sociable, something sympathetic, something which makes 
its way with greater facility and effect than does the national 
genius of any other people; whether from our language, 
whether from the turn of our mind, of our manners, certain 
it is that our ideas are more popular than those of other peo- 
ple, present themselves more clearly and intelligibly to the 
masses and penetrate among them more readily; in a word, 
perspicuity, sociability, sympathy, are the peculiar character- 
istics of France, of her civilization, and it is these qualities 
which rendered her eminently fit to march at the very head 
of European civilization. 
In entering, therefore, upon the study of this great fact, it 
is no arbitrary or conventional choice to take France as the 
center of this study; we must needs do so if we would place 
ourselves, as it were, in the very heart of civilization, in the very 
heart of the fact we are about to consider. 
I use the term fact, and I do so purposely; civilization is 
a fact like any other — a fact susceptible, like any other, of 
being studied, described, narrated. 
For some time past, there has been much talk of the neces- 
sity of limiting history to the narration of facts ; nothing can 
be more just; but we must always bear in mind that there 
are far more facts to narrate, and that the facts themselves 
are far more various in their nature, than people are at first 
disposed to believe ; there are material, visible facts, such as 
wars, battles, the official acts of governments ; there are moral 
facts, none the less real that they do not appear on the sur- 
face ; there are individual facts which have denominations of 
their own; there are general facts, without any particular 
designation, to which it is impossible to assign any precise 
date, which it is impossible to bring within strict limits, but 
which are yet no less facts than the rest, historical facts, facts 
which we cannot exclude from history without mutilating 
history. 
The very portion of history which we are accustomed to 
call its philosophy, the relation of events to each other, the 
connection which unites them, their causes and their effects, — 
4 GUIZOT 
these are all facts, these are all history, just as much as the 
narratives of battles, and of other material and visible events. 
Facts of this class it is doubtless more difficult to disentangle 
and explain ; we are more liable to error in giving an account 
of them, and it is no easy thing to give them life and anima- 
tion, to exhibit them in clear and vivid colors; but this 
difficulty in no degree changes their nature; they are none 
the less an essential element of history. 
Civilization is one of these facts ; general, hidden, complex 
fact; very difficult, I allow, to describe, to relate, but which 
none the less for that exists, which, none the less for that, 
has a right to be described and related. We may raise as to 
this fact a great number of questions; we may ask, it has 
been asked, whether it is a good or an evil? Some bitterly 
deplore it; others rejoice at it. We may ask, whether it is 
an universal fact, whether there is an universal civilization of 
the human species, a destiny of humanity ; whether the nations 
have handed down from age to age, something which has 
never been lost, which must increase, from a larger and larger 
mass, and thus pass on to the end of time ? For my own part, 
I am convinced that there is, in reality, a general destiny of 
humanity, a transmission of the aggregate of civilization ; and, 
consequently, an universal history of civilization to be written. 
But without raising questions so great, so difficult to solve, 
if we restrict ourselves to a definite limit of time and space, 
if we confine ourselves to the history of a certain number of 
centuries, of a certain people, it is evident that within these 
bounds, civilization is a fact which can be described, related 
— which is history. I will at once add, that this history is the 
greatest of all, that it includes all. 
And, indeed, does it not seem to yourselves that the fact 
civilization is the fact par excellence — the general and defin- 
itive fact, in which all the others terminate, into which they 
all resolve themselves? Take all the facts which compose the 
history of a nation, and which we are accustomed to regard 
as the elements of its life; take its institutions, its commerce, 
its industry, its wars, all the details of its government: when 
we would consider these facts in their aggregate, in their con- 
nection, when we would estimate them, judge them, we ask 
in what they have contributed to the civilization of that na- 
tion, what part they have taken in it, what influence they have 
exercised over it. It is in this way that we not only form a 
complete idea of them, but measure and appreciate their true 
value; they are, as it were, rivers, of which we ask what 
quantity of water it is they contribute to the ocean? For 
civilization is a sort of ocean, constituting the wealth of a 
people, and on whose bosom all the elements of the life of that 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 5 
people, all the powers supporting its existence, assemble and 
unite. This is so true, that even facts, which from their na- 
ture are odious, pernicious, which weigh painfully upon 
nations, despotism, for example, and anarchy, if they have 
contributed in some way to civilization, if they have enabled 
it to make an onward stride, up to a certain point we pardon 
them, we overlook their wrongs, their evil nature ; in a word, 
wherever we recognize civilization, whatever the facts which 
have created it, we are tempted to forget the price it has cost. 
There are, moreover, facts which, properly speaking, we 
cannot call social; individual facts, which seem to interest 
the human soul rather than the public life : such are religious 
creeds and philosophical ideas, sciences, letters, arts. These 
facts appear to address themselves to man with a view to his 
moral perfection, his intellectual gratification; to have for 
their object his internal amelioration, his mental pleasure, 
rather than his social condition. But, here again, it is with 
reference to civilization that these very facts are often con- 
sidered, and claim to be considered. 
At all times, in all countries, religion has assumed the glory 
of having civilized the people; sciences, letters, arts, all the 
intellectual and moral pleasures, have claimed a share of this 
glory ; and we have deemed it a praise and an honor to them, 
when we have recognized this claim on their part. Thus, 
facts the most important and sublime in themselves, inde- 
pendently of all external result, and simply in their relations 
with the soul of man, increase in importance, rise in sublimity 
from their affinity with civilization. Such is the value of this 
general fact, that it gives value to everything it touches. And 
not only does it give value; there are even occasions when 
the facts of which we speak, religious creeds, philosophical 
ideas, letters, arts, are especially considered and judged of 
with reference to their influence upon civilization; an in- 
fluence which becomes, up to a certain point and during a 
certain time, the conclusive measure of their merit, of their 
value. 
What, then, I will ask, before undertaking its history, what, 
considered only in itself, what is this so grave, so vast, so 
precious fact, which seems the sum, the ｅxpression of the whole 
life of nations? 
I shall take care here not to fall into pure philosophy; not 
to lay down some ratiocinative principle, and then deduce 
from it the nature of civilization as a result; there would be 
many chances of error in this method. And here again we 
have a fact to verify and describe. 
For a long period, and in many countries, the word civili- 
sation has been in use; people have attached to the word 
6 GUIZOT 
ideas more or less clear, more or less comprehensive; but 
there it is in use, and those who use it attach some meaning 
or other to it. It is the general, human, popular meaning of 
this word that we must study. There is almost always in 
the usual acceptation of the most general terms more accu- 
racy than in the definitions, apparently more strict, more 
precise, of science. It is common sense which gives to words 
their ordinary signification, and common sense is the character- 
istic of humanity. The ordinary signification of a word is 
formed by gradual progress and in the constant presence of 
facts ; so that when a fact presents itself which seems to come 
within the meaning of a known term, it is received into it, as 
it were, naturally ; the signification of the term extends itself, 
expands, and by degrees the various facts, the various ideas 
which from the nature of things themselves men should in- 
clude under this word, are included. 
When the meaning of a word, on the other hand, is de- 
termined by science, this determination, the work of one 
individual, or of a small number of individuals, takes place 
under the influence of some particular fact which has struck 
upon the mind. Thus, scientific definitions are, in general, 
much more narrow, and, hence, much less accurate, much 
less true at bottom, than the popular meanings of the terms. 
In studying as a fact the meaning of the word civilization, in 
investigating all the ideas which are comprised within it, ac- 
cording to the common sense of mankind, we shall make a 
much greater progress toward a knowledge of the fact itself 
than by attempting to give it ourselves a scientific definition, 
however more clear and precise the latter might appear at 
first. 
I will commence this investigation by endeavoring to place 
before you some hypotheses : I will describe a certain number 
of states of society, and we will then inquire whether general 
instinct would recognize in them the condition of a people civil- 
izing itself ; whether we recognize in them the meaning which 
mankind attaches to the word civilization? 
First, suppose a people whose external life is easy, is full 
of physical comfort ; they pay few taxes, they are free from 
suffering; justice is well administered in their private rela- 
tions — in a word, material existence is for them altogether 
happy and happily regulated. But at the same time, the intel- 
lectual and moral existence of this people is studiously kept 
in a state of torpor and inactivity ; of, I will not say, oppression, 
for they do not understand the feeling, but of compression. We 
are not without instances of this state of things. There has 
been a great number of small aristocratic republics in which the 
people have been thus treated like flocks of sheep, well kept and 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 7 
materially happy, but without moral and intellectual activity. 
Is this civilization ? Is this a people civilizing itself ? 
Another hypothesis: here is a people whose material ex- 
istence is less easy, less comfortable, but still supportable. 
on the other hand, moral and intellectual wants have not been 
neglected, a certain amount of mental pasture has been served 
out to them ; elevated, pure sentiments are cultivated in them ; 
their religious and moral views have attained a certain degree 
of development; but great care is taken to stifle in them the 
principle of liberty; the intellectual and moral wants, as in 
the former case the material wants, are satisfied ; each man has 
meted out to him his portion of truth ; no one is permitted to 
seek it for himself. Immobility is the characteristic of moral 
life ; it is the state into which have fallen most of the popula- 
tions of Asia ; wherever theocratic dominations keep humanity 
in check; it is the state of the Hindoos, for example. I ask 
the same question here as before; is this a people civilizing 
itself? 
I change altogether the nature of the hypothesis : here is a 
people among whom is a great display of individual liberties, 
but where disorder and inequality are excessive: it is the 
empire of force and of chance ; every man, if he is not strong, 
is oppressed, suffers, perishes; violence is the predominant 
feature of the social state. No one is ignorant that Europe 
has passed through this state. It this a civilized state ? It may, 
doubtless, contain principles of civilization which will develop 
themselves by successive degrees ; but the fact which dominates 
in such a society is, assuredly, not that which the common sense 
of mankind call civilization. 
I take a fourth and last hypothesis: the liberty of each 
individual is very great, inequality among them is rare, and 
at all events, very transient. Every man does very nearly just 
what he pleases, and differs little in power from his neighbor ; 
but there are very few general interests, very few public ideas, 
very little society, — in a word, the faculties and existence of 
individuals appear and then pass away, wholly apart and with- 
out acting upon each other, or leaving any trace behind them ; 
the successive generations leave society at the same point at 
which they found it : this is the state of savage tribes ; liberty 
and equality are there, but assuredly not civilization. 
I might multiply these hypotheses, but I think we have be- 
fore us enough to explain what is the popular and natural 
meaning of the word civilisation. 
It is clear that none of the states I have sketched corre- 
sponds, according to the natural good sense of mankind, to 
this term. Why? It appears to me that the first fact com- 
prised in the word civilization (and this results from the 
S GUIZOT 
different examples I have rapidly placed before you), is the 
fact of progress, of development ; it presents at once the idea 
of a people marching onward, not to change its place, but to 
change its condition; of a people whose culture is condition 
itself, and ameliorating itself. The idea of progress, of de- 
velopment, appears to me the fundamental idea contained in 
the word, civilii^ation. What is this progress? what this de- 
velopment? Herein is the greatest difficulty of all. 
The etymology of the word would seem to answer in a 
clear and satisfactory manner: it says that it is the perfecting 
of civil life, the development of society, properly so called, 
of the relations of men among themselves. 
Such is, in fact, the first idea which presents itself to the 
understanding when the word civilization is pronounced ; we 
at once figure forth to ourselves the extension, the greatest 
activity, the best organization of the social relations: on the 
one hand, an increasing production of the means of giving 
strength and happiness to society ; on the other, a more equita- 
ble distribution, among individuals, of the strength. 
Is this all? Have we here exhausted all the natural, ordi- 
nary meaning of the word civilization ? Does the fact contain 
nothing more than this? 
It is almost as if we asked : is the human species after all 
a mere ant-hill, a society in which all that is required is order 
and physical happiness, in which the greater the amount of 
labor, and the more equitable the division of the fruits of 
labor, the more surely is the object attained, the progress ac- 
complished ? 
Our instinct at once feels repugnant to so narrow a defini- 
tion of human destiny. It feels at the first glance that the 
word civilization comprehends something more extensive, 
more complex, something superior to the simple perfeccion of 
the social relations, of social power and happiness. 
Fact, public opinion, the generally received meaning of the 
term, are in accordance with this instinct. 
Take Rome in the palmy days of the republic, after the sec- 
ond Punic war, at the same time of its greatest virtues, when 
it was marching to the empire of the world, when its social 
state was evidently in progress. Then take Rome under Au- 
gustus, at the epoch when her decline began, when, at all 
events, the progressive movement of society was arrested, 
when evil principles were on the eve of prevailing; yet there 
is no one who does not think and say that the Rome of Au- 
Eustus was more civilized than the Rome of Fabricius or of 
!incinnatus. 
Let us transport ourselves beyond the Alps : let us take the 
France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: it is 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 9 
evident that, in a social point of view, considering the actual 
amount and distribution of happiness among individuals, 
the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was 
inferior to some other countries of Europe, to Holland and to 
England, for example. I believe that in Holland and in Eng- 
land the social activity was greater, was increasing more 
rapidly, distributing its fruit more fully, than in France, yet 
ask general good sense, and it will say that the France of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the most civilized 
country in Europe. Europe has not hesitated in her affirma- 
tive reply to the question : traces of this public opinion, as to 
France, are found in all the monuments of European literature. 
We might point out many other states in which the pros- 
perity is greater, is of more rapid growth, is better distributed 
among individuals than elsewhere, and in which, neverthe- 
less, by the spontaneous instinct, the general good sense of 
men, the civilization is judged inferior to that of countries not 
so well portioned out in a purely social sense. 
What does this mean; what advantages do these latter 
countries possess? What is it gives them, in the character of 
civilized countries, this privilege; what so largely compen- 
sates in the opinion of mankind for what they so lack in other 
respects ? 
A development other than that of social life has been 
gloriously manifested by them; the development of the indi- 
vidual, internal life, the development of man himself, of his 
faculties, his sentiments, his ideas. If society with them be 
less perfect than elsewhere, humanity stands forth in more 
grandeur and power. There remain, no doubt, many social 
conquests to be made; but immense intellectual and moral 
conquests are accomplished; worldly goods, social rights, are 
wanting to many men ; but many great men live and shine in 
the eyes of the world. Letters, sciences, the arts, display all 
their splendor. Wherever mankind beholds these great signs, 
these signs glorified by human nature, wherever it sees created 
these treasures of sublime enjoyment, it there recognizes and 
names civilization. 
Two facts, then, are comprehended in this great fact; it 
subsists on two conditions, and manifests itself by two symp- 
toms: the development of social activity, and that of indi- 
vidual activity; the progress of society and the progress of 
humanity. Wherever the external condition of man extends 
itself, vivifies, ameliorates itself; wherever the internal nature 
of man displays itself with lustre, with grandeur; at these 
two signs, and often despite the profound imperfection of the 
social state, mankind with loud applause proclaims civiliza- 
tion. 
lo GUIZOT 
Such, if I do not deceive myself, is the result of simple and 
purely common-sense examination of the general opinion of 
mankind. If we interrogate history, properly so-called, if we 
examine what is the nature of the great crises of civilization, 
of those facts which, by universal consent, have propelled it 
onward, we shall constantly recognize one or other of the two 
elements I have just described. They are always crises of 
individual or social development, facts which have changed 
the internal man, his creed, his manners, or his external con- 
dition, his position in his relation with his fellows. Christianity, 
for example, not merely on its first appearance, but during 
the first stages of its existence, Christianity in no degree ad- 
dressed itself to the social state; it announced aloud that it 
would not meddle with the social state; it ordered the slave 
to obey his master; it attacked none of the great evils, the 
great wrongs of the society of that period. Yet who will deny 
that Christianity was a great crisis of civilization? Why was 
it so? Because it changed the internal man, creeds, senti- 
ments ; because it regenerated the moral man, the intellectual 
man. 
We have seen a crisis of another nature, a crisis which ad- 
dressed itself, not to the internal man, but to his external con- 
dition; one which changed and regenerated society. This 
also was assuredly one of the decisive crises of civilization. 
Look through all history, you will find everywhere the same 
result; you will meet with no important fact instrumental in 
the development of civilization, which has not exercised one 
or other of the two sorts of influence I have spoken of. 
Such, if I mistake not, is the natural and popular meaning 
of the term; you have here the fact, I will not say defined, 
but described, verified almost completely, or, at all events, 
in its general features. We have before us the two elements 
of civilization. Now comes the question, would one of these 
two suffice to constitute it ; would the development of the social 
state, the development of the individual man, separately pre- 
sented, be civilization? Would the human race recognize it 
as such, or have the two facts so intimate and necessary a 
relation between them, that if they are not simultaneously pro- 
duced, they are notwithstanding inseparable, and sooner or 
later one brings on the other? 
We might, as it appears to me, approach this question on 
three several sides. We might examine the nature itself of 
the two elements of civilization, and ask ourselves whether by 
that alone, they are or are not closely united with, and neces- 
sary to each other. We might inquire of history whether they 
had manifested themselves isolately, apart the one from the 
other, or whether they had invariably produced the one the 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE ii 
other. We may, lastly, consult upon this question the com- 
mon opinion of mankind — common sense. I will address 
myself first to common sense. 
When a great change is accomplished in the state of a 
country, when there is operated in it a large development of 
wealth and power, a revolution in the distribution of the social 
means, this new fact encounters adversaries, undergoes oppo- 
sition: this is inevitable. What is the general cry of the 
adversaries of the change ? They say that this progress of the 
social state does not ameliorate, does not regenerate in like 
manner, in a like degree, the moral, the internal state of man ; 
that it is a false, delusive progress, the result of which is detri- 
mental to morality, to man. The friends of social development 
energetically repel this attack ; they maintain, on the contrary, 
that the progress of society necessarily involves and carries 
v^ith it the progress of morality; that when the external life 
is better regulated, the internal life is refined and purified. 
Thus stands the question between the adversaries and parti- 
sans of the new state. 
Reverse the hypothesis : suppose the moral development 
in progress: what do the laborers in this progress generally 
promise? What, in the origin of societies, have promised the 
religious rulers, the sages, the poets, who have labored to 
soften and to regulate men's manners ? They have promised the 
amelioration of the social condition, the more equitable dis- 
tribution of the social means. What, then, I ask you, is involved 
in these disputes, these promises ? What do they mean ? What 
do they imply? 
They imply that in the spontaneous, instinctive conviction 
of mankind, the two elements of civilization, the social devel- 
opment and the moral development, are closely connected 
together ; that at sight of the one, man at once looks forward 
to the other. It is to this natural instinctive conviction that 
those who are maintaining or combating one or other of the 
two developments address themselves, when they affirm or 
deny their union. It is well understood, that if we can per- 
suade mankind that the amelioration of the social state will 
be averse to the internal progress of individuals, we shall have 
succeeded in decrying and enfeebling the revolution in operation 
throughout society. on the other hand, when we promise man- 
kind the amelioration of society by means of the amelioration 
of the individual, it is well understood that the tendency is to 
place faith in these promises, and it is accordingly made use of 
with success. It is evidently, therefore, the instinctive belief of 
humanity, that the m'ovements of civilization are connected the 
one with the other, and reciprocally produce the one the other. 
If we address ourselves to the history of the world, we shall 
12 GUIZOT 
receive the same answer. We shall find that all the great 
developments of the internal man have turned to the profit 
of society; all the great developments of the social state to 
the profit of individual man. We find the one or other of 
the two facts predominating, manifesting itself with striking 
effect, and impressing upon the movement in progress a dis- 
tinctive character. It is, sometimes, only after a very long 
interval of time, after a thousand obstacles, a thousand trans- 
formations, that the second fact, developing itself, comes to 
complete the civilization which the first had commenced. But 
if you examine them closely, you will soon perceive the bond 
which unites them. The march of Providence is not restricted 
to narrow limits ; it is not bound, and it does not trouble itself 
to follow out to-day the consequences of the principle which 
it laid down yesterday. The consequences will come in due 
course, when the hour for them has arrived, perhaps not till 
hundreds of years have passed away; though its reasoning 
may appear to us slow, its logic is none the less true and 
sound. To Providence, time is as nothing; it strides through 
time as the gods of Homer through space; it makes but one 
step, and ages have vanished behind it. How many centuries, 
what infinite events passed away before the regeneration of 
the moral man by Christianity exercised upon the regenera- 
tion of the social state its great and legitimate influence. Yet 
who will deny that it any the less succeeded? 
If from history we extend our inquiries to the nature itself 
of the two facts which constitute civilization, we are infallibly 
led to the same result. There is no one who has not experienced 
this in his own case. When a moral change is operated in 
man, when he acquires an idea, or a virtue, or a faculty, more 
than he had before — in a word, when he develops himself in- 
dividually, what is the desire, what the want, which at the 
same moment takes possession of him? It is the desire, the 
want, to communicate the new sentiment to the world about 
him, to give realization to his thoughts externally. As soon 
as a man acquires anything, as soon as his being takes in his 
own conviction a new development, assumes an additional 
value, forthwith he attaches to this new development, this 
fresh value, the idea of possession ; he feels himself impelled, 
compelled by his instinct, by an inward voice, to extend to 
others the change, the amelioration, which has been accom- 
plished in his own person. We owe the great reformers solely 
to this cause ; the mighty men who have changed the face of 
the world, after having changed themselves, were urged on- 
ward, were guided on their course, by no other want than 
this. So much for the alteration which is operated in the 
internal man ; now to the other. A revolution is accomplished 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 13 
in the state of society ; it is better regulated, rights and prop- 
erty are more equitably distributed among its members — ^that 
is to say, the aspect of the world becomes purer and more 
beautiful, the action of government, the conduct of men in 
their mutual relations, more just, more benevolent. Do you 
suppose that this improved aspect of the world, this ameliora- 
tion of external facts, does not react upon the interior of man, 
upon humanity? All that is said as to the authority of exam- 
ples, of customs, of noble models, is founded upon this only: 
that an external fact, good, well regulated, leads sooner or 
later, more or less completely, to an internal fact of the same 
nature, the same merit ; that a world better regulated, a world 
more just, renders man himself more just ; that the inward is 
reformed by the outward, as the outward by the inward ; that 
the two elements of civilization are closely connected the one 
with the other ; that centuries, that obstacles of all sorts, may 
interpose between them; that it is possible they may have 
to undergo a thousand reformations in order to regain each 
other; but sooner or later they will rejoin each other: this 
is the law of their nature, the general fact of history, the instinc- 
tive faith of the human race. 
I think I have thus — not exhausted the subject, very far 
from it — but, exhibited in a well-nigh complete, though cur- 
sory manner, the fact of civilization ; I think I have described 
it, settled its limits, and stated the principal, the fundamental 
questions to which it gives rise. I might stop here; but I 
cannot help touching upon a question which meets me at this 
point; one of those questions which are not historical ques- 
tions, properly so called; which are questions, I will not call 
them hypothetical, but conjectural; questions of which man 
holds but one end, the other end being permanently beyond 
his reach; questions of which he cannot make the circuit, 
nor view on more than one side; and yet questions not the 
less real, not the less calling upon him for thought; for they 
present themselves before him, despite of himself, at every 
moment. 
Of those two developments of which we have spoken, and 
which constitute the fact of civilization, the development of 
society on the one hand and of humanity on the other, which 
is the end, which is the means? Is it to perfect this social 
condition, to ameliorate his existence on earth, that man de- 
velops himself, his faculties, sentiments, ideas, his whole being ? 
— or rather, is not the amelioration of the social condition, the 
progress of society, society itself, the theatre, the occasion, the 
mobile, of the development of the individual, in a word, is 
society made to serve the individual, or the individual to serve 
society? on the answer to this question inevitably depends 
14 GUIZOT 
that whether the destiny of man is purely social; whether 
society drains up and exhausts the whole man ; or whether he 
bears within him something intrinsic — something superior to 
his existence on earth. 
A man, whom I am proud to call my friend, a man who has 
passed though meetings like our own to assume the first place 
in the assemblies less peaceable and more powerful : a man, all 
whose words are engraven on the hearts of those who hear them, 
M. Royer-Collard, has solved this question according to his 
own conviction, at least, in his speech on the Sacrilege Bill. 
I find in that speech these two sentences : " Human societies 
are born, live and die, on the earth ; it is there their destinies 
are accomplished. . . . But they contain not the whole man. 
After he has engaged himself to society, there remains to him 
the noblest part of himself, those high faculties by which he 
elevates himself to God, to a future life, to unknown felicity 
in an invisible world. . . . We, persons individual and 
identical, veritable beings endowed with immortality, we have 
a different destiny from that of states."* 
I will add nothing to this ; I will not undertake to treat the 
question itself ; I content myself with stating it. It is met with 
at the history of civilization: when the history of civilization 
is completed, when there is nothing more to say as to our present 
existence, man inevitably asks himself whether all is exhausted, 
whether he has reached the end of all things? This then is 
the last, the highest of all those problems to which history of 
civilization can lead. It is sufficient for me to have indicated 
its position and its grandeur. 
From all I have said it is evident that the history of civiliza- 
tion might be treated in two methods, drawn from two sources, 
considered under two different aspects. The historian might 
place himself in the heart of the human mind for a given period, 
a series of ages, or among the determinate people; he might 
study, describe, relate all the events, all the transformations, 
all the revolutions which had been accomplished in the internal 
man; and when he should arrive at the end he would have 
a history of civilization among the people, and in the period he 
had selected. He may proceed in another manner; instead of 
penetrating the internal man, he may take his stand — he may 
place himself in the midst of the world ; instead of describing 
the vicissitudes of the ideas, the sentiments of the individual 
being, he may describe external facts, the events, the changes 
of the social state. These two portions, these two histories of 
civilization are closely connected with each other; they are 
the reflection, the image of each other. Yet, they may be sep- 
* *' Opinion de M. Royer-Collard sur le Projet de Loi reUtif au Sacrilege,** 
pp. 7» 17. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 15 
arated; perhaps, indeed, they ought to be so, at least at the 
onset, in order that both the one and the other may be treated 
of in detail, and with perspicuity. For my part I do not pro- 
pose to study with you the history of civilization in the interior 
of the human soul ; it is the history of external events of the 
visible and social world that I shall occupy myself with. I had 
wished, indeed, to exhibit to you the whole fact of civiliza- 
tion, such as I can conceive it in all its complexity and extent, 
to set forth before you all the high questions which may arise 
from it. At present I restrict myself; mark out my field of 
inquiry within narrower limits; it is only the history of the 
social state that I purpose investigating. 
We shall begin by seeking all the elements of European civ- 
ilization in its cradle at the fall of the Roman Empire ; we will 
study with attention society, such as it was, in the midst of 
those famous ruins. We will endeavor, not to resuscitate, but 
to place its elements side by side, and when we have done so, 
we will endeavor to make them move and follow them in their 
developments through the fifteen centuries which have elapsed 
since that epoch. 
I believe that when we have got but a very little way into this 
study, we shall acquire the conviction that civilization is as 
yet very young; that the world has by no means as yet meas- 
ured the whole of its career. Assuredly human thought is at 
this time very far from being all that it is capable of becom- 
ing ; we are very far from comprehending the whole future of 
humanity: let each of us descend into his own mind, let him 
interrogate himself as to the utmost possible good he has formed 
a conception of and hopes for ; let him then compare his idea 
with what actually exists in the world; he will be convinced 
that society and civilization are very young ; that notwithstand- 
ing the length of the road they have come, they have incom- 
parably further to go. This will lessen nothing of the pleasure 
that we shall take in the contemplation of our actual condi- 
tion. 
As I endeavor to place before you the great crises in the 
history of civilization in Europe during the last fifteen cen- 
turies, you will see to what a degree, even up in our own days, 
the condition of man has been laborious, stormy, not only in the 
outward and social state, but inwardly in the life of the soul. 
During all those ages, the human mind has had to suffer as 
much as the human race; you will see that in modern times, 
for the first time, perhaps, the human mind has attained a state, 
as yet very imperfect, but still a state in which reigns some 
peace, some harmony. It is the same with society; it has 
evidently made immense progress, the human condition is easy 
and just, compared with what it was previously ; we may almost 
i6 GUIZOT 
when thinking of our ancestors apply to ourselves the verses 
of Lucretius : 
" Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis, 
E terr^ magnum alterius spectare laborera." * 
We may say of ourselves, without too much pride, as Sthenelus 
in Homer : — 
Hfifis To\ T \T€pup fity' kfifivovfs fvxSfifff tivai. f 
Let us be careful, however, not to give ourselves up too much 
to the idea of our happiness and amelioration, or we may fall 
into two grave dangers, pride and indolence; we may conceive 
an over-confidence in the power and success of the human 
mind, in our own enlightenment, and, at the same time, suffer 
ourselves to become enervated by the luxurious ease of our con- 
dition. It appears to me that we are constantly fluctuating 
between a tendency to complain upon light grounds, on the one 
hand, and to be content without reason, on the other. We have 
a susceptibility of spirit, a craving, an unlimited ambition in the 
thought, in our desire, in the movement of the imagination; but 
when it comes to the practical work of life, when we are called 
upon to give ourselves any trouble, to make any sacrifices, to 
use any efforts to attain the object, our arms fall down listlessly 
by our sides, and we give the matter up in despair, with a facility 
equalled only by the impatience with which we had previously 
desired its attainment. We must beware how we allow ourselves 
to yield to either of these defects. Let us accustom ourselves 
duly to estimate beforehand the extent of our force, our capacity, 
our knowledge; and let us aim at nothing which we feel we 
cannot attain legitimately, justly, regularly, and with unfailing 
regard to the principles upon which our civilization itself rests. 
We seem at times tempted to adopt the principles which, as a 
general rule, we assail and hold up to scorn — the principles, the 
right of the strongest of barbarian Europe; the brute force, the 
violence, the downright lying which were matters of course, of 
daily occurrence, four or five hundred years ago. But when 
we yield for a moment to this desire, we find in ourselves neither 
the perseverance nor the savage energy of the men of that 
period, who, suffering greatly from their condition, were natu- 
rally anxious, and incessantly essaying, to emancipate them- 
selves from it. We, of the present day, are content with our 
condition; let us not expose it to danger by indulging in vague 
• ** *Tis pleasant, in a great storm, to contemplate, from a safe position on 
shore, the perils of some ships tossed about by the furious winds and the 
stormy ocean." 
t "Thank Heaven, we are infinitely better than those who went before us." 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 17 
desires, the time for realizing which has not come. Much has 
been given to us, much will be required of us; we must render 
to posterity a strict account of our conduct; the public, the 
government, all are now subjected to discussion, examination, 
responsibility. Let us attach ourselves firmly, faithfully, undevi- 
atingly, to the principles of our civilization — ^justice, legality, 
publicity, Hberty; and let us never forget, that while we ourselves 
require, and with reason, that all things shall be open to our 
inspection and inquiry, we ourselves are under the eye of the 
world, and shall, in our turn, be discussed, be judged. 
SECOND LECTURE. 
IN meditating the plan of the course with which I propose to 
present you, I am fearful lest my lectures should possess 
the double inconvenience of being very long, by reason of 
the necessity of condensing much matter into little space, and, 
at the same time, of being too concise. 
I dread yet another difficulty, originating in the same cause; 
the necessity, namely, of sometimes making affirmations with- 
out proving them. This is also the result of the narrow space 
to which I find myself confined. There will occur ideas and 
assertions of which the confirmation must be postponed. I hope 
you will pardon me for sometimes placing you under the 
necessity of believing me upon my bare word. I come even 
now to an occasion of imposing upon you this necessity. 
I have endeavored, in the preceding lecture, to explain the 
fact of civilization in general, without speaking of any particular 
civilization, without regarding circumstances of time and place, 
considering the fact in itself, and under a purely philosophical 
point of view. I come to-day to the history of European civil- 
ization; but before entering upon the narrative itself, I wish to 
make you acquainted, in a general manner, with the particular 
physiognomy of this civilization; I desire to characterize it so 
clearly to you, that it may appear to you perfectly distinct from 
all other civilizations which have developed themselves in the 
world. This I am going to attempt, more than which I dare not 
say; but I can only affirm it, unless I could succeed in depicting 
European society with such faithfulness that you should 
instantly recognize it as a portrait. But of this I dare not flatter 
myself. 
When we regard the civilizations which have preceded that 
of modern Europe, whether in Asia or elsewhere, including even 
Greek and Roman civilization, it is impossible to help being 
struck with the unity which pervades them. They seem to have 
emanated from a single fact, from a single idea; one might say 
that society has attached itself to a solitary dominant principle, 
which has determined its institutions, its customs, its creeds, in 
one word, all its developments. 
In Egypt, for instance, it was the theocratic principle which 
pervaded the entire community; it reproduced itself in the 
x8 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 19 
customs, in the monuments, and in all that remains to us of 
Egyptian civilization. In India, you will discover the same fact; 
there is still the almost exclusive dominion of the theocratic 
principle. Elsewhere you will meet with another organizing 
principle — the domination of a victorious caste; the principle 
of force will here alone possess society, imposing thereupon its 
laws and its character. Elsewhere society will be the ｅxpression 
of the democratic principle; it has been thus with the commercial 
republics which have covered the coasts of Asia Minor and of 
Syria, in Ionia, in Phenicia. In short, when we contemplate 
ancient civilizations, we find them stamped with a singular 
character of unity in their institutions, their ideas and their 
manners; a sole, or at least, a strongly preponderating force 
governs and determines all. 
I do not mean to say this unity of principle and form in the 
civilization of these states has always prevailed therein. When 
we go back to their earlier history, we find that the various 
powers which may develop themselves in the heart of a society, 
have often contended for empire. Among the Egyptians, the 
Etruscans, the Greeks themselves, etc., the order of warriors, 
for example, has struggled against that of the priests ; else- 
where, the spirit of clanship has struggled against that of free 
association ; the aristocratic against the popular system, etc. But 
it has generally been in ante-historical times that such struggles 
have occurred; and thus only a vague recollection has remained 
of them. 
The struggle has sometimes reproduced itself in the course of 
the existence of nations; but, almost invariably, it has soon been 
terminated; one of the powers that disputed for empire has soon 
gained it, and taken sole possession of the society. The war has 
always terminated by the, if not exclusive, at least largely pre- 
ponderating, domination of some particular principle. The co- 
existence and the combat of different principles have never, in 
the history of these peoples, been more than a transitory crisis, 
and accident. 
The result of this has been a remarkable simplicity in the 
majority of ancient civilizations. This simplicity has produced 
different consequences. Sometimes, as in Greece, the simplicity 
of the social principle has led to a wonderfully rapid develop- 
ment; never has any people unfolded itself in so short a period 
with such brilliant effect. But after this astonishing flight, 
Greece seemed suddenly exhausted; its decay, if it was not so 
rapid as its rise, was nevertheless strangely prompt. It seems 
that the creative force of the principle of Greek civilization was 
exhausted ; no other has come to renew it. 
Elsewhere, in Egypt and in India, for instance, the unity of 
the principle of civilization has had a different effect ; society has 
20 GUIZOT 
fallen into a stationary condition. Simplicity has brought 
monotony ; the country has not been destroyed, society has con- 
tinued to exist, but motionless, and as if frozen. 
It is to the same cause that we must attribute the character of 
tyranny which appeared in the name of principle and under the 
most various forms, among all the ancient civilizations. Society 
belonged to an exclusive power, which would allow of the exist- 
ence of none other. Every differing tendency was proscribed 
and hunted down. Never has the ruling principle chosen to 
admit beside it the manifestation and action of a different 
principle. 
This character of unity of civilization is equally stamped upon 
literature and the works of the mind. Who is unacquainted with 
the monuments of Indian literature, which have lately been dis- 
tributed over Europe? It is impossible not to see that they are 
all cast in the same mold; they seem all to be the result of the 
same fact, the ｅxpression of the same idea ; works of religion or 
morals, historical traditions, dramatic and epic poetry, every- 
where the same character is stamped; the productions of the 
mind bear the same character of simplicity and of monotony 
which appears in events and institutions. Even in Greece, in the 
centre of all the riches of the human intellect, a singular uni- 
formity reigns in literature and in the arts. 
It has been wholly otherwise with the civilization of modem 
Europe. Without entering into details, look upon it, gather 
together your recollections; it will immediately appear to you 
varied, confused, stormy ; all forms, all principles of social organ- 
ization co-exist therein ; powers spiritual and temporal ; elements 
theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic; all orders, all 
social arrangements mingle and press upon one another; there 
are infinite degrees of liberty, wealth, and influence. These 
various forces are in a state of continual struggle among them- 
selves, yet no one succeeds in stifling the others, and taking 
possession of society. In ancient times, at every great epoch, all 
societies seemed cast in the same mold; it is sometimes pure 
monarchy, sometimes theocracy or democracy, that prevails; 
but each, in its turn, prevails completely. Modern Europe pre- 
sents us with examples of all systems, of all experiments of social 
organization ; pure or mixed monarchies, theocracies, republics, 
more or less aristocratic, have thus thrived simultaneously, one 
beside the other; and, notwithstanding their diversity, they have 
all a certain resemblance, a certain family likeness, which it is 
impossible to mistake. 
In the ideas and sentiments of Europe there is the same 
variety, the same struggle. The theocratic, monarchic, aristo- 
cratic, and popular creeds, cross, combat, limit, and modify each 
other. Open the boldest writings of the middle ages; never 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 21 
there is an idea followed out to its last consequences. The part- 
isans of absolute power recoil suddenly and unconsciously 
before the results of their own doctrine ; they perceive around 
them ideas and influences which arrest them, and prevent them 
from going to extremities. The democrats obey the same law. 
on neither part exists that imperturbable audacity, that blind 
determination of logic, which show themselves in ancient civil- 
izations. The sentiments offer the same contrasts, the same 
variety; an energetic love of independence, side by side with a 
great facility of submission; a singular faithfulness of man to 
man, and, at the same time, an uncontrollable wish to exert free 
will, to shake off every yoke, and to live for one's self, without 
caring for any other. The souls of men are as different, as 
agitated, as society. 
The same character discovers itself in modern literature. 
We cannot but agree that, as regards artistic form and beauty, 
they are very much inferior to ancient literature; but, as re- 
gards depth of sentiment and of ideas, they are far more rich 
and vigorous. We see that the human soul has been moved 
upon a greater number of points, and to a greater depth. Im- 
perfection of form results from this very cause. The richer and 
more numerous the materials, the more difficult it is to reduce 
them to a pure and simple form. That which constitutes the 
beauty of a composition, of that which we call form in works 
of art, is clearness, simplicity, and a symbolic unity of work- 
manship. With the prodigious diversity of the ideas and senti- 
ments of European civilization, it has been much more diffi- 
cult to arrive at this simplicity, this clearness. 

on all sides then this predominant character of modern 
civilization discovers itself. It has no doubt had this disad- 
vantage, that, when we consider separately such or such a 
particular development of the human mind in letters, in the 
arts, in all directions in which it can advance, we usually find 
it inferior to the corresponding development in ancient civiliza- 
tions; but, on the other hand, when we regard it in the ag- 
gregate, European civilization shows itself incomparably richer 
than any other; it has displayed at one and the same time 
many more different developments. Consequently you find 
that it has existed fifteen centuries, and yet is still in a state of 
continuous progression ; it has not advanced nearly so rapidly 
as the Greek civilization, but its progress has never ceased to 
grow. It catches a glimpse of the vast career which lies before 
it, and day after day it shoots forward more rapidly, because 
more and more of freedom attends its movements. While in 
other civilizations the exclusive, or at least the excessively 
preponderating dominion of a single principle, of a single form, 
has been the cause of tyranny, in modern Europe the diversity 
11 GUIZOT 
of elements which constitute the social order, the impossibility 
under which they have been placed of excluding each other, 
have given birth to the freedom which prevails in the present 
day. Not having been able to exterminate each other, it has 
become necessary that various principles should exist together 
— that they should make between them a sort of compact. Each 
has agreed to undertake that portion of the development which 
may fall to its share; and while elsewhere the predominance 
of a principle produced tyrapny, in Europe liberty has been 
the result of the variety of the elements of civilization and of 
the state of struggle in which they have constantly existed. 
This constitutes a real and an immense superiority; and if 
we investigate yet further, if we penetrate beyond external 
facts into the nature of things, we shall discover that this 
superiority is legitimate, and acknowledged by reason as well 
as proclaimed by facts. Forgetting for a moment European 
civilization, let us turn our attention to the world in general, 
on the general course of terrestrial things. What character 
do we find? How goes the world? It moves precisely with 
this diversity and variety of elements, a prey to this constant 
struggle which we have remarked in European civilization. 
Evidently it has not been permitted to any single principle, to 
any particular organization, to any single idea, or to any special 
force, that it should possess itself of the world, molding it once 
for all, destroying all other influences to reign therein itself 
exclusively. 
Various powers, principles and systems mingle, limit each 
other, and struggle without ceasing, in turn predominating or 
predominated over, never entirely conquered or conquering. 
A variety of forms, of ideas, and of principles, then, struggles, 
their efforts after a certain unity, a certain ideal which perhaps 
can never be attained, but to which the human race tends by 
freedom and work; these constitute the general condition of 
the world. European civilization is, therefore, the faithful 
image of the world: like the course of things in the world, 
it is neither narrow, exclusive, nor stationary. For the first 
time, I believe, the character of specialty has vanished from 
civilization ; for the first time it is developed as variously, as 
richly, as laboriously, as the great drama of the universe. 
European civilization has entered, if we may so speak, into 
the eternal truth, into the plan of Providence; it progresses 
according to the intentions of God. This is the rational ac- 
count of its superiority. 
I am desirous that this fundamental and distinguishing char- 
acter of European civilization should continue present to your 
minds during the course of our labors. At present I can only 
make the affirmation: the development of facts must furnish 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 23 
the proof. It will, nevertheless, you will agree, be a strong con- 
firmation of my assertion, if we find, even in the cradle of our 
civilization, the causes and the elements of the character which 
I have just attributed to it: if, at the moment of its birth, at 
the moment of the fall of the Roman Empire, we recognize 
in the state of the world, in the facts that, from the earliest 
times, have concurred to form European civilization, the prin- 
ciple of this agitated but fruitful diversity which distinguishes 
it. I am about to attempt this investigation. I shall examine 
the condition of Europe at the fall of the Roman Empire, and 
seek to discover, from institutions, creeds, ideas, and senti- 
ments, what were the elements bequeathed by the ancient to 
the modern world. If, in these elements, we shall already 
find impressed the character which I have just described, it 
will have acquired with you, from this time forth, a high degree 
of probability. 
First of all, we must clearly represent to ourselves the nature 
of the Roman Empire, and how it was formed. 
Rome was, in its origin, only a municipality, a corporation. 
The government of Rome was merely the aggregate of the 
institutions which were suited to a population confined within 
the walls of a city: these were municipal institutions, that is 
their distinguishing character. 
This was not the case with Rome only. If we turn our atten- 
tion to Italy, at this period, we find around Rome nothing but 
towns. That which was then called a people was simply a 
confederation of towns. The Latin people was a confederation 
of Latin towns. The Etruscans, the Samnites, the Sabines, the 
people of Graecia Magna, may all be described in the same 
terms. 
There was, at this time, no coimtry — that is to say, the coun- 
try was wholly unlike that which at present exists ; it was cul- 
tivated, as was necessary, but it was uninhabited. The pro- 
prietors of lands were the inhabitants of the towns. They 
went forth to superintend their country properties, and often 
took with them a certain number of slaves ; but that which 
we at present call the country, that thin population — sometimes 
in isolated habitations, sometimes in villages — which every- 
where covers the soil, was a fact almost unknown in ancient 
Italy. 
When Rome extended itself, what did she do? Follow 
history, and you will see that she conquered or founded towns ; 
it was against towns that she fought, with towns that she con- 
tracted alliances ; it was also into towns that she sent 
colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome 
is the history of the conquest and foundation of a great number 
of towns. In the East, the extension of Roman dominion does 
24 GUIZOT 
not carry altogether this aspect: the population there was 
otherwise distributed than in the West — it was much less con- 
centrated in towns. But as we have to do here with the Euro- 
pean population, what occurred in the East is of little interest 
to us. 
Confining ourselves to the West, we everywhere discover 
the fact to which I have directed your attention. In Gaul, in 
Spain, you meet with nothing but towns. At a distance from 
the towns, the territory is covered with marshes and forests. 
Examine the character of the Roman monuments, of the Roman 
roads. You have great roads, which reach from one city to an- 
other; the multiplicity of minor roads, which now cross the 
country in all directions, was then unknown ; you have nothing 
resembling that countless number of villages, country seats 
and churches, which have been scattered over the country 
since the middle ages. Rome has left us nothing but im- 
mense monuments, stamped with the municipal character, and 
destined for a numerous population collected upon one spot. 
Under whatever point of view you consider the Roman world, 
you will find this almost exclusive preponderance of towns, 
and the social non-existence of the country. 
This municipal character of the Roman world evidently 
rendered unity, the social bond of a great state, extremely 
difficult to establish and maintain. A municipality like Rome 
had been able to conquer the world, but it was much less easy 
to govern and organize it. Thus, when the work appeared 
completed, when all the West, and a great part of the East, 
had fallen under Roman dominion, you behold this prodigious 
number of cities, of little states, made for isolation and in- 
dependence, disunite, detach themselves, and escape, so to speak, 
in all directions. This was one of the causes which rendered 
necessary the Empire, a form of government more concen- 
trated, more capable of holding together elements so slightly 
coherent. The Empire endeavored to introduce unity and 
combination into this scattered society. It succeeded up to a 
certain point. It was between the reigns of Augustus and Dio- 
cletian that, at the same time that civil legislation developed 
itself, there became established the vast system of administra- 
tive despotism which spread over the Roman world a net- 
work of functionaries, hierarchically distributed, well linked 
together, both among themselves and with the imperial court, 
and solely applied to rendering eflFective in society the will of 
power, and in transferring to power the tributes and energies 
of society. 
And not only did this system succeed in rallying and in hold- 
ing together the elements of the Roman world, but the idea of 
despotism, of central power, penetrated minds with a singular 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 25 
facility. We are astonished to behold rapidly prevailing through- 
out this ill-united assemblage of petty republics, this association 
of municipalities, a reverence for the imperial majesty alone, 
august and sacred. The necessity of establishing some bond 
between all these portions of the Roman world must have been 
very pressing, to insure so easy an access to the mind for the 
faith and almost the sentiments of despotism. 
It was with these creeds, with this administrative organization, 
and with the military organization which was combined with it, 
that the Roman Empire struggled against the dissolution at 
work inwardly, and against the invasion of the barbarians from 
without. It struggled for a long time, in a continual state of 
decay, but always defending itself. At last a moment came in 
which dissolution prevailed; neither the skill of despotism nor 
the indifference of servitude sufficed to support this huge body. 
In the fourth century it everywhere disunited and dismembered 
itself; the barbarians entered on all sides; the provinces no 
longer resisted, no longer troubled themselves concerning the 
general destiny. At this time a singular idea suggested itself 
to some of the emperors; they desired to try whether hopes of 
general liberty, a confederation — a system analogous to that 
which, in the present day, we call representative government — 
would not better defend the unity of the Roman Empire than 
despotic administration. Here is a rescript of Honorius and 
Theodosius, the younger, addressed, in the year 418, to the pre- 
fect of Gaul, the only purpose of which was to attempt to estab- 
lish in the south of Gaul a sort of representative government, 
and, with its aid, to maintain the unity of the Empire. 
" Rescript of the emperors Honorius and Theodosius the 
younger, addressed, in the year 418, to the prefect of the 
Gauls, sitting in the town of Aries. 
" Honorius and Theodosius, Augusti, to Agricola, prefect of 
the Gauls: 
" Upon the satisfactory statement that your Magnificence has 
made to us, among other information palpably advantageous to 
the state, we decree the force of the law in perpetuity to the 
following ordinances, to which the inhabitants of our seven 
provinces will owe obedience, they being such that they them- 
selves might have desired and demanded them. Seeing that 
persons in office, or special deputies from motives of public or 
private utility, not only from each of the provinces, but also from 
every town, often present themselves before your Magnificence, 
either to render accounts or to treat of things relative to the 
interest of proprietors, we have judged that it would be a season- 
able and profitable thing that, from the date of the present year, 
26 GUIZOT 
there should be annually, at a fixed time, an assemblage held in 
the metropolis — that is, in the town of Aries, for the inhabitants 
of the seven provinces. By this institution we have in view to 
provide equally for general and particular interests. In the first 
place, by the meeting of the most notable of the inhabitants in 
the illustrious presence of the prefect, if motives of public order 
have not called him elsewhere, the best possible information may 
be gained upon every subject under deliberation. Nothing of 
that which will have been treated of and decided upon, after a 
ripe consideration, will escape the knowledge of any of the 
provinces, and those who shall not have been present at the 
assembly will be bound to follow the same rules of justice and 
equity. Moreover, in ordaining that an annual assembly be held 
in the city of Constantine.* we believe that we are doing a thing 
not only advantageous to the public good, but also adapted to 
multiply social relations. Indeed, the city is so advantageously 
situated, strangers come there in such numbers, and it enjoys 
such an extensive commerce, that everything finds its way there 
which grows or is manufactured in other places. All admirable 
things that the rich East, perfumed Arabia, delicate Assyria, 
fertile Africa, beautiful Spain, valiant Gaul produce, abound in 
this place with such profusion, that whatever is esteemed 
magnificent in the various parts of the world seems there the 
produce of the soil. Besides, the junction of the Rhone with 
the Tuscan sea approximates and renders almost neighbors 
those countries which the first traverses, and the second bathes 
in its windings. Thus, since the entire earth places at the 
service of this city all that it has most worthy — since the peculiar 
productions of all countries are transported hither by land, by 
sea, and by the course of rivers, by help of sails, of oars, and of 
wagons — how can our Gaul do otherwise than behold a benefit 
in the command which we give to convoke a public assembly in 
a city, wherein are united, as it were, by the gift of God, all the 
enjoyments of life, and all the facilities of commerce ? 
" The illustrious prefect Petronius,t through a laudable and 
reasonable motive, formerly commanded that this custom should 
be observed ; but as the practice thereof was interrupted by the 
confusion of the times, and by the reign of usupers, we have 
resolved to revive it in vigor by the authority of our wisdom. 
Thus, then, dear and beloved cousin Agricola, your illustrious 
Magnificence, conforming yourself to our present ordinance, 
and to the custom established by your predecessors, will cause 
to be observed throughout the provinces the following rules: 
* Constantine the Great had a smgular liking for the town of Aries. It was 
he who established there the seat of the Gaulish prefecture ; he desired also that 
it should bear his name, but custom prevailed ajjainst his wish. 
f Petronius was prefect of the Gauls between the years 402 and 408. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 27 
" * Let all persons who are honored with public functions, or 
who are proprietors of domains, and all judges of provinces, be 
informed that, each year, they are to assemble in council in the 
city of Aries, between the ides of August and those of September, 
the days of convocation and of sitting being determined at their 
pleasure. 
" ' Novem Populinia and the second Aquitaine, being the most 
distant provinces, should their judges be detained by indispen- 
sable occupations, may send deputies in their place, according 
to custom. 
" ' Those who shall neglect to appear at the place assigned and 
at the time appointed, shall pay a fine, which for the judges, 
shall be five pounds of gold, and three pounds for the members 
of the curicB'^ and other dignitaries.' 
'* We propose, by this means, to confer great advantages and 
favor on the inhabitants of our provinces. We feel, also, assured 
of adding to the ornaments of the city of Aries, to the fidehty of 
which we are so much indebted, according to our brother and 
patrician, f 
" Given on the 15th of the calends of May; received at Aries 
on the loth of the calends of June." 
The provinces and the towns refused the benefit; no one would 
nominate the deputies, no one would go to Aries. Central- 
ization and unity were contrary to the primitive character of 
that society; the local and munificent spirit reappeared every- 
where, and the impossibility of reconstituting a general society 
or country became evident. The towns confined themselves, 
each to its own walls and its own affairs, and the empire fell 
because none wished to be of the empire, because citizens 
desired to be only of their own city. Thus we again discover, 
at the fall of the Roman Empire, the same fact which we have 
detected in the cradle of Rome, namely, the predominance of the 
municipal form and spirit. The Roman world had returned to 
its first condition; towns had constituted it; it dissolved; and 
towns remained. 
In the municipal system we see what ancient Roman civili- 
zation has bequeathed to modern Europe ; that system was very 
irregular, much weakened and far inferior, no doubt, to what 
it had been in earlier times; but, nevertheless, the only real, the 
only constituted system which had outlived all the elements of 
the Roman world. 
When I say alone I make a mistake. Another fact, another 
idea equally survived; the idea of the empire, the name of em- 
* The municipal bodies of Roman towns were called curicB, and the members 
of those bodies, who were very numerous, were called curiales. 
t Constantine, the second husband of Placidius, whom Honorius had chosen 
for colleague in 421. 
28 GUIZOT 
peror, the idea of imperial majesty, of an absolute and sacred 
power attached to the name of emperor. These are the elements 
which Rome has transmitted to European civilization ; upon one 
hand, the municipal system, its habits, rules, precedents, the 
principle of freedom; on the other, a general and uniform civil 
legislation, the idea of absolute power, of sacred majesty, of the 
emperor, the principle of order and subjection. 
But there was formed at the same time, in the heart of the 
Roman society, a society of a very diflferent nature, founded 
upon totally diflferent principles, animated by diflferent senti- 
ments, a society which was about to infuse into modern Euro- 
pean society elements of a character wholly diflferent ; I speak of 
the Christian Church. I say the Christian church, and not 
Christianity. At the end of the fourth and at the beginning of 
the fifth century Christianity was no longer merely an individual 
belief, it was an institution ; it was constituted ; it had its govern- 
ment, a clergy, an hierarchy calculated for the diflferent functions 
of the clergy, revenues, means of independent action, rallying 
points suited for a great society, provincial, national and general 
councils, and the custom of debating in common upon the 
afifairs of the society. In a word, Christianity, at this epoch, was 
v/ not only a religion, it was also a church. 
Had it not been a church I cannot say what might have 
happened to it amid the fall of the Roman Empire. I confine 
myself to simply human considerations; I put aside every ele- 
ment which is foreign to the natural consequences of natural 
facts; had Christianity been, as in the earlier times, no more than 
a belief, a sentiment, an individual conviction, we may believe 
that it would have sunk amidst the dissolution of the empire and 
the invasion of the barbarians. In later times, in Asia and in all 
the north of Africa, it sunk under an invasion of the same nature, 
under the invasion of the Moslem barbarians; it sunk then, 
although it subsisted in the form of an institution, or constituted 
church. With much more reason might the same thing have 
happened at the moment of the fall of the Roman Empire. There 
existed, at that time, none of those means by which, in the 
present day, moral influences establish themselves or oflfer resist- 
ance, independently of institutions; none of those means whereby 
a pure truth, a pure idea obtains a great empire over minds, 
governs actions and determines events. Nothing of the kind 
existed in the fourth century to give a like authority to ideas and 
to personal sentiments. It is clear that a society strongly organ- 
ized and strongly governed was indispensable to struggle against 
such a disaster, and to issue victorious from such a storm. I do 
not think that I say more than the truth in aflfirming that at the 
end of the fourth and the commencement of the fifth centuries 
it was the Christian church that saved Christianity; it was the 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 
29 
church with its institutions, its magistrates and its power, that 
vigorously resisted the internal dissolution of the empire and 
barbarism ; that conquered the barbarians and became the bond, 
the medium and the principle of civilization between the Roman 
and barbarian worlds. It is, then, the condition of the church 
rather than that of religion, properly so called, that we must look 
to in order to discover what Christianity has, since then, added 
to modern civilization, and what new elements it has introduced 
therein. What was the Christian church at that period? 
When we consider, always under a purely human point of 
view, the various revolutions which have accomplished them- 
selves during the development of Christianity, from the time of 
its origin up to the fifth century; if, I repeat, we consider it 
simply as a community and not as a religious creed, we find that 
It passed through three essentially different states. 
In the very earliest period, the Christian society presents itself 
as a simple association of a common creed and common senti- 
ments; the first Christians united to enjoy together the same 
emotions, and the same religious convictions. We find among 
them no system of determinate doctrines, no rules, no discipline, 
no body of magistrates. 
Of course, no society, however newly born, however weakly 
constituted it may be, exists without a moral power which 
animates and directs it. In the various Christian congregations 
there were men who preached, taught and morally governed the 
congregation, but there was no formal magistrate, no recognized 
discipline; a simple association caused by a community of creed 
and sentiments was the primitive condition of the Christian 
society. 
In proportion as it advanced — and very speedily, since traces 
are visible in the earliest monuments — a body of doctrines, of 
rules, of discipline, and of magistrates, began to appear; one 
kind of magistrates were called Trpecr/Svrepoiy or ancients, who 
became the priests; another, CTria-fjiO'iroi, or inspectors, or 
superintendents, who became bishops ; a third Btafiovoi, or 
deacons, who were charged with the care of the poor, and with 
the distribution of alms. 
It is scarcely possible to determine what were the precise 
functions of these various magistrates ; the line of demarcation 
was probably very vague and variable, but what is clear is that 
an establishment was organized. Still, a peculiar character pre- 
vails in this second period : the preponderance and rule belonged 
to the body of the faithful. It was the body of the faithful which 
prevailed, both as to the choice of functionaries, and as to the 
adoption of discipline, and even doctrine. The church govern- 
ment and the Christian people were not as yet separated. They 
did not exist apart from, and independently of, one another; 
30 
GUIZOT 
and the Christian people exercised the principal influence in the 
society. 
In the third period all was different. A clergy existed who 
were distinct from the people ; a body of priests who had their 
own riches, jurisdiction, and peculiar constitution ; in a word, an 
entire government, which in itself was a complete society, a 
society provided with all the means of existence, independently 
of the society to which it had reference, and over which it ex- 
tended its influence. Such was the third stage of the constitu- 
tion of the Christian church ; such was the form in which it ap- 
peared at the beginning of the fifth century. The government 
was not completely separated from the people ; there has never 
been a parallel kind of government, and less in religious matters 
than in any others ; but in the relations of the clergy to the faith- 
ful, the clergy ruled almost without control. 
The Christian clergy had moreover another and very different 
source of influence. The bishops and the priests became the 
principal municipal magistrates. You have seen, that of the 
Roman Empire there remained, properly speaking, nothing but 
the municipal system. It had happened, from the vexations of 
despotism and the ruin of the towns, that the curiales, or mem- 
bers of the municipal bodies, had become discouraged and 
apathetic; on the contrary, the bishops, and the body of priests, 
full of life and zeal, offered themselves naturally for the super- 
intendence and direction of all matters. We should be wrong 
to reproach them for this, to tax them with usurpation; it was 
all in the natural course of things; the clergy alone were morally 
strong and animated ; they became everywhere powerful. Such 
is the law of the universe. 
The marks of this revolution are visible in all the legislation 
of the emperors at this period. If you open the code, either of 
Theodosius or of Justinian, you will find numerous regulations 
which remit municipal affairs to the clergy and the bishops. 
Here are some of them : 
''Cod. Just. I. I, tit. IV., de episcopali audientid. § 26. — 
With respect to the yearly affairs of cities, whether they concern 
the ordinary revenues of the city, either from funds arising from 
the property of the city, or from private gifts or legacies, or from 
any other source; whether public works, or depots of provisions, 
or aqueducts, or the maintenance of baths, or ports, or the con- 
struction of walls or towers, or the repairing of bridges or roads, 
or trials in which the city may be engaged in reference to public 
or private interests, we ordain as follows : The very pious bishop 
and three notables chosen from among the first men of the city, 
shall meet together; they shall, each year, examine the works 
done; they shall take care that those who conduct them, or who 
have conducted them, shall regulate them, with precision, render 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 31 
their accounts, and show that they have duly performed their 
engagements in the administration, whether of the pubUc monu- 
ments, or of the sums appointed for provisions or baths, or of 
expenses in the maintenance of roads, aqueducts, or any other 
work. 
''Ibid. § 30. — With regard to the guardianship of young 
persons of the first or second age, and of all those for whom the 
law appoints guardians, if their fortune does not exceed 500 
aurei, we ordain that the nomination of the president of the 
province shall not be waited for, as this gives rise to great 
expenses, particularly if the said president do not reside in the 
city in which it is necessary to provide the guardianship. The 
nomination of guardians shall in such case be made by the 
magistrate of the city ... in concert with the very pious 
bishop and other person or persons invested with public offices, 
if there be more than one. 
" Ibid I. I, tit. LV., de defensoribus. § 8. — We desire that 
the defenders of the cities, being well instructed in the holy 
mysteries of the orthodox faith, be chosen and instituted by the 
venerable bishops, the priests, the notables, the proprietors, and 
the curiales. As regards their installation, it shall be referred to 
the glorious power of the pretorian prefect, in order that their 
authority may have infused into it more solidity and vigor from 
the letters of admission of his Magnificence." 
I might cite a great number of other laws, and you would 
everywhere meet with the fact which I have mentioned; between 
the municipal system of the Romans, and that of the middle 
ages, the municipal-ecclesiastic system interposed; the prepon- 
derance of the clergy in the affairs of the city succeeded that of 
the ancient municipal magistrates, and preceded the organi- 
zation of the modern municipal corporations. 
You perceive what prodigious power was thus obtained by 
the Christian church, as well by its own constitution as by its 
influence upon the Christian people, and by the part which it 
took in civil affairs. Thus, from that epoch, it powerfully 
assisted in forming the character and furthering the develop- 
ment of modern civilization. Let us endeavor to sum up the 
elements which it from that time introduced into it. 
And first of all there was an immense advantage in the 
presence of a moral influence, of a moral power, of a power 
which reposed solely upon convictions and upon moral creeds 
and sentiments, amidst the deluge of material power which at 
this time inundated society. Had the Christian church not 
existed, the whole world must have been abandoned to purely 
material force. The church alone exercised a moral power. It 
did more; it sustained, it spread abroad the idea of a rule, of a 
law superior to all human laws. It proposed for the salvation 
32 GUIZOT 
of humanity the fundamental belief that there exists, above all 
human laws, a law which is denominated, according to periods 
and customs, sometimes reason, sometimes the divine law, but 
which, everywhere and always, is the same law under different 
names. 
In short, with the church originated a great fact, the separation 
of spiritual and temporal power. This separation is the source 
of liberty of conscience; it is founded upon no other principle 
but that which is the foundation of the most perfect and extended 
freedom of conscience. The separation of temporal and spirit- 
ual power is based upon the idea that physical force has neither 
right nor influence over souls, over conviction, over truth. It 
flows from the distinction established between the world of 
thought and the world of action, between the world of internal 
and that of external facts. Thus this principle of liberty of con- 
science for which Europe has struggled so much, and suflfered 
so much, this principle which prevailed so late, and often, in its 
progress, against the inclination of the clergy, was enunciated, 
under the name of the separation of temporal and spiritual 
power, in the very cradle of European civilization; and it was 
the Christian church which, from the necessity imposed by its 
situation of defending itself against barbarism, introduced and 
maintained it. 
' The presence, then, of a moral influence, the maintenance of 
a divine law, and the separation of the temporal and spiritual 
powers, are the three grand benefits which the Christian church 
in the fifth century conferred upon the European world. 
Even at that time, however, all its influences were not equally 
salutary. Already, in the fifth century, there appeared in the 
church certain unwholesome principles, which have played a 
great part in the development of our civilization. Thus, at this 
period, there prevailed within it the separation of governors and 
the governed, the attempt to establish the independence of 
*--^overnors as regards the governed, to impose laws upon the 
governed, to possess their mind, their life, without the free con- 
sent of their reason and of their will. The church, moreover, 
endeavored to render the theocratic principle predominant in 
society, to usurp the temporal power, to reign exclusively. And 
when it could not succeed in obtaining temporal dominion, in 
inducing the prevalence of the theocratic principle, it allied itself 
with temporal princes, and, in order to share, supported their 
absolute power at the expense of the liberty of the people. 
Such were the principles of civilization which Europe, in the 
fifth century, derived from the church and from the Empire. It 
was in this condition that the barbarians found the Roman 
world, and came to take possession of it. In order to fully 
understand all the elements which met and mixed in the cradle 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 33 
of our civilization, it only remains for us to study the barba- 
rians. 
When I speak of the barbarians, you understand that we have 
nothing to do here with their history; narrative is not our 
present business. You know that at this period the conquerors 
of the Empire were nearly all of the same race; they were all 
Germans, except some Sclavonic tribes, the Alani, for example. 
We know also that they were all in pretty nearly the same stage 
of civilization. Some difference, indeed, might have existed 
between them in this respect, according to the greater or less 
degree of connection which the different tribes had had with the 
Roman world. Thus, no doubt the Goths were more advanced, 
possessed milder manners than the Franks. But in considering 
matters under a general point of view, and in their results as 
regards ourselves, this original difference of civilization among 
the barbarous people is of no importance. 
It is the general condition of society among the barbarians 
that we need to understand. But this is a subject with which, at 
the present day, it is very difficult to make ourselves acquainted. 
We obtain, without much difficulty, a comprehension of the 
Roman municipal system, of the Christian church; their influ- 
ence has been continued up to our own days. We find traces of 
it in numerous institutions and actual facts ; we have a thousand 
means of recognizing and explaining them. But the customs 
and social condition of the barbarians have completely perished. 
We are compelled to make them out either from the earliest 
historical monuments, or by an effort of the imagination. 
There is a sentiment, a fact which, before all things, it is 
necessary that we should well understand in order to represent 
faithfully to one's self the barbaric character: the pleasure of 
individual independence; the pleasure of enjoying one's self 
with vigor and liberty, amidst the chances of the world and of 
life; the delights of activity without labor; the taste for an 
adventurous career, full of uncertainty, inequality and peril. 
Such was the predominating sentiment of the barbarous state, 
the moral want which put in motion these masses of human 
beings. In the present day, locked up as we are in so regular a 
society, it is difficult to realize this sentiment to one's self with 
all the power which it exercised over the barbarians of the fourth 
and fifth centuries. There is only one work which, in my 
opinion, contains this characteristic of barbarism stamped in 
all its energy — " The History of the Conquest of England by the 
Normans," of M. Thierry, the only book wherein the motives, 
tendencies and impulses which actuate men in a social con- 
dition, bordering on barbarism, are felt and reproduced with 
a really Homeric faithfulness. Nowhere else do we see so well 
the nature of a barbarian and of the life of a barbarian. Some- 
3 
34 GUIZOT 
thing of this sort is also found, though, in my opinion, in a 
much lower degree, with much less simplicity, much less truth, 
in Cooper's romances upon the savages of America. There is 
something in the life of the American savages, in the relations 
and the sentiments they bear with them in the middle of the 
woods, that recalls, up to a certain point, the manners of the 
ancient Germans. No doubt these pictures are somewhat ideal- 
ized, somewhat poetic; the dark side of the barbaric manners 
and life is not presented to us in all its grossness. I speak not 
only of the evils induced by these manners upon the social state, 
but of the internal and individual condition of the barbarian 
himself. There was within this passionate want of personal 
independence something more gross and more material than 
one would be led to conceive from the work of M. Thierry; 
there was a degree of brutality and of apathy which is not always 
exactly conveyed by his recitals. Nevertheless, when we look 
to the bottom of the question, notwithstanding this alloy of 
brutality, of materialism, of dull, stupid selfishness, the love of 
independence is a noble and a moral sentiment, which draws its 
power from the moral nature of man; it is the pleasure of feeling 
one's self a man, the sentiment of personality, of human spon- 
taneity, in its free development. 
It was through the German barbarians that this sentiment 
was introduced into European civilization; it was unknown in 
the Roman world, unknown in the Christian church, and 
unknown in almost all the ancient civilizations. When you find 
liberty in ancient civilizations, it is political liberty, the liberty 
of the citizen : man strove not for his personal liberty, but for his 
liberty as a citizen: he belonged to an association, he was 
devoted to an association, he was ready to sacrifice himself to 
an association. It was the same with the Christian church: a 
sentiment of strong attachment to the Christian corporation, of 
devotion to its laws, and a lively desire to extend its empire; or 
rather, the religious sentiment induced a reaction of man upon 
himself, upon his soul, an internal effort to subdue his own 
liberty, and to submit himself to the will of his faith. But the 
sentiment of personal independence, a love of liberty displaying 
itself at all risks, without any other motive but that of satisfying 
itself; this sentiment, I repeat, was unknown to the Roman and 
to the Christian society. It was by the barbarians that it was 
brought in and deposited in the cradle of modem civilization, 
wherein it has played so conspicuous a part, has produced such 
worthy results, that it is impossible to help reckoning it as one 
of its fundamental elements. 
There is a second fact, a second element of civilization, for 
which we are equally indebted to the barbarians: this is military 
clicntship; the bond which established itself between individuals, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 35 
between warriors, and which, without destroying the liberty of 
each, without even in the beginning destroying, beyond a certain 
point, the equahty which almost completely existed between 
them, nevertheless founded an hierarchial subordination, and 
gave birth to that aristocratical organization which afterward 
became feudalism. The foundation of this relation was the 
attachment of man to man, the fidelity of individual to indi- 
vidual, without external necessity, and without obligation based 
upon the general principles of society. In the ancient republics 
you see no man attached freely and especially to any other man; 
they were all attached to the city. Among the barbarians it was 
between individuals that the social bond was formed; first by 
the relation of the chief to his companion, when they lived in 
the condition of a band of wandering over Europe; and later, 
by the relation of suzerain to vassal. This second principle, 
which has played so great a part in the history of modern civili- 
zation, this devotion of man to man, came to us from the barba- 
rians ; it is from their manners that it has passed into ours. 
I ask you, was I wrong in saying at the beginning that 
modern civilization, even in its cradle, had been as varied, as 
agitated and as confused as I have endeavored to describe it to 
you in the general picture I have given you of it? Is it not true 
that we have now discovered, at the fall of the Roman Empire, 
almost all the elements which unite in the progressive develop- 
ment of our civilization? We have found, at that time, three. 
wholly different societies: the municipal society, the last L 
remains of the Roman Empire, the Christian society, and the ' 
barbaric society. We find these societies very variously organ- 
ized, founded upon totally different principles, inspiring 
men with wholly different sentiments ; we find the craving after 
the most absolute independence side by side with the most 
complete submission; military patronage side by side with 
ecclesiastical dominion ; the spiritual and temporal powers every- 
where present; the canons of the church, the learned legislation 
of the Romans, the almost unwritten customs of the barbarians; 
everywhere the mixture, or rather the co-existence of the most 
diverse races, languages, social situations, manners, ideas and 
impressions. Herein I think we have a sufficient proof of the 
faithfulness of the general character under which I have endeav- 
ored to present our civilization to you. 
No doubt this confusion, this diversity, this struggle, have 
cost us very dear; these have been the cause of the slow progress 
of Europe, of the storms and sufferings to which she has been 
a prey. Nevertheless, I do not think we need regret them. To 
people, as well as to individuals, the chance of the most complete 
and varied development, the chance of an almost unlimited prog- 
ress in all directions, compensates of itself alone for all that it 
36 GUIZOt 
may cost to obtain the right of casting for it. And all things 
considered, this state, so agitated, so toilsome, so violent, has 
availed much more than the simplicity with which other civili- 
zations present themselves; the human race has gained thereby 
more than it has suffered. 
We are now acquainted with the general features of the con- 
dition in which the fall of the Roman Empire left the world; we 
are acquainted with the different elements which were agitated 
and became mingled, in order to give birth to European civili- 
zation. Henceforth we shall see them advancing and acting 
under our eyes. In the next lecture I shall endeavor to show 
what they became, and what they effected in the epoch which we 
are accustomed to call the times of barbarism; that is to say, 
while the chaos of invasion yet existed. 
THIRD LECTURE. 
I HAVE placed before you the fundamental elements of 
European civilization, tracing them to its very cradle, at 
the moment of the fall of the Roman Empire. I have 
endeavored to give you a glimpse beforehand of their diversity, 
and their constant struggle, and to show you that no one of 
them succeeded in reigning over our society, or at least in 
reigning over it so completely as to enslave or expel the others. 
We have seen that this was the distinguishing character of 
European civilization. We now come to its history at its 
commencement, in the ages which it is customary to call the 
barbarous. 
At the first glance we cast upon this epoch it is impossible 
not to be struck with a fact which seems to contradict what 
we have lately said. When you examine certain notions which 
are accredited concerning the antiquities of modern Europe, 
you will perceive that the various elements of our civiliza- 
tion, the monarchical, theocratical, aristocratical, and demo- 
cratical principles, all pretend that European society originally 
belonged to them, and that they have only lost the sole dominion 
by the usurpation of contrary principles. Question all that has 
been written, ,all that has been said upon this subject, and you 
will see that all the systems whereby our beginnings are sought 
to be represented or explained maintain the exclusive predom- 
inance of one or other of the elements of European civilization. 
Thus there is a school of feudal publicists, of whom the 
most celebrated is M. de Boulainvilliers, who pretend that, 
after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was the conquering 
nation, subsequently become the nobility, which possessed all 
powers and rights; that society was its domain; that kings 
and peoples have despoiled it of this domain ; that aristocratic 
organization was the primitive and true form of Europe. 
Beside this school you will find that of the monarchists, the 
Abbe Dubois, for instance, who maintain, on the contrary, 
that it was to royalty European society belonged. The Ger- 
man kings, say they, inherited all the rights of the Roman 
emperors ; they had even been called in by the ancient nations ; 
the Gauls among others; they alone ruled legitimately; all 
the acquisitions of the aristocracy were only encroachments 
upon monarchy. 
37 
3$ GUIZOT 
A third party presents itself, that of the liberal publicists, 
republicans, democrats, or whatever you like to call them. Con- 
sult the Abbe de Mably ; according to him, it is to the system 
of free institutions, to the association of free men, to the 
people properly so called, that the government of society de- 
volved from the period of the fifth century : nobles and kings 
enriched themselves with the spoils of primitive freedom; it 
sunk beneath their attacks indeed, but it reigned before them. 
And above all these monarchical, aristocratical and popular 
pretensions rises the theocratical pretension of the church, who 
affirms that in virtue of her very mission, of her divine title, 
society belonged to her ; that she alone had the right to govern 
it; that she alone was the legitimate queen of the European 
world., won over by her labors to civilization and to truth. 
See then the position in which we are placed ! We fancied 
we had shown that no one of the elements of European civiliza- 
tion had exclusively ruled in the course of its history; that 
those elements had existed in a constant state of vicinity, of 
amalgamation, of combat, and of compromise; and yet, at 
our very first step, we meet with the directly contrary opinion, 
that, even in its cradle, in the bosom of barbaric Europe, it 
was such or such a one of their elements which alone possessed 
society. And it is not only in a single country, but in all the 
countries of Europe, that, beneath slightly different forms, at 
different periods, the various principles of our civilization have 
manifested these irreconcilable pretensions. The historical 
schools we have just characterized are to be met with every- 
where. 
This is an important fact — important not in itself, but be- 
cause it reveals other facts which hold a conspicuous place in 
our history. From this simultaneous setting forth of the most 
opposite pretensions to the exclusive possession of power in 
the first age of modern Europe two remarkable facts become 
apparent. The first, the principle, the idea of political legiti- 
macy; an idea which has played a great part in the course of 
European civilization. The second, the veritable and peculiar 
character of the condition of barbaric Europe, of that epoch 
with which we are at present especially concerned. 
I shall endeavor to demonstrate these two facts, to deduce 
them successively from this combat of primitive pretensions 
which I have just described. 
What do the various elements of European civilization, the 
theocratical, monarchical, aristocratical and popular elements 
pretend to, when they wish to appear the first who possessed 
society in Europe? Do they not thus pretend to have been 
alone legitimate? Political legitimacy is evidently a right 
founded upon antiquity, upon duration ; priority in time is ap- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 
39 
pealed to as the source of the right, as the proof of the legiti- 
macy of power. And observe, I pray you, that this pretension 
is not peculiar to any one system, to any one element of our 
civilization ; it extends to all. In modern times we are accus- 
tomed to consider the idea of legitimacy as existing in only 
one system, the monarchical. In this we are mistaken; it is 
discoverable in all. You have already seen that all the elements 
of our civilization have equally desired to appropriate it. If 
we enter into the subsequent history of Europe, we shall find 
the most different social forms and governments equally in 
possession of their character and legitimacy. The Italian and 
Swiss aristocracies and democracies, the republic of San 
Marino, as well as the greatest monarchies of Europe, have 
called themselves, and have been regarded as legitimate; the 
former, like the latter, have founded their pretensions to 
legitimacy upon the antiquity of their institutions and upon 
the historical priority and perpetuity of their system of gov- 
ernment. 
If you leave Europe and direct your attention to other times 
and other countries, you everywhere meet with this idea of 
political legitimacy; you find it attaching itself everywhere to 
some portion of the government, to some institution, form, or 
maxim. There has been no country and no time, in which there 
has not existed a certain portion of the social system, public 
powers; which has not attributed to itself, and in which has 
not been recognized this character of legitimacy, derived from 
antiquity and long duration. 
What is this principle? what are its elements? how has it 
introduced itself into European civilization? 
At the origin of all powers, I say of all without any distinc- 
tion, we meet with physical force. I do not mean to state 
that force alone has founded them all, or that if, in their 
origin, they had not had other titles than that of force, they 
would have been established. Other titles are manifestly neces- 
sary ; powers have become established in consequence of certain 
social expediences, of certain references to the state of society, 
manners, and opinions. But it is impossible to avoid perceiving 
that physical force has stained the origin of all the powers of 
the world, whatever may have been their character and form. 
Yet none will have anything to say to this origin ; all powers, 
whatever they may be, reject it; none will admit themselves 
the offspring of force. An unconquerable instinct warns gov- 
ernments that force does not found right, and that if force 
was their origin, their right could never be established. This, 
then, is the reason why, when we go back to early times, and 
there find the various systems and powers a prey to violence, 
all exclaim, " I was anterior to all this, I existed previously, 
40 GUIZOt 
in virtue of other titles; society belonged to me before this 
state of violence and struggle in which you meet with me ; I was 
legitimate, but others contested and seized my rights." 
This fact alone proves that the idea of force is not the 
foundation of political legitimacy, but that it reposes upon a 
totally different basis. What, indeed, is done by all these 
systems in thus formally disavowing force? They themselves 
proclaim that there is another kind of legitimacy, the true 
foundation of all others, the legitimacy of reason, justice, and 
right; and this is the origin with which they desire to con- 
nect themselves. It is because they wish it not to be sup- 
posed that they are the offspring of force, that they pretend 
to be invested in the name of their antiquity with a different 
title. The first characteristic then, of political legitimacy, is 
to reject physical force as a source of power, and to connect 
it with a moral idea, with a moral force, with the idea of right, 
of justice, and of reason. This is the fundamental element from 
which the principle of political legitimacy has issued. It has 
issued thence by the help of antiquity and long duration. And 
in this manner : 
After physical force has presided at the birth of all govern- 
ments, of all societies, time progresses; it alters the works 
of force, it corrects them, corrects them by the very fact that 
a society endures, and is composed of men. Man carries 
within himself certain notions of order, justice and reason, a 
certain desire to induce their prevalence, to introduce them 
into the circumstances among which he lives; he labors un- 
ceasingly at this task ; and if the social condition in which he 
is placed continues, he labors always with a certain effect. 
Man places reason, morality and legitimacy in the world in 
which he lives. 
Independently of the work of man, by a law of Providence 
which it is impossible to mistake, a law analogous to that which 
regulates the material world, there is a certain measure of 
order, reason and justice, which is absolutely necessary to the 
duration of a society. From the single fact of its duration, 
we may conclude that a society is not wholly absurd, insensate 
and iniquitous ; that it is not utterly deprived of that element 
of reason, truth and justice which alone gives life to societies. 
If, moreover, the society develops itself, if it becomes more 
vigorous and more powerful, if the social condition from day 
to day is accepted by a greater number of men, it is because 
it gathers by the action of time more reason, justice and right; 
because circumstances regulate themselves, step by step, accord- 
ing to true legitimacy. 
Thus the idea of political legitimacy penetrates the world, 
and men's minds, from the world. It has for its foundation 
CIVILISATION IN EUROPE 41 
and first origin, in a certain measure at least, moral legitimacy, 
justice, reason, and truth, and afterward the sanction of time, 
which gives cause for believing that reason has won entrance 
into facts, and that true legitimacy has been introduced into 
the external world. At the epoch which we are about to study, 
we shall find force and falsehood hovering over the cradle of 
royalty, of aristocracy, of democracy, and of the church her- 
self ; you will everywhere behold force and falsehood reform- 
ing themselves, little by little, under the hand of time, right 
and truth taking their places in civilization. It is this intro- 
duction of right and truth into the social state, which has 
developed, step by step, the idea of political legitimacy; it is 
thus that it has been established in modern civilization. 
When, therefore, attempts have at different times been 
made to raise this idea as the banner of absolute power, it has 
been perverted from its true origin. So far is it from being 
the banner of absolute power, that it is only in the name of 
right and justice that it has penetrated and taken root in the 
world. It is not exclusive ; it belongs to no one in particular, 
but springs up wherever right develops itself. Political legiti- 
macy attaches itself to liberty as well as to power ; to individual 
rights as well as to the forms according to which public func- 
tions are exercised. We shall meet with it, in our way, in 
the most contrary systems ; in the feudal system, in the munici- 
palities of Flanders and Germany, in the Italian republics, 
no less than in the monarchy. It is a character spread over 
the various elements of modern civilization, and which it is 
necessary to understand thoroughly on entering upon its his- 
tory. 
The second fact which clearly reveals itself in the simul- 
taneous pretensions of which I spoke in the beginning, is 
the true character of the so-called barbarian epoch. All the 
elements of European civilization pretend at this time to have 
possessed Europe; it follows that neither of them predomi- 
nated. When a social form predominates in the world, it is 
not so difficult to recognize it. on coming to the tenth cent- 
ury we shall recognize, without hesitation, the predominance 
of the feudal system ; in the seventeenth century we shall not 
hesitate to affirm that the monarchical system prevails ; if we 
look to the municipalities of Flanders, to the Italian republics, 
we shall immediately declare the empire of the democratic 
principle. When there is really any predominating principle 
in society, it is impossible to mistake it. 
The dispute which has arisen between the various systems 
that have had a share in European civilization, upon the ques- 
tion, which predominated at its origin, proves, then, that they 
all co-existed, without any one of them prevailing generally 
42 GUIZOT 
enough, or certainly enough to give to society its form and its 
name. 
Such, then, is the character of the barbarian epoch ; it was 
the chaos of all elements, the infancy of all systems, an uni- 
versal turmoil, in which even strife was not permanent or sys- 
tematic. By examining all the aspects of the social state at 
this period, I might show you that it is impossible anywhere 
to discover a single fact, or a single principle, which was any- 
thing like general or established. I shall confine myself to two 
essential points: the condition of individuals, and the con- 
dition of institutions. That will be enough to paint the entire 
society. 
At this period we meet with four classes of persons. — i. The 
free men ; that is to say, those who depended upon no superior, 
upon no patron, and who possessed their property and rege- 
lated their life in complete liberty, without any bond of obliga- 
tion to any other man. 2. The leudes, Udeles, anstrustions, 
etc., bound at first by the relation of companion to chief, and 
afterward by that of vassal to suzerain, to another man, to- 
ward whom, on account of a grant of lands, or other gifts, 
they had contracted the obligation of service. 3. The freedman. 
4. The slaves. 
But were these various classes fixed? Did men, when once 
they were inclosed in their limits, remain there? Had the 
relations of the various classes anything of regularity and 
permanence? By no means. You constantly behold freemen 
who leave their position to place themselves in the service of 
some one, receiving from him some gift or other, and passing 
into the class of leudes; others you see who fall into the class 
of slaves. Elsewhere leudes are seen struggling to separate 
themselves from their patrons, to again become independent, 
to re-enter the class of freemen. Everywhere you behold a 
movement, a continual passage of one class into another; an 
uncertainty, a general instability in the relations of the classes ; 
no man remaining in his position, no position remaining the 
same. 
Landed properties were in the same condition. You know 
that these were distinguished as allodial, or wholly free, and 
beneficiary, or subject to certain obligations with regard to a 
superior: you know how an attempt has been made to estab- 
lish, in this last class of properties, a precise and defined sys- 
tem ; it has been said that the benefices were at first given 
for a certain determinate number of years, afterward for life, 
and that finally they became hereditary. A vain attempt I All 
these kinds of tenure existed without order and simultaneously ; 
we meet, at the same moment, with benefices for a fixed time, 
for life, and heredity; the same lands, indeed, passed in a 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 43 
few years through these different states. There was nothing 
more stable in the condition of lands than in that of individuals. 
on all sides was felt the laborious transition of the wandering 
to the sedentary life, of personal relations to the combined 
relations of men and properties, or to real relations. During 
this transition all is confused, local and disordered. 
In the institutions we find the, same instability, the same 
chaos. Three systems of institutions co-existed: royalty; 
aristocratic institutions, or the dependence of men and lands 
one upon another; and free institutions, that is to say, the 
assemblies of free men deliberating in common. Neither of 
these systems was in possession of society; neither of them 
prevailed over the others. Free institutions existed, but the 
men who should have taken part in the assemblies rarely at- 
tended them. The signorial jurisdiction was not more regu- 
larly exercised. Royalty, which is the simplest of institutions 
and the easiest to determine, had no fixed character; it was 
partly elective, partly hereditary. Sometimes the son succeeded 
the father; sometimes a selection was made from the family; 
sometime? it was a simple election of a distant relation, or 
of a stranger. In no system will you find anything fixed ; all 
institutions, as well as all social situations, existed together, 
became confounded, and were continually changing. 
In states the same fluctuation prevailed: they were erected 
and suppressed, united and divided ; there were no boundaries, 
no governments, no distant people; but a general confusion 
of situations, principles, facts, races and languages; such was 
barbarous Europe. 
Within what limits is this strange period bounded? Its 
origin is well marked, it begins with the fall of the Roman 
Empire. But when did it conclude? In order to answer this 
question, we must learn to what this condition of society is 
to be attributed, what were the causes of this barbarism. 
I think I can perceive two principal causes ; the one material, 
arising from without, in the course of events ; the other moral, 
originating from within, from man himself. 
The material cause was the continuation of the invasion. 
We must not fancy that the invasion of the barbarians ceased 
in the fifth century; we must not think that, because Rome 
was fallen, we shall immediately find the barbaric king- 
doms founded upon its ruins, or that the movement was at 
an end. This movement lasted long after the fall of the empire ; 
the proofs of this are manifest. 
See the Frank kings, even of the first race, called continually 
to make war beyond the Rhine ; Clotaire, Dagobert constantly 
engaged in expeditions- into Germany, fighting against the 
Thuringians, Danes and Saxons, who occupied the right bank 
44 GUIZOT 
of the Rhine. Wherefore? Because these nations wished to 
cross the river, to come and take their share of the spoils of 
the empire. When, about the same time, those great invasions 
of Italy by the Franks established in Gaul, and principally by 
the Eastern or Austrasian Franks ? They attacked Switzerland ; 
passed the Alps; entered Italy. Why? Because they were 
pressed, on the northeast, by new populations ; their expeditions 
were not merely forays for pillage, they were matters of neces- 
sity; they were disturbed in their settlements, and went else- 
where to seek their fortune. A new Germanic nation appeared 
upon the stage, and founded in Italy the kingdom of Lombardy. 
In Gaul, the Frank dynasty changed; the Carlovingians suc- 
ceeded the Merovingians. It was now acknowledged that this 
change of dynasty was, to say the truth, a fresh invasion of 
Gaul by the Franks, a movement of nations which substituted 
the eastern for the western Franks. The change was com- 
pleted; the second race now governed. Charlemagne com- 
menced against the Saxons what the Merovingians had done 
against the Thuringians; he was incessantly engaged in war 
against the nations beyond the Rhine. Who urged these on ? 
The Obotrites, the Wiltzes, the Sorabes, the Bohemians, the 
entire Sclavonic race which pressed upon the Germanic, and 
from the sixth to the ninth century compelled it to advance 
toward the west. Everywhere to the northeast the movement 
of invasion continued and determined events. 
In the south a movement of the same nature exhibited itself: 
the Moslem Arabs appeared. While the Germanic and Scla- 
vonic people pressed on along the Rhine and Danube, the 
Arabs begun their expeditions and conquests upon all the 
coasts of the Mediterranean. 
The invasion of the Arabs had a peculiar character. The 
spirit of conquest and the spirit of proselytism were united. 
The invasion was to conquer a territory and disseminate a 
faith. There was a great difference between this movement 
and that of the Germans. In the Christian world, the spiritual 
and temporal powers were distinct. The desire of propagating 
a creed and making a conquest did not co-exist in the same 
men. 
The Germans, when they became converted, preserved 
their manners, sentiments and tastes ; terrestrial passions and 
interests continued to rule them ; they became Christians, but 
not missionaries. The Arabs, on the contrary, were both con- 
querors and missionaries ; the power of the sword and that 
of the word, with them, were in the same hands. At a later 
period, this character determined the unfortunate turn taken 
by Mussulman civilization; it is in the combination of the 
spiritual and temporal powers, in the confusion of moral and 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 45 
material authority, that the tyranny which seems adherent in 
that civilization originated. This I conceive to be the cause 
of the stationary condition into which that civilization is every- 
where fallen. But the fact did not make its appearance at 
first; on the contrary, it added prodigious force to the Arab 
invasion. Undertaken with moral passions and ideas, it im- 
mediately obtained a splendor and a greatness which was want- 
ing to the German invasion ; it exhibited far more energy and 
enthusiasm, and far differently influenced the minds of men. 
Such was the state of Europe from the fifth to the ninth 
century; pressed on the south by the Mahometans, on the 
north by the Germans and the Sclavonic tribes, it was scarcely 
possible that the reaction of this double invasion should do 
other than hold the interior of Europe in continual disorder. 
The populations were constantly being displaced, and forced 
one upon the other; nothing of a fixed character could be 
established ; the wandering life recommenced on all sides. 
There was, no doubt, some difference in this respect in the 
different states : the chaos was greater in Germany than in the 
rest of Europe, Germany being the focus of the movement; 
France was more agitated than Italy. But in no place could 
society settle or regulate itself; barbarism continued on all 
sides from the same cause that had originated it. 
So much for the material cause, that which arose from the 
course of events. I now come to the moral cause, which 
sprang from the internal condition of man, and which was 
no less powerful. 
After all, whatever external events may be, it is man him- 
self who makes the world; it is in proportion to the ideas, 
sentiments and dispositions, moral and intellectual, of man, 
that the world becomes regulated and progressive; it is upon k 
the internal condition of man that the visible condition of / 
society depends. 
What is required to enable men to found a society with / 
any thing of durability and regularity? It is evidently neces- 
sary that they should have a certain number of ideas sufficiently 
extended to suit that society, to apply to its wants, to its rela- 
tions. It is necessary, moreover, that these ideas should be 
common to the greater number of the members of the society ; 
finally, that they should exercise a certain empire over their 
wills and actions. 
It is clear, that if men have no ideas extending beyond 
their own existence, if their intellectual horizon is confined 
to themselves, if they are abandoned to the tempest of their 
passions and their wills, if they have not among them a cer- 
tain number of notions and sentiments in common around 
which to rally, it is clear, I say, that between them no society 
46 GUIZOT 
IS possible, and that each individual must be a principle of 
disturbance and dissolution to any association which he may 
enter. 
Wherever individuality predominates almost exclusively, 
wherever man considers no one but himself, and his ideas do 
not extend beyond himself, and he obeys nothing but his own 
passions, society (I mean a society somewhat extended and 
permanent) becames for him almost impossible. Such, how- 
ever, was the moral condition of the conquerors of Europe, 
at the time upon which we are now occupied. 
I remarked in my last lecture that we are indebted to the Ger- 
mans for an energetic sentiment of individual liberty, of human 
individuality. But in a state of extreme barbarism and igno- 
rance this sentiment becomes selfishness in all its brutality, and 
in all its insociability. From the fifth to the eigth century it was 
at this point among the Germans. They cared only for their 
own interests, their own passions, their own will : how could 
they be reconciled to a condition even approximating to the 
social ? Attempts were made to prevail upon them to enter it ; 
they attempted to do so themselves. But they immediately 
abandoned it by some act of carelessness, some burst of passion, 
some want of intelligence. Constantly did society attempt to 
form itself; constantly was it destroyed by the act of man, 
by the absence of the moral conditions under which alone it 
can exist. 
Such were the two determining causes of the barbarous 
state. So long as these were prolonged, barbarism endured. 
Let us see how and when they at last termin^ited. 
Europe labored to escape from this condition. It is in the 
nature of man, even when he has been plunged into such a 
condition by his own fault, not to desire to remain in it. How- 
ever rude, however ignorant, however devoted to his own in- 
terests and to his own passions he may be, there is within 
him a voice and an instinct which tells him that he was made 
for better things, that he has other powers, another destiny. 
In the midst of disorder, the love of order and of progress 
pursues and harasses him. The need of justice, foresight, de- 
velopment, agitates him even under the yoke of the most brutal 
selfishness. He feels himself impelled to reform the material 
world, and society, and himself; and he labors to do this, 
though unaware of the nature of the want which urges him. 
The barbarians aspired after civilization, while totally in- 
capable of it, nay more, detesting it from the instant that they 
became acquainted with its law. 
There remained, moreover, considerable wrecks of the Roman 
civilization. The name of the Empire, the recollection of that 
great and glorious society, disturbed the memories of men, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 47 
particularly of the senators of towns, of bishops, priests, and 
all those who had their origin in the Roman world. 
Among the barbarians themselves, or their barbaric ances- 
tors, many had been witnesses of the grandeur of the Empire ; 
they had served in its armies, they had conquered it. The 
image and name of Roman civilization had an imposing in- 
fluence upon them, and they experienced the desire of imitat- 
ing, of reproducing, of preserving something of it. This was 
another cause which urged them to quit the condition of bar- 
barism I have described. 
There was a third cause which suggests itself to every mind ; 
I mean the Christian church. The church was a society regu- 
larly constituted, having its principles, its rules, and its dis- 
cipline, and experiencing an ardent desire to extend its in- 
fluence and conquer its conquerors. Among the Christians of 
this period, among the Christian clergy there were men who 
had thought upon all moral and political questions, who had 
decided opinions and energetic sentiments upon all subjects, 
and a vivid desire to propagate and give them empire. Never 
has any other society made such efforts to influence the sur- 
rounding world, and to stamp thereon its own likeness, as 
were made by the Christian church between the fifth and the 
tenth centuries. When we come to study its particular his- 
tory, we shall see all that it has done. It attacked barbarism, 
as it were, at every point, in order to civilize by ruling over it. 
Finally, there was a fourth cause of civilization, a cause 
which it is impossible fitly to appreciate, but which is not 
therefore the less real, and this is the appearance of great 
men. No one can say why a great man appears at a certain 
epoch, and what he adds to the development of the world ; 
that is a secret of Providence: but the fact is not therefore 
less certain. There are men whom the spectacle of anarchy 
and social stagnation, strikes and revolts, who are intellectually 
shocked therewith as with a fact which ought not to exist, 
and are possessed with an unconquerable desire of changing 
it, a desire of giving some rule, somewhat of the general, 
regular and permanent to the world before them. A terrible 
and often tyrannical power, which commits a thousand crimes, 
a thousand errors, for human weakness attends it; a power, 
nevertheless, glorious and salutary, for it gives to humanity, 
and with the hand of man, a vigorous impulse forward, a 
mighty movement. 
These different causes and forces led, between the fifth and 
ninth century, to various attempts at extricating European so- 
ciety from barbarism. 
The first attempt, which, although but slightly effective, 
must not be overlooked, since it emanated from the barbarians 
48 GUIZOT 
themselves, was the drawing up of the barbaric laws : between 
the sixth and eighth centuries the laws of almost all the bar- 
barous people were written. Before this they had not been 
written; the barbarians had been governed simply by cus- 
toms, until they established themselves upon the ruins of the 
Roman empire. We may reckon the laws of the Burgundians, 
of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, of the Visigoths, of the 
Lombards, the Saxons, the Prisons, the Bavarians, the Alemanni, 
etc. Here was manifestly a beginning of civilization ; an en- 
deavor to bring society under general and regular principles. 
The success of this attempt could not be great ; it was writing 
the laws of a society which no longer existed, the laws of the 
social state of the barbarians before their establishment upon 
the Roman territory, before they had exchanged the wander- 
ing for the sedentary life, the condition of nomad warriors for 
that of proprietors. We find, indeed, here and there, some 
articles concerning the lands which the barbarians had con- 
quered, and concerning their relations with the ancient in- 
habitants of the country; but the foundation of the greater 
part of their laws is the ancient mode of life, the ancient Ger- 
man condition ; they were inapplicable to the new society, and 
occupied only a trifling place in its development. 
At the same time, another kind of an attempt was made in 
Italy and the south of Gaul. Roman society had not so com- 
pletely perished there as elsewhere ; a little more order and life 
remained in the cities. There civilization attempted to lift again 
its head. If, for example, we look to the kingdom of the 
Ostrogoths in Italy under Theodoric, we see even under the 
dominion of a barbarous king and nation the municipal sys- 
tem, taking breath, so to speak, and influencing the general 
course of events. Roman society had acted upon the Goths, 
and had to a certain degree impressed them with its likeness. 
The same fact is visible in the south of Gaul. It was at the 
commencement of the sixth century that a Visigoth king of 
Toulouse, Alaric, caused the Roman laws to be collected, and 
published a code for his Roman subjects under the name of 
the Breviarmm Aniani. 
In Spain it was another power — namely, that of the church, 
which tried to revive civilization. In place of the ancient 
German assemblies, the assemblies of warriors, it was the 
council of Toledo which prevailed in Spain ; and although dis- 
tinguished laymen attended this council, the bishops had domin- 
ion there. Look at the law of the Visigoths, you will see that 
it is not a barbarous law ; it was evidently compiled by the 
philosophers of the time, the clergy. It abounds in general 
ideas, in theories, theories wholly foreign to barbarous man- 
ners. Thus, you know that the legislation of the barbarians 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 49 
was a personal legislation — that is to say, that the same law 
applied only to men of the same race. The Roman law gov- 
erned the Romans, the Frank law governed the Franks ; each 
people had its law, although they were united under the same 
government and inhabited the same territory. This is what 
is called the system of personal legislation, in opposition to that 
of real legislation fixed upon the territory. Well, the legisla- 
tion of the Visigoths was not personal, but fixed upon the terri- 
tory. All the inhabitants of Spain, Visigoths and Romans, 
were subject to the same law. Continue your investigation, and 
you will find yet more evident traces of philosophy. Among 
the barbarians, men had, according to their relative situations, 
a determinate value; the barbarian, the Roman, the freeman, 
the vassal, etc., were not held at the same price, there was a 
tariff of their lives. The principle of the equal value of men 
in the eye of the law was established in the law of the Visi- 
goths. Look to the system of procedure, and you find in place 
of the oath of compur gator es, or the judicial combat, the proof 
by witnesses, and a rational investigation of the matter in 
question, such as might be prosecuted in a civilized society. 
In short, the whole Visigoth law bears a wise, systematic and 
social character. We may perceive herein the work of the same 
clergy who prevailed in the councils of Toledo, and so power- 
fully influenced the government of the country. 
In Spain, then, up to the great invasion of the Arabs, it was 
the theocratic principle which attempted the revival of civili- 
zation. 
In France the same endeavor was the work of a different 
power ; it came from the great men, above all from Charlemagne. 
Examine his reign under its various aspects ; you will see that 
his predominating idea was the design of civilizing his people. 
First, let us consider his wars. He was constantly in the field, 
from the south to the northeast, from the Ebro to the Elbe 
or the Weser. Can you believe that these were mere wilful 
expeditions, arising simply from the desire of conquest? By 
no means. I do not mean to say that all that he did is to be 
fully explained, or that there existed much diplomacy or strate- 
gic skill in his plans; but he obeyed a great necessity — a 
strong desire of suppressing barbarism. He was engaged dur- 
ing the whole of his reign in arresting the double invasion — 
the Mussulman invasion on the south and the German and 
Sclavonic invasion on the north. This is the military character 
of the reign of Charlemagne ; his expedition against the Saxons 
had no other origin and no other purpose. 
If you turn from his wars to his internal government 
you will there meet with a fact of the same nature — the at- 
tempt to introduce order and unity into the administration of 
50 GUIZOT 
all the countries which he possessed. I do not wish to employ 
the word kingdom nor the word state; for these ｅxpressions 
convey too regular a notion, and suggest ideas which are little 
in harmony with the society over which Charlemagne pre- 
sided. But this is certain, that being master of an immense 
territory, he felt indignant at seeing all things incoherent, an- 
archical and rude, and desired to alter their hideous condition. 
First of all he wrought by means of his missi dotninici, whom 
he despatched into the various parts of his territory, in order 
that tney might observe circumstances and reform them, or 
give an account of them to him. He afterward worked by 
means of general assemblies, which he held with much more 
regularity than his predecessors had done. At these assem- 
blies he caused all the most considerable persons of the territory 
to be present. They were not free assemblies, nor did they at 
all resemble the kind of deliberations with which we are ac- 
quainted; they were merely a means taken by Charlemagne 
of being well informed of facts, and of introducing some order 
and unity among his disorderly populations. 
Under whatever point of view you consider the reign of 
Charlemagne, you will always find in it the same character, 
namely, warfare against the barbarous state, the spirit of civili- 
zation; this is what appears in his eagerness to establish 
schools, in his taste for learned men, in the favor with which 
he regarded ecclesiastical influence, and in all that he thought 
proper to do, whether as regarded the entire society or indi- 
vidual man. 
An attempt of the same kind was made somewhat later in 
England by King Alfred. 
Thus the different causes to which I have directed attention, 
as tending to put an end to barbarism, were in action in some 
part or other of Europe from the fifth to the ninth century. 
None succeeded. Charlemagne was unable to found his 
great empire, and the system of government which he desired 
to establish therein. In Spain the church succeeded no better 
in establishing the theocratic principle. In Italy and in the 
south of Gaul, although Roman civilization often attempted to 
rise again, it was not till afterward, toward the end of the 
tenth century, that it really reacquired any vigor. Up to that 
time all efforts to terminate barbarism proved abortive; they 
supposed that men were more advanced than they truly were ; 
they all desired, under various forms, a society more extended 
or more regular than was compatible with the distribution of 
power and the condition of men's minds. Nevertheless, they 
had not been wholly useless. At the beginning of the tenth 
century, neither the great empire of Charlemagne nor the 
glorious councils of Toledo were any longer spoken of; but 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 51 
barbarism had not the less arrived at its extreme term — two 
great results had been obtained. . 
I. The movement of the invasions on the north and south f-"^ 
had been arrested: after the dismemberment of the empire 
of Charlemagne the states established on the right bank of the 
Rhine opposed a powerful barrier to the tribes who continued 
to urge their way westward. The Normans prove this incon- 
testably; up to this period, if we except the tribes which cast 
themselves upon England, the movement of maritime invasions 
had not been very considerable. It was during the ninth cen- 
tury that it became constant and general. And this was be- 
cause invasions by land were become very difficult, society 
having, on this side, acquired more fixed and certain frontiers. 
That portion of the wandering population which could not be 
driven back was constrained to turn aside and carry on its 
roving life upon the sea. Whatever evils were done in the 
west by Norman expeditions, they were far less fatal than in- 
vasions by land; they disturbed dawning society far less 
generally. 
In the south the same fact declared itself. The Arabs were 
quartered in Spain; warfare continued between them and the 
Christians, but it no longer entailed the displacement of the 
population. Saracenic bands still, from time to time, infested 
the coasts of the Mediterranean; but the grand progress of 
Islamism had evidently ceased. 
II. At this period we see the wandering life ceasing, in its 
turn, throughout the interior of Europe; populations estab- 
lished themselves; property became fixed; and the relations 
of men no longer varied from day to day, at the will of vio- 
lence or chance. The internal and moral condition of man 
himself began to change; his ideas and sentiments, like his 
life, acquired fixedness; he attached himself to the places 
which he inhabited, to the relations which he had contracted 
there, to those domains which he began to promise himself 
that he would bequeath to his children, to that dwelling which 
one day he will call his castle, to that miserable collection of 
colonists and slaves which will one day become a village. 
Everywhere little societies, little states, cut, so to speak, to 
the measure of the ideas and the wisdom of man, formed them- 
selves. Between these societies was gradually introduced the 
bond, of which the customs of barbarism contained the germ, 
the bond of a confederation which did not annihilate individual 
independence. on the one hand, every considerable person 
established himself in his domains, along with his family and 
servitors; on the other hand, a certain hierarchy of services 
and rights became established between these warlike proprie- 
tors scattered over the land. What was this? The feudal 
-H 
52 GUIZOT 
system rising definitively from the bosom of barbarism. Of 
the various elements of our civilization, it was natural that the 
Germanic element should first prevail; it had strength on its 
side, it had conquered Europe ; from it Europe was to receive 
its earliest social form and organization. This is what hap- 
pened. Feudalism, its character, and the part played by it in 
the history of European civilization, will be the subject-matter 
of my next lecture ; and in the bosom of that victorious feudal 
system we shall meet at every step, with the other elements of 
our civilization — royalty, the church, municipal corporations; 
and we shall foresee without difficulty that they are not destined 
to sink beneath this feudal form, to which they become assimi- 
lated, while struggling against it, and while waiting the hour 
when victory shall visit them in their turn. 
FOURTH LECTURE. 
WE have studied the condition of Europe after the fall of 
the Roman Empire, in the first period of modern 
history, the barbarous. We have seen that, at the 
end of this epoch, and at the commencement of the tenth century, 
the first principle, the first system that developed itself and took 
possession of European society, was the feudal system ; we have 
seen that feudalism was the first-born of barbarism. It is then 
the feudal system which must now be the object of our study. 
I scarcely think it necessary to remind you that it is not the 
history of events, properly speaking, which we are considering. 
It is not my business to recount to you the destinies of feudalism. 
That which occupies us in the history of civilization; this is the 
general and hidden fact which we seek under all the external 
facts which envelop it. 
Thus events, social crises, the various states through which 
society has passed, interest us only in their relations to the 
development of civilization ; we inquire of them solely in what 
respects they have opposed or assisted it, what they have given 
to it, and what they have refused it. It is only under this point 
of view that we are to consider the feudal system. 
In the commencement of these lectures we defined the nature 
of civilization; we attempted to investigate its elements; we saw 
that it consisted, on the one hand, in the development of man 
himself, of the individual, of humanity; on the other hand, in that 
of his external condition, in the development of society. When- 
ever we find ourselves in the presence of an event, of a system, 
or of a general condition of the world, we have this double 
question to ask of it, what has it done for or against the develop- 
ment of man, for or against the development of society? 
You understand beforehand that, during our investigations, 
it is impossible that we should not meet upon our way most 
important questions of moral philosophy. When we desire to 
know in what an event or a system has contributed to the 
development of man and of society, it is absolutely needful that 
we should be acquainted with the nature of the true develop- 
ment of society and of man; that we should know what 
developments are false and illegitimate, perverting instead of 
ameliorating, causing a retrogressive instead of a progressive 
movement. 
53 
54 GUIZOT 
We shall not seek to escape from this necessity. Not only 
should we thereby mutilate and lower our ideas and the facts, 
but the actual state of the world imposes upon us the necessity 
of freely accepting this inevitable alliance of philosophy and 
history. This is precisely one of the characteristics, perhaps the 
essential characteristic of our epoch. We are called upon to 
consider, to cause to progress together, science and reality, 
theory and practice, right and fact. Up to our times, these two 
powers have existed separately; the world has been accustomed 
to behold science and practice following different roads, without 
recognizing each other, or at least without meeting. And when 
doctrines and general ideas have desired to amalgamate with 
events and influence the world they have only succeeded under 
the form and by means of the arm of fanaticism. The empire 
of human societies, and the direction of their affairs, have 
hitherto been shared between two kinds of influences; upon one 
hand, the believers, the men of general ideas and principles, the 
fanatics; on the other, men strangers to all rational principles, 
who govern themselves merely according to circumstances, prac- 
ticians, free-thinkers, as the seventeenth century called them. 
This condition of things is now ceasing; neither fanatics nor 
free-thinkers will any longer have dominion. In order now to 
govern and prevail with men, it is necessary to be acquainted 
with general ideas and circumstances; it is necessary to know 
how to value principles and facts, to respect virtue and necessity, 
to preserve one's self from the pride of fanatics, and the not less 
blind scorn of free-thinkers. To this point have we been con- 
ducted by the development of the human mind and the social 
state; upon one hand, the human mind, exalted and freed, better 
comprehends the connection of things, knows how to look 
around on all sides, and makes use of all things in its combi- 
nations ; on the other hand, society has perfected itself to that 
degree that it can be compared with the truth ; that facts can 
be brought into juxtaposition with principles, and yet, in spite 
of their still great imperfections, not inspire by the comparison 
invincible discouragement or distaste. I shall thus obey the 
natural tendency, convenience, and the necessity of our times, 
in constantly passing from the examination of circumstances 
to that of ideas, from an exposition of facts to a question of 
doctrines. Perhaps, even, there is in the actual disposition of 
men's minds another reason in favor of this method. For 
some time past a confirmed taste, I might say a sort of predi- 
lection, has manifested itself among us, for facts, for practical 
views, for the positive aspect of human affairs. We have been 
to such an extent a prey to the despotism of general ideas, of 
theories ; they have, in some respects, cost us so dear that they 
are become the objects of a certain degree of distrust. We 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 55 
like better to carry ourselves back to facts, to special circum- 
stances, to applications. This is not to be regretted ; it is a new 
progress, a great step in knowledge, and toward the empire of 
truth; provided always that we do not allow ourselves to be 
prejudiced and carried away by this disposition; that we do 
not torget that truth alone has a right to reign in the world ; 
that facts have no value except as they tend to explain, and 
to assimilate themselves more and more to the truth; that all 
true greatness is of thought ; and that all fruitfulness belongs 
to it. The civilization of our country has this peculiar charac- 
ter, that it has never wanted intellectual greatness; it has 
always been rich in ideas; the power of the human mind has 
always been great in French society; greater, perhaps, than 
in any other. We must not lose this high privilege ; we must 
not fall into the somewhat subordinate and material state which 
characterizes other societies. Intelligence and doctrines must 
occupy in the France of the present day at least the place which 
they have occupied there hitherto. 
We shall, then, by no means avoid general and philosophical 
questions; we shall not wander in search of them, but where 
facts lead us to them we shall meet them without hesitation 
or embarrassment. An occasion of doing so will more than 
once present itself during the consideration of the feudal sys- 
tem in its relations to the history of European civilization. 
A good proof that in the tenth century the feudal system 
was necessary, was the only possible social state, is the uni- 
versality of its establishment. Wherever barbarism ceased, 
everything took the feudal form. At the first moment, men 
saw in it only the triumph of chaos; all unity, all general 
civilization vanished; on all sides they beheld society dis- 
membering itself; and, in its stead, they beheld a number of 
minor, obscure, isolated, and incoherent societies erect them- 
selves. To contemporaries, this appeared the dissolution of 
all things, universal anarchy. Consult the poets and the 
chroniclers of the time ; they all believed themselves at the end 
of the world. It was, nevertheless, the beginning of a new 
and real society, the feudal, so necessary, so inevitable, so 
truly the only possible consequence of the anterior state, that 
all things entered into it and assumed its form. Elements, 
the most foreign to this system, the church, municipalities, 
royalty, were compelled to accommodate themselves to it ; the 
churches became suzerains and vassals, cities had lords and 
vassals, royalty disguised itself under the form of suzerainship. 
All things were given in fief, not only lands, but certain rights, 
the right, for instance, of felling in forests, and of fishing, 
the churches gave in fief their perquisites, from their revenues 
from baptisms, the churchings of women. Water and money 
56 GUIZOT 
were given in fief. Just as all the general elements of society 
entered into the feudal frame, so the smallest details, and the 
most trifling facts of common life, became a part of feudalism. 
In beholding the feudal form thus taking possession of all 
things, we are tempted to believe, at first, that the essential 
and vital principle of feudalism everywhere prevailed. But 
this is a mistake. In borrowing the feudal form, the elements 
and institutions of society which were not analogous to the 
feudal system, did not renounce their own nature or 
peculiar principles. The feudal church did not cease to be 
animated and governed, at bottom, by the theocratic principle ; 
and it labored unceasingly, sometimes in concert with the royal 
power, sometimes with the pope, and sometimes with the peo- 
ple, to destroy this system, of which, so to speak, it wore the 
livery. It was the same with royalty and with the corpora- 
tions ; in the one the monarchical, in the other the democratical 
principle, continued, at bottom, to predominate. Notwith- 
standing their feudal livery, these various elements of Euro- 
pean society constantly labored to deliver themselves from a 
form which was foreign to their true nature, and to assume 
that which corresponded to their peculiar and vital principle. 
Having shown the universality of the feudal form, it be- 
comes very necessary to be on our guard against concluding 
from this the universality of the feudal principle, and against 
studying feudalism indifferently, whenever we meet with its 
physiognomy. In order to know and comprehend this system 
thoroughly, to unravel and judge of its effects in reference to 
modern civilization, we must examine it where the form and 
principle are in harmony; we must study it in the hierarchy 
of lay possessors of fiefs, in the association of the conquerors 
of the European territory. There truly resided feudal society ; 
thereupon we are now to enter. 
I spoke just now of the importance of moral questions, and 
of the necessity of not avoiding them. But there is a totally 
opposite kind of considerations, which has generally been too 
much neglected ; I mean the material condition of society, the 
material changes introduced into mankind's method of exist- 
ing, by a new fact, by a revolution, by a new social state. We 
have not always sufficiently considered these things; we have 
not always sufficiently inquired into the modifications intro- 
duced by these great crises of the world, into the material ex- 
istence of men, into the material aspect of their relations. 
These modifications have more influence upon the entire so- 
ciety than is supposed. Who does not know how much the 
influence of climates has been studied, and how much im- 
portance was attached to it by Montesquieu. If we regard the 
immediate influence of climate upon men, perhaps it is not so 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 57 
extensive as has been supposed ; it is, at all events, very vague 
and difficult to be appreciated. But the indirect influence of 
climate, that which, for example, results from the fact that, 
in a warm country men live in the open air, while in a cold 
country they shut themselves up in their houses; that in one 
case they nourish themselves in one manner, in the other in 
another. These are facts of great importance, facts which, 
by the simply difference of material life, act powerfully upon 
civilization. All great revolutions lead to modifications of 
this sort in the social state, and these are very necessary to be 
considered. 
The establishment of the feudal system produced one of 
these modifications, of unmistakable importance ; it altered the 
distribution of the population over the face of the land. 
Hitherto the masters of the soil, the sovereign population, 
had lived united in more or less numerous masses of men, 
whether sedentarily in cities, or wandering in bands through 
the country. In consequence of the feudal system, these same 
men lived isolated, each in his own habitation and at great dis- 
tances from one another. You will immediately perceive how 
much influence this change was calculated to exercise upon the 
character and course of civilization. The social preponderance, 
the government of society, passed suddenly from the towns to 
the country; private property became of more importance 
than public property, private life than public life. Such was 
the first and purely material effect of the triumph of feudal 
society. The further we examine into it, the more will the 
consequence of this single fact be unfolded to our eyes. 
Let us investigate this society in itself and see what part 
it has played in the history of civilization. First of all let us 
take feudalism in its most simple, primitive, and fundamental 
element; let us consider a single possessor of a fief in his do- 
main, and let us see what will become of all those who form 
the little society around him. 
He establishes himself upon an isolated and elevated spot, 
which he takes care to render safe and strong; there he con- 
structs what he will call his castle. With whom does he es- 
tablish himself? With his wife and children; perhaps some 
freemen, who have not become proprietors, attach themselves 
to his person, and continue to live with him, at his table. 
These are the inhabitants of the interior of the castle. Around 
and at his foot a little population of colonists and serfs gather 
together, who cultivate the domains of the possessor of the 
fief. In the center of this lower population religion plants a 
church; it brings hither a priest. In the early period of the 
feudal system this priest was commonly at the same time the 
chaplain of the castle and pastor of the village; by and by 
1— 
58 GUIZOT 
these two characters separated ; the village had its own pastor, 
who Hved there beside his church. This, then, was the ele- 
mentary feudal society, the feudal molecule, so to speak. It 
is this element that we have first of all to examine. We will 
demand of it the double question which should be asked of 
all our facts: What has resulted from it in favor of the de- 
velopment — (i) of man himself, (2) of society? 
We are perfectly justified in addressing this double question 
to the little society which I have just described, and in placing 
faith in its replies; for it was the type and faithful image of 
the entire feudal society. The lord, the people on his domains, 
and the priest; such is feudalism upon the great as well as 
the small scale, when we have taken from it royalty and the 
towns, which are distinct and foreign elements. 
The first fact that strikes us in contemplating this little so- 
ciety, is the prodigious importance which the possessor of the 
fief must have had, both in his own eyes, and in the eyes of 
those who surround him. The sentiment of personality, of 
individual liberty, predominated in the barbaric life. But 
here it was wholly different ; it was no longer only the liberty 
of the man, of the warrior ; it was the importance of the pro- 
prietor, of the head of the family, of the master, that came to 
be considered. From this situation an impression of immense 
superiority must have resulted ; a superiority quite peculiar, 
and very different from everything that we meet with in the 
career of other civilizations. I will give the proof of this. I 
take in the ancient world some great aristocratical position, 
a Roman patrician, for instance: like the feudal lord, the 
Roman patrician was head of a family, master, superior. He 
was, moreover, the religious magistrate, the pontiff in the in- 
terior of his family. Now, his importance as a religious magis- 
trate came to him from without ; it was not a purely personal 
and individual importance; he received it from on high; he 
was the delegate of the Divinity ; the interpreter of the religious 
creed. The Roman patrician was, besides, the member of a 
corporation which lived united on the same spot, a member 
of the senate; this again was an importance which came to 
him from without, from his corporation, a received, a bor- 
rowed importance. The greatness of the ancient aristocrats, 
associated as it was with a religious and political character, 
belonged to the situation, to the corporation in general, rather 
than to the individual. That of the possessor of the fief was 
purely individual ; it was not derived from any one ; all his 
rights, all his power, came to him from himself. He was not 
a religious magistrate; he took no part in the senate; it was 
in his person that all his importance resided ; all that he was, 
he was of himself, and in his own name. What a mighty 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 59 
influence must such a situation have exerted on its occupant! 
What individual haughtiness, what prodigious pride — let us 
say the word — what insolence, must have arisen in his soul ! 
Above himself there was no superior of whom he was the 
representative or interpreter; there was no equal near him; 
no powerful and general law which weighed upon him; no 
external rule which influenced his will; he knew no curb but 
the limits of his strength and the presence of danger. Such 
was the necessary moral result of this situation upon the char- 
acter of man. 
I now proceed to a second consequence, mighty also, and 
too little noticed, namely, the particular turn taken by the 
feudal family spirit. 
Let us cast a glance over the various family systems. Take 
first of all the patriarchal system of which the Bible and 
oriental records offer the model. The family was very numer- 
ous ; it was a tribe. The chief, the patriarch, lived therein in 
common with his children, his near relations, the various gen- 
erations which united themselves around him, all his kindred, 
all his servants ; and not only did he live with them all, but he 
had the same interests, the same occupations, and he led the 
same life. Was not this the condition of Abraham, of the 
patriarchs, and of the chiefs of the Arab tribes, who still repro- 
duce the image of the patriarchal life? 
Another family system presents itself, namely, the clan, 
a petty society, whose type we must seek for in Scotland or 
Ireland. Through this system, very probably, a large portion 
of the European family has passed. This is no longer the 
patriarchal family. There is here a great difference between 
the situation of the chief and that of the rest of the popula- 
tion. They did not lead the same life: the greater portion 
tilled and served; the chief was idle and warlike. But they 
had a common origin ; they all bore the same name ; and their 
relations of kindred, ancient traditions, the same recollections, 
the same affections, established a moral tie, a sort of equality 
between all the members of the clan. 
These are the two principal types of the family society pre- 
sented by history. But have we here the feudal family ? Obvi- 
ously not. It seems, at first, that the feudal family bears some 
relation to the clan; but the difference is much greater than 
the resemblance. The population which surrounded the pos- 
sessor of the fief were totally unconnected with him ; they did 
not bear his name ; between them and him there was no kin- 
dred, no bond, moral or historical. Neither did it resemble 
the patriarchal family. The possessor of the fief led not the 
same life, nor did he engage in the same occupations with 
those who surrounded him; he was an idler and a warrior, 
6o GUIZOT 
while the others were laborers. The feudal family was not 
numerous; it was not a tribe; it reduced itself to the family, 
properly so called, namely, to the wife and children; it lived 
separated from the rest of the population, shut up in the castle. 
The colonists and serfs made no part of it; the origin of the 
members of this society was different, the inequality of their 
situation immense. Five or six individuals, in a situation at 
once superior to and estranged from the rest of the society, 
that was the feudal family. It was of course invested with a 
peculiar character. It was narrow, concentrated, and con- 
stantly called upon to defend itself against, to distrust, and, 
at least, to isolate itself from even its retainers. The interior 
life, domestic manners, were sure to become predominant in 
such a system. I am aware that the brutality of the passions 
of a chief, his habit of spending his time in warfare or the 
chase, were a great obstacle to the development of domestic 
manners. But this would be conquered ; the chief necessarily 
returned home habitually ; he always found there his wife and 
children, and these well nigh only; these would alone consti- 
tute his permanent society — they would alone share his inter- 
ests, his destiny. Domestic life necessarily, therefore, acquired 
great sway. Proofs of this abound. Was it not within the 
bosom of the feudal family that the importance of women de- 
veloped itself? In all the ancient societies, I do not speak of 
those where the family spirit did not exist, but of those wherein 
it was very powerful in the patriarchal life, for instance, women 
did not hold at all so considerable a place as they acquired in 
Europe under the feudal system. It was to the development 
and necessary preponderance of domestic manners in feudal- 
ism, that they chiefly owed this change, this progress in their 
condition. Some have desired to trace the cause to the peculiar 
manners of the ancient Germans; to a national aspect which, 
it is said, they bore toward women amid their forests. Upon 
a sentence of Tacitus, German patriotism has built I know not 
what superiority, what primitive and uneradicable purity of 
German manners, as regards the relations of the two sexes. 
Mere fancies ! Phrases similar to that of Tacitus, concerning 
sentiments and usages analogous to those of the ancient Ger- 
mans, are to be found in the recitals of a crowd of observers 
of savage or barbarous people. There is nothing primitive 
therein, nothing peculiar in any particular race. It was in 
the effects of a strongly marked social position, in the progress 
and preponderance of domestic manners, that the importance 
of women in Europe originated ; and the preponderance of 
domestic manners became, very early, an essential character- 
istic of the feudal system. 
A second fact, another proof of the empire of domestic life, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 6l 
equally characterizes the feudal family: I mean the heredi- 
tary spirit, the spirit of perpetuation, which evidently predomi- 
nated therein. The hereditary spirit is inherent in the family 
spirit ; but nowhere has it so strongly developed itself as under 
the feudal system. This resulted from the nature of the prop- 
erty with which the family was incorporated. The fief was 
unlike other properties; it constantly demanded a possessor 
to defend it, serve it, acquit himself of the obligations inherent 
in the domain, and thus maintain it in its rank amid the general 
association of the masters of the soil. Thence resulted a sort of 
identification between the actual possessor of the fief and the 
fief itself, and all the series of its future possessors. 
This circumstance greatly contributed to fortify and make 
closer the family ties already so powerful by the very nature of 
the feudal family. 
I now issue from the seignorial dwelling, and descend amid 
the petty population that surrounds it. Here all things wear a 
different aspect. The nature of man is so good and fruitful 
that when a social situation endures for any length of time, a 
certain moral tie, sentiments of protection, benevolence and 
affection, inevitably establish themselves among those who are 
thus approximated to one another, whatever may be the con- 
ditions of approximation. It happened thus with feudalism. 
No doubt, after a certain time, some moral relations, some 
habits of affection, became contracted between the colonists 
and the possessor of the fief. But this happened in spite of 
their relative position, and not by reason of its influence. 
Considered in itself, the position was radically wrong. There 
was nothing morally in common between the possessor of the 
fief and the colonists; they constituted part of his domain; 
they were his property; and under this name, property, were 
included all the rights which, in the present day, are called 
rights of public sovereignty, as well as the rights of private 
property, the right of imposing laws, of taxing and punishing, 
as well as that of disposing of and selHng. As far as it is possi- 
ble that such should be the case where men are in presence of 
men, between the lord and the cultivators of his lands there 
existed no rights, no guarantees, no society. 
Hence, I conceive, the truly prodigious and invincible hatred 
with which the people at all times have regarded the feudal 
system, its recollections, its very name. It is not a case with- 
out example for men to have submitted to oppressive despot- 
isms, and to have become accustomed to them; nay, to have 
willingly accepted them. Theocratic and monarchical despot- 
isms have more than once obtained the consent, almost the 
affections, of the population subjected to them. But feudal 
despotism has always been repulsive and odious; it has op- 
62 GUIZOT 
pressed the destinies, but never reigned over the souls of men. 
The reason is, that in theocracy and monarchy, power is ex- 
ercised in virtue of certain words which are common to the 
master and to the subject; it is the representative, the minis- 
ter of another power superior to all human power; it speaks 
and acts in the name of the Divinity or of a general idea, and 
not in the name of man himself, of man alone. Feudal des- 
potism was altogether different ; it was the power of the indi- 
vidual over the individual ; the dominion of the personal and 
capricious will of a man. This is, perhaps, the only tyranny 
of which, to his eternal honor, man will never willingly ac- 
cept. Whenever, in his master, he beholds a mere man, from 
the moment that the will which oppresses him appears a merely 
human and individual will, like his own, he becomes indignant, 
and supports the yoke wrathfully. Such was the true and dis- 
tinguishing character of feudal power; and such was also the 
origin of the antipathy which it has ever inspired. 
The religious element which was associated with it was 
little calculated to ease the burden. I do not conceive that the 
influence of the priest, in the little society which I have just 
described, was very great, nor that he succeeded much in 
legitimating the relations of the inferior population with the 
lord. The church has exerted a very great influence upon 
European civilization, but this it has done by proceedings of 
a general character, by changing, for instance, the general dis- 
positions of men. When we enter closely into the petty feudal 
society, properly so called, we find that the influence of the 
priest, between the colonists and the lord, scarcely amounted 
to anything. Most frequently he was himself rude and sub- 
ordinate as a serf, and very little in condition or disposition to 
combat the arrogance of the lord. No doubt, called, as he was, 
to sustain and develop somewhat of moral life in the inferior 
population, he was dear and useful to it on this account; he 
spread through it somewhat of consolation and of life; but, 
I conceive, he could and did very little to alleviate its destiny. 
I have examined the elementary feudal society; I have 
placed before you the principal consequences which necessarily 
flowed from it, whether to the possessor of the fief himself, 
or his family, or the population congregated around him. Let 
us now go forth from this narrow inclosure. The population 
of the fief was not alone upon the land ; there were other socie- 
ties, analogous or different ; with which it bore relation. 
What influence did the general society, to which that popula- 
tion belonged, necessarily exercise upon civilization? 
I will make a brief remark before answering this question: 
It is true that the possessor of the fief and the priest belonged, 
one and the other, to a general society ; they had at a distance 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 63 
numerous and frequent relations. It was not the same with 
the colonists, the serfs ; every time that, in order to designate 
the population of the country at this period, we make use of 
a general word, which seems to imply one and the same society, 
the word people, for example, we do not convey the truth. 
There was for this population no general society; its exist- 
ence was purely local. Beyond the territory which they in- 
habited the colonists had no connection with any thing or 
person. For them there was no common destiny, no common 
country; they did not form a people. When we speak of the 
feudal association as a whole, it is only the possessors of the 
fiefs that are concerned. 
Let us see what were the relations of the petty feudal society 
with the general society with which it was connected, and to 
what consequences these relations necessarily led as regards 
the development of civilization. 
You are acquainted with the nature of the ties which united 
the possessors of the fiefs among themselves, with the obli- 
gations of service on the one hand, of protection on the other. 
I shall not enter into a detail of these obligations ; it suffices 
that you have a general idea of their character. From these 
obligations there necessarily arose within the mind of each 
possessor of a fief a certain number of moral ideas and senti- 
ments, ideas of duty, sentiments of affection. The fact is 
evident that the principle of fidelity, of devotion, of loyalty to 
engagements, and all sentiments connected therewith, were de- 
veloped and sustained by the relations of the possessors of the 
fiefs between themselves. 
These obligations, duties and sentiments endeavored to con- 
vert themselves into rights and institutions. Every one knows 
that feudalism desired legally to determine what were the ser- 
vices due from the possessor of the fief toward his suzerain; 
what were the services which he might expect in return; in 
what cases the vassal owed pecuniary or military aid to his 
suzerain ; in what forms the suzerain ought to obtain the con- 
sent of his vassals, for services to which they were not com- 
pelled by the simple tenure of their fiefs. Attempts were made 
to place all their rights under the guarantee of institutions, 
which aimed at insuring their being respected. Thus, the 
seignorial jurisdictions were destined to render justice be- 
tween the possessors of the fiefs upon claims carried before 
their common suzerain. Thus, also, each lord who was of any 
consideration assembled his vassals in a parliament, in order 
to treat with them concerning matters which required their 
consent or their concurrence. In short, there existed a collec- 
tion of political, judicial and military means, with which at- 
tempts were made to organize the feudal system, converting 
H 
64 GUIZOT 
the relations between the possessors of fiefs into rights and 
institutions. 
But these rights and these institutions had no reahty, no 
guarantee. 
If one is asked what is meant by a guarantee, a poHtical 
guarantee, one is led to perceive that its fundamental character 
is the constant presence, in the midst of the society, of a will, 
of a power disposed and in a condition to impose a law upon 
particular wills and powers, to make them observe the common 
rule and respect the general right. 
There are only two systems of political guarantees possible : 
it is either necessary there should be a particular will and 
power so superior to all others that none should be able to 
resist it, and that all should be compelled to submit to it as 
soon as it interferes ; or else that there should be a public will 
and power, which is the result of agreement, of the develop- 
ment of particular wills, and which, once gone forth from 
them, is in a condition to impose itself upon, and to make 
itself respected equally by all. 
Such are the two possible systems of political guarantees: 
the despotism of one or of a body, or free government. When 
we pass systems in review, we find that all of them come under 
one or other of these heads. 
Well, neither one nor the other existed, nor could exist, 
under the feudal system. 
No doubt the possessors of the fiefs were not all equal 
among themselves ; there were many of superior power, many 
powerful enough to oppress the weaker. But there was no 
one, beginning from the first of the suzerains, the king, who 
was in condition to impose law upon all the others and make 
himself obeyed. Observe that all the permanent means of 
power and action were wanting: there were no permanent 
troops, no permanent taxes, no permanent tribunals. The 
social powers and institutions had, after a manner, to recom- 
mence and create themselves anew every time they were re- 
quired. A tribunal was obliged to be constructed for every 
process, an army whenever there was a war to be made, a 
revenue whenever money was wanted; everything was occa- 
sional, accidental and special ; there was no means of central, 
permanent and independent government. It is plain that, in 
such a system, no individual was in a condition to impose his 
will upon others, or to cause the general rights to be resi>ected 
by all. 

on the other hand, resistance was as easy as repression 
was difficult. Shut up in his castle, having to do only with 
a small number of enemies, easily finding among vassals of 
his own condition the means of coalition, and of assistance, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 65 
the possessor of the fief defended himself with the greatest 
facihty. 
Thus, then, we see that the first system of guarantees, the 
system which places them in the intervention of the strongest, 
was not possible under feudalism. 
The other system, that of a free government, a public power, 
was equally impracticable; it could never have arisen in the 
bosom of feudalism. The reason is sufficiently simple. 
When we speak, in the present day, of a public power, of that 
which we call the rights of sovereignty, the right of giving 
laws, taxing and punishing, we all think that those rights 
belong to no one, that no one has, on his own account, a right 
to punish others, and to impose upon them a charge, a law. 
Those are rights which belong only to society in the mass, 
rights which are exercised in its name, which it holds not of 
itself, but receives from the Highest., Thus, when an indi- 
vidual comes before the powers invested with these rights, 
the sentiment which, perhaps without his consciousness, 
reigns in him is, that he is in the presence of a public and 
legitimate power, which possesses a mission for commanding 
him, and he is submissive beforehand and internally. But it 
was wholly otherwise under feudalism. The possessor of the 
fief, in his domain, was invested with all the rights of sov- 
ereignty over those who inhabited it; they were inherent to 
the domain, and a part of his private property. What are 
at present public rights were then private rights; what is 
now public power was then private power. When the pas- 
sessor of a fief, after having exercised sovereignty in his own 
name, as a proprietor over all the population amid which he 
lived, presented himself at an assembly, a parliament held be- 
fore his suzerain, a parliament not very numerous, and com- 
posed in general of men who were his equals, or nearly so, 
he did not bring with him, nor did he carry away the idea of 
a public power. This idea was in contradiction to all his 
existence, to all that he had been in the habit of doing in the 
interior of his own domains. He saw there only men who 
were invested with the same rights as himself, who were in 
the same situation, and, like him, acted in the name of their 
personal will. Nothing in the most elevated department of the 
government, in what we call public institutions, conveyed to 
him, or forced him to recognize this character of superiority 
and generality, which is inherent to the idea that we form 
to ourselves of pubHc powers. And if he was dissatisfied with 
the decision, he refused to agree with it, or appealed to force 
for resistance. 
Under the feudal system, force was the true and habitual 
guarantee of right, if, indeed, we may call force a guarantee. 
5 
66 GUIZOT 
All rights had perpetual recourse to force to make themselves 
recognized or obeyed. No institution succeeded in doing this ; 
and this was so generally felt that institutions were rarely 
appealed to. If the seignorial courts and parliaments of vassals 
had been capable of influence, we should have met with them 
in history more frequently than we do, and found them exert- 
ing more activity; their rarity proves their invalidity. 
At this we must not be astonished ; there is a reason for it, 
more decisive and deeply seated than those which I have de- 
scribed. 
Of all systems of government and political guarantee, the fed- 
erative system is certainly the most difficult to establish and to 
render prevalent ; a system which consists in leaving in each 
locality and each particular society all that portion of the govern- 
ment which can remain there, and in taking from it only that 
portion which is indispensable to the maintenance of the general 
society, and carrying this to the center of that society, there to 
constitute of it a central government. The federative system, 
logically the most simple, is, in fact, the most complex. In 
order to reconcile the degree of local independence and liberty 
which it allows to remain, with the degree of general order and 
submission which it demands and supposes in certain cases, a 
very advanced degree of civilization is evidently requisite ; it ib 
necessary that the will of man, that individual liberty, should 
concur in the establishment and maintenance of this system, 
much more than in that of any other, for its means of coercion 
are far less than those of any other. 
The federative system, then, is that which evidently requires 
the greatest development of reason, morality and civilization in 
the society to which it is applied. Well, this, nevertheless, was 
the system which feudalism endeavored to establish ; the idea of 
genaral feudalism, in fact, was that of a federation. It reposed 
upon the same principles on which are founded, in our day, the 
federation of the United States of America, for example. It 
aimed at leaving in the hands of each lord all that portion of gov- 
ernment and sovereignty which could remain there, and to carry 
to the suzerain, or to the general assembly of barons, only the 
least possible portion of power, and that only in cases of absolute 
necessity. You perceive the impossibility of establishing such 
a system amid ignorance, amid brutal passions — in short, in a 
normal state so imperfect as that of man under feudalism. The 
very nature of government was contradictory to the ideas and 
manners of the very men to whom it was attempted to be applied. 
Who can be astonished at the ill success of these endeavors at 
organization? 
We have considered feudal society, first in its most simple and 
fundamental element, then in its entirety. We have examined, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 67 
under these two points of view, that which it necessarily did, that 
which naturally flowed from it, as to its influence upon the 
course of civilization. I conceive that we have arrived at this 
double result : 
First, federalism has exerted a great, and, on the whole, a 
salutary influence upon the internal development of the indi- 
vidual ; it has awakened in men's minds ideas, energetic senti- 
ments, moral requirements, fine developments of character and 
passion. 
Secondly, under the social point of view, it was unable to es- 
tablish either legal order or political guarantees ; it was indis- 
pensable to the revival in Europe of society, which had been so 
entirely dissolved by barbarism that it was incapable of a more 
regular and more extended form ; but the feudal form, radically 
bad in itself, could neither regulate nor extend itself. The only 
political right which the feudal system caused to assert itself in 
European society was the right of resistance — I do not say legal 
resistance, that could not have place in a society so little ad- 
vanced. The progress of society consists precisely in substitut- 
ing, on the one hand, public powers for particular wills ; on the 
other, legal, for individual resistance. In this consists the grand 
aim, the principal perfection of the social order ; much latitude 
is left to personal liberty ; then, when that liberty fails, when it 
becomes necessary to demand from it an account of itself, appeal 
is made to public reason alone, to determine the process insti- 
tuted against the liberty of the individual. Such is the system 
of legal order and of legal resistance. You perceive, without 
difficulty, that under feudalism there existed nothing of this sort. 
The right of resistance which the feudal system maintained and 
practised was the right of personal resistance — a terrible, un- 
social right, since it appeals to force and to war, which is the de- 
struction of society itself ; a right which, nevertheless, should 
never be abolished from the heart of man, for its abolition is the 
acceptation of servitude. The sentiment of the right or resist- 
ance had perished in the disgrace of Roman society, and could 
not rise anew from its wreck ; it could not come more naturally, 
in my opinion, from the principle of the Christian society. To 
feudalism we are indebted for its re-introduction into the man- 
ners of Europe. It is the boast of civilization to render it always 
useless and inactive ; it the boast of the feudal system to have 
constantly professed and defended it. 
Such, if I do not deceive myself, is the result of an examina- 
tion of feudal society, considered in itself, in its general ele- 
ments, and independently of historical development. If we 
pass on to facts, to history, we shall see that has happened which 
might have been looked for ; that the feudal system has done 
what it was fitted to do ; that its destiny has been in conformity 
^ 
6S GUIZOT 
with its nature. Events may be adduced in proof of all the 
conjectures and inferences which I have drawn from the very 
nature of this system. 
Cast a glance upon the general history of feudalism between 
the tenth and thirteenth centuries ; it is impossible to mistake 
the great and salutary influence exerted by it upon the develop- 
ment of sentiments, characters, and ideas. We cannot look into 
the history of this period without meeting with a crowd of noble 
sentiments, great actions, fine displays of humanity, born evi- 
dently in the bosom of feudal manners. Chivalry, it is true, does 
not resemble feudalism — nevertheless, it is its daughter : from 
feudalism issued this ideal of elevated, generous, loyal senti- 
ments. It says much in favor of its parentage. 
Turn your eyes to another quarter : the first bursts of Euro- 
pean imagination, the first attempts of poetry and of literature, 
the first intellectual pleasures tasted by Europe on its quitting 
barbarism, under the shelter, under the wings of feudalism, in 
the interior of the feudal castles, that all these were born. This 
kind of development of humanity requires a movement in the 
soul, in life, leisure, a thousand conditions which are not to be 
met with in the laborious, melancholy, coarse, hard existence of 
the common people. In France, in England, in Germany, 
it is with the feudal times that the first literary recollections, the 
first intellectual enjoyments of Europe connect themselves. 

on the other, if we consult history upon the social influence 
of feudalism, its answers will always be in harmony with our 
conjectures ; it will reply that the feudal system has been as 
much opposed to the establishment of general order as to the 
extension of general liberty. Under whatever point of view 
you consider the progress of society, you find the feudal system 
acting as an obstacle. Therefore, from the earliest existence of 
feudalism, the two forces which have been the grand motive 
powers of the development of order and liberty — on one hand 
the monarchical power, the popular power on the other ; roy- 
alty, and the people — have attacked and struggled against it un- 
ceasingly. Some attempts have, at different times, been made 
to regulate it, and construct out of it a state somewhat legal and 
general : in England, such attempts were made by William the 
Conqueror and his sons ; in France, by St. Louis ; in Germany, 
by many of the emperors. All attempts, all efforts have failed. 
The very nature of feudal society was repugnant to order and 
legality. In modern ages, some men of intellect have attempted 
to re-establish feudalism as a social system ; they have desired 
to discover therein a legal, regulated, and progressive state ; 
they have made of it an age of gold. But ask them to assign the 
age of gold to some particular place or time, and they can do no 
such thing : it is an Utopia without a date, a drama for which 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 69 
we find, in past times, neither theater nor actors. The cause of 
this error is easy to discover, and it equally explains the mistake 
of those who cannot pronounce the name of feudalism without 
cursing it. Neither one party nor the other has taken the pains 
to consider the double aspect under which feudalism presents it- 
self ; to distinguish, on the one hand, its influence upon the in- 
dividual development of man, upon sentiments, characters and 
passions, and, on the other, its influence upon the social state. 
The one party has not been able to persuade itself that a social 
system, in which so many beautiful sentiments, so many virtues 
are found — in which they behold the birth of all literatures, and 
in which manners assume a certain elevation and nobility — can 
have been so bad and fatal as it is pretended. The other party 
has only seen the wrong done by feudalism to the mass of the 
population, the obstacles opposed by it to the establishment of 
order and liberty; and this party has not been able to believe that 
fine characters, great virtues, and any progress, can have resulted 
from it. Both have mistaken the double element of civilization ; 
they have not understood that it consists of two developments, 
of which the one may, in time, produce itself independently of 
the other ; although, after the course of centuries, and by means 
of a long series of circumstances, they must reciprocally call 
forth and lead to each other. 
For the rest, that which feudalism was in theory it was in fact ; 
that to which theory pointed as likely to result from it, has re- 
sulted from it. IndividuaHty and energy of personal existence, 
such was the predominating trait among the conquerors of the 
Roman world ; the development of individuality necessarily 
resulted, before all things, from the social system which was 
founded by and for themselves. That which man himself 
brings to a social system, at the moment of his entrance, his in- 
ternal and moral qualities, powerfully influence the situation in 
which he establishes himself. The situation, in turn, reacts upon 
these qualities, and strengthens and develops them. The indi- 
vidual predominated in the German society ; it was for the bene- 
fit of the development of the individual that feudal society, the 
daughter of German society, exerted its influence. We shall 
again find the same fact in the different elements of civilization ; 
they have remained faithful to their principle; they have ad- 
vanced and urged on the world in the direction which they first 
entered. In our next lecture the history of the church and its 
influence, from the fifth to the twelfth century, upon European 
civilization, will furnish us with another and a striking illustra- 
tion of this fact. 
FIFTH LECTURE. 
WE have examined the nature and influence of the feudal 
system ; it is with the Christian church, from the fifth 
to the twelfth century, that we are now to occupy 
ourselves : I say, with the church ; and I have already laid this 
emphasis, because it is not with Christianity properly speaking, 
with Christianity as a religious system, but with the church as 
an ecclesiastical society, with the Christian clergy, that I propose 
to engage your attention. 
In the 'fifth century this society was almost completely organ- 
ized ; not that it has not since then undergone many and impor- 
tant changes ; but we may say that at that time, the church, con- 
sidered as a corporation, as a government of Christian people, 
had attained a complete and independent existence. 

one glance is enough to show us an immense difference be- 
tween the state of the church and that of the other elements of 
European civilization in the fifth century. I have mentioned, 
as the fundamental elements of our civilization, the municipal 
and feudal systems, royalty, and the church. The municipal 
system, in the fifth century, was no more than the wreck of the 
Roman Empire, a shadow without life or determinate form. 
The feudal system had not yet issued from the chaos. Royalty 
existed only in name. All the civil elements of modern society 
were either in decay or infancy. The church alone was, at the 
same time, young and constituted ; it alone had acquired a defi- 
nite form, and preserved all the vigor of early age ; it alone 
possessed, at once, movement and order, energy and regularity, 
that is to say, the two great means of influence. Is it not, let me 
ask you, by moral life, by internal movement, on the one hand, 
and by order and discipline on the other, that institutions take 
possession of society? The church, moreover, had mooted all 
the great questions which interest man ; it busied itself with all 
the problems of his nature, and with all the chances of his des- 
tiny. Thus its influence upon modern civilization has been very 
great, greater, perhaps, than even its most ardent adversaries, 
or its most zealous defenders have supposed. Occupied with 
rendering it services, or with combating it, they have regarded 
it only in a polemical point of view, and have therefore, I con- 
ceive, been unable either to judge it with equity, or to measure 
it in all its extent. 
70 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 71 
The Christian church in the fifth century presents itself as an 
independent and constituted society, interposed between the 
masters of the world, the sovereigns, the possessors of the tem- 
poral power on the one hand, and the people on the other, serv- 
ing as a bond between them, and influencing all. 
In order completely to know and comprehend its action, we 
must therefore consider it under three aspects : first of all we 
must regard it in itself, make an estimate of what it was, of its 
internal constitution, of the principles which predominated in it, 
and of its nature ; we must then examine it in its relation to the 
temporal sovereignties, kings, lords, and others ; lastly, in its 
relations to the people. And when from this triple examination 
we shall have deduced a complete picture of the church, of its 
principles, its situation, and the influence which it necessarily 
exercised, we shall verify our assertions by an appeal to history ; 
we shall find out whether the facts and events, properly so called, 
from the fifth to the twelfth century, are in harmony with the 
results to which we have been led by the study of the nature of 
the church, and of its relations, both with the masters of the 
world and with the people. 
First of all, let us occupy ourselves with the church in itself, 
with its internal condition, and its nature. 
The first fact which strikes us, and perhaps the most impor- 
tant, is its very existence, the existence of a religious govern- 
ment, of a clergy, of an ecclesiastical corporation, of a priest- 
hood, of a religion in the sacerdotal state. 
With many enlightened men, these very words, a body of 
priesthood, a religious government, appear to determine the 
question. They think that a religion which ends in a body of 
priests, a legally constituted clergy, in short, a governed relig- 
ion, must be, taking all things together, more injurious than 
useful. In their opinion, religion is a purely individual relation 
of man to God ; and that whenever the relation loses this char- 
acter, whenever an external authority comes between the indi- 
vidual and the object of religious creeds — namely, God — religion 
is deteriorated, and society in danger. 
We cannot dispense with an examination of this question. In 
order to ascertain what has been the influence of the Christian 
church, we must know what ought to be, by the very nature of 
the institution, the influence of a church and of a clergy. In 
order to appreciate this influence, we must find out, first of all, 
whether religion is, in truth, purely individual ; whether it does 
not provoke and give birth to something more than merely a 
private relation between each man and God ; or whether it nec- 
essarily becomes a source of new relations between men, from 
which a religious society and a government of that society nec- 
essarily flow. 
72 GUIZOT 
If we reduce religion to the religious sentiment properly so 
called, to that sentiment which is very real, though somewhat 
vague and uncertain as to its object, and which we can scarcely 
characterize otherwise than by naming it, — to this sentiment 
which addresses itself sometimes to external nature, sometimes 
to the innermost recesses of the soul, to-day to poetry, to-mor- 
row to the mysteries of the future, which, in a word, wanders 
everywhere, seeking everywhere to satisfy itself, and fixing itself 
nowhere, — if we reduce religion to this sentiment, it seems evi- 
dent to me that it should remain purely individual. Such a 
sentiment may provoke a momentary association between men ; 
it can, it even ought to take pleasure in sympathy, nourishing 
and strengthening itself thereby. But by reason of its fluctuat- 
ing and doubtful character it refuses to become the principle of 
a permanent and extensive association, to adapt itself to any sys- 
tem of precepts, practices, and forms; in short, to give birth to a 
religious society and government. 
But either I deceive myself strangely, or this religious senti- 
ment is not the complete ｅxpression of the religious nature of 
man. Religion, I conceive, is a different thing, and much more 
than this. 
In human nature and in human destiny there are problems of 
which the solution lies beyond this world, which are connected 
with a class of things foreign to the visible world, and which in- 
veterately torment the soul of man, who is fixedly intent upon 
solving them. The solution of these problems, creeds, dogmas, 
which contain that solution, or at least flatter themselves that 
they do, these constitute the first object and the first source of 
religion. 
Another path leads men to religion. To those among you 
who have prosecuted somewhat extended philosophical studies, 
it is, I conceive, sufficiently evident at present that morality ex- 
ists independently of religious ideas ; that the distinction of 
moral good and evil, the obligation to shun the evil, and to do 
the good, are laws, which, like the laws of logic, man discovers 
in his own nature, and which have their principle in himself, as 
they have their application in his actual life. But these facts be- 
ing decided, the independence of morality being admitted, a 
question arises in the human mind — Whence comes morality? 
To what does it lead? Is this obligation to do good, which sub- 
sists of itself, an isolated fact, without author and aim? Does it 
not conceal from, or rather does it not reveal to man a destiny 
which is beyond this world? This is a spontaneous and inevita- 
ble question, by which morality, in its turn, leads man to the 
door of religion, and discovers to him a sphere from which he 
had not borrowed morality. 
Thus, in the problems of our nature, upon one hand, and in 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 73 
the necessity of discovering a sanction, origin, and aim for mo- 
rality, on the other, we find assured and fruitful sources of relig- 
ion, which thus presents itself under aspects very different from 
that of a mere instrument, as it has been described ; it presents 
itself as a collection — first, of doctrines called forth by problems 
which man discovers within himself ; and, of precepts which 
correspond to those doctrines, and give to natural morality a 
meaning and sanction; second, of promises which address them- 
selves to the hopes of humanity in the future. This is what truly 
constitutes religion ; this is what it is at bottom, and not a mere 
form of sensibility, a flight of the imagination, a species of poetry. 
Reduced in this manner to its true elements and to its essence, 
religion no longer appears as a purely individual fact, but as a 
powerful and fruitful principle of association. Consider it as a 
system of creeds and dogmas ; truth belongs to no one ; it is 
universal, absolute ; men must seek and profess it in common. 
Consider the precepts that associate themselves with doctrines : 
an obligatory law for one is such for all ; it must be promul- 
gated, it must bring all men under its empire. It is the same 
with the promises made by religion in the name of its creeds and 
precepts : they must be spread abroad, and all men must be 
called to gather the fruits of them. From the essential elements 
of religion, then, you see that the religious society is born ; in- 
deed, it flows therefrom so infallibly that the word which ex- 
presses the most energetic social sentiment, the most imperious 
necessity of propagating ideas and extending a society, is the 
word proselytism, a word which applies above all to religious 
creeds, and, indeed, seems to be almost exclusively consecrated 
to them. 
The religious society being once born, when a certain number 
of men become united in common religious creeds, under the 
law of common religious precepts, and in common religious 
hopes, that society must have a government. There is no society 
which can survive a week, an hour, without a government. At 
the very instant in which the society forms itself, and even by 
the very fact of its formation, it calls a government, which pro- 
claims the common truth, the bond of the society, and promul- 
gates and supports the precepts which originate in that truth. 
The necessity for a power, for a government over the religious 
society, as over every other, is implied in the fact of the existence 
of that society. And not only is government necessary, but it 
naturally forms itself. I must not pause for any time to explain 
how government originates and establishes itself in society in 
general. I shall confine myself to saying that, when things fol- 
low their natural laws, when external force does not mix itself 
up with them, power always flies to the most capable, to the best, 
to those who will lead society toward its aim. In a warlike ex- 
74 GUIZOT 
pedition the bravest obtain the power. If research or skilful 
enterprise is the object of an association, the most capable will 
be at the head of it. In all things, when the world is left to its 
natural course, the natural inequality of men freely displays it- 
self, and each takes the place which he is capable of occupying. 
Well, as regards religion, men are no more equal in talents, 
faculties, and power than in the other cases ; such a one will be 
better able than any other to expound religious doctrines, and to 
cause them to be generally adopted ; some other bears about 
him more authority to induce the observance of religious pre- 
cepts ; a third will excel in sustaining and animating religious 
emotions and hopes in the souls of men. The same inequality 
of faculties and influence which gives rise to power in civil society 
originates it equally in religious society. Missionaries arise and 
declare themselves like generals. Thus, as on one hand re- 
ligious government necessarily flows from the nature of relig- 
ious society, so on the other it naturally develops itself therein by 
the mere effect of the human faculties and their unequal parti- 
tion. Therefore, from the moment at which religion is born in 
man, religious society develops itself ; and from the moment at 
which religious society appears it gives rise to its government. 
But now a fundamental objection arises : there is nothing in 
this case to ordain or impose ; nothing coercive. There is no 
room for government, since unlimited liberty is required to 
exist. 
It is, I conceive, a very rude and petty idea of government in 
general to suppose that it resides solely, or even principally, in 
the force which it exerts to make itself obeyed in its coercive ele- 
ment. 
I leave the religious point of view ; I take civil government. 
I pray you follow with me the simple course of facts. The so- 
ciety exists : there is something to be done, no matter what, in 
its interest and name ; there is a law to make, a measure to take, 
a judgment to pronounce. Assuredly there is likewise a worthy 
manner of fulfilling these social wants ; a good law to make, a 
good measure to take, a good judgment to pronounce. What- 
ever may be the matter in hand, whatever may be the interest in 
question, there is in every case a truth that must be known, a 
truth which must decide the conduct of the question. 
The first business of government is to seek this truth, to dis- 
cover what is just, reasonable, and adapted to society. When it 
has found it, it proclaims it. It becomes then necessary that it 
should impress it upon men's minds ; that the government 
should make itself approved of by those upon whom it acts, that 
it should persuade them of its reasonableness. Is there any- 
thing coercive in this? Assuredly not. Now, suppose that the 
truth which ought to decide concerning the affair, no matter 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 75 
what, suppose I say, that this truth once discovered and pro- 
claimed, immediately all understandings are convinced, all wills 
determined, that all recognize the reasonableness of the govern- 
ment, and spontaneously obey it ; there is still no coercion, there 
is no room for the employment of force. Is it that the govern- 
ment did not exist? Is it that, in all this, there was no govern- 
ment? Evidently there was a government and it fulfilled its 
task. Coercion comes then only when the resistance of indi- 
vidual will occurs, when the idea, the proceeding which the gov- 
ernment has adopted, does not obtain the approbation and vol- 
untary submission of all. The government then employs force 
to make itself obeyed ; this is the necessary result of human im- 
perfection, an imperfection which resides at once in the govern- 
ing power and in the society. There will never be any way of 
completely avoiding it; civil governments will ever be com- 
pelled to have recourse, to a certain extent, to coercion. But 
governments are evidently not constituted by coercion : when- 
ever they can dispense with it they do, and to the great profit of 
all ; indeed, their highest perfection is to dispense with it, and to 
confine themselves to methods purely moral, to the action which 
they exert upon the understanding ; so that the more the gov- 
ernment dispenses with coercion, the more faithful it is to its 
true nature, the better it fulfills its mission. It is not thereby 
reduced in power or contracted, as is vulgarly supposed ; it acts 
only in another manner, and in a manner which is infinitely 
more general and powerful. Those governments which make 
the greatest use of coercion succeed not nearly so well as those 
which employ it scarcely at all. 
In addressing itself to the understanding, in determining the 
will, in acting by purely intellectual means, the government, in- 
stead of reducing, extends and elevates itself ; it is then that it 
accomplishes the most and the greatest things. on the contrary, 
when it is obliged incessantly to employ coercion, it contracts 
and lessens itself, and effects very little, and that little very ill. 
Thus the essence of government does not reside in coercion, in 
the employment of force ; but that which above all things con- 
stitutes it, is a system of means and powers, conceived with the 
design of arriving at the discovery of what is applicable to each 
occasion ; at the discovery of truth, which has a right to rule 
society, in order that afterward the minds of men may be brought 
to open themselves to it, and adopt it voluntarily and freely. 
The necessity for, and the actual existence of a government are 
thus perfectly conceivable, when there is no occasion for coer- 
cion, when even it is absolutely interdicted. 
Well, such is the government of the religious society. Un- 
doubtedly, coercion is interdicted to it ; undoubtedly, the em- 
ployment of force by it is illegitimate, whatever may be its aim, 
76 GUIZOT 
for the single reason that its exclusive territory is the human con- 
science : but not less, therefore, does it subsist ; not the less 
has it to accomplish all the acts I have mentioned. It must dis- 
cover what are the religious doctrines which solve the problems 
of the human destiny ; or, if there exists already a general sys- 
tem of creeds whereby those problems are solved, it must dis- 
cover and exhibit the consequences of that system, as regards 
each particular case ; it must promulgate and maintain the pre- 
cepts which correspond to its doctrines ; it must preach and 
teach them, in order that, when the society wanders from them, 
it may bring back. There must be no coercion ; the duties of 
this government are, examining, preaching, and teaching re- 
ligious virtues ; and, at need, admonishing or censuring. Sup- 
press coercion as completely as you will, you will yet behold all 
the essential questions of the organization of a government arise 
and claim solutions. For example, the question whether a body 
of religious magistrates is necessary, or whether it is possible to 
trust to the religious inspiration of individuals (a question which 
is debated between the majority of religious societies and the 
Quakers), will always exist, it will always be necessary to discuss 
it. In like manner, the question, whether, when it has been 
agreed that a body of religious magistrates is necessary, we 
should prefer a system of equality, of religious ministers equal 
among themselves and deliberating in common, to an hierarchi- 
cal constitution, with various degrees of power; this question 
will never come to an end, because you deny all coercive power 
to ecclesiastical magistrates, whosoever they may be. Instead, 
then, of dissolving religious society in order that we may have 
the right of destroying religious government, we must rather 
recognize that the religious society forms itself naturally, that 
the religious government flows as naturally from the religious 
society, and that the problem to be solved is to ascertain under 
what conditions this government should exist, what are its foun- 
dations, principles, and conditions of legitimacy. This is the 
real investigation which is imposed by the necessary existence 
of a religious government as of all others. 
The conditions of legitimacy are the same for the government 
of a religious society as for that of any other ; they may be re- 
duced to two : the first, that the power should attach itself to 
and remain constantly in the hands of the best and most capable, 
as far, at least, as human imperfection will allow of its doing so ; 
that the truly superior people who exist dispersed among the 
society should be sought for there, brought to light, and called 
upon to unfold the social law, and to exercise power ; the second 
that the power legitimately constituted should respect the legit- 
imate liberties of those over whom it exercises itself. In these 
two conditions, a good system of forming and organizing power, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 77 
and a good system of guarantees of liberty, consists the worth of 
government in general, whether religious or civil; all govern- 
ments ought to be judged according to this criterion. 
Instead, then, of taunting the church, or the government of 
the Christian world, with its existence, we should find out how 
it was constituted, and whether its principles corresponded with 
the two essential conditions of all good government. Let us 
examine the church in this twofold view. 
As regards the formation and transmission of power in the 
church, there is a word which is often used in speaking of the 
Christian clergy, and which I wish to discard ; it is the world 
caste. The body of ecclesiastical magistrates has often been 
called a caste. Look around the world; take any country in 
which castes have been produced, in India or Egypt ; you will see 
everywhere that the caste is essentially hereditary; it is the 
transmission of the same position and the same power from 
father to son. Wherever there is no inheritance there is no 
caste, there is a corporation ; the spirit of a corporation has its 
inconveniences, but it is very different from the spirit of the 
caste. The word caste cannot be applied to the Christian 
church. The celibacy of the priests prevents the Christian 
church from ever becoming a caste. 
You already see, to a certain extent, the consequences of this 
difference. To the vSystem of caste, to the fact of inheritance, 
monopoly is inevitably attached. This results from the very 
definition of the word caste. When the same functions and the 
same powers become hereditary in the same families, it is evident 
that privilege must have been attached to them, and that no one 
could have acquired them independently of his origin. In fact, 
this was what happened; wherever the religious government 
fell into the hands of a caste it became a matter of privilege; no 
one entered into it but those who belonged to the families of the 
caste. Nothing resembling this is met with in the Christian 
church; and not only is there no resemblance found, but the 
church has continually maintained the principle of the equal 
admissibility of all men to all her duties and dignities, whatever 
may have been their origin. The ecclesiastical career, particu- 
larly from the fifth to the twelfth century, was open to all. The 
church recruited herself from all ranks, alike from the inferior, 
as well as the superior; more often, indeed, from the inferior. 
Around her all was disposed of under the system of privilege ; 
she alone maintained the principle of equality and competition; 
she alone called all who were possessed of legitimate superiority 
to the possession of power. This was the first great consequence 
which naturally resulted from her being a body, and not a 
caste. 
Again, there is an inherent spirit in castes, the spirit of immo- 
78 GUIZOT 
bility. This assertion needs no proof. Open any history and you 
will see the spirit of immobility imprinted upon all societies, 
whether political or religious, where the system of castes domin- 
ated. The fear of progress, it is true, was introduced at a certain 
epoch, and up to a certain point, in the Christian church. But 
we cannot say that it has dominated there; we cannot say that 
the Christian church has remained immovable and stationary; 
for many long ages she has been in movement and progress; 
sometimes provoked by the attacks of an external opposition, 
sometimes impelled from within, by desires of reform and inter- 
nal development. Upon the whole it is a society which has con- 
tinually changed and marched onward, and which has a varied 
and progressive history. There can be no doubt that the equal 
admission of all men to the ecclesiastical functions, that the con- 
tinued recruiting of the church according to principles of equal- 
ity, has powerfully contributed to maintain, and incessantly 
reanimate within it, its life and movement, to prevent the triumph 
of the spirit of immobility. 
How could the church, who thus admitted all men to power, 
assure herself of their right to it? How could she discover and 
bring to light, from the heart of society, the legitimate superior- 
ities which were to share the government? 
Two principles were in vigor in the church : First, the election 
of the inferior by the superior — the choice, the nomination; 
second, the election of the superior by the subordinates — that 
is, an election properly so called, what we understand as such 
in the present day. 
The ordination of priests, for instance, the power of making a 
man a priest, belonged to the superior alone. The choice was 
exercised by the superior over the inferior. So, in the collation 
of certain ecclesiastical benefices, among others, benefices 
attached to the feudal concessions, it was the superior — king, 
pope, or lord — who nominated the incumbent; in other cases, 
the principle of election, properly so called, was in force. The 
bishops had long been, and at the epoch which occupies us were 
still very often, elected by the body of the clergy. Sometimes 
even the congregations interfered. In the interior of monas- 
teries, the abbot was elected by the monks. At Rome, the popes 
were elected by the college of cardinals, and at one time even the 
whole of the Roman clergy took part in the election. You thus 
see the two principles — the choice of the inferior by the superior, 
and the election of the superior by the subordinate — acknowl- 
edged and acted upon in the church, especially at the epoch 
under consideration. It was by one or other of these means 
that she nominated the men called upon to exercise a portion 
of the ecclesiastical power. 
Not only were these two principles co-existent, but being 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 79 
essentially different there was a struggle between them. After 
many centuries and many vicissitudes the nomination of the 
inferior by the superior gained the mastery in the Christian 
church; but as a general thing, from the fifth to the twelfth 
century, it was the other principle, the choice of the superior 
by the subordinate, which still prevailed. And do not be sur- 
prised at the co-existence of two principles so dissimilar. Re- 
gard society in general, the natural course of the world, the 
manner in which power is transmitted in it, you will see that this 
transmission is brought into force sometimes according to one 
of these principles and sometimes according to the other. The 
church did not originate them; she found them in the provi- 
dential government of human things, and thence she borrowed 
them. There is truth and utility in each of them ; their combin- 
ation will often be the best means of discovering the legitimate 
power. It is a great misfortune, in my opinion, that one of these 
two, the choice of the inferior by the superior, should have 
gained the mastery in the church; the second, however, has 
never entirely prevailed; and under various names, with more 
or less success, it has been reproduced in all epochs, so as at all 
events to enter protest and interrupt prescription. 
The Christian church derived, at the epoch which occupies 
us, immense strength from its respect for equality and legitimate 
superiorities. It was the most popular society, the most access- 
ible and open to all kinds of talent, to all the noble ambitions of 
human nature. Thence arose its power, much more than from 
its riches, or from the illegitimate means which it has too often 
employed. 
As regards the second condition of a good government, re- 
spect for liberty, there was much to wish for in the church. 
Two evil principles met in it; the one avowed, and, as it were, 
incorporated in the doctrines of the church; the other intro- 
duced into it by human weakness, and not as a legitimate conse- 
quence of doctrine. 
The first was the denial of the right of individual reason, the 
pretension to transmit creeds down through the whole religious 
society, without any one having the right to judge for himself. 
It was easier to lay down this principle than to make it actually 
prevail. A conviction does not enter into the human intellect 
unless the intellect admits it; it must make itself acceptable. In 
whatever form it presents itself, and whatever name it evokes, 
reason weighs it; and if the creed prevail, it is from being 
accepted by reason. Thus, under whatever form they may be 
concealed, the action of the individual reason is always exerted 
upon the ideas which are sought to be imposed upon it. It is 
very true that reason may be altered; it may to a certain extent 
abdicate and mutilate itself; it may be induced to make an ill 
8o GUIZOT 
use of its faculties, or not to put in force all the use of them to 
which it has a right; such, indeed, has been the consequence 
of the ill principle admitted by the church ; but as regards the 
pure and complete influence of this principle, it never has been, 
and never can be, put into full force. 
The second evil principle is, the right of constraint which the 
church arrogates to herself — a right contrary to the very nature 
of religious society, to the very origin of the church, and her 
primitive maxims — a right which has been disputed by many 
of the most illustrious fathers, St. Ambrose, St. Hilary, St. 
Martin, but which has, notwithstanding, prevailed and become a 
dominant fact. The pretension of forcing to believe, if two such 
words can stand in juxtaposition, or of physically punishing 
belief, the persecution of heresy, contempt for the legitimate 
liberty of human thought, this is an error which was introduced 
into the church even before the fifth century ; and dearly has it 
cost her. 
If, then, we consider the church in relation to the liberty of 
her members, we perceive that her principles in this respect 
were less legitimate and less salutary than those which presided 
at the formation of the ecclesiastical power. It must not be 
supposed, however, that an evil principle radically vitiates an 
institution, nor even that it is the cause of all the evil which it 
carries in its breast. Nothing more falsifies history than logic : 
when the human mind rests upon an idea, it draws from it every 
possible consequence, makes it produce all the eflfect it is capable 
of producing, and then pictures it in history with the whole 
retinue. But things do not happen in this way; events are not 
so prompt in their deductions as the human mind. There is in 
all things a mixture of good and evil so profound and invincible 
that wherever you penetrate, when you descend into the most 
hidden elements of society or the soul, you find there these two 
orders of existent facts developing themselves side by side, com- 
bating without exterminating one another. Human nature never 
goes to the extremity either of evil or good ; it passes incessantly 
from one to the other, erecting itself at the moment when it 
seems most likely to fall, and weakening at the moment when 
its walk seems firmest. We shall find here that character of 
discordance, variety and strife, which I have remarked as being 
the fundamental characteristic of European civilization. There 
is still another general fact which characterizes the government 
of the church, and of which it is necessary to take notice. 
At the present day, when the idea of government presents 
itself to us, whatever it may be, we know that there is no preten- 
sion of governing other than the external actions of man — the 
civil relations of men among themselves; governments profess 
to apply themselves to nothing more. With regard to human 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 8i 
thought, human conscience, and morality, properly so called, 
with regard to individual opinions and private manners, they 
do not interfere ; these fall within the domain of liberty. 
The Christian church did or wished to do directly the con- 
trary ; she undertook to govern the liberty, private manners and 
opinions of individuals. She did not make a code like ours, to 
define only actions at once morally culpable and socially danger- 
ous, and only punishing them in proportion as they bore this 
twofold character. She made a catalogue of all actions morally 
culpable, and under the name of sins she punished all with the 
intention of repressing all; in a word, the government of the 
church did not address itself, like modern governments, to the 
external man, to the purely civil relations of men among them- 
selves; it addressed itself to the internal man, to the thought and 
conscience, that is to say, to all that is most private to him, most 
free and rebellious against constraint. The church then from 
the very nature of her enterprise, together with the nature of 
some of the principles upon which she founded her government, 
was in danger of becoming tyrannical and of employing illegiti- 
mate force. But at the same time the force encountered a resist- 
ance which it could not vanquish. However little movement 
and space are left them, human thought and liberty energetically 
react against all attempts to subdue them, and at every moment 
compel the very despotism which they endure to abdicate. Thus 
it happened in the bosom of the Christian church. You have 
seen the proscription of heresy, the condemnation of the right 
of inquiry, the contempt for individual reason, and the principle 
of the imperative transmission of doctrines upon authority. 
Well, show one society in which individual reason has been more 
boldly developed than in the church! What are sects and 
heresies, if they are not the fruit of individual opinions ? Sects 
and heresies, all the party of opposition in the church, are the in- 
contestable proof of the moral life and activity which reigned in 
it ; a life tempestuous and painful, overspread with perils, errors, 
crimes, but noble and powerful, and one that has given rise to the 
finest developments of mind and intellect. Leave the oppo- 
sition, look into the ecclesiastical government itself; you will 
find it constituted and acting in a manner very different from 
what some of its principles seem to indicate. It denied the right 
of inquiry, and wished to deprive individual reason of its liberty; 
and yet it is to reason that it incessantly appeals, and liberty is 
its dominant fact. What are its institutions and means of action? 
Provincial councils, national councils, general councils, a con- 
tinual correspondence, the incessant publication of letters, 
admonitions, and writings. Never did a government pro- 
ceed to such an extent by discussion and common deliberation. 
We might suppose ourselves in the heart of the Greek 
6 
82 GUIZOT 
schools of philosophy; and yet it was no mere discussion or 
seeking^ for truth that was at issue; it involved questions of 
authority, of adopting measures, of promulgating decrees; in 
fine, of a government. But such in the very heart of this gov- 
ernment was the energy of intellectual life, that it became the 
dominant and universal fact, to which all others gave way; and 
what shone forth on all sides was the exercise of reason and 
liberty. 
I am far from inferring that these bad principles which I have 
attempted to set forth, and which, in my opinion, existed in the 
system of the church, remained in it without effect. At the epoch 
which now occupies us, they already bore but too bitter fruit, 
and were destined at a later period to bear fruit still more bitter; 
but they have not accomplished all the evil of which they were 
capable, they have not stifled all the good which grew in the 
same soil. Such was the church, considered in itself, in its 
internal construction and nature. I now pass to its relations 
with the sovereigns, the masters of temporal power. This is the 
second point of view under which I promised to consider it. 
When the Empire fell — when, instead of the ancient Roman 
system, the government, in the midst of which the church 
had taken birth, with which she had arisen, and had habits in 
common and ancient ties, she found herself exposed to those 
barbarian kings and chiefs who wandered over the land or 
remained fixed in their castles, and to whom neither traditions, 
creeds nor sentiments could unite her; her danger was great, 
and as great was her terror. 
A single idea became dominant in the church ; this was to take 
possession of the new-comers, to convert them. The relations 
between the church and the barbarians had, at first, scarcely 
any other aim. In influencing the barbarians it was necessary 
that their senses and their imagination should be appealed to. 
We therefore find at this epoch a great augmentation in the 
number, pomp and variety of the ceremonies of worship. The 
chronicles prove that this was the chief means by which the 
church acted upon the barbarians; she converted them by 
splendid spectacles. When they were established and converted, 
and when there existed some ties between them and the church, 
she did not cease to run many dangers on their part. The 
brutality and recklessness of the barbarians were such that the 
new creeds and sentiments with which they were inspired exer- 
cised but little empire over them. Violence soon reassumed 
the upper hand, and the church, like the rest of society, 
was its victim. For her defence she proclaimed a principle for- 
merely laid down under the Empire, although more vaguely — 
this was the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, 
and their reciprocal independence. It was by the aid of this 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 83 
principle that the church Hved freely in connection with the 
barbarians; she maintained that force could not act upon the 
system of creeds, hopes, and religious promises; that the spiritual 
world and the temporal world were entirely distinct. You may at 
once see the salutary consequences resulting from this principle. 
Independently of its temporal utility to the church, it had this 
inestimable effect of bringing about, on the foundation of right, 
the separation of powers, and of controlling them by means of 
each other. Moreover, in sustaining the independence of the 
intellectual world, as a general thing, in its whole extent, the 
church prepared the way for the independence of the in- 
dividual intellectual world — the independence of thought. 
The church said that the system of religious creeds could not 
fall under the yoke of force; and each individual was led to 
apply to his own case the language of the church. The prin- 
ciple of free inquiry, of liberty of individual thought, is exactly 
the same as that of the independence of general spiritual author- 
ity with regard to temporal power. 
Unhappily, it is easy to pass from the desire for liberty to the 
lust for domination. I thus happened within the bosom of the 
church; by the natural development of ambition and human 
pride, the church attempted to establish, not only the indepen- 
dence of spiritual power, but also its domination over temporal 
power. But it must not be supposed that this pretension had 
no other source than in the weaknesses of human nature ; there 
were other more profound sources which it is of importance to 
know. 
When liberty reigns in the intellectual world, when thought 
and human conscience are not subjected to a power which dis- 
putes their right to debate and decide, or employs force against 
them ; when there is no visible and constituted spiritual govern- 
ment, claiming and exercising the right to dictate opinions; 
then the idea of the domination of the spiritual over the temporal 
order is impossible. Nearly such is the present state of the world. 
But when there exists, as there did exist in the tenth century, a 
government of the spiritual order; when thought and conscience 
come under laws, institutions and powers which arrogate to 
themselves the right of commanding and constraining them ; in 
a word, when spiritual power is constituted, when it actually 
takes possession of human reason and conscience in the name 
of right and force, it is natural that it should be led to assume 
the domination over the temporal order, that it should say: 
" Now ! I have right and influence over that which is most 
elevated and independent in man ; over his thought, his internal 
will, and his conscience, and shall I not have right over his 
exterior, material and passing interests? I am the interpreter 
of justice and truth, and am I not allowed to regulate worldly 
84 GUIZOT 
affairs according to justice and truth?" In very virtue of this 
reasoning, the spiritual order was sure to attempt the usurpation 
of the temporal order. And this was the more certain from the 
fact that the spiritual order embraced every development of 
human thought at that time; there was but one science, and that 
was theology; but one spiritual order, the theological; all other 
sciences, rhetoric, arithmetic, even music, all was comprised in 
theology. ^ . 
The spiritual power, thus finding itself at the head of all tne 
activity of human thought, naturally arrogated to itself the gov- 
ernment of the world. A second cause tended as powerfully to 
this end — the frightful state of the temporal order, the vi.cjence 
and iniquity which prevailed in the government of temporal 
societies. 
We, for many centuries, have spoken at our ease of the rights 
of temporal power; but at the epoch under consideration the 
temporal was mere force, ungovernable brigandage. The 
church, however imperfect her notions still were concerning 
morality and justice, was infinitely superior to such a temporal 
government as this ; the cries of the people continually pressed 
her to take its place. When a pope, or the bishops, proclaimed 
that a prince had forfeited his rights, and that her subjects were 
absolved from their oath of fidelity, this intervention, without 
doubt subject to various abuses, was often, in particular cases, 
legitimate and salutary. In general, when liberty has failed 
mankind, it is religion that has had the charge of replacing it. 
In the tenth century the people were not in a state to defend 
themselves, and so make their rights available against civil 
violence : religion, in the name of Heaven, interfered. This is 
one of the causes which have most contributed to the victories 
of the theocratical principle. 
There is a third, which I think is too seldom remarked : the 
complexity of situation of the heads of the church, the variety 
of aspects under which they have presented themselves in so- 
ciety. on one hand they were prelates, members of the eccle- 
siastical order, and part of the spiritual power, and by this title 
independent ; on the other, they were vassals, and, as such, en- 
gaged in the bonds of civil feudalism. This is not all ; besides 
being vassals they were subjects ; some portion of the ancient 
relations between the Roman emperors, and the bishops, and 
the clergy, had now passed into those between the clergy and 
the barbarian sovereigns. By a series of causes, which it would 
be too tedious to develop, the bishops had been led to regard, 
up to a certain point, the barbarian sovereigns as the successors 
of the Roman emperors, and to attribute to them all their pre- 
rogatives. The chiefs of the clergy, then, had a three-fold 
character: an ecclesiastical character, and as such, an inde- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 85 
pendent one ; a feudal character, one as such bound to certain 
duties, and holding by certain services ; and, lastly, the charac- 
ter of a simple subject, and as such bound to obey an absolute 
sovereign. Now mark the result. The temporal sovereigns, 
who were not less covetous and ambitious than the bishops, 
availed themselves of their rights as lords or sovereigns to en- 
croach upon the spiritual independence, and to seize upon the 
collation of benefices, the nomination of bishops, etc. The 
bishops, on their side, often intrenched themselves in their 
spiritual independence in order to escape their obligations as 
vassals or subjects ; so that, on either hand, there was an almost 
inevitable tendency which led the sovereigns to destroy spirit- 
ual independence, and the heads of the church to make 
spiritual independence a means of universal domination. 
The result has been shown in facts of which no one is ig- 
norant: in the quarrels concerning investitures, and in the 
struggle between the priesthood and the empire. The various 
situations of the heads of the church, and the difficulty of recon- 
ciling them, were the real sources of the uncertainty and con- 
test of these pretensions. 
Lastly, the church had a third relation with the sovereigns, 
which was for her the least favorable and the most unfortunate 
of them all. She laid claim to co-action, to the right of re- 
straining and punishing heresy ; but she had no means of doing 
this; she had not at her disposal a physical force; when she had 
condemned the heretic, she had no means of executing judgment 
upon him. What could she do ? She invoked the aid of what 
was called the secular arm ; she borrowed the force of civil 
power as a means of co-action. And she thereby placed her- 
self, in regard to civil power, in a situation of dependence and 
inferiority. A deplorable necessity to which she was reduced 
by the adoption of the evil principle of co-action and persecu- 
tion. 
It remains for me to make you acquainted with the relations 
of the church with the people, what principles were prevalent in 
them, and what consequences have thence resulted to civiliza- 
tion in general. I shall afterward attempt to verify the induc- 
tions we have here drawn from the nature of its institutions and 
principles, by means of history, facts, and the vicissitudes of the 
destiny of the church from the fifth to the twelfth century. 
SIXTH LECTURE. 
WE were unable, at our last meeting, to terminate the in- 
quiry into the state of the church from the fifth to the 
twelfth century. After having decided that it should 
be considered under three principal aspects, first, in itself alone, 
in its internal constitution, and in its nature as a distinct and in- 
dependent society; next, in its relations to the sovereign and 
the temporal power; and lastly, in its relations with the people, 
we have only accomplished the two first divisions of this task. 
It now remains for me to make you acquainted with the 
church in its relations with the people. I shall afterward en- 
deavor to draw from this threefold inquiry a general idea of the 
influence of the church upon European civilization from the 
fifth to the twelfth century. And lastly, we will verify our as- 
sertions by an examination of the facts, by the history of the 
church itself at that epoch. 
You will easily understand that, in speaking of the relations 
of the church with the people, I am forced to confine myself to 
very general terms. I cannot enter into a detail of the prac- 
tices of the church, or of the daily relations of the clergy with the 
faithful. It is the dominant principles and grand effects of the 
system and of the conduct of the church toward the Christian 
people, that I have to place before you. 
The characteristic fact, and, it must so be called, the radical 
vice of the relations of the church with the people, is the sepa- 
ration of the governing and the governed, the non-influence of 
the governed in their government, the independence of the 
Christian clergy with regard to the faithful. 
This evil must have been provoked by the state of man and 
of society, for we find it introduced into the Christian church at 
a very early period. The separation of the clergy and the 
Christian people was not entirely consummated at the epoch 
under consideration ; there was, on certain occasions, in the 
election of bishops for instance, at least in some cases, a direct 
intervention of the Christian people in its government. But 
this intervention became by degrees more weak and of more 
rare occurrence ; it was from the second century of our era that 
it begun visibly and rapidly to decline. The tendency to the 
isolation and independence of the clergy is, in a measure, the 
history of the church itself from its very cradle. From thence, 
86 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE $7 
it cannot be denied, arose the greater portion of those abuses 
which, at this epoch, and still more at a later period, have cost 
so dear to the church. We must not, however, impute them 
solely to this, nor regard this tendency to isolation as peculiar 
to the Christian clergy. There is in the very nature of religious 
society a strong inclination to raise the governing far above the 
governed, to attribute to the former something distinct and di- 
vine. This is the effect of the very mission with which they are 
charged, and of the character under which they present them- 
selves to the eyes of people, and such an effect is more griev- 
ous in the religious society than in any other. What is it that 
is at stake with the governed? Their reason, their conscience, 
their future destiny — that is to say, all that is most near to them, 
most individual, and most free. We can conceive, to a certain 
point, that although great evil may result therefrom, a man 
may abandon to an external authority the direction of his mate- 
rial interests, and his temporal destiny. We can understand 
the philosopher, who, when they came to tell him that his house 
was on fire, answered, "Go and inform my wife; I do not 
meddle in the household affairs." But, when it extends 
to the conscience, the thought and the internal existence, 
to the abdication of self-government, to the delivering one's 
self to a foreign power, it is truly a moral suicide, a servi- 
tude a hundred-fold worse than that of the body, or than 
that of the soul. Such, however, was the evil which, with- 
out prevailing entirely, as I shall immediately show, gradu- 
ally usurped the Christian church in its relations with the 
faithful. You have already seen that, for the clergy them- 
selves, and in the very heart of the church, there was no 
guarantee for liberty. It was far worse beyond the church and 
among the laity. Among ecclesiastics, there was, at least, dis- 
cussion, deliberation and a display of individual faculties ; there 
the excitement of contest supplied, in some measure, the want 
of liberty. There was none of this between the clergy and the 
people. The laity took part in the government of the church 
as mere spectators. Thus we see springing up and prevailing 
at a very early period, the idea that theology and religious ques- 
tions and affairs are the privileged domain of the clergy ; that 
the clergy alone have the right, not only of deciding, but of 
taking part tfierein at all ; that in any case the laity can have no 
kind of right to interfere. At the period under consideration 
this theory was already in full power; centuries and terrible 
revolutions were necessary to conquer it, to bring back within 
the public domain religious questions and science. 
In the principle, then, as well as in fact, the legal separation 
of the clergy and the Christian people was almost consum- 
mated before the twelfth century. 
SS GUIZOT 
I would not have you suppose, however, that even at this 
epoch the Christian people were entirely without influence in its 
government. The legal intervention was wanting, but not in- 
fluence — that is almost impossible in any government, still more 
so in a government founded upon a belief common both to the 
governing and the governed. Wherever this community of 
ideas is developed, or wherever a similar intellectual move- 
ment prevails with the government and the people, there must 
necessarily exist a connection between them which no vice in 
the organization can entirely destroy. To explain myself clearly 
I will take an example near to us, and from the political order : 
at no epoch in the history of France has the French people had 
less legal influence on its government, by means of institutions, 
than in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under Louis 
XIV and Louis XV. 
No one is ignorant that at this period nearly all official and 
direct influence of the country in the exercise of authority had 
perished; yet there can be no doubt that the people and the 
country then exercised upon the government far more influence 
than in other times — in the times, for instance, when the states- 
general were so often convoked, when the parliament took so 
important a part in politics, and when the legal participation 
of the people in power was much greater. 
It is because there is a force which cannot be inclosed by 
laws, which, when need is, can dispense with institutions: it is 
the force of ideas, of the public mind and opinion. In France, 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a public 
opinion which was much more powerful than at any other 
epoch. Although deprived of the means of acting legally upon 
the government, it acted indirectly by the empire of ideas, which 
were common alike to the governing and the governed, and 
by the impossibility which the governing felt of taking no note 
of the opinion of the governed. A similar fact happened in the 
Christian church from the fifth to the twelfth century; the Chris- 
tian people, it is true, were deficient in legal action, but there 
was a great movement of mind in religious matters — this move- 
ment brought the laity and the ecclesiastics into conjunction, 
and by this means the people influenced the clergy. 
In all cases in the study of history it is necessary to hold as 
highly valuable, indirect influences ; they are much more effi- 
cacious, and sometimes more salutary, than is generally sup- 
posed. It is natural that men should wish their actions to be 
prompt and evident, should desire the pleasure of participating 
in their success, power and triumph. This is not always pos- 
sible, not always even useful. There are times and situations 
in which indirect and unseen influences arc alone desirable and 
practicable. I will take another example from the political 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 89 
order. More than once, especially in 1641, the English parlia- 
ment, like many other assemblies in similar crisis, has claimed 
the right of nominating directly the chief officers of the crown, 
the ministers, councillors of state, etc. ; it regarded this direct 
action in the government as an immense and valuable guaran- 
tee. It has sometimes exercised this prerogative, and always 
with bad success. The selections were ill concerted, and affairs 
ill governed. But how is it in England at the present day? 
Is it not the influence of parliament which decides the formation 
of the ministry, and the nomination of all the great officers of 
the crown? Certainly; but then it is an indirect and gen- 
eral influence, instead of a special intervention. The end 
at which England has long aimed is gained; but by differ- 
ent means ; the first means which were tried had never acted 
beneficially. 
There is a reason for this, concerning which I ask your per- 
mission to detain you for a moment. Direct action supposes, 
in those to which it is confided, far more enlightenment, reason 
and prudence ; as they are to attain the end at once, and with- 
out delay, it is necessary that they should be certain of not miss- 
ing that end. Indirect influences, on the contrary, are only 
exercised through obstacles, and after tests which restrain and 
rectify them ; before prospering, they are condemned to un- 
dergo discussion, and to see themselves opposed and controlled ; 
they triumph but slowly, and, in a measure, conditionally. For 
this reason, when minds are not sufficiently advanced and 
ripened to guarantee their direct action being taken with safety, 
indirect influences, although often insufficient, are still prefer- 
able. It was thus that the Christian people influenced their 
government, very incompletely, in much too limited an extent, 
I am convinced — but still they influenced it. 
There was also another cause of approximation between the 
church and the people ; this was the dispersion, so to speak, of 
the Christian clergy among all social conditions. Almost 
everywhere, when a church has been constituted independently 
of the people whom it governed, the body of priests has been 
formed of men nearly in the same situation ; not that great ine- 
qualities have not existed among them, but upon the whole the 
government has appertained to colleges of priests living in com- 
mon, and governing, from the depths of the temple, the people 
under their law. The Christian church was quite differently or- 
ganized. From the miserable habitation of the serf, at the foot 
of the feudal castle, to the king's palace itself, everywhere there 
was a priest, a member of the clergy. The clergy was associated 
with all human conditions. This diversity in the situation of 
the Christian priests, this participation in all fortunes, has been 
a grand principle of union between the clergy and the laity, a 
90 
GUIZOT 
principle which has been wanting in most churches invested 
with power. The bishops and chiefs of the Christian clergy 
were, moreover, as you have been, engaged in the feudal organ- 
ization, and were members, at one and the same time, of a civil 
and of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Hence it was that the same 
interests, habits and manners, became common to both the civil 
and religious orders. There has been much complaint, and 
with good reason, of bishops who have gone to war, of 
priests who have led the life of laymen. Of a verity, it was a 
great abuse, but still an abuse far less grievous than was, else- 
where, the existence of those priests who never left the temple, 
and whose life was totally separated from that of the community. 
Bishops, in some way mixed up in civil discords, were far more 
serviceable than the priests who were total strangers to the 
population, to all its affairs and its manners. Under this con- 
nection there was established between the clergy and the Chris- 
tian people a parity of destiny and situation, which, if it did not 
correct, at least lessened the evil of the separation between the 
governing and the governed. 
This separation being once admitted, and its limits deter- 
mined (the attainment of which object I have just attempted), 
let us investigate the manner in which the Christian church was 
governed, and in what way it acted upon the people under its 
command. on the one hand, how it tended to the develop- 
ment of man, and the internal progress of the individual ; and 
on the other, how it tended to the amelioration of the social 
condition. 
As regards the development of the individual, I do not think, 
correctly speaking, that, at the epoch under consideration, the 
church troubled itself much in the matter ; it endeavored to in- 
spire the powerful of the world with milder sentiments, and 
with more justice in their relations with the weak ; it maintained 
in the weak a moral life, together with sentiments and desires 
of a more elevated order than those to which their daily destiny 
condemned them. Still, for the development of the individual, 
properly so called, and for increasing the worth of man's per- 
sonal nature, I do not think that at this period the church did 
much, at all events not among the laity. What it did effect was 
confined to the ecclesiastical society; it concerned itself much 
with the development of the clergy, and the instruction of the 
priests; it had for them schools, and all the institutions which 
the deplorable state of society permitted. But they were ec- 
clesiastical schools destined only for the instruction of the 
clergy; beyond this, the church acted only indirectly and by 
very dilatory means upon the progress of ideas and manners. 
It doubtless provoked general activity of mind, by the career 
which it opened to all those whom it judged capable of serving 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 91 
it ; but this was all that it did at this period toward the intellec- 
tual development of the laity. 
It worked more, I believe, and that in a more efficacious man- 
ner, toward the amelioration of social society. There can be 
no doubt that it struggled resolutely against the great vices of 
the social state, against slavery, for instance. It has often been 
repeated, that the abolition of slavery among modern people 
is entirely due to Christians. That, I think, is saying too 
much ; slavery existed for a long period in the heart of Christian 
society without it being particularly astonished or irritated. A 
multitude of causes, and a great development in other ideas and 
principles of civilization were necessary for the abolition of this 
iniquity of all iniquities. It cannot be doubted, however, that the 
church exerted its influence to restrain it. We have an un- 
deniable proof of this. The greater part of the forms of en- 
franchisement, at various epochs, were based upon religious 
principles ; it is in the name of religious ideas, upon hopes of 
the future, and upon the religious equality of mankind, that en- 
franchisement has almost always been pronounced. 
The church worked equally for the suppression of a crowd 
of barbarous customs, and for the amelioration of the criminal 
and civil legislation. You know how monstrous and absurd 
this legislation then was, despite some principles of liberty in it ; 
you also know what ridiculous proofs, such as judicial combat, 
and even the simple oaths of a few men, were considered as the 
only means of arriving at the truth. The church endeavored 
to substitute in their stead more rational and legitimate means. 
I have already spoken of the difference which may be observed 
between the laws of the Visigoths, issued chiefly from the coun- 
cils of Toledo, and other barbarous laws. It is impossible to 
compare them without being struck by the immense superiority 
of the ideas of the church in matters of legislation, justice and in 
all that interests the search for truth and the destiny of man- 
kind. Doubtless many of these ideas were borrowed from the 
Roman legislation ; but had not the church preserved and de- 
fended them, if it had not worked their propagation, they would, 
doubtless, have perished. For example, as regards the em- 
ployment of the oath in legal procedure, open the law of the 
Visigoths and you will see with what wisdom it is used: 
*• Let the judge, that he may understand the cause, first in- 
terrogate the witnesses, and afterward examine the writings, 
to the end that the truth may be discovered with more certainty, 
and that the oath may not be needlessly administered. The 
search for truth requires that the writings on either side be care- 
fully examined, and that the necessity for the oath, suspended 
over the heads of the parties, arrive unexpectedly. Let the 
oath be administered only in those cases when the judge can 
92 GUIZOT 
discover no writings, proof, or other certain evidence of the 
truth/' (For. Jnd. 1. ii. tit. i. 21.) 
In criminal matters the relation between the punishments and 
the offences is determined according to philosophical and moral 
notions, which are very just. one may there recognize 
the efforts of an enlightened legislator struggling against the 
violence and want of reflection of barbarous manners. The 
chapter, De ccede et morte hominum, compared with laws corre- 
sponding thereto in other nations, is a very remarkable ex- 
ample. Elsewhere it is the damage done which seems to con- 
stitute the crime, and the punishment is sought in the material 
reparation of pecuniary composition. Here the crime is re- 
duced to its true, veritable and moral element, the intention. 
The various shades of criminality, absolutely involuntary hom- 
icide, homicide by inadvertency, provoked homicide, homicide 
with or without premeditation, are distinguished and defined 
nearly as correctly as in our codes, and the punishments vary in 
just proportion. The justice of the legislator went still further. 
He has attempted, if not to abolish, at least to lessen the diver- 
sity of legal value established among men by the laws of bar- 
barism. The only distinction which he kept up was that of the 
free man and the slave. As regards free men, the punishment 
varies neither according to the origin nor the rank of the de- 
ceased, but solely according to the various degrees of moral cul- 
pability of the murderer. With regard to slaves, although not 
daring to deprive the master of all right to life and death, he at 
least attempted to restrain it by subjecting it to a public and 
regular procedure. The text of the law deserves citation : 
"If no malefactor or accomplice in a crime should go unpun- 
ished, with how much more reason should we condemn those 
who have committed homicide lightly and maliciously 1 There- 
fore, as masters, in their pride, often put their slaves to death, 
without fault on their part, it is right that this license should be 
entirely extirpated, and we ordain that the present law be per- 
petually observed by all. No master or mistress can put to 
death without public trial any of their male or female slaves, 
nor any person dependent upon them. If a slave, or any other 
servant, shall commit any crime which will render him liable to 
capital punishment, his master, or accuser, shall immediately 
inform the judge, or the count, or the duke, of the place where 
the crime was committed. After an investigation into the 
affair, if the crime be proved, let the culprit undergo, either 
through the judge or his own master, the sentence of death 
which he merits : provided, however, that if the judge will not 
put the accused to death, he shall draw up a capital sentence 
against him in writing ; and then it shall be in the power of the 
master either to kill him or spare his life. At the same time, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 93 
if the slave, by a fatal audacity, resisting his master, shall strike, 
or attempt to strike, him with a weapon or stone, and if the 
master, while defending himself, should kill the slave in his 
rage, the master shall not receive the punishment due to a 
homicide ; but it must be proved that this really was the fact, 
and that, by the testimony or oath of the slaves, male or female, 
who may have been present, and by the oath of the author of 
the deed himself. Whoever, in pure malice, whether with his 
own hand or by that of another, shall kill his slave without 
public judgment, shall be reckoned infamous and declared in- 
capable of bearing testimony, and shall pass the remainder of 
his life in exile or penitence, and his goods shall fall to his near- 
est heir to whom the law accords the inheritance." (For. Jud. 1. 
vi. tit. V. 1. 12.) 
There is one fact in the institutions of the church which is 
generally not sufficiently remarked; it is the penitential system, a 
system so much the more curious to study in the present day from 
its being, as regards the principles and applications of the penal 
law, exactly in accordance with the ideas of modern philosophy. 
If you study the nature of the punishments of the church, and 
the public penances which were its principal mode of chastise- 
ment, you will see that the chief object is to excite repentance 
in the soul of the culprit and moral terror in the beholders by 
the example. There was also another idea mixed with it, that 
of expiation. I know not, as a general thing, if it be possible 
to separate the idea of expiation from that of punishment, and 
whether there is not in all punishment, independently of the 
necessity of provoking repentance in the culprit and of de- 
terring those who might be tempted to become so, a secret and 
imperious want to expiate the wrong committed. But, leav- 
ing aside this question, it is evident that repentance and ex- 
ample are the ends proposed by the church in its whole peni- 
tential system. Is not this also the end of a truly philosophical 
legislation? Is it not in the name of these principles that the most 
enlightened jurists of this and the past century have advocated 
the reform of the European penal legislation? Open their 
works, those of Bentham, for instance, and you will be surprised 
by all the resemblances which you will meet with between the 
penal means therein proposed and those employed by the 
church. They certainly did not borrow them from her, nor 
could she have foreseen that one day her example would be in- 
voked to aid the plans of the least devout of philosophers. 
Lastly, she strove by all sorts of means to restrain violence and 
continual warfare in society. Every one knows what was the 
truce of God, and numerous measures of a similar kind, by which 
the church struggled against the employment of force and 
strove to introduce more order and gentleness into society. 
94 
GUIZOT 
These facts arc so well known that it is needless for me to enter 
into details. Such are the principal points which I have to 
place before you concerning the relations between the church 
and the people. We have considered it under the three aspects 
which I first announced ; and have gained an inward and out- 
ward knowledge of it, both in its internal constitution and its 
two-fold position. It now remains for us to deduct from our 
knowledge, by means of induction and conjecture, its general 
influence upon European civilization. This, if I mistake not, 
is a work almost completed, or at least far advanced; the simple 
announcement of the dominant facts and principles in the 
church show and explain its influence ; the results have, in some 
measure, already passed before your eyes with the causes. If, 
however, we attempt to recapitulate them, we shall, I think, be 
led to two general assertions. 
The first is, that the church must have exercised a very great 
influence upon the moral and intellectual orders in modem 
Europe, upon public ideas, sentiments and manners. 
The fact is evident; the moral and intellectual development 
of Europe has been essentially theological. Survey history 
from the fifth to the twelfth centuries; it is theology that pos- 
sessed and directed the human spirit ; all opinions are impressed 
by theology; philosophical, political and historical questions 
are all considered under a theological point of view. So all- 
powerful is the church in the intellectual order, that even the 
mathematical and physical sciences are held in submission to 
its doctrines. The theological spirit is, in a manner, the blood 
which ran in the veins of the European world, down to Bacon 
and Descartes. For the first time, Bacon in England and 
Descartes in France carried intelligence beyond the path of 
theology. 
The same fact is evident in all branches of literature ; theo- 
logical habits, sentiments and language are manifest at every 
step. 
Upon the whole, this influence has been salutary; not only 
has it sustained and fertilized the intellectual movement in 
Europe, but the system of doctrines and precepts, under the 
name of which it implanted the movement, was far superior to 
anything with which the ancient world was acquainted. There 
was at the same time movement and progress. 
The situation of the church, moreover, gave an extent and a 
variety to the development of the human mind in the modern 
world which it had not possessed previously. In the east, in- 
tellect is entirely religious; in Greek society, it is exclusively 
human ; in the one, humanity, properly so called — that is, its 
actual nature and destiny, vanishes ; in the other, it is man 
himself, his actual passions, sentiments and interests which oc- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 95 
cupy the whole stage. In the modern world, the religious 
spirit is mixed up with everything, but it excludes nothing. 
Modern intellect has at once the stamp of humanity and of 
divinity. Human sentiments and interests occupy an impor- 
tant place in our literature ; and yet the religious character of 
man, that portion of his existence which links him to another 
world, appears in every step; so that the two great sources of 
man's development — humanity and religion — have flowed at 
one time, and that abundantly; and despite all the evil and 
abuses with which it is mixed, despite many acts of tyranny, 
regarded in an intellectual point of view, the influence of the 
church has tended more to develop than compress, more to ex- 
tend than to confine. 
Under a political point of view, it is otherwise. There can 
be no doubt that in softening sentiments and manners, in crying 
down and exploding numerous barbarous customs, the church 
has powerfully contributed to the amelioration of the social 
state; but in the political order, properly so called, as regards the 
relations between the government and the subject, between 
power and liberty, I do not think that, upon the whole, her in- 
fluence has been beneficial. Under this relation, the church 
has always presented itself as the interpreter and defender of 
two systems, the theocratic or the Roman Imperial system — 
that is, of despotism, sometimes under a religious, and some- 
times under a civil form. Take all her institutions, and all her 
legislation ; take her canons and procedure ; and you will always 
find, as the dominant principle, theocracy or the empire. If 
weak, the church sheltered herself under the absolute power of 
the emperors ; if strong, she claimed the same absolutism on 
her own account in the name of her spiritual power. We must 
not confine ourselves to particular facts or special instances. 
The church has, doubtless, often invoked the rights of the 
people against the bad government of the sovereigns ; and often 
even approved of and provoked insurrection ; has often main- 
tained, in the face of the sovereign, the rights and interests of 
the people. But when the question of political guarantees has 
arisen between power and liberty, when the question was of es- 
tablishing a system of permanent institutions, which might 
truly place liberty beyond the invasions of power, the church 
has generally ranged upon the side of despotism. 

one need not be much astonished at this, nor charge the 
clergy with too great a degree of human weakness, nor suppose 
it a vice peculiar to the Christian church. There is a more 
profound and powerful cause. What does a religion pretend 
to ? It pretends to govern the human passions and the human 
will. All religion is a restraint, a power, a government. It 
comes in the name of divine law for the purpose of subduing 
96 GUIZOT 
human nature. It is human Hberty, then, with which it chiefly 
concerns itself; it is human liberty which resists it, and which 
it wishes to overcome. Such is the enterprise of religion, such 
its mission and its hope. 
It is true, that although human liberty is what religions con- 
cern themselves with, although they aspire to the reformation 
of the will of man, they have no moral means of acting upon 
him but through himself, by his own will. When they act by 
external means, by force, seduction, or any means, in fact, which 
are foreign to the free concurrence of man, when they treat 
him as they would water or wind, as a material power, they do 
not attain their end, they neither reach nor govern the human 
will. For religions to accomplish what they attempt, they must 
make themselves acceptable to liberty itself; it is needful that 
man should submit, but he must do so voluntarily and freely, and 
must preserve his liberty in the very heart of his submission. 
This is the double problem which religions are called upon to 
solve. 
This they have too often overlooked ; they have considered 
liberty as an obstacle, not as a means ; they have forgotten the 
nature of the force to which they address themselves, and have 
treated the human soul as they would a material force. It is in 
following this error that they have almost always been led to 
range themselves on the side of power and despotism against 
human liberty, regarding it only as an adversary, and taking 
more pains to subdue than to secure it. If religions had turned 
their means of action to good account, if they had not allowed 
themselves to be carried away by a natural but deceitful in- 
clination, they would have seen that it is necessary to guarantee 
liberty in order to regulate it morally ; that religion cannot, nor 
ought to act except by moral means ; they would have respected 
the will of man in applying themselves to govern it. This they 
have too often forgotten, and religious power has ended in itself 
suffering as much as liberty. 
I will go no further in the examination of the general con- 
sequence of the influence of the church upon European civili- 
ation. I have recapitulated them in this twofold result ; a great 
and salutary influence upon the social and moral order, an in- 
fluence rather unfortunate than beneficial on the political order, 
properly so called. We have now to verify our assertions by 
facts, to verify by history that which we have deduced from 
the mere nature and situation of the ecclesiastical society. Let 
us see what was the fate of the Christian church from the fifth 
to the twelfth century, and whether the principles which I have 
placed before you, and the results which T have attempted to 
draw from them, were really developed as I have ventured to 
describe. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 97 
You should be careful not to suppose that these principles 
and consequences have appeared at the same periods, and with 
the same distinctness that I have represented them. It is a 
great and too common an error, when considering the past at 
the distance of many centuries, to forget the moral chronology, 
to forget (singular obliviousness !) that history is essentially 
successive. Take the life of a man, of Cromwell, Gustavus 
Adolphus or Cardinal Richelieu. He enters upon his career, 
he moves and progresses ; he influences great events, and he in 
his turn is influenced by them; he arrives at the goal. We then 
know him, but it is in his whole ; it is, as it were, such as he has 
issued after much labor from the workshop of Providence. But 
at starting he was not what he has thus become ; he has never 
been complete and finished at any single period of his life ; he 
has been formed progressively. Men are formed morally as 
physically ; they change daily ; their being modifies itself with- 
out ceasing; the Cromwell of 1650 was not the Cromwell of 1640. 
There is always a groundwork of individuality ; it is always the 
same man who perseveres ; but how changed are his ideas, 
sentiments and will ! What things has he lost and acquired ! 
At whatever moment we look upon the life of man there is no 
time when it has been what we shall see it when its term is at- 
tained. 
It is here, however, that most historians have fallen into error ; 
because they have gained one complete idea of man they see 
him such throughout the whole course of his career. For them, 
it is the same Cromwell who enters parliament in 1628, and who 
dies thirty years afterward in the palace of Whitehall. And 
with regard to institutions and general influences, they inces- 
santly commit the same error. Let us guard against it. I 
have represented to you the principles of the church in their 
entirety, and the development of the consequences. But re- 
member that historically the picture is not correct ; all has been 
partial and successive, cast here and there over space and time. 
We must not expect to find this uniformity, this prompt and 
systematic connection, in the recital of facts. Here we shall see 
one principle springing up, there another; all will be incomplete, 
unequal and dispersed. We must come to modern times, to 
the end of the career, before we shall find the entire result. I 
shall now place before you the various states through which 
the church passed between the fifth and the twelfth century. We 
cannot collect an entire demonstration of the assertions which 
I have placed before you, but we shall see sufficient to enable us 
to presume they are legitimate. 
The first condition in which the church appears at the fifth 
century is the imperial state, the church of the Roman Empire. 
When the Roman Empire was on the decline the church 
7 
98 GUIZOT 
thought herself at the term of her career, and that her triumph 
was accompHshed. It is true she had completely vanquished 
paganism. The last emperor who took the rank of sovereign 
pontiff, which was a pagan dignity, was the emperor Gratian, 
who died at the end of the fourth century. Gratian was called 
sovereign pontiff, like Augustus and Tiberius. The church 
likewise thought herself at the end of her struggle with the 
heretics, especially with the Arians, the chief heretics of the 
day. The Emperor Theodosius, toward the end of the fourth 
century, instituted against them a complete and severe legis- 
lation. The church then enjoyed the government and the 
victory over its two most formidable enemies. It was at this 
moment that she saw the Roman Empire fail her, and found her- 
self in the presence of other pagans and heretics, in the pres- 
ence of barbarians, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians and Franks. 
The fall was immense. You may easily conceive the lively at- 
tachment for the empire which must have been preserved in 
the bosom of the church. Thus we see her strongly adhering 
to what remained of it — to the municipal system and to ab- 
solute power. And when she had converted the barbarians, she 
attempted to resuscitate the empire; she addressed herself to 
the barbarous kings, conjured them to become Roman em- 
perors, to take all the rights belonging to them, and enter into 
the same relations with the church as that which she had main- 
tained with the Roman Empire, This was the work of the 
bishops between the fifth and sixth centuries, the general state 
of the church. 
This attempt could not be successful; there were no means 
of reforming the Roman society with barbarians. Like the 
civil world, the church herself fell into barbarism. This was 
its second state. When one compares the writings of the ec- 
clesiastical chroniclers of the eighth century with those of pre- 
ceding ages, the difference is immense. Every wreck of Ro- 
man civilization had disappeared, even the language ; every- 
thing felt itself, as it were, cast into barbarism. on the one 
hand, barbarians entered the clerical order, and became priests 
and bishops; and, on the other hand, the bishops adopted a life of 
barbarism, and without quitting their bishoprics, placed them- 
selves at the head of bands, overrunning the country, pillaging, 
and making war, like the companions of Clovis. You will find 
in Gregory of Tours mention of several bishops, among others 
Salonus and Sagittarius, who thus passed their lives. 
Two important facts developed themselves in the bosom of 
this barbarous church. The first is the separation of the spirit- 
ual and temporal power. This principle took its rise at this 
epoch. Nothing could be more natural. The church not hav- 
ing succeeded in resuscitating the absolute power of the Roman 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 99 
Empire, and sharing it herself, was forced to seek safety in in- 
dependence. It was necessary that she should defend herself 
on all sides, for she was continually threatened. Each bishop 
and priest saw his barbarous neighbors incessantly interfering 
in the affairs of the church, to usurp her riches, lands and 
power; her only means of defence was to say, "The spiritual 
order is totally separate from the temporal; you have not the 
right to interfere in its affairs." This principle, above all 
others, became the defensive arm of the church against bar- 
barism. 
A second important fact belonged to this epoch, the devel- 
opment of the monastic order in the west. It is known that at 
the commencement of the sixth century, St. Benedict insti- 
tuted his order among the monks of the west, who were then 
trifling in number, but who have since prodigiously increased. 
The monks at this epoch were not members of the clergy ; they 
were still regarded as laymen. No doubt priests, or even 
bishops, were sought for among them ; but it was only at 
the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth cen- 
tury that the monks in general were considered as forming a 
part of the clergy, properly so called. We then find that 
priests and bishops became monks, believing that by so 
doing they made a fresh progress in religious life. Thus 
the monastic order in Europe took all at once a great de- 
velopment. The monks struck the fancy of the barbarians 
far more than the secular clergy. Their number was as im- 
posing as their singularity of life. The secular clergy, the 
bishop or simple priest, were common to the imagination of 
the barbarians, who were accustomed to see, maltreat and rob 
them. It was a much more serious affair to attack a monastery, 
where so many holy men were congregated in one holy place. 
The monasteries, during the barbaric epoch, were an asylum 
for the church, as the church was for the laity. Pious men 
there found a refuge, as in the east they sheltered themselves 
in the Thebaid, to escape a worldly life and the temptations of 
Constantinople. 
Such are the two great facts in the history of the church, 
which belong to the barbaric epoch ; on one side the develop- 
ment of the principle of separation between the spiritual and 
temporal power ; on the other, the development of the mon- 
astic system in the west. 
Toward the end of the barbaric epoch, there was a new at- 
tempt to resuscitate the Roman Empire made by Charlemagne. 
The church and the civil sovereign again contracted a close 
alliance. This was an epoch of great docility, and hence one 
of great progress for papacy. The attempt again failed, and 
the empire of Charlemagne fell ; but the advantages which the 
loo GUIZOT 
church had gained from his alliance still remained with her. 
Papacy found herself definitely at the head of Christianity. 

on the death of Charlemagne, chaos recommenced; the 
church again fell into it as well as civil society, and only left 
it to enter the frame of feudalism. This was its third state. 
By the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne, there hap- 
pened almost the same thing in the ecclesiastical order as in 
the civil order ; all unity disappeared, all became local, partial, 
and individual. There then commenced in the situation of the 
clergy a struggle which it had never experienced before. This 
was the struggle between the sentiments and interests of the 
fief-holder and the sentiments and interests of the priest. The 
chiefs of the church were placed betwen these two positions, 
each tended to overcome the other; the ecclesiastical spirit was 
no longer so powerful or so universal ; individual interest be- 
came more influential, and the desire for independence and the 
habits of a feudal life, loosened the ties of the ecclesiastical 
hierarchy. There was then made in the bosom of the church 
an attempt to remedy the effects of this relaxation. They 
sought in various quarters, by a system of federation, and by 
communal assemblies and deliberations, to organize national 
churches. It is at this epoch, and under the feudal system, 
that we find the greatest number of councils, convocations, and 
ecclesiastical assemblies, both provincial and national. It was 
in France, more especially, that this attempt at unity seemed 
followed with the greatest ardor. Hincmar, archbishop of 
Rheims, may perhaps be considered as the representative of 
this idea. His constant care was to organize the French 
church; he sought and put in force all the means of corre- 
spondence and union which might bring back some unity into 
the feudal church. We find Hincmar maintaining on the one 
side the independence of the church with regard to its temporal 
power, and on the other its independence with regard to pa- 
pacy; it was he who, knowing that the pope wished to come 
into France, and threatened the bishops with excommunica- 
tion, said. Si excommunicaturus vencrit, cxcommimicatus ahibit. 
But this attempt to organize the feudal church succeeded no 
better than the attempt to organize the imperial church had 
done. There were no means of establishing unity in this 
church. Its dissolution was always increasing. Each bishop, 
prelate and abbot isolated himself more and more within his 
diocese or his monastery. The disorder increased from the 
same cause. This was the time of the greatest abuses of 
simony, of the entirely arbitrary disposition of ecclesiastical 
benefices, and of the greatest looseness of manners among 
the priests. This disorder greatly shocked the people and the 
better portion of the clergy. We thence see at an early time, a 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE loi 
certain spririt of reform appear in the church, and the desire 
to seek some authority which could rally all these elements, 
and impose law upon them. Claude, bishop of Turin, and 
Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, originated in their dioceses 
some attempts of this nature, but they were not in a condition 
to accomplish such a work. There was within the whole 
church but one force adequate to it, and that was the court of 
Rome, the papacy. It was, therefore, not long ere it prevailed. 
The church passed during the course of the eleventh century 
into its fourth state, that of the theocratical or monastical 
church. The creator of this new form of church, in so far 
as a man can create, was Gregory VI I. 
We are accustomed to represent to ourselves Gregory VII 
as a man who wished to render all things immovable, as an 
adversary to intellectual development and social progress, and 
as a man who strove to maintain the world in a stationary or 
retrograding system. Nothing can be so false. Gregory VII 
was a reformer upon the plan of despotism, as were Charle- 
magne and Peter the Great. He, in the ecclesiastical order, 
was almost what Charlemagne in France and Peter the Great 
in Russia were in the civil order. He wished to reform the 
church, and through the church to reform society, to intro- 
duce therein more morality, more justice, and more law — he 
wished to effect this through the holy see, and to its profit. 
At the same time that he strove to subject the civil world 
to the church, and the church to papacy, with an aim of re- 
form and progress, and not one of immobility or retrogression, 
an attempt of the same kind and a similar movement was pro- 
duced in the heart of monasteries. The desire for order, dis- 
cipline and moral strictness, was zealously shown. It was at 
this period that Robert de Moleme introduced a severe order at 
Citeaux. This was the age of St. Norbert and the reform of 
the prebendaries, of the reform of Cluni, and lastly, of the 
great reform of St. Bernard. A general ferment reigned in the 
monasteries ; the old monks defended themselves, declared 
it to be an injurious thing, said that their liberty was in dan- 
ger, that the manners of the times must be complied with, 
that it was impossible to return to the primitive church, and 
treated all the reformers as madmen, dreamers and tyrants. 
Open the history of Normandy, by Orderic Vital, and you will 
continually meet with these complaints. 
All therefore seemed tending to the advantage of the church, 
to its unity and power. While papacy sought to seize upon the 
government of the world, and while monasteries reformed 
themselves in a moral point of view, some powerful though 
isolated men claimed for human reason its right to be con- 
sidered as something in man, and its right to interfere in his 
102 GUIZOT 
opinions. The greater part of them did not attack received 
doctrines nor religious creeds ; they only said that reason had 
a right to test them, and that it did not suffice that they should 
be affirmed upon authority. John Erigena, Roscelin and 
Abailard were the interpreters through whom reason once 
more began to claim her inheritance; these were the first 
authors of the movement of liberty which is associated with 
the movement of reform of Hildebrand and St. Bernard. When 
we seek the dominant character of this movement, we find that 
it is not a change of opinion, or a revolt against the system 
of public creeds — it is simply the right of reasoning claimed 
on the behalf of reason. The pupils of Abailard asked him, as 
he himself tells us in his Introduction to Theology, " for 
philosophical argument calculated to satisfy the reason, sup- 
plicating him to instruct them, not to repeat what he taught 
them, but to understand it; because nothing can be believed 
without being understood, and it is ridiculous to preach things 
which neither he who professes, nor those whom he teaches, 
can understand. ... To what purpose were the study of 
philosophy, if not to lead to the study of God, to whom all 
things should be referred? With what view are the faithful 
permitted to read the writings which treat of the age and the 
books of the Gentiles, unless to prepare them for understand- 
ing the Holy Scriptures, and the necessary capacity for de- 
fending them? In this view it is especially necessary to be 
aided with all the force of reason, so as to prevent, upon 
questions so difficult and complicated as are those which form 
the object of the Christian faith, the subtleties of its enemies 
from easily contriving to adulterate the purity of our faith." 
The importance of this first attempt at liberty, this regenera- 
tion of the spirit of inquiry, was soon felt. Although occupied 
in reforming herself, the church did not the less take the alarm. 
She immediately declared war against these new reformers, 
whose methods menaced her more than their doctrines. 
This is the great fact which shone forth at the end of the 
eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century, at the time 
when the state of the church was that of the theocratical or 
monastic. At this epoch, for the first time, there arose a 
struggle between the clergy and the free-thinkers. The quar- 
rels of Abailard and St. Bernard, the councils of Soissons and 
Sens, where Abailard was condemned, are nothing but the ex- 
pression of this fact, which holds so important a position in 
the history of modern civilization. It was the principal cir- 
cumstance in the state of the church in the twelfth century, 
at the point at which we shall now leave it. 
At the same time a movement of a different nature was pro- 
duced, the movement for the enfranchisement of the boroughs. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 103 
Singular inconsistency of rude and ignorant manners ! If it 
had been said to the citizens who conquered their Hberty with 
so much passion, that there were men who claimed the rights 
of human reason, the right of free inquiry — men whom the 
church treated as heretics — they would have instantly stoned 
or burnt them. More than once did Abailard and his friends 
run this risk. on the other hand, those very writers who 
claimed the rights of human reason, spoke of the efforts for 
the enfranchisement of the boroughs as of an abominable dis- 
order, and overthrow of society. Between the philosophical 
and the communal movement, between the political and ra- 
tional enfranchisement, war seemed to be declared. Centuries 
were necessary to effect the reconciliation of these two great 
powers, and to make them understand that their interests were 
in common. At the twelfth century they had nothing in com- 
mon. 
SEVENTH LECTURE. 
WE have conducted, down to the twelfth century, the 
history of the two great elements of civilization, 
the feudal system and the church. It is the third 
of these fundamental elements, I mean the boroughs, which 
now we have to trace likewise down to the twelfth century, 
confining ourselves to the same limits which we have observed 
in the other two. 
We shall find ourselves differently situated with regard to 
the boroughs, from what we were with regard to the church 
or the feudal system. From the fifth to the twelfth century, 
the feudal system and the church, although at a later period 
they experienced new developments, showed themselves al- 
most complete, and in a definitive state; we have watched 
their birth, increase and maturity. It is not so with the bor- 
oughs. It is only at the end of the epoch which now occupies 
us, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that they take up 
any position in history ; not but that before then they had a his- 
tory which was deserving of study; nor is it that there were not 
long before this epoch traces of their existence; but it was only 
at the eleventh century that they became evidently visible 
upon the great scene of the world, and as an important element 
of modern civilization. Thus, in the feudal system and the 
church, from the fifth to the twelfth century, we have seen 
the eflfects born and developed from the causes. Whenever, 
by way of induction or conjecture, we have deduced certain 
principles and results, we have been able to verify them by 
an inquiry into the facts themselves. As regards the bor- 
oughs, this facility fails us; we are present only at their 
birth. At present I must confine myself to causes and origins. 
What I say concerning the eflfects of the existence of the 
boroughs, and their influence in the course of Euroi>ean civili- 
zation, I shall say in some measure by way of anticipation. 
I cannot invoke the testimony of contemporaneous and known 
facts. It is at a later period, from the twelfth to the fifteenth 
century, that we shall see the boroughs taking their development, 
the institution bearing all its fruit, and history proving our 
assertions. I dwell upon this difiference of situation in order 
to anticipate your objections against the incompleteness and 
104 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 105 
prematurity of the picture which I am about to offer you. 
I will suppose that in 1789, at the time of the commencement 
of the terrible regeneration of France, a burgher of the twelfth 
century had suddenly appeared among us, and that he had 
been given to read, provided he knew how, one of the pam- 
phlets which so powerfully agitated mind ; for example, the 
pamphlet of M. Sieyes — '' Who is the third estate ? " His 
eyes fall upon this sentence, which is the foundation of the 
pamphlet: "The third estate is the French nation, less the 
nobility and the clergy." I ask you, what would be the effect 
of such a phrase upon the mind of such a man? Do you 
suppose he would understand it ? No, he could not understand 
the words, the French nation, because they would represent 
to him no fact with which he was acquainted, no fact of his age ; 
and if he understood the phrase, if he clearly saw in it this 
sovereignty attributed to the third estate above all society, 
of a verity it would appear to him mad, impious, such would 
be its contradiction to all that he had seen, to all his ideas 
and sentiments. 
Now, ask this astonished burgher to follow you: lead him 
to one of the French boroughs of this epoch, to Rheims, Beau- 
vais, Laon, or Noyon ; a different kind of astonishment would 
seize him : he enters a town ; he sees neither towers nor ram- 
parts, nor burgher militia ; no means of defence ; all is open, 
all exposed to the first comer, and the first occupant. The 
burgher would doubt the safety of this borough; he would 
think it weak and ill-secured. He penetrates into the interior, 
and inquires what is passing, in what manner it is governed, 
and what are its inhabitants. They tell him that beyond the 
walls there is a power which taxes them at pleasure without 
their consent; which convokes their militia and sends it to 
war without their voice in the matter. He speaks to them of 
magistrates, of the mayor, and of the aldermen ; and he hears 
that the burghers do not nominate them. He learns that the 
affairs of the borough are not decided in the borough; but 
that a man belonging to the king, an intendant, administers 
them, alone and at a distance. Furthermore, they will tell him 
that the inhabitants have not the right of assembling and de- 
liberating in common upon matters which concern them ; that 
they are never summoned to the public place by the bell of 
their church. The burgher of the twelfth century would be 
confounded. First, he was stupefied and dismayed at the 
grandeur and importance that the communal nation, the third 
estate, attributed to itself; and now he finds it on its own 
hearthstone in a state of servitude, weakness, and nonentity, 
far worse than any thing which he had experienced. He 
passes from one spectacle to another utterly different, from 
io6 GUIZOT 
the view of a sovereign burghership to that of one entirely 
powerless. How would you have him comprehend this, — rec- 
oncile it, so that his mind be not overcome? 
Let us burghers of the nineteenth century go back to the 
twelfth and be present at an exactly corresponding double 
spectacle. Whenever we regard the general affairs of a coun- 
try, its state, its government, the whole society, we shall see 
no burghers, hear, speak of none; they interfere in nothing, 
and are quite unimportant. And not only have they no im- 
portance in the state, but if we would know what they think 
of their situation, and how they speak of it, and what their 
position in regard to their relation with the government of 
France in general is in their own eyes, we shall find in their 
language an extraordinary timidity and humility. Their ancient 
masters, the lords, from whom they forced their franchises, 
treat them, at least in words, with a haughtiness which con- 
founds us; but it neither astonishes nor irritates them. 
Let us enter into the borough itself; let us see what passes 
there. The scene changes; we are in a kind of fortified place 
defended by armed burghers: these burghers tax themselves, 
elect their magistrates, judge and punish, and assemble for 
the purpose of deliberating upon their affairs. All come to 
these assemblies ; they make war on their own account against 
their lord; and they have a militia. In a word, they govern 
themselves; they are sovereigns. This is the same contrast 
which in the France of the eighteenth century so much aston- 
ished the burghers of the twelfth; it is only the parts that 
are changed. In the latter, the burgher nation is all, the bor- 
ough nothing; in the former, the burghership is nothing, the 
borough everything. 
Assuredly, between the twelfth and the eighteenth century, 
many things must have passed — many extraordinary events, 
and many revolutions have been accomplished, to bring about, 
in the existence of a social class, so enormous a change. Despite 
this change, there can be no doubt but that the third estate 
of 1789 was, politically speaking, the descendant and heir of 
the corporations of the twelfth century. This French nation, 
so haughty and ambitious, which raises its pretensions so high, 
which so loudly proclaims its sovereignty, which pretends not 
only to regenerate and govern itself, but to govern and regen- 
erate the world, undoubtedly descends, principally at least, 
from the burghers who obscurely though courageously revolted 
in the twelfth century, with the sole end of escaping in some 
corner of the land from the obscure tyranny of the lords. 
Most assuredly it is not in the state of the boroughs in the 
twelfth century that we shall find the explanation of such a 
metamorphosis : it was accomplished and had its causes in the 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 107 
events which succeeded it from the twelfth to the eighteenth 
century; it is there that we shall meet it in its progression. 
Still the origin of the third estate has played an important 
part in its history ; although we shall not find there the secret 
of its destiny, we shall, at least, find its germ: for what it 
was at first is again found in what it has become, perhaps, 
even to a greater extent than appearances would allow of our 
presuming. A picture, even an incomplete one, of the state of 
the boroughs in the twelfth century, will, I think, leave you 
convinced of this. 
The better to understand this state, it is necessary to con- 
sider the boroughs from two principal points of view. There 
are two great questions to resolve; the first, that of the en- 
franchisement of the boroughs itself — the question how the 
revolution was operated, and from what causes — what change 
it brought into the situation of the burghers, what effect it has 
had upon society in general, upon the other classes and upon 
the state. The second question relates only to the govern- 
ment of the boroughs, the internal condition of the enfranchised 
towns, the relations of the burghers among themselves, and 
the principles, forms and manners which dominated in the cities. 
It is from these two sources, on the one hand, from the change 
introduced into the social condition of the burghers, and on 
the other, from their internal government and their communal 
condition, that all their influence upon modern civilization origi- 
nated. There are no facts produced by this influence but 
which should be referred to one or other of these causes. When, 
therefore, we shall have summed them up, when we thor- 
oughly understand, on one side, the enfranchisement of the 
boroughs, and on the other, the government of the boroughs, 
we shall be in possession, so to speak, of the two keys to their 
history. 
Lastly, I shall say a word concerning the various state of the 
boroughs throughout Europe. The facts which I am about to 
place before you do not apply indifferently to all the boroughs 
of the twelfth century, to the boroughs of Italy, Spain, Eng- 
land, or France ; there are certainly some which belong to all, 
but the differences are great and important. I shall point 
them out in passing ; we shall again encounter them in a later 
period of civilization, and we will then investigate them more 
closely. 
To understand the enfranchisement of the boroughs, it is 
necessary to recall to your minds what was the state of the 
towns from the fifth to the eleventh century — from the fall 
of the Roman Empire down to the commencement of the com- 
munal revolution. Here, I repeat, the differences were very 
great ; the state of the towns varied prodigiously in the various 
io8 GUIZOT 
countries of Europe; still there are general facts which may 
be affirmed of almost all towns ; and I shall try to confine my- 
self to them. When I depart from this restriction, what I 
say more especially will apply to the boroughs of France, and 
particularly to the boroughs of the north of France, beyond the 
Rhone and the Loire. These will be the prominent points in 
the picture which I shall attempt to trace. 
After the fall of the Roman Empire, from the fifth to the 
tenth century, the condition of the towns was one neither of 
servitude nor liberty. one runs the same risk in the employ- 
ment of words that I spoke of the other day in the painting 
of men and events. When a society and a language has long 
existed, the words take a complete, determined and precise 
sense, a legal and official sense, in a manner. Time has intro- 
duced into the sense of each term a multitude of ideas which 
arise the moment that it is pronounced, and which, not belong- 
ing to the same date, are not applicable alike to all times. For 
example, the words servitude and liberty call to our minds in the 
present day ideas infinitely more precise and complete than 
the corresponding facts of the eighth, ninth or tenth centuries. 
If we say that, at the eighth century, the towns were in a state 
of liberty, we say far too much ; in the present day we attach 
a sense to the word liberty which does not represent the fact 
of the eighth century. We shall fall into the same error if we 
say that the towns were in a state of servitude, because the 
word implies an entirely different thing from the municipal 
facts of that period. 
I repeat that at that time the towns were neither in a state 
of servitude nor liberty; they suffered all the ills which ac- 
company weakness ; they were a prey to the violence and con- 
tinual depredations of the strong; but yet, despite all these 
fearful disorders, despite their impoverishment and depopula- 
tion, the towns had preserved ancl did still preserve a certain 
importance : in most of them there was a clergy, a bishop, who 
by the great exercise of power, and his influence upon the 
population, served as a connecting link between them and their 
conquerors, and thus maintained the town in a kind of in- 
dependence, and covered it with the shield of religion. More- 
over, there remained in the towns many wrecks of Roman 
institutions. one meets at this epoch (and many facts of this 
nature have been collected by MM. de Savigny and Hullman, 
Mademoiselle de Lezardiere, etc.) with frequent convocations 
of the senate, of the curia; there is mention made of public 
assemblies and municipal magistrates. The affairs of the civil 
order, wills, grants and a multitude of acts of civil life, were 
legalized in the curia by its magistrates, as was the case in 
the Roman municipality. The remains of urban activity and 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 109 
liberty, it is true, gradually disappeared. Barbarism, disorder 
and always increasing misfortunes accelerated the depopula- 
tion. The establishment of the masters of the land in the rural 
districts, and the growing preponderance of agricultural life, 
were new causes of decay to the towns. The bishops them- 
selves, when they had entered the frame of feudalism, placed 
less importance on their municipal existence. Finally, when 
feudalism had completely triumphed, the towns, without falling 
into the servitude of serfs, found themselves entirely in the 
hands of a lord, inclosed within some fief, and robbed of all 
the independence which had been left to them, even in the most 
barbarous times, in the first ages of the invasion. So that from 
the fifth century down to the time of the complete organiza- 
tion of feudalism the condition of the towns was always upon 
the decline. 
When once feudalism was thoroughly established, when each 
man had taken his place, and was settled upon his land, when 
the wandering life had ceased, after some time the towns again 
began to acquire some importance and to display anew some ac- 
tivity. It is, as you know, with human activity as with the 
fecundity of the earth; from the time that commotion ceases 
it reappears and makes everything germinate and flourish. 
With the least glimpse of order and peace man takes hope, 
and with hope goes to work. It was thus with the towns ; the 
moment that feudalism was a little fixed new wants sprang 
up among the fief-holders, a certain taste for progress and 
amelioration; to supply this want a Httle commerce and in- 
dustry reappeared in the towns of their domain; riches and 
population returned to them ; slowly, it is true, but still they 
returned. Among the circumstances which contributed thereto, 
one, I think, is too little regarded; this is the right of sanc- 
tuary in the churches. Before the boroughs had established 
themselves, before their strength and their ramparts enabled 
them to oflfer an asylum to the afflicted population of the coun- 
try, when as yet they had no safety but that afforded by the 
church, this sufficed to draw into the towns many unhappy 
fugitives. They came to shelter themselves in or around the 
church; and it was not only the case with the inferior class, 
with serfs and boors, who sought safety, but often with men 
of importance, rich outlaws. The chronicles of the time are 
filled with examples of this nature. one sees men, formerly 
powerful themselves, pursued by a more powerful neighbor, or 
even by the king himself, who abandon their domains, carry- 
ing with them all they can, shut themselves up within a town, 
and putting themselves under the protection of the church 
become citizens. These kind of refugees have not been, I 
think, without their influence upon the progress of the towns; 
no GUIZOT 
they introduced into them riches, and elements of a superior 
population to the mass of their inhabitants. Besides, who 
knows not that when once an association is in part formed, 
men flock to it, both because they find more safety and also 
for the mere sake of that sociability which never leaves them ? 
By the concurrence of all these causes, after the feudal gov- 
ernment was in some manner regulated, the towns regained 
a little strength. Their security, however, did not return to 
them in the same proportion. The wandering life had ceased, 
it is true, but the wandering life had been for the conquerors, 
for the new proprietors of the soil, a principal means of satis- 
fying their passions. When they had wished to pillage they 
made an excursion, they went to a distance to seek another 
fortune, another domain. When each was nearly established, 
when it became necessary to renounce this conquering vagrancy, 
there was no cessation of their avidity, their inordinate wants, 
nor their violent desires. Their weight then fell on the people 
nearest at hand, upon the towns. Instead of going to a distance 
to pillage, they pillaged at home. The extortions of the nobility 
upon the burgesses were redoubled from the commencement of 
the tenth century. Whenever the proprietor of a domain in 
which a town was situated had any fit of avarice to satisfy 
it was upon the burgesses that he exercised his violence. This, 
above all, was the epoch in which the complaints of the bur- 
gesses against the absolute want of security of commerce burst 
forth. The merchants, after having made their journeys, were 
not permitted to enter their towns in peace; the roads and 
approaches were incessantly beset by the lord and his followers. 
The time at which industry was recommencing was exactly 
that in which security was most wanting. Nothing can irri- 
tate a man more than being thus interfered with in his work, 
and despoiled of the fruits which he had promised himself 
from it. He is far more annoyed and enraged than when har- 
assed in an existence which has been some time fixed and 
monotonous, when that which is carried from him has not 
been the result of his own activity, has not excited in his bosom 
all the pleasures of hope. There is, in the progressive move- 
ment toward fortune of a man or a population, a principle of 
resistance against injustice and violence far more energetic 
than in any other situation. 
This, then, was the position of the towns during the tenth 
century; they had more strength, more importance, more 
riches, and more interests to defend. At the same time it was 
more than ever necessary to defend them, because this strength, 
these interests, these riches, became an object of envy to the 
lords. The danger and evil increased with the means of resist- 
ing them. Moreover, the feudal system gave to all those who 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE iii 
participated in it the example of continued resistance ; it never 
presented to the mind the idea of an organized government, 
capable of ruling and quelling all by imposing its single inter- 
vention. It offered, on the contrary, the continuous spectacle 
of the individual will refusing submission. Such, for the most 
part, was the position of the possessors of fiefs toward their 
superiors, of the lesser lords toward the greater; so that at 
the moment when the towns were tormented and oppressed, 
when they had new and most important interests to sustain, 
at that moment they had before their eyes a continual lesson 
of insurrection. The feudal system has rendered one service 
to humanity, that of incessantly showing to men the individual 
will in the full display of its energy. The lesson prospered : 
in spite of their weakness, in spite of the infinite inequality 
of condition between them and their lords, the towns arose in 
insurrection on all sides. 
It is difficult to assign an exact date to this event. It is gen- 
erally said that the enfranchisement of the commons com- 
menced in the eleventh century ; but, in all great events, how 
many unhappy and unknown efforts occur before the one which 
succeeds ! In all things, to accomplish its designs, Providence 
lavishly expends courage, virtues, sacrifices, in a word, man 
himself ; and it is only after an unknown number of unrecorded 
labors, after a host of noble hearts have succumbed in dis- 
couragement, convinced that their cause is lost, it is only 
then that the cause triumphs. It doubtless happened thus with 
the commons. Doubtless, in the eighth, ninth and tenth cen- 
turies, there were many attempts at resistance, and movements 
toward enfranchisement, which not only were unsuccessful, 
but of which the memory remained alike without glory or 
success. It is true, however, that these attempts have in- 
fluenced posterior events; they reanimated and sustained the 
spirit of liberty, and prepared the way for the great insur- 
rection of the eleventh century. 
I say designedly, insurrection. The enfranchisement of the 
commons in the eleventh century was the fruit of a veritable 
insurrection, and a veritable war, a war declared by the popu- 
lation of the towns against their lords. The first fact which 
is always met with in such histories, is the rising of the bur- 
gesses, who arm themselves with the first thing that comes 
to hand ; the expulsion of the followers of the lord who have 
come to put in force some extortion; or it is an enterprise 
against the castle; these are always the characteristics of the 
war. If the insurrection fails, what is done by the conqueror ? 
He orders the destruction of the fortification raised by the 
citizens, not only round the town but round each house. one 
sees at the time of the confederation, after having promised 
112 GUIZOT 
to act in common, and after taking the oath of mutual aid, the 
first act of the citizen is to fortify himself within his house. 
Some boroughs, of which at this day the name is entirely 
obscure, as, for example, the little borough of Vezelay in 
Nivernois, maintained a very long and energetic struggle 
against their lord. Victory fell to the abbot of Vezelay; he 
immediately enjoined the demolition of the fortifications of 
the citizens' houses ; the names of many are preserved whose 
fortified houses were thus immediately destroyed. 
Let us enter the interior of the habitations of our ancestors ; 
let us study the mode of their construction and the kind of 
life which they suggest; all is devoted to war, all has the 
character of war. 
This is the construction of a citizen's house in the twelfth 
century, as far as we can follow it out: there were generally 
three floors, with one room upon each floor; the room on 
the ground floor was the common room, where the family 
took their meals; the first floor was very high up, by way 
of security; this is the most remarkable characteristic of the 
construction. on this floor was the room which the citizen 
and his wife inhabited. The house was almost always flanked 
by a tower at the angle, generally of a square form ; another 
symptom of war, a means of defence. on the second floor 
was a room, the use of which is doubtful, but which probably 
served for the children, and the rest of the family. Above, 
very often, was a small platform, evidently intended for a place 
of observation. The whole construction of the house sug- 
gests war. This was the evident character, the true name of 
the movement which produced the enfranchisement of the 
commons. 
When war has lasted a certain time, whoever may be the 
belligerent powers, it necessarily leads to peace. The treaties 
of peace between the commons and their adversaries were the 
charters. The borough charters are mere treaties of peace 
between the burgesses and their lord. 
The insurrection was general. When I say general, I do 
not mean that there was a union or coalition between all the 
citizens in a country ; far from it. The situation of the com- 
mons was almost everywhere the same ; they were everywhere 
a prey to the same danger, afflicted with the same evil. Having 
acquired almost the same means of resistance and defence, 
they employed them at nearly the same epoch. Example, too, 
may have done something, and the success of one or two bor- 
oughs may have been contagious. The charters seem some- 
times to have been drawn after the same pattern : that of 
Noyon, for example, served as a model for those of Beauvais, 
St. Quentin, etc. I doubt, however, whether example had so 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 113 
much influence as has been supposed. Communications were 
difficuh and rare, and hearsay vague and transient ; it is more 
likely that the insurrection was the result of a similar situation, 
and of a general and spontaneous movement. When I say 
general, I mean to say that it took place almost everywhere; 
for, I repeat, that the movement was not unanimous and con- 
certed, all was special and local; each borough was insurgent 
against its lord upon its own account; all passed in its own 
locality. 
The vicissitudes of the struggle were great. Not only did 
success alternate, but even when peace seemed established, 
after the charter had been sworn to by each party, it was 
violated and eluded in every way. The kings played a great 
part in the alternations of this struggle. Of this I shall speak 
in detail when I treat of royalty itself. Its influence in the 
movement of communal enfranchisement has been sometimes 
praised, perhaps too highly; sometimes, I think, too much 
undervalued, and sometimes denied. I shall confine myself at 
present to saying that it frequently interfered, sometimes in- 
voked by the boroughs and sometimes by the lords; that it 
has often played contrary parts; that it has acted sometimes 
on one principle, sometimes on another ; that it has unceasingly 
changed its intentions, designs, and conduct; but that, upon 
the whole, it has done much, and with more of good than of 
evil effect. 
Despite these vicissitudes, despite the continual violations of 
charters, the enfranchisement of the boroughs was consum- 
mated in the twelfth century. All Europe, and especially 
France, which for a century had been covered with insurrec- 
tions, was covered with charters more or less favorable; the 
corporations enjoyed them with more or less security, but still 
they enjoyed them. The fact prevailed, and the right was 
established. 
Let us now attempt to discover the immediate results of 
this great fact, and what changes it introduced into the con- 
dition of the burgesses, in the midst of society. 
In the first place, it changed nothing, at least not in the 
commencement, in the relations of the burgesses with the gen- 
eral government of the country — with what we of the present 
day call the state; they interfered no more in it than hereto- 
fore, all remained local, inclosed within the limits of the fief. 

one circumstance, however, should modify this assertion, a 
bond now began to be established between the citizens and the 
king. At times the burgesses had invoked the aid of the 
king against their lord, or his guarantee, when the charter 
was promised or sworn to. At other times, the lords had 
invoked the judgment of the king between themselves and the 
8 
114 
GUIZOT 
citizens. At the demand of either one or other of the parties, 
in a multitude of different causes, royalty had interfered in the 
quarrel; from thence resulted a frequent relation, and some- 
times a rather intimate one, between the burgesses and the 
king. It was by this relation that the burgesses approached 
the center of the state, and began to have a connection with 
the general government. 
Notwithstanding that all remained local, a new and gen- 
eral class was created by the enfranchisement. No coalition 
had existed between the citizens; they had, as a class, no 
common and public existence. But the country was filled 
with men in the same situation, having the same interests and 
the same manners, between whom a certain bond of unity could 
not fail of being gradually established, which should give rise 
to the bourgeoisie. The formation of a great social class, the 
bourgeoisie, was the necessary result of the local enfranchise- 
ment of the burghers. 
It must not be imagined that this class was at this time 
that which it has since become. Not only has its situation 
changed, but its elements were entirely different: in the 
twelfth century it consisted almost entirely of merchants, 
traders carrying on a petty commerce, and of small proprietors, 
either of land or houses, who had taken up their residence 
in the town. Three centuries after, the bourgeoisie compre- 
hended, besides, advocates, physicians, learned men of all sorts, 
and all the local magistrates. The bourgeoisie was formed 
gradually, and of very different elements ; as a general thing, 
in its history no account is given of its succession or diversity. 
Wherever the bourgeoisie is spoken of, it seems to be sup- 
posed that at all epochs it was composed of the same elements. 
This is an absurd supposition. It is perhaps in the diversity 
of its composition at different epochs of history that we should 
look for the secret of its destiny. So long as it did not in- 
clude magistrates nor men of letters, so long as it was not what 
it became in the sixteenth century, it possessed neither the 
same importance nor the same character in the state. To 
comprehend the vicissitudes of its fortune and power, it is 
necessary to observe in its bosom the successive rise of new 
professions, new moral positions, and a new intellectual state. 
In the twelfth century, I repeat, it was composed of only the 
small merchants, who retired into the towns after having made 
their purchases and sales, and of the proprietors of houses and 
small domains who had fixed their residence there. Here 
we see the European burgher class in its first elements. 
The third great consequence of the enfranchisement of the 
commons was the contest of classes, a contest which constitutes 
the fact itself, and which fills modern history. Modern Europe 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 115 
was born from the struggle of the various classes of society. 
Elsewhere, as I have already observed, this struggle led to very 
different results: in Asia, for example, one class completely 
triumphed, and the government of castes succeeded to that of 
classes, and society sunk into immobility. Thank God, none of 
this has happened in Europe. Neither of the classes has been 
able to conquer or subdue the others ; the struggle, instead of be- 
coming a principle of immobility, has been a cause of prog- 
ress; the relations of the principal classes among themselves, 
the necessity under which they found themselves of combat- 
ing and yielding by turns; the variety of their interests and 
passions, the desire to conquer without the power to satisfy it ; 
from all this has arisen perhaps the most energetic and fertile 
principle of the development of European civilization. The 
classes have incessantly struggled; they detested each other; 
an utter diversity of situation, of interests, and of manners, 
produced between them a profound moral hostility: and yet 
they have progressively approached nearer, come to an under- 
standing, and assimilated ; every European nation has seen 
the birth and development in its bosom of a certain universal 
spirit, a certain community of interests, ideas, and sentiments, 
which have triumphed over diversity and war. In France, for 
example, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the social 
and moral separation of the classes was still very profound ; 
yet the fusion was advancing; still, without doubt, at that 
time there was a veritable French nation, not an exclusive 
class, but which embraced them all, and in which all were 
animated by a certain sentiment in common, having a com- 
mon social existence, strongly impressed, in a word, with na- 
tionality. Thus, from the bosom of variety, enmity and war 
has arisen in modern Europe the national unity so striking in 
the present day, and which tends to develop and refine itself, 
from day to day, with still greater brilliancy. 
Such are the great, external, apparent and social effects of 
the revolution which at present occupies us. Let us investigate 
its moral effects, what changes it brought about in the soul 
of the citizens themselves, what they became, what, in fact, 
they necessarily became morally in their new situation. 
There is a fact by which it is impossible not to be struck 
while contemplating the relation of the burghers toward the 
state in general, the government of the state, and the general 
interests of the country, not only in the twelfth century, but 
also in subsequent ages ; I mean the prodigious timidity of 
the citizens, their humility, the excessive modesty of their 
pretensions as to the government of the country, and the facility 
with which they contented themselves. Nothing is seen among 
them of the true political spirit which aspires to influence, 
ii6 GUIZOT 
reform and govern ; nothing which gives proof of boldness of 
thought or grandeur of ambition ; one might call them sensible- 
minded, honest, freed men. 
There are but two sources in the sphere of politics from 
which greatness of ambition or firmness of thought can arise. 
It is necessary to have either the feeling of immense im- 
portance, of great power exercised upon the destiny of others, 
and in a vast extent — or else it is necessary to bear within one's 
self a feeling of complete individual independence, a confidence 
in one's own liberty, a conviction of a destiny foreign to all 
will but that of the man himself. To one or other of these 
two conditions seem to belong boldness of thought, greatness 
of ambition, the desire of acting in an enlarged sphere, and 
of obtaining great results. 
Neither one nor the other of these conditions entered into 
the condition of the burghers of the middle ages. These, as 
you have just seen, were only important to themselves; they 
exercised no sensible influence beyond their own town, or upon 
the state in general. Nor could they have any great senti- 
ment of individual independence. It was in vain that they 
conquered, in vain that they obtained a charter. The citizen 
of a town, in comparing himself with the inferior lord who 
dwelt near him, and who had just been conquered, was not 
the less sensible of his extreme inferiority; he was not filled 
with the haughty sentiment of independence which animated 
the proprietor of the fief; he held not his portion of liberty 
from himself alone, but from his association with others; a 
difficult and precarious succor. Hence that character of re- 
serve, of timidity of spirit, of retiring modesty and humility of 
language, even in conjunction with a firmness of conduct, 
which is so deeply imprinted in the life of the citizens, not 
only in the twelfth century, but even of their descendants. 
They had no taste for great enterprises, and when fate forced 
them among them, they were uneasy and embarrassed ; the 
responsibility annoyed them ; they felt that they were out of 
their sphere of action, and wished to return to it ; they there- 
fore treated on moderate terms. Thus one finds in the course 
of European history, especially of France, that the bourgeoisie 
has been esteemed, considered, flattered, and even respected, 
but rarely feared ; it has rarely produced upon its adversaries 
an impression of a great and haughty power, of a truly political 
power. There is nothing to be surprised at in this weakness 
of the modern bourgeoisie; its principal cause lay in its very 
origin, and in the circumstances of its enfranchisement, which 
I have just placed before you. A high ambition, independently 
of social conditions, enlargement and firmness of poHtical 
thought, the desire to participate in the affairs of the country, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 117 
the full consciousness of the greatness of man as man, and 
of the power which belongs to him, if he is capable of exercis- 
ing it, these are in Europe sentiments and dispositions entirely 
modern, the fruit of modern civilization, the fruit of that 
glorious and powerful universality which characterizes it, and 
which cannot fail of insuring to the public an influence and 
weight in the government of the country, which were always 
wanting, and necessarily so, to the burghers our ancestors. 

on the other hand, they acquired and displayed, in the 
struggle of local interests which they had to maintain in their 
narrow stage, a degree of energy, devotedness, perseverance 
and patience which has never been surpassed. The difficulty of 
the enterprise was such, and such the perils which they had 
to strive against, that a display of unexampled courage was 
necessary. In the present day, a very false idea is formed of 
the life of the burghers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 
You have read in one of the novels of Walter Scott, " Quentin 
Durward," the representation he has given of the burgomaster 
of Liege ; he has made of him a regular burgher in a comedy, 
fat, indolent, without experience or boldness, and wholly oc- 
cupied in passing his life easily. Whereas, the burghers of 
this period always had a coat of mail upon their breast, a pike 
in their hand ; their life was as tempestuous, as warlike and 
as hardy as that of the lords with whom they fought. It 
was in these continual perils, in struggling against all the 
difficulties of practical life, that they acquired that manly char- 
acter and that obstinate energy which is, in a measure, lost in 
the soft activity of modern times. 
None of these social or moral efforts of the enfranchise- 
ment of the boroughs had attained their development in the 
twelfth century; it is in the following centuries that they 
distinctly appeared, and are easily discernible. It is certain, 
however, that the germ was laid in the original situation of 
the boroughs, in the manner of their enfranchisement, and 
the place then taken by the burghers in society. I was, there- 
fore, right in placing them before you alone. Let us now 
investigate the interior of the borough of the twelfth century ; 
let us see how it was governed, what principles and facts 
dominated in the relations of the citizens among themselves. 
You will recollect that in speaking of the municipal system, 
bequeathed by the Roman Empire to the modern world, I 
told you that the Roman Empire was a great coalition of 
municipalities, formerly sovereign municipalities like Rome 
itself. Each of these towns had originally possessed the same 
existence as Rome, had once been a small independent republic, 
making peace and war, and governing itself as it thought 
proper. In proportion as they became incorporated with the 
1x8 GUIZOT 
Roman Empire the rights which constitute sovereignty, the 
riglit of peace and war, the right of legislation, the right of 
taxation, etc., left each town and centred in Rome. There re- 
mained but one sovereign municipality, Rome, reigning over 
a large number of municipalities which had now only a civil 
existence. The municipal system changed its character; and 
instead of being a political government and a system of sover- 
eignty, it became a mode of administration. 
This was the great revolution which was consummated under 
the Roman Empire. The municipal system became a mode of 
administration, was reduced to the government of local affairs 
and the civic interests of the city. This was the condition in 
which the towns and their institutions were left at the fall of 
the Roman Empire. In the midst of the chaos and barbarism, 
all ideas, as well as facts, were in utter confusion; all the 
attributes of sovereignty and of the administration were con- 
founded. These distinctions were no longer attended to. Af- 
fairs were abandoned to the course of necessity. There was 
a sovereign, or an administrator, in each locality, according 
to circumstances. When the towns rose in insurrection to 
recover some security, they took upon themselves the sover- 
eignty. It was not in any way for the purpose of following out 
a political theory, nor from a feeling of their dignity ; it was 
that they might have the means of resisting the lords against 
whom they rebelled that they appropriated to themselves the 
right of levying militia, of taxations for the purposes of war, 
of themselves nominating their chiefs and magistrates; in a 
word, of governing themselves. The government in the interior 
of the towns was the means of defence and security. Thus 
sovereignty re-entered the municipal system, from which it had 
been eradicated by the conquests of Rome. The boroughs 
again became sovereign. We have here the political character 
of their enfranchisement. 
It does not follow that this sovereignty was complete. It 
always retained some trace of external sovereignty: some- 
times the lord preserved to himself the right of sending 
a magistrate into the town, who took for his assessors the 
municipal magistrates; sometimes he possessed the right of 
receiving certain revenues ; elsewhere a tribute was secured to 
him. Sometimes the external sovereignty of the community 
lay in the hands of the king. 
The boroughs themselves having entered within the frame 
of feudalism had vassals, became suzerains, and by virtue of 
this title partly possessed themselves of the sovereignty which 
was inherent in the lord paramount. This caused a con- 
fusion between the rights which they had from their feudal 
position, and those which they had conquered by their insur- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 119 
rections ; and under this double title the sovereignty belonged 
to them. 
Thus we see, as far as can be judged from very deficient 
monuments, how government was administered, at least in the 
early ages in the interior of a borough. The totality of the 
inhabitants formed the assembly of the borough ; all those who 
had sworn the borough oath (and whoever lived within the 
walls was obliged to do so) were convoked by the ringing 
of a bell to the general assembly. It was there that they 
nominated the magistrates. The number and form of the mag- 
istracy were very various. The magistrates being once nomi- 
nated, the assembly was dissolved, and the magistrates gov- 
erned almost alone, somewhat arbitrarily, and without any 
other responsibility than that of the new elections or popular 
riots, which were the chief mode of responsibility in those 
times. 
You see that the internal organization of boroughs reduced 
itself to two very simple elements; the general assembly of 
the inhabitants, and a government invested with an almost 
arbitrary power, under the responsibility of insurrections and 
riots. It was impossible, principally from the state of man- 
ners, to establish a regular government, with veritable guaran- 
tees for order and duration. The greater portion of the popu- 
lation of the boroughs was in a state of ignorance, brutality 
and ferocity, which it would have been very difficult to govern. 
After a short time, there was almost as little security in the 
interior of the borough as there had formerly been in the 
relations between the burgher and the lord. There was formed, 
however, very quickly a superior bourgeoisie. You can easily 
comprehend the causes. The state of ideas and of social rela- 
tions led to the establishment of industrial professions, legally 
constituted corporations. The system of privilege was intro- 
duced into the interior of boroughs, and from this a great 
inequality ensued. There was shortly everywhere a certain 
number of rich and important burghers, and a working popu- 
lation more or less numerous, which, in spite of its inferiority, 
had an important influence in the affairs of the borough. The 
boroughs were then divided into a high bourgeoisie and a 
population subject to all the errors and vices of a populace. 
The superior bourgeoisie found itself pressed between the im- 
mense difficulty of governing the inferior population, and the 
incessant attempts of the ancient master of the borough, who 
sought to re-establish his power. Such was its situation, not 
only in France but in all Europe, down to the si>fteenth cen- 
tury. This perhaps has been the chief means of preventing 
the corporations, in most European nations, and especially in 
France, from possessing all the important political influence 
I20 GUIZOT 
which they might otherwise have had. Two principles car- 
ried on incessant warfare within them ; in the inferior popula- 
tion, a blind, unbridled and ferocious spirit of democracy; 
and as a consequence, in the superior population, a spirit of 
timidity at making agreements, an excessive facility of concilia- 
tion, whether in regard to the king, the ancient lords, or in re- 
establishing some peace and order in the interior of the bor- 
ough. Each of these principles could not but tend to deprive 
the corporation of any great influence in the state. 
All these effects were not visible in the twelfth century; 
still, however, one might foresee them in the very character 
of the insurrection, in the manner of its commencement, and in 
the condition of the various elements of the communal popu- 
lation. 
Such, if I mistake not, are the principal characteristics and 
the general results of the enfranchisement of the boroughs 
and of their internal government. I forewarn you that these 
facts were neither so uniform nor so universal as I have broadly 
represented them. There is great diversity in the history of 
boroughs in Europe. For example, in Italy and in the south 
of France, the Roman municipal system dominated ; there was 
not merely so much diversity and inequality here as in the north, 
and the communal organization was much better, either by 
reason of the Roman traditions, or from the superior condition 
of the population. In the north the feudal system prevailed in 
the communal existence ; there, all was subordinate to the 
struggle against the lords. The boroughs of the south were 
more occupied with their internal organization, amelioration 
and progress ; they thought only of becoming independent 
republics. The destiny of the northern borouglis, in France 
particularly, showed thmselves more and more incomplete and 
destined for less fine developments. If we glance at the bor- 
oughs of Germany, Spain and England, we shall find in them 
other differences. I shall not enter into these details ; we shall 
remark some of them as we advance in the history of civiliza- 
tion. In their origin, all things are nearly confounded under 
one physiognomy; it is only by successive developments that 
variety shows itself. Then commences a new development 
which urges society toward free and high unity, the glorious 
end of all the efforts and wishes of the human race. 
EIGHTH LECTURE. 
I HAVE not as yet explained to you the complete plan of 
my course. I commenced by indicating its object; I 
then passed in review European civilization without con- 
sidering it as a whole, without indicating to you at one and 
the same time the point of departure, the route, and the port, 
the commencement, the middle and the end. We have now, 
however, arrived at an epoch when this entire view, this general 
sketch of the region which we survey, has become necessary. 
The times which have hitherto occupied us in some measure 
explain themselves, or are explained by immediate and evident 
results. Those upon which we are about to enter would not 
be understood, nor even would they excite any lively interest, 
unless they are connected with even the most indirect and 
distant of their consequences. 
In so extensive a study, moments occur when we can no 
longer consent to proceed while all before us is unknown and 
dark. We wish not only to know whence we have come and 
where we are, but also to what point we tend. This is what 
we now feel. The epoch to which we are approaching is not 
intelligible, nor can its importance be appreciated except by 
the relations which unite it to modern times. Its true mean- 
ing is not evident until a later period. 
We are in possession of almost all the essential elements 
of European civilization. I say almost, because as yet I have 
not spoken to you of royalty. The decisive crisis of the de- 
velopment of royalty did not take place until the twelfth or 
even thirteenth century. It was not until then that the institu- 
tion was really constituted, and that it began to occupy a definite 
place in modern society. I have, therefore, not treated of it 
earlier; it will form the subject of my next lecture. With 
this exception, I repeat, we have before us all the great ele- 
ments of European civilization. You have beheld the birth 
of feudal aristocracy, of the church, the boroughs; you have 
seen the institutions which should correspond to these facts; 
and not only the institutions, but also the principles and ideas 
which these facts should raise up in the mind. Thus, while 
treating of feudalism, you were present at the cradle of the 
modern family, at the hearth of domestic life ; you have com- 
121 
122 GUIZOT 
prehended, in all its energy, the sentiment of individual inde- 
pendence, and the place which it has held in our civilization. 
With regard to the church, you have seen the purely religious 
society rise up, its relations with the civil society, the theo- 
cratical principle, the separation of the spiritual and temporal 
powers, the first blows of persecutions, and the first cries of 
the liberty of conscience. The rising boroughs have shown 
you glimpses of an association founded upon altogether other 
principles than those of feudalism and the church, the diversity 
of the social classes, their struggles, the first and profound 
characteristics of modern burgher manners, timidity of spirit 
side by side with energy of soul, the demagogue spirit side 
by side with the legal spirit. In a word, all the elements which 
have contributed to the formation of European society, all that 
it has been, and, so to speak, all that it has suggested, have 
already met your view. 
Let us now transport ourselves to the heart of modern Europe. 
I speak not of existing Europe, after the prodigious meta- 
morphoses which we have witnessed, but of Europe in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I ask you, do you recog- 
nize the society which we have just seen in the twelfth cent- 
ury? What a wonderful difference! I have already dwelt 
upon this difference as regards the boroughs. I afterward tried 
to make you sensible of how little the third estate of the eigh- 
teenth century resembled that of the twelfth. If we make the 
same essay upon feudalism and the church, we shall be struck 
with the same metamorphosis. There was no more resemblance 
between the nobility at the court of Louis XV and the feudal 
aristocracy, or between the church of Cardinal de Bernis and 
that of the Abbot Suger, than between the third estate of the 
eighteenth century and the bourgeoisie of the twelfth century. 
Between these two epochs, although already in possession of all 
its elements, society was entirely transformed. 
I wish to establish clearly the general and essential character 
of this transformation. From the fifth to the twelfth century 
society contained all that I have described. It possessed kings, 
a lay aristocracy, a clergy, burghers, laborers, religious and 
civil powers — in a word, the germs of everything which is 
necessary to form a nation and a government, and yet there 
was neither government nor nation. Throughout the epoch 
upon which we are occupied there was nothing bearing a 
resemblance to a people, properly so called, nor to a veritable 
government, in the sense which the words have for us in the 
present day. We have encountered a multitude of particular 
forces, of special facts, and local institutions : but nothing 
general or public; no policy, properly so called, nor no true 
nationality. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 123 
Let us regard, on the contrary, in Europe of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries; we shall everywhere see two 
leading figures present themselves upon the scene of the world, 
the government and the people. The action of a universal 
power upon the whole country, and the influence of the coun- 
try upon the power which governs it, this is society, this is 
history: the relations of the two great forces, their alliance 
or their struggle, this is what history discovers and relates. 
The nobility, the clergy and the burghers, all these particular 
classes and forces, now only appear in a secondary rank, 
almost like shadows effaced by those two great bodies, the 
people and its government. 
This, if I mistake not, is the essential feature which dis- 
tinguishes modern from primitive Europe; this is the meta- 
morphosis which was accomplished from the thirteenth to the 
sixteenth centuries. 
It is then from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, that 
is to say, in the period which we are about to enter upon, that 
the secret of this must be sought for; it is the distinctive 
character of this epoch that it was employed in converting 
primitive Europe into modern Europe ; and hence its historical 
importance and interest. If it is not considered from this 
point of view, and unless we everywhere seek what has arisen 
from it, not only will it not be understood, but we shall soon 
be weary of and annoyed by it. Indeed, viewed in itself, and 
apart from its results, it is a period without character, a period 
when confusion continues to increase, without our being able 
to discover its causes, a period of movement without direction, 
and of agitation without result. Royalty, nobility, clergy, bour- 
geoisie, all the elements of social order seem to turn in the same 
circle, equally incapable of progress or repose. They make at- 
tempts of all kinds, but all fail ; they attempt to settle govern- 
ments and to establish public liberties; they even attempt re- 
ligious reforms, but nothing is accomplished — nothing per- 
fected. If ever the human race has been abandoned to a destiny, 
agitated and yet stationary, to labor incessant, yet barren of 
effect, it was between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries 
that such was the physiognomy of its condition and its history. 
I know of but one work in which this physiogomy is 
truly shown, the "Histoire des Dues de Burgogne," by M. de 
Barante. I do not speak of the truth which sparkles in the 
descriptions of manners, or in the detailed recital of facts, but 
of that universal truth which makes the entire book a faithful 
image, a sincere mirror of the whole epoch, of which it at the 
same time shows the movement and the monotony. 
Considered, on the contrary, in its relation to that which fol- 
lows, as the transition from the primitive to the modern Europe, 
124 
GUIZOT 
this epoch brightens and becomes animated ; we discover in it a 
totaHty, a direction and a progress ; its unity and interest con- 
sist in the slow and secret work which is accompHshed in it. 
The history of European civilization may then be summed 
up into three grand periods : First, a period which I shall call 
the period of origins, of formation — a time when the various 
elements of our society freed themselves from the chaos, took 
being, and showed themselves under their native forms with the 
principles which animated them. This period extended nearly 
to the twelfth century. Second, the second period is a time of 
essay, of trial, of groping; the various elements of the social 
order drew near each other, combined, and, as it were, felt each 
other, without the power to bring forth anything general, reg- 
ular, or durable. This state was not ended, properly speaking, 
till the sixteenth century. Third, the period of development, 
properly so called, when society in Europe took a definite form, 
followed a determined tendency, and progressed rapidly and 
universally toward a clear and precise end. This commenced at 
the sixteenth century, and now pursues its course. 
Such appears to me to be the spectacle of European civiliza- 
tion in its whole, and such I shall endeavor to represent it to 
you. It is the second period that we enter upon now. We have 
to seek in it the great crises and determinative causes of the 
social transformation which has been the result of it. 
The crusades constitute the first great event which presents 
itself to us, which, as it were, opens the epoch of which we 
speak. They commenced at the eleventh century, and extended 
over the twelfth and thirteenth. Of a surety, a great event; 
for since it was completed it has not ceased to occupy philosophic 
historians ; even before reading the account of it, all have fore- 
seen that it was one of those events which change the condition 
of the people, and which it is absolutely necessary to study in 
order to comprehend the general course of facts. 
The first characteristic of the crusades is their universality; 
the whole of Europe joined in them — they were the first Euro- 
pean event. Previously to the crusades, Europe had never been 
excited by one sentiment, or acted in one cause ; there was no 
Europe. The crusades revealed Christian Europe. The French 
formed the vans of the first army of crusaders ; but there were 
also Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and English. Observe the 
second, the third crusade ; all the Christian nations engaged in 
it. Nothing like it had yet been seen. 
This is not all : just as the crusades form an European event, 
so in each country do they form a national event. All classes 
of society were animated with the same impression, obeyed the 
same idea, abandoned themselves to the same impulse. Kings, 
lords, priests, burghers, countrymen, all took the same part, the 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 125 
same interest in the crusades. The moral unity of nations was 
shown — a fact as novel as the European unity. 
When such events happen in the infancy of a people, at a 
time when men act freely and spontaneously, without premedi- 
tation, without political intention or combination, one recognizes 
therein what history calls heroic events — the heroic age of na- 
tions. In fact, the crusades constitute the heroic event of 
modern Europe — a movement at once individual and general, 
national, and yet unregulated. 
That such was really their primitive character is verified by all 
documents, proved by all facts. Who were the first crusaders 
that put themselves in motion? Crowds of the populace, who 
set out under the guidance of Peter the Hermit, without prepa- 
ration, without guides, and without chiefs, followed rather than 
guided by a few obscure knights ; they traversed Germany, the 
Greek empire, and dispersed or perished in Asia Minor. 
The superior class, the feudal nobility, in their turn became 
eager in the cause of the crusade. Under the command of 
Godefroi de Bouillon, the lords and their followers set out full 
of ardor. When they had traversed Asia Minor, a fit of indif- 
ference and weariness seized the chiefs of the crusaders. They 
cared not to continue their route ; they united to make conquests 
and establish themselves. The common people of the army re- 
belled ; they wished to go to Jerusalem — the deliverance of Jeru- 
salem was the aim of the crusade ; it was not to gain principal- 
ities for Raimond de Toulouse, nor for Bohemond, nor for any 
other, that the crusaders came. The popular, national and 
European impulsion was superior to all individual wishes ; the 
chiefs had not sufiicient ascendancy over the masses to subdue 
them to their interests. The sovereigns, who had remained 
strangers to the first crusade, were at last carried away by the 
movement, like the people. The great crusades of the twelfth 
century were commanded by kings. 
I pass at once to the end of the thirteenth century. People 
still spoke in Europe of the crusades, they even preached them 
with ardor. The popes excited the sovereigns and the people 
— they held councils in recommendation of the Holy Land ; but 
no one went there — it was no longer cared for. Something 
had passed into the European spirit and European society that 
put an end to the crusades. There were still some private ex- 
peditions. A few lords, a few bands, still set out for Jerusalem ; 
but the general movement was evidently stopped ; and yet it 
does not appear that either the necessity or the facility of con- 
tinuing it had disappeared. The Moslems triumphed more and 
more in Asia. The Christian kingdom founded at Jerusalem 
had fallen into their hands. It v/as necessary to reconquer it ; 
there were greater means of success than they had at the com- 
126 GUIZOT 
mencement of the crusades ; a large number of Christians were 
established, and still powerful, in Asia Minor, Syria and Pales- 
tine. They were better acquainted with the means of travelling 
and acting. Still nothing could revive the crusades. It was 
clear that the two great forces of society — the sovereigns on 
one side and the people on the other — were averse to it. 
It has often been said that this was lassitude — that Europe 
was tired of thus falling upon Asia. We must come to an un- 
derstanding upon this word lassitude, which is so often used 
upon similar occasions ; it is strangely inexact. It is not pos- 
sible that human generations can be weary with what they 
have never taken part in ; weary of the fatigues undergone by 
their forefathers. Weariness is personal, it cannot be trans- 
mitted like a heritage. Men in the thirteenth century were not 
fatigued by the crusades of the twelfth, they were influenced by 
another cause. A great change had taken place in ideas, senti- 
ments, and social conditions. There were no longer the same 
wants and desires. They no longer thought or wished the same 
things. It is these political or moral metamorphoses, and not 
weariness, which explain the different conduct of successive 
generations. The pretended lassitude which is attributed to 
them is a false metaphor. 
Two great causes, one moral and the other social, threw 
Europe into the crusades. The moral cause, as you know, was 
the impulsion of religious sentiments and creeds. Since the end 
of the seventh century, Christianity had been struggling against 
Mahommedanism ; it had conquered it in Europe after being 
dangerously menaced ; it had succeeded in confining it to Spain. 
Thence also it still constantly strove to expel it. The crusades 
have been represented as a kind of accident, as an event unfore- 
seen, unheard of, born solely of the recitals of pilgrims on their 
return from Jerusalem, and of the preaching of Peter the Hermit. 
It was nothing of the kind. The crusades were the continua- 
tion, the zenith of the grand struggle which had been going on 
for four centuries between Christianity and Mahommedanism. 
The theatre of this struggle had been hitherto in Europe ; it 
was now transported into Asia. If I put any value upon those 
comparisons and parallels, into which some people delight at 
times to press, suitable or not, historical facts, I might show you 
Christianity running precisely the same career in Asia, and 
undergoing the same destiny as Mahommedanism in Europe. 
Mahommedanism was established in Spain, and had there con- 
quered and founded a kingdom and principalities. The Giris- 
tians did the same in Asia. They there found themselves with 
regard to Mahommedans in the same situation as the latter in 
Spain with regard to the Christians. The kingdom of Jerusa- 
lem and the kingdom of Grenada correspond to each other. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 127 
But these similitudes are of little importance. The great fact 
is the struggle of the two social and religious systems ; and of 
this the crusades was the chief crisis. In that lies their historical 
character, the connecting link which attaches them to the total- 
ity of facts. 
There was another cause, the social state of Europe in the 
eleventh century, which no less contributed to their outburst. 
I have been careful to explain why, between the fifth and the 
eleventh century, nothing general could be established in 
Europe. I have attempted to show how every thing had be- 
come local, how states, existences, minds, were confined within 
a very limited horizon. It was thus feudalism had prevailed. 
After some time an horizon so restricted did not suffice ; human 
thought and activity desired to pass beyond the circle in which 
they had been confined. The wandering life had ceased, but not 
the inclination for its excitement and adventures. The people 
rushed into the crusades as into a new existence, more enlarged 
and varied, which at one time recalled the ancient liberty of 
barbarism as others opened out the perspective of a vast future. 
Such, I believe, were the two determining causes of the cru- 
sades of the twelfth century. At the end of the thirteenth cent- 
ury neither of these causes existed. Men and society were so 
much changed that neither the moral impulsion nor the social 
need which had precipitated Europe upon Asia was any longer 
felt. I do not know if many of you have read the original 
historians of the crusades, or whether it has ever occurred to 
you to compare the contemporaneous chroniclers of the first 
crusades with those at the end of the twelfth and thirteenth cent- 
uries, for example, Albert d'Aix, Robert the Monk and Ray- 
mond d'Agiles, who took part in the first crusade, with William 
of Tyre and James de Vitry. When we compare these two 
classes of writers, it is impossible not to be struck by the distance 
which separates them. The first are animated chroniclers, full 
of vivid imagination, who recount the events of the crusades 
with passion. But they are, at the same time, men of very nar- 
row minds, without an idea beyond the little sphere in which 
they have lived ; strangers to all science, full of prejudices, and 
incapable of forming any judgment whatever upon what passes 
around them, or upon the events which they relate. Open, 
on the contrary, the history of the crusades by William of Tyre : 
you will be surprised to find almost an historian of modern 
times, a mind developed, extensive and free, a rare political 
understanding of events, completeness of views, a judgment 
bearing upon causes and effects. James de Vitry affords an 
example of a different kind of development; he is a scholar, 
who not only concerns himself with what has reference to the 
crusades, but also occupies himself with manners, geography, 
128 GUIZOT 
ethnography, natural history; who observes and describes the 
country. In a word, between the chroniclers of the first cru- 
sades and the historians of the last, there is an immense interval, 
which indicates a veritable revolution in mind. 
This revolution is above all seen in the manner in which each 
speaks of the Mahommedans. To the first chroniclers, and con- 
sequently to the first crusaders, of whom the first chroniclers are 
but the ｅxpression, the Mahommedans are only an object of 
hatred. It is evident that they knew nothing of them, that they 
weighed them not, considered them not, except under the point 
of view of the religious hostility which existed between them ; 
we discover no trace of any social relation ; they detested and 
fought them, and that was all. William of Tyre, James de 
Vitry, and Bernard the Treasurer, speak quite differently of the 
Mussulmans: one feels that, although fighting them, they do 
not look upon them as mere monsters ; that to a certain point 
they have entered into their ideas; that they have lived with 
them, that there is a sort of relation, and even a kind of sym- 
pathy established between them, William of Tyre warmly eulo- 
gizes Noureddin — Bernard the Treasurer, Saladin. They even 
go far as to compare the manners and conduct of the Mussul- 
mans with those of the Christians ; they take advantage of the 
Mussulmans to satirize the Christians, as Tacitus painted the 
manners of the Germans in contrast with the manners of the 
Romans. You see how enormous the change between the two 
epochs must have been, when you find in the last, with regard 
to the enemies of the Christians, to those against whom the cru- 
sades were directed, a liberty and impartiality of spirit which 
would have filled the first crusaders with surprise and indigna- 
tion. 
This, then, was the first and principal effect of the crusades, 
a great step toward the enfranchisement of mind, a great prog- 
ress toward more extensive and liberal ideas. Commenced in 
the name and under the influence of religious creeds, the cru- 
sades removed from religious ideas, I will not say their legiti- 
mate influence, but the exclusive and despotic possession of 
the human mind. This result, doubtless altogether unforeseen, 
was born of many causes. The first is evidently the novelty, 
extension and variety of the spectacle which was opened to the 
view of the crusaders. It happened with them as with travel- 
lers. It is a common saying that the mind of travellers becomes 
enlarged ; that the habit of observing various nations and man- 
ners, and different opinions, extends the ideas, and frees the 
judgment from old prejudices. The same fact was accom- 
plished among these travelling nations who were caller cru- 
saders: their minds were opened and elevated, by seeing a 
multitude of different things, and by observing other manners 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 129 
than their own. They also found themselves in juxtaposition 
with two civilizations, not only different from their own, but 
more advanced ; the Greek on the one hand, and the Mahom- 
medan on the other. There can be no doubt that the Greek 
society, although enervated, perverted, and falling into decay, 
had upon the crusaders the effect of a more advanced, polished 
and enlightened society than their own. The Mahommedan 
society afforded them a spectacle of the same nature. It is 
curious to observe in the old chroniclers the impression which 
the crusaders made upon the Mussulmans; these latter re- 
garded them at first as barbarians, as the rudest, most ferocious 
and most stupid class of men they had ever seen. The cru- 
saders, on their part, were struck with the riches and elegance 
of manners of the Mussulmans. To this first impression suc- 
ceeded frequent relations between the two people. These ex- 
tended and became much more important than is generally 
supposed. Not only had the Christians of the east habitual 
relations with the Mussulmans, but the west and the east be- 
came acquainted, visited and mixed with each other. It is not 
long since that one of those scholars who honor France in 
the eyes of Europe, M. Abel Remusat, discovered the existence 
of relations between the Mongol emperors and the Christian 
kings. Mongol ambassadors were sent to the Frank kings, 
to Saint Louis among others, to treat for an alliance with them, 
and to recommence the crusades in the common interest of the 
Mongols and the Christians against the Turks. And not only 
were diplomatic and official relations thus established between 
the sovereigns ; frequent and various national relations were 
formed. I quote the words of M. Abel Remusat.* 
" Many Itahan, French and Flemish monks were charged 
with diplomatic missions to the Great Khan. Mongols of 
distinction came to Rome, Barcelona, Valentia, Lyons, Paris, 
London, Northampton ; and a Franciscan of the kingdom of 
Naples was archbishop of Pekin. His successor was a pro- 
fessor of theology of the faculty of Paris. But how many 
others, less known, were drawn after these, either as slaves or 
attracted by the desire for gain, or guided by curiosity into 
countries till then unknown ! Chance has preserved the names 
of some: the first who came to visit the King of Hungary, 
on the part of the Tartars, was an Englishman, banished from 
his country for certain crimes, and who, after wandering all 
over Asia, ended by taking service among the Mongols. A 
Flemish shoemaker met in the depths of Tartary a woman 
from Metz, named Paquette, who had been carried off from 
*M/moires sur les Relations Politiques des Princes Chretiens avec les 
Empereurs Mongols. Deuxieme Memoire, pp. 154-157. 
9 
I30 
GUIZOT 
Hungary; a Parisian goldsmith, whose brother was estab- 
lished at Paris, upon the great bridge, and a young man from 
the environs of Rouen, who had been at the taking of Bel- 
grade. He saw, also, Russians, Hungarians and Flemings. 
A chorister, named Robert, after having traveled over Eastern 
Asia, returned to finish his days in the cathedral of Chartres. 
A Tartar was purveyor of helmets in the army of Philip the 
Handsome ; John de Plancarpin found near Gayouk a Russian 
gentleman, whom he calls Temer, who was serving as an in- 
terpreter; many merchants of Breslau, Poland and Austria 
accompanied him on his journed to Tartary. Others returned 
with him by way of Russia ; these were Genoese, Pisans and 
Venetians. Two merchants, whom chance had led to Bok- 
hara, consented to follow a Mongol ambassador sent by Koul- 
agou to Khoubilai. They sojourned several years both in 
China and Tartary, returned with letters from the Great Khan 
to the Pope ; again returned to the Great Khan, taking with 
them the son of one of them, the celebrated Marco Polo, and 
again quitted the court of Khoubilai to return to Venice. 
Travels of this kind were not less frequent in the following 
century. Among the number are those of Sir John Mande- 
ville, an English physician, of Oderic of Friula, of Pegoletti, 
of William de Bouldeselle, and several others, and we may 
suppose that those whose memorials are preserved, form but 
the least part of what were undertaken, and that there were 
at this period more persons capable of executing long journeys 
than of writing an account of them. Many of these adventur- 
ers remained and died in the countries which they visited. 
Others returned to their country as obscure as when they left 
it, but with an imagination filled with what they had seen, 
relating it to their family, exaggerating, no doubt, but leav- 
ing around them, amid absurd fables, useful remembrances 
and traditions capable of bearing fruit. Thus in Germany, 
Italy and France, in the monasteries, in the castles of the lords, 
and even down to the lowest ranks of society, were deposited 
precious seeds destined before long to germinate. All these 
unknown travellers carried the arts of their native land into the 
most distant countries, brought back other knowledge no less 
precious, and thus made, without being aware of it, more ad- 
vantageous exchanges than all those of commerce. By these 
means not only the trade in silk, porcelain and Indian com- 
modities was extended and facilitated — new routes opened to 
commercial industry and activity — but, what was of much more 
importance, foreign manners, unknown nations, extraordinary 
productions, oflfered themselves in crowds to the minds of the 
Europeans, confined, since the fall of the Roman Empire, with- 
in too narrow a circle. They began to know the value of the 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 
131 
most beautiful, the most populous, and the most anciently 
civilized of the four (quarters of the globe. They began to 
study the arts, creeds, and idioms of its inhabitants, and there 
was even talk of establishing a professorship of the Tartar lan- 
guage in the University of Paris. Romantic narrative, v^hen 
duly discussed and investigated, spread on all sides more just 
and varied notions. The world seemed to open on the side 
of the east ; geography took a great stride, and the desire for 
discovery became the new form which clothed the adventurous 
spirit of the Europeans. The idea of another hemisphere ceased 
to present itself as a paradox void of all probability, when our 
own became better known; and it was in searching for the 
Zipangi of Marco Polo that Christopher Columbus discovered 
the New World." 
You see, by the facts which led to the impulsion of the 
crusades, what, at the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was 
the new and vast world which was thrown open to the Euro- 
pean mind. There can be no doubt but that this was one of 
the most powerful causes of development, and of the freedom 
of mind which shone forth at the end of this great event. 
There is another cause which merits observation. Down 
to the time of the crusades, the court of Rome, the centre 
of the church, had never been in communication with the laity, 
except through the medium of ecclesiastics, whether legates 
sent from the court of Rome, or the bishops and the entire 
clergy. There had always been some laymen in direct relation 
with Rome ; but, taken all together, it was through the eccle- 
siastics that she communicated with the people. During the 
crusades, on the contrary, Rome became a place of passage to 
the greater part of the crusaders, both in going and in return- 
ing. Numbers of the laity viewed her policy and manners, 
and could see how much of personal interest influenced relig- 
ious controversy. Doubtless this new knowledge inspired 
many minds with a hardihood till then unknown. 
When we consider the state of minds in general, at the end 
of the crusades, and particularly in ecclesiastical matters, it is 
impossible not to be struck by one singular fact: religious 
ideas experienced no change ; they had not" been replaced by 
contrary or even different opinions. Yet minds were infinitely 
more free ; religious creeds were no longer the only sphere in 
which it was brought into play ; without abandoning them, it 
began to separate itself from them, and carry itself elsewhere. 
Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century, the moral cause 
which had determined the crusades, which at least was its most 
energetic principle, had vanished ; the moral state of Europe 
was profoundly modified. 
The social state had undergone an analogous change. Much 
132 
GUIZOT 
investigation has been expended upon what was the influence 
of the crusades in this respect ; it has been shown how they 
reduced a large number of fief holders to the necessity of sell- 
ing them to their sovereigns, or of selling charters to the bor- 
oughs in order to procure the means of following the crusade. 
It has been shown that by their mere absence many of the lords 
must have lost the greater portion of their power. Without 
entering into the details of this inquiry, we may, I think, resolve 
into a few general facts the influence of the crusades upon the 
social state. 
They greatly diminished the number of petty fiefs and small 
domains, of inferior fief-holders ; and they concentred property 
and power in a smaller number of hands. It is with the com- 
mencement of the crusades that we see the formation and aug- 
mentation of large fiefs and great feudal existences. 
I have often regretted that there is no map of France divided 
into fiefs, as there is of its division into departments, arrondisse- 
ments, cantons and parishes, in which all the fiefs should be 
marked, with their extent and successive relations and changes. 
If we were to compare, with the aid of such a map, the state of 
France before and after the crusades, we should see how many 
fiefs had vanished, and to what a degree the great and middle 
fiefs had increased. This was one of the most important facts 
to which the crusades led. 
Even where the petty proprietors preserved their fiefs, they 
no longer lived as isolated as formerly. The great fief-holders 
became so many centres around which the smaller ones con- 
verged, and near to which they passed their lives. It had be- 
come necessary during the crusades for them to put them- 
selves in the train of the richest and most powerful, to receive 
succor from him ; they had lived with him, partaken of his 
fortune, gone through the same adventures. When the cru- 
saders returned home, this sociability, this habit of living near 
to the superior lord, remained fixed in their manners. Thus 
as we see the augmentation of the great fiefs after the crusades, 
so we see the holders of those fiefs holding a much more con- 
siderable court in the interior of their castles, having near them 
a larger number of gentlemen who still preserved their small 
domains, but did not shut themselves up within them. 
The extension of the great fiefs and the creation of a certain 
number of centres of society, in place of the dispersion which 
formerly existed, are the two principal effects brought about 
by the crusades in the heart of feudalism. 
As to the burghers, a result of the same nature is easily per- 
ceptible. The crusades created the great boroughs. Petty 
commerce and industry did not suffice to create boroughs such 
as the great towns of Italy and Flanders were. It was com- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 133 
merce on a great scale, maritime commerce, and especially 
that of the east, which gave rise to them ; it was the crusades 
which gave to maritime commerce the most powerful impul- 
sion it had ever received. 
Upon the whole, when we regard the state of society at the 
end of the crusades, we find that this movement of dissolution, 
of the dispersion of existences and influences, this movement 
of universal localization, if such a phrase be permitted, which 
had preceded this epoch, had ceased, by a movement with an 
exactly contrary tendency, by a movement of centralization. 
All now tended to approximation. The lesser existences were 
either absorbed in the greater, or were grouped around them. 
It was in this direction that society advanced, that all its prog- 
ress was made. 
You now see why, toward the end of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, neither people nor sovereigns any longer 
desired the crusades ; they had no longer either the need or 
desire for them ; they had been cast into them by the impul- 
sion of the religious spirit, and by the exclusive domination 
of religious ideas upon the whole existence; this domination 
had lost its energy. They had sought, too, in the crusades a 
new life, more extensive and more varied; they now began to 
find it in Europe itself, in the progress of social relations. It 
was at this epoch the career of political aggrandizement opened 
itself to kings. Wherefore seek kingdoms in Asia, when they 
had them to conquer at their own doors ? Philip Augustus went 
to the crusades against his will : what could be more natural ? 
He had to make himself king of France. It was the same with 
the people. The career of riches opened before their eyes; 
they renounced adventures for work. For the sovereigns, the 
place of adventures was supplied by policy ; for the people, by 
work on a great scale. one single class of society still had a 
taste for adventure; this was that portion of feudal nobility 
who, not being in a condition to think of political aggrandize- 
ment, and not liking work, preserved their ancient condition 
and manners. They therefore continued to rush to the cru- 
sades, and attempted their revival. 
Such, in my opinion, are the great and true effects of the 
crusades : on one side, the extension of ideas, the enfranchise- 
ment of mind ; on the other, the aggrandizement of existences 
and a large sphere opened to activity of all kind ; they produced 
at once a greater degree of individual liberty, and of political 
unity. They aided the independence of man and the centrali- 
zation of society. Much has been asked as to the means of 
civilization — which they directly imported from the east; it 
has been said that the chief portion of the great discoveries 
which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, called forth the 
X34 GUIZOT 
development of European civilization — the compass, printing, 
gunpowder — were known in the east, and that the crusaders 
may have brought them thence. This, to a certain point, is 
true. But some of these assertions are disputable. That which 
is not disputable is this influence, this general effect of the cru- 
sades upon the mind on one hand, and upon society on the 
other hand ; they drew European society from a very straight- 
ened tract, and led it into new and infinitely more extensive 
paths; they commenced that transformation of the various 
elements of European society into governments and peoples 
which is the character of modern civilization. About the same 
time, royalty, one of those institutions which have most power- 
fully contributed to this great result, developed itself. Its his- 
tory, from the birth of modern states down to the thirteenth 
century, will form the subject of my next lecture. 
NINTH LECTURE. 
IN our last lecture I attempted to determine the essential 
and distinctive character of modern European society as 
compared with primitive European society ; I believe that 
we discovered in this fact that all the elements of the social state, 
at first numerous and various, reduce themselves to two : on 
one hand the government, and on the other the people. Instead 
of encountering the feudal nobility, the clergy, the kings, the 
burghers, and serfs as the dominant powers and chief actors 
in history, we find in modern Europe but two great figures which 
alone occupy the historic scene, the government, and the coun- 
try. 
If such is the fact in which European civilization terminates, 
such also is the end to which we should tend, and to which our 
researches should conduct us. It is necessary that we should 
see this grand result take birth, and progressively develop and 
strengthen itself. We are entered upon the epoch in which 
we may arrive at its origin : it was, as you have seen, between 
the twelfth and the sixteenth century that the slow and con- 
cealed work operated in Europe which has led our society to this 
new form and definite state. We have likewise studied the first 
great event, which, in my opinion, evidently and powerfully im- 
pelled Europe, in this direction, that is, the crusades. 
About the same epoch, almost at the moment that the crusades 
broke out, that institution commenced its aggrandizement, 
which has, perhaps, contributed more than anything to the for- 
mation of modern society, and to that fusion of all the social ele- 
ments into two powers, the government and the people — roy- 
alty. 
It is evident that royalty has played a prodigious part in the 
history of European civilization ; a single glance at facts suffices 
to convince one of it ; we see the development of royalty march- 
ing with the same step, so to speak, at least for a long period, as 
that of society itself ; the progress is mutual. 
And not only is the progress mutual, but whenever society ad- 
vances toward its modern and definitive character, royalty seems 
to extend and prosper ; so that when the work is consummated, 
when there is no longer any, or scarcely any, other important or 
135 
136 GUIZOT 
(decisive influence in the great states of Europe, than that of the 
government and the public, royalty is the government 
And it has thus happened, not only in France, where the fact 
is evident, but also in the greater portion of European countries ; 
a little earlier or a little later, under somewhat different forms, 
the same result is offered us in the history of society in England, 
Spain, and Germany. In England, for example, it was under 
the Tudors that the ancient, peculiar, and local elements of Eng- 
lish society were perverted and dissolved, and gave place to the 
system of public powers ; this also was the time of the greatest 
influence of royalty. It was the same in Germany, Spain and 
all the great European states. 
If we leave Europe, and if we turn our view upon the rest of 
the world, we shall be struck by an analogous fact ; we shall 
everywhere find royalty occupying an important position, ap- 
pearing as, perhaps, the most general and permanent of institu- 
tions, the most difficult to prevent, where it did not formerly 
exist, and the most difficult to root out where it had existed. 
From time immemorial it has possessed Asia. At the discovery 
of America, all the great states there were found with different 
combinations, subject to the monarchical system. When we 
penetrate into the interior of Africa, wherever we meet with na- 
tions in any way extensive, this is the prevailing system. And 
not only has royalty penetrated everywhere, but it has accom- 
modated itself to the most diverse situations, to civilization, and 
to barbarism, to manners the most pacific, as in China, for ex- 
ample, and to those in which war, in which the military spirit 
dominates. It has alike established itself in the heart of the 
system of castes ; in the most rigorously classified societies, and 
in the midst of a system of equality, in societies which are utter 
strangers to all legal and permanent classification. Here 
despotic and oppressive, there favorable to civilization and even 
to liberty, it seems like a head which may be placed upon a mul- 
titude of different bodies, a fruit that will spring from the most 
dissimilar germs. 
In this fact we may discover many curious and important con- 
sequences. I will take only two. The first is, that it is impos- 
sible such a result should be the fruit of mere chance, of force or 
usurpation alone ; it is impossible but that there should be a 
profound and powerful analogy between the nature of royalty, 
considered as an institution, and the nature, whether of indi- 
vidual man, or of human society. Doubtless force is intermixed 
with the origin of the institution ; doubtless force has taken an 
important part in its progress ; but when we meet with such a 
result as this, when we see a great event developing and repro- 
ducing itself during the course of many centuries, and in the 
midst of such different situations, we cannot attribute it to force. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 137 
Force plays a great part and an incessant one in human affairs ; 
but it is not their principle, their primum mobile ; above force 
and the part which it plays there hovers a moral cause which de- 
cides the totality of things. It is with force in the history of 
societies as with the body in the history of man. The body 
surely holds a high place in the life of man, but still it is not the 
principle of life. Life circulates within it, but it does not 
emanate from it. So it is with human societies ; whatever part 
force takes therein, it is not force which governs them, and which 
presides supremely over their destinies ; it is ideas and moral 
influences, which conceal themselves under the accidents of force 
and regulate the course of the society. It is a cause of this kind, 
and not force, which gave success to royalty. 
A second fact, and one which is no less worthy of remark, is 
the flexibility of the institution, its faculty of modifying and 
adapting itself to a multitude of different circumstances. Mark 
the contrast : its form is unique, permanent, and simple ; it 
does not offer that prodigious variety of combinations which we 
see in other institutions, and yet it applies itself to societies which 
the least resemble it. It must evidently allow of great diversity, 
and must attach itself, whether in man himself or in society, to 
many different elements and principles. 
It is from not having considered the institution of royalty in 
its whole extent ; from not having, on the one hand, penetrated to 
its peculiar and fixed principle, which, whatever may be the cir- 
cumstances to which it applies itself, is its very essence and being 
— and, on the other, from not having estimated all the varieties 
to which it lends itself, and all the principles with which it may 
enter into alliance ; it is, I say, from not having considered roy- 
alty under this vast and two- fold point of view, that the part 
taken by it in the history of the world has not been always com- 
prehended, that its nature and effects have often been mis- 
construed. 
This is the work which I wish to go through with you, and in 
such a manner as to take an exact and complete estimate of the 
effects of this institution in modern Europe, whether they have 
flowed from its own peculiar principles or the modifications 
which it has undergone. 
There can be no doubt that the force of royalty, that moral 
power which is its true principle, does not reside in the sole and 
personal will of the man momentarily king ; there can be no 
doubt that the people, in accepting it as an institution, philoso- 
phers in maintaining it as a system, have not intended or con- 
sented to accept the empire of the will of a man essentially nar- 
row, arbitrary, capricious, and ignorant. 
Royalty is quite a distinct thing from the will of a man, al- 
though it presents itself in that form ; it is the personification of 
138 GUIZOT 
the sovereignty of right, of that will, essentially reasonable, en- 
lightened, just and impartial, foreign and superior to all indi- 
vidual wills, and which in virtue of this title has a right to govern 
them. Such is the meaning of royalty in the minds of nations, 
such the motive for their adhesion. 
Is it true that there is a sovereignty of right, a will which pos- 
sesses the right of governing men? It is quite certain that they 
believe so; because they seek, and constantly have sought, 
and indeed cannot but seek, to place themselves under its empire. 
Conceive to yourselves the smallest assembly of men, I will not 
say a people : conceive that assembly under the submission to a 
sovereign who is only so de facto, under a force which has no 
right except that of force, which governs neither according to 
reason, justice, nor truth ; human nature revolts at such a sup- 
position — it must have right to believe in. It is the supremacy 
of right which it seeks, that is the only power to which man con- 
sents to submit. What is history but the demonstration of this 
universal fact? What are the greater portion of the struggles 
which take place in the life of nations but an ardent effort toward 
the sovereignty of right, so that they may place themselves un- 
der its empire? And not only nations, but philosophers believe 
in its existence, and incessantly seek it. What are all the sys- 
tems of political philosophy, but the search for the sovereign of 
right? What is it that they treat of, but the question of know- 
ing who has a right to govern society ? Take the theocratical, 
monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical systems, all of them 
boast of having discovered wherein the sovereignty of right re- 
sides; all promise to society that they will place it under the rule 
of its legitimate master. I repeat, this is the end alike of all the 
works of philosophers, of all efforts of nations. 
How should they but believe in the sovereignty of right ? How 
should they but be constantly in search of it? Take the most 
simple suppositions ; let there be something to accomplish, 
some influence to exercise, whether upon society in its whole, or 
upon a number of its members, or upon a single individual ; 
there is evidently always a rule for this action, a legitimate will 
to follow and apply. Whether you penetrate into the smallest 
details of social life, or whether you elevate yourselves to the 
greatest events, you will everywhere encounter a truth to be 
proved, or a just and reasonable idea to be passed into reality. 
This is the sovereign of right, toward which philosophers and 
nations have never ceased and never can cease to aspire. 
Up to what point can the sovereignty of right be represented 
in a general and permanent manner by a terrestial force or by a 
human will? How far is such a supposition necessarily false 
and dangerous ? What should be thought in particular of the 
personification of the sovereignty of right under the image of 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 139 
royalty? Upon what conditions, within what limits is this per- 
sonification admissible? Great questions, which I have not to 
treat of here, but which I could not resist pointing out, and upon 
which I shall say a word in passing. 
I affirm, and the merest common sense will acknowledge, that 
the sovereignty of right completely and permanently can apper- 
tain to no one ; that all attribution of the sovereignty of right 
to any human power whatsoever is radically false and dangerous. 
Hence arises the necessity for the limitation of all powers, what- 
ever their names or forms may be ; hence the radical illegiti- 
macy of all absolute power, whether its origin be from conquest, 
inheritance, or election. People may differ as to the best means 
of seeking the sovereign of right ; they may vary as to place and 
times ; but in no place, no time, can any legitimate power be 
the independent possessor of this sovereignty. 
This principle being laid down, it is no less certain that roy- 
alty, in whatever system it is considered, presents itself as the 
personification of the sovereign of right. Listen to the theocrat- 
ical system : it will tell you that kings are the image of God 
upon earth ; this is only saying that they are the personification 
of sovereign justice, truth, and goodness. Address yourself to 
the jurisconsults ; they will tell you that the king is the living 
law ; that is to say, the king is the personification of the sover- 
eign of right, of the just law, which has the right of governing 
society. Ask royalty itself, in the system of pure monarchy ; it 
will tell you that it is the personification of the state, of the gen- 
eral interest. In whatever alliance and in whatever situation 
you consider it, you will always find it summing itself up in the 
pretension of representing and reproducing the sovereign of 
right, alone capable of legitimately governing society. 
There is no occasion for astonishment in all this. What are 
the characteristics of the sovereign of right, the characteristics 
derivable from his very nature? In the first place he is unique ; 
since there is but one truth, one justice, there can be but one 
sovereign of right. He is permanent, always the same ; truth 
never changes. He is placed in a superior situation, a stranger 
to all the vicissitudes and changes of this world ; his part in the 
world is, as it were, that of a spectator and judge. Well, is it 
royalty which externally reproduces, under the most simple 
form, that which appears its most faithful image, these rational 
and natural characteristics of the sovereign of right. Open the 
work in which M. Benjamin Constant has so ingeniously repre- 
sented royalty as a neutral and moderating power, raised above 
the accidents and struggles of social life, and only interfering at 
great crises. Is not this, so to speak, the attitude of the sover- 
eign of right in the government of human things ? There must 
be something in this idea well calculated to impress the mind, 
I40 GUIZOT 
for it has passed with singular rapidity from books to facts. one 
sovereign made it in the constitution of Brazil the very founda- 
tion of his throne ; there royalty is represented as a moderating 
power, raised above all active powers, as a spectator and judge. 
Under whatever point of view you regard this institution as 
compared with the sovereign of right, you will find that there is 
a great external resemblance, and that it is natural for it to have 
struck the minds of men. Accordingly, whenever their reflec- 
tion or imagination turned with preference toward the contem- 
plation or study of the nature of the sovereign of right, and his 
essential characteristics, they have inclined toward royalty. As 
in the time of the preponderance of religious ideas, the habitual 
contemplation of the nature of God led mankind toward the 
monarchical system, so when the jurisconsults dominated in so- 
ciety, the habit of studying, under the name of the law, the nature 
of the sovereign of right, was favorable to the dogma of his per- 
sonification in royalty. The attentive application of the human 
mind to the contemplation of the nature of the sovereignty of 
right when no other causes have interfered to destroy the effect, 
has always given force and credit to royalty, which presents its 
image. 
Moreover, there are times peculiarly favorable to this personi- 
fication. These are the times when individual powers display 
themselves in the world with all their risks and caprices ; times 
when egotism dominates in individuals, whether from ignorance 
and brutality, or from corruption. Then society, abandoned to 
the contests of personal wills, and unable to raise itself by their 
free concurrence to a common and universal will, passionately 
long for a sovereign to whom all individuals may be forced to 
submit ; and the moment any institution, bearing any one of the 
characteristics of the sovereignty of right, presented itself and 
promised its empire to society, society rallied round it with 
eager earnestness, like outlaws, taking refuge in the asylum of a 
church. This is what has been seen in the disorderly youth of 
nations, such as we have surveyed. Royalty is admirably 
adapted to epochs, of vigorous and fruitful anarchy, so to speak, 
when society desires to form and regulate itself, without know- 
ing how to do so by the free concord of individual wills. There 
are other times when, from directly opposite causes, it has the 
same recommendation. Why did the Roman Empire, so nearly 
in a state of dissolution at the end of the republic, subsist for 
nearly fifteen centuries afterward, under the name of that empire 
which, after all, was but a continual decay, a lengthened agony? 
Royalty alone could produce such an effect ; that alone could 
hold together a society which selfishness incessantly tended to 
destroy. The imperial power struggled for fifteen centuries 
against the ruin of the Roman world. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 141 
Thus there are times when royalty alone can retard the disso- 
lution of society, and times when it alone accelerates its forma- 
tion. And in both these cases it is because it represents more 
clearly and powerfully than any other form the sovereignty of 
right, that it exercises this power upon events. 
From whatever point of view you may consider this institu- 
tion, and at whatever epoch, you will acknowledge then that its 
essential characteristic, its moral principle, its true and inmost 
meaning is the image, the personification, the presumed inter- 
preter of this unique, superior and essentially legitimate will, 
which alone has the right of governing society. 
Let us now regard royalty from the second point of view, that 
is to say, in its flexibility, in the variety of parts which it has 
played, and the effects which it has produced; it is necessary 
that we should give the reason of these features and determine 
their causes. 
Here we have an advantage; we can immediately enter upon 
history, and upon our own history. By a concourse of singular 
circumstances it has happened that in modern Europe royalty 
has assumed every character under which it has shown itself in 
the history of the world. If I may be allowed to use an arithmet- 
ical ｅxpression, European royalty is the sum total of all possible 
species of royalty. I will run over its history from the fifth to 
the twelfth century; you will see how various are the aspects 
under which it presents itself, and to what an extent we shall 
everywhere find this character of variety, complication and con- 
flict which belongs to all European civilization. 
In the fifth century, at the time of the great German invasion, 
two royalties are present; the barbarian and the imperial royalty, 
that of Clovis and that of Constantine, both differing essentially 
in principles and effects. Barbaric royalty is essentially elective; 
the German kings were elected, although their election did not 
take place with the same forms which we are accustomed to 
attach to the idea; they were military chiefs, who were bound to 
make their power freely acceptable to a large number of com- 
panions, who obeyed them as being the most brave and the most 
able among them. Election is the true source of barbaric 
royalty, its primitive and essential characteristic. 
Not that this characteristic in the fifth century was not already 
a little modified, or that different elements had not been intro- 
duced into royalty. The various tribes had had their chiefs for 
a certain time; some families had raised themselves to more 
trust, consideration and riches than others. Hence a com- 
mencement of inheritance; the chief was now mostly elected out 
of these families. This was the first differing principle which 
became associated with the dominant principle of election. 
Another idea, another element, had also already penetrated 
142 
GUIZOT 
into barbaric royalty: this was the religious element. We find 
among some of the barbarous nations, among the Goths, for 
example, that the families of their kings descended from the 
families of their gods, or from those heroes of whom they had 
made gods, such as Odin. This is the situation of the kings of 
Homer, who sprang from gods or demi-gods, and by reason of 
this title were the objects of a kind of religious veneration, 
despite their limited power. 
Such, in the fifth century, was barbaric royalty, already vary- 
ing and fluctuating, although its primitive principle still 
dominated. 
I take imperial, Roman royalty; this is a totally different 
thing; it is the personification of the state, the heir of the sov- 
ereignty and majesty of the Roman people. Consider the 
royalty of Augustus and Tiberius; the emperor is the repre- 
sentative of the senate, the comitia, and the whole republic ; he 
succeeded them, and they are summed up in his person. Who 
would not recognize this in the modesty of language of the first 
emperors; of those, at least, who were men of sense, and under- 
stood their situation? They felt themselves in the presence of 
the late sovereign people who had abdicated in their favor; they 
addressed them as their representatives and ministers. But, in 
fact, they exercised the whole power of the people, and that with 
the most formidable intensity. It is easy for us to understand 
such a transformation ; we have ourselves witnessed it ; we have 
seen the sovereignty pass from the people to a man; that is 
the history of Napoleon. He also was the personification of 
the sovereign people; he unceasingly repeated to it, " Who like 
me has been elected by eighteen millions of men? Who like me 
is the representative of the people Reptiblique Frangaise?" 
And when upon one side of his coinage we read, The French 
Republic, and upon the other. Napoleon, Empereur, what does 
this mean, if not the fact which I have described, the people 
become king? 
Such was the fundamental character of imperial royalty, which 
it preserved for the three first centuries of the empire; it was 
not till Diocletian that it took its definite and complete form. 
It was then, however, upon the point of undergoing a g^eat 
change; a new royalty had almost appeared. Christianity 
labored for three centuries to introduce the religious element into 
society. It was under Constantine that it met with success, not 
in making it the prevalent fact, but in making it play an impor- 
tant part. Here royalty presents itself under a different aspect ; 
its origin is not earthly; the prince is not the representative of 
the public sovereignty; he is the image of God, his representa- 
tive and delegate. Power came down to him from above, while 
in imperial royalty it came from below. These are two utterly 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 143 
different situations, and have entirely different results. The 
rights of liberty, political guarantees, are difficult to combine 
with the principle of religious royalty; but the principle itself 
is elevated, moral and salutary. Let us see the idea which was 
formed of the prince in the seventh century in the system of 
religious royalty. I take it from the canons of the councils of 
Toledo. 
"The king is called king (r^jir) because he governs justly 
(recte). If he act with justice (recte) he legitimately pos- 
sesses the name of king; if he act with injustice he miserably 
loses it. Our fathers, therefore, said with good reason: Rex 
ejus, eris si recta facis, si autem non facis, non eris. The two 
principal royal virtues are justice and truth (science of the 
reason). 
" The royal power is bound, like the people, to respect the 
laws . . . Obedience to the will of Heaven, gives to us and 
to our subjects wise laws which our greatness and that of our 
successors is bound to obey, as well as the whole population of 
our kingdom. . . . 
" God, the creator of all things, in disposing the structure of 
the human body, has raised the head on high and has willed that 
the nerves of all the members should proceed therefrom. And 
he has placed in the head the torch of the eyes, to the end that 
from thence may be viewed all things that might be prejudicial. 
He has established the power of intellect, charging it to govern 
all the members and wisely to regulate their action. ... It 
is first necessary, then, to regulate what relates to princes, to 
watch over their safety, and to protect their life, and then to 
order what relates to the people; so that in guaranteeing, as is 
fitting, the safety of kings, they at the same time guarantee, and 
more effectually, that of the people."* 
But, in the system of religious royalty, another element, quite 
different from that of royalty itself, almost always introduced 
itself. A new power took its place by the side of it, a power 
nearer to God, to the source whence royalty emanates, than 
royalty itself: this was the clergy, the ecclesiastical power which 
interposed itself between God and kings and between kings and 
the people; so that royalty, the image of divinity, ran a chance 
of falling to the rank of an instrument of the human interpreters 
of the divine will. This was a new cause of diversity in tHe 
destinies and effects of the institution. 
Here, then, we see, what in the fifth century were the various 
royalties which manifested themselves upon the ruins of the 
Roman Empire; the barbaric royalty, the imperial royalty and 
the rising religious royalty. Their fortunes were as various as 
their principles. 
* Forum Judicum, i. lib. 2; tit. i. 1. 2, I.4.. 
144 GUIZOT 
In France, under the first race, barbaric royalty prevailed; 
there were many attempts of the clergy to impress upon it the 
imperial or religious character; but election in the royal family, 
with some mixture of inheritance and religious ideas, remained 
dominant. In Italy, among the Ostrogoths, imperial royalty 
superseded the barbarian customs. Theodoric asserted himself 
the successor of the emperors. You need only read Cassiodorus, 
to acknowledge this character of his government. 
In Spain, royalty appeared more religious than elsewhere; 
as the councils of Toledo were, I will not say the masters, but the 
influencing power, the religious character dominated, if not in 
the government, properly so-called, of the Visigoth kings at 
least, in the laws with which the clergy inspired them and the 
language which it made them speak. 
In England, among the Saxons, barbarian manners subsisted 
almost entire. The kingdoms of the heptarchy were merely the 
domains of various bands, having each its chief. The military 
election is more evident there than elsewhere. Anglo-Saxon 
royalty is the most perfect type of barbaric royalty. 
Thus from the fifth to the twelfth century three kinds of 
royalty manifested themselves at the same time in general facts; 
one or other of them prevailed, according to circumstances, in 
each of the different states of Europe. 
The chaos was such at this epoch that nothing universal or 
permanent could be established; and, from one vicissitude to 
another, we arrive at the eighth century, without royalty having 
anywhere taken a definitive character. Toward the middle of 
the eighth century, with the triumph of the second race of the 
Frank kings, events generalized themselves and became clearer; 
as they were accomplished upon a greater scale they were better 
understood and led to more results. You will shortly see the 
different royalties distinctly succeed and combine with each 
other. 
At the time when the Carlovingjans replace the Merovingians, 
a return of barbaric royalty is visible; election again appears. 
Pepin causes himself to be elected at Soissons. When the first 
Carlovingians give the kingdoms to their sons, they take care 
to have them accepted by the chief persons in the states assigned 
them; when they make a partition, they wish it to be sanctioned 
in the national assemblies. In a word, the elective principle, 
under the form of public acceptation, reassumes some reality. 
You bear in mind that this change of dynasty was like a new 
invasion of the Germans in the west of Europe and brought 
back some shadow of their ancient institutions and manners. 
At the same time we see the religious principle introduced 
more clearly into royalty, and playing therein a more important 
part. Pepin was acknowledged and crowned by the pope. He 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 145 
had need of religious sanction ; it had already a great power, and 
he courted it. Charlemagne took the same precaution ; religious 
royalty was developing. Still under Charlemagne this character 
did not dominate; imperial royalty was evidently what he 
attempted to resuscitate. Although he closely allied himself to 
the clergy, and made use of them, he was not their instrument. 
The idea of a great state, of a great political unity, the resur- 
rection of the Roman Empire, was the favorite idea, the dream 
of Charlemagne's reign. He died, and was succeeded by Louis 
le Debonnaire. Every one knows what character the royal 
power instantly assumed; the king fell into the hands of the 
clergy, who censured, deposed, re-estabHshed, and governed 
him ; religious royalty, late subordinate, seemed on the point of 
being established. 
Thus, from the middle of the eighth to the middle of the 
ninth century, the diversity of three kinds of royalty manifested 
itself in important, closely connected, and palpable events. 
After the death of Louis le Debonnaire, in the dissolution 
into which Europe fell, the three species of royalty disappeared 
almost simultaneously; all became confusion. After some time, 
when the feudal system prevailed, a fourth royalty presented 
itself, different from any that we have yet seen; this was feudal 
royalty. This is confused, and very difficult to define. It has 
been said that the king in the feudal system was sovereign of 
sovereigns, lord of lords, that he held by sure ties, from one class 
to another, the entire society; that in calling around him his 
vassals, then the vassals of his vassals, he called the whole nation, 
and truly showed himself a king. I do not deny that this was the 
theory of feudal royalty; but it is a mere theory, which has never 
governed facts. That general influence of the king by the means 
of an hierarchial organization, those ties which united royalty 
to the entire feudal society, are the dreams of publicists. In 
fact, the greater part of the feudal lords were at this epoch 
entirely independent of royalty; a large number scarcely knew 
the name, and had little or no connection with it. All the 
sovereignties were local and independent: the title of king 
borne by one of the feudal lords expressed rather a remembrance 
than a fact. 
This was the state of royalty during the course of the tenth 
and eleventh centuries. In the twelfth, with the reign of Louis 
le Gros, the aspect of things began to change. We more often 
find the king spoken of; his influence penetrated into places 
where hitherto he had never made way; his part in society 
became more active. If we seek by what title, we shall recognize 
none of the titles of which royalty had hitherto been accustomed 
to avail itself. It was not as the heir of the emperors, or by the 
title of imperial royalty, that it aggrandized itself and assumed 
146 GUIZOT 
more coherence; nor was it in virtue of election, nor as the 
emanation of divine power. All trace of election had disap- 
peared, the hereditary principle of succession had become defin- 
itively established ; and although religion sanctioned the acces- 
sion of kings, the minds of men did not appear at all engrossed 
with the religious character of the royalty of Louis le Gros. A 
new element, a character hitherto unknown, produced itself in 
royalty; a new royalty commenced. 
I need not repeat that society was at this epoch in a prodigious 
disorder, a prey to unceasing violence. Society had m itself no 
means of striving against this deplorable state, of regaining any 
regularity or unity. The feudal institutions, those parliaments 
of barons, those seigneurial courts, all those forms under which 
in modern times, feudalism has been represented as a systematic 
and organized regime, all this was devoid of reality, of power; 
there was nothing there which could re-establish order or justice ; 
so that, amid this social desolation, none knew to whom to 
have recourse for the reparation of any great injustice, or to 
remedy any great evil, or in any way to constitute anything 
resembling a state. The name of king remained; a lord bore it, 
and some few addressed themselves to him. The various titles 
under which royalty had hitherto presented itself, although they 
did not exercise any great control, were still present to many 
minds, and on some occasions were recognized. It sometimes 
happened that they had recourse to the king to repress any 
scandalous violence, or to re-establish something like order, in 
any place near to his residence, or to terminate any difference 
which had long existed; he was sometimes called upon to inter- 
fere in matters not strictly within his jurisdiction ; he interfered 
as the protector of public order, as arbitrator and redresser of 
wrongs. The moral authority which remained attached to his 
name by degrees attracted to him this power. 
Such is the character which royalty begun to take under Louis 
le Gros, and under the administration of Suger. Then, for the 
first time, we see in the minds of men the idea, although very 
incomplete, confused and weak, of a public power, foreign to 
the powers which possessed society, called to render justice to 
those who were unable to obtain it by ordinary means, capable 
of establishing, or, at least, of commanding order; the idea of a 
great magistrate, whose essential character was that of main- 
taining or re-establishing peace, of protecting the weak, and of 
ending differences which none others could decide. This is the 
entirely new character under which, dating from the twelfth 
century, royalty presented itself in Europe, and especially in 
France. It was neither as a barbarous royalty, a religious 
royalty, nor as an imperial royalty, that it exercised its empire; 
it possessed only a limited, incomplete and accidental power; 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 147 
the power, as it were (I know of no ｅxpression more exact), 
of a great justice of peace for the whole nation. 
This is the true origin of modern royalty; this, so to speak, is 
its vital principle; that which has been developed in the course 
of its career, and which, I do not hesitate in saying, has brought 
about its success. At the different epochs of history, we see 
the different characters of royalty reappear; we see the various 
royalties which I have described attempting by turns to regain 
the preponderance. Thus the clergy has always preached relig- 
ious royalty; jurisconsults labored to resuscitate imperial 
royalty; and the nobles have sometimes wished to revive elective 
royalty, or the feudal. And not only have the clergy, juriscon- 
sults and nobility striven to make dominant in royalty such or 
such a character; it has itself made them all subservient to the 
aggrandizement of its power; kings have sometimes represented 
themselves as the delegates of God, sometimes as the successors 
of the emperors, according to the need or inclination of the 
moment; they have illegitimately availed themselves of these 
various titles, but none of them has been the veritable title of 
modern royalty, or the source of its preponderating influence. 
It is, I repeat, as the depositary and protector of public order, of 
universal justice and common interest — it is under the aspect 
of great magistrac)^, the center and union of society — that it has 
shown itself to the eyes of the people, and has appropriated 
their strength by obtaining their adhesion. 
You will see, as we advance; this characteristic of modern 
European royalty, which commenced at the twelfth century, 
under the reign of Louis le Gros, strengthen and develop itself, 
and become, so to speak, its political physiognomy. It is 
through it that royalty has contributed to the great result 
which characterizes European societies in the present day, 
namely, the reduction of all social elements into two, the govern- 
ment and the country. 
Thus, at the termination of the crusades, Europe entered the 
path which was to conduct it to its present state; and royalty 
took its appropriate part in the great transformation. In our 
next lecture we shall study the different attempts made at polit- 
ical organization, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, with 
a view to maintain, by regulating it, the order, then almost in 
ruin. We shall consider the efforts of feudalism, of the church, 
and even of the boroughs, to constitute society after its ancient 
principles, and under its primitive forms, and thus defend them- 
selves against the general metamorphosis which was in prepa- 
ration. 
TENTH LECTURE. 
I WISH to determine correctly, and at the outset, the object 
of this lecture. 
You will recollect that one of the first facts which struck 
us in the elements of ancient European society, was their diver- 
sity, separation, and independence. The feudal nobility, clergy 
and boroughs had a situation, laws and manners, all entirely 
different; they were so many societies which governed them- 
selves, each upon its own account, and by its own rules and 
power. They stood in relation and came in contact, but there 
was no true union; they did not form, properly speaking, a 
nation, a state. 
The fusion of all these societies into one has been accom- 
plished. It is precisely, as you have seen, the distinctive fact, 
the essential character of modern society. The ancient social 
elements are reduced to two, the government and the people; 
that is to say, the diversity has ceased, that similitude has led to 
union. But before this result was consummated, and even with 
a view to its prevention, many efforts were tried to make all 
particular societies live and act in common, without destroying 
their diversity or independence. It was not wished to strike 
a blow in any way prejudicial to their situation, privileges, or 
special nature, and yet to unite them in a single state, to form of 
them one nation, to rally them under one and the same govern- 
ment. 
All these attempts failed. The result which I have just men- 
tioned, the unity of modern society, proves their ill success. 
Even in those European countries where some traces of the 
ancient diversity of social elements, in Germany, for example, 
where there is still a true feudal nobility, and a bourgeoisie; in 
England, where a national church is in possession of special 
revenues and a particular jurisdiction, it is clear that this pre- 
tended distinct existence is but an appearance, an illusion; that 
these special societies are politically confounded with the general 
society, absorbed in the state, governed by the public powers, 
in subjection to the same system, and carried away in the 
current of the same ideas and the same manners. I repeat that, 
where even the form of it still subsists, the independence of the 
ancient social elements has no reality. 
X48 
BANQUET OF WALLENSTEIN'S GENERALS 
A 7' PILSEN. 
Photogravure from a painiing by Julius ScboU^. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 149 
Still these attempts to make them co-ordinate without trans- 
forming them, to attach them to a national unity without abolish- 
ing their diversity, have held an important place in the history 
of Europe; they partly fill the epoch which now occupies our 
attention, that epoch which separates primitive from modern 
Europe, and in which the metamorphosis of European society 
was accomplished. And not only has it occupied an important 
place therein, but it has also greatly influenced posterior events, 
and the manner in which the reduction of all social elements 
into two, the government and the public, has been brought ' 
about. It is, therefore, of consequence to properly estimate and 
thoroughly understand all the essays at political organization 
which were made from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, to 
create nations and governments, without destroying the diver- 
sity of the secondary societies placed side by side. Such will be 
our business in this lecture. 
It is a difficult and even a painful task. These attempts at 
political organization have not all been conceived and directed 
with a good intention; many of them have had no other views 
but those of selfishness and tyranny. More than one, however, 
has been pure and disinterested; more than one has really had 
for its object the moral and social good of mankind. The state of 
incoherence, violence and iniquity, in which society was then 
placed, shocked great minds and elevated souls, and they inces- 
santly sought the means of escaping from it. Still, even the best 
of these noble essays have failed; and so much courage and 
virtue, so many sacrifices and efforts, have been lost; is it not a 
heart-rending spectacle? There is even one thing still more 
painful, the source of a sadness still more bitter; not only have 
these attempts at social amelioration failed, but an enormous 
mass of error and evil has been mixed up therein. Despite the 
good intention, the greater part were absurd, and indicated a 
profound ignorance of reason, justice, the rights of humanity, 
and the foundations of the social state; so that not only has 
success been wanting to mankind, but they have merited their 
failures. We here, then, have the spectacle, not only of the hard 
destiny of humanity, but also of its weakness. one may here 
see how the merest instalment of truth suffices so to occupy the 
greatest minds that they entirely forget all the rest, and become 
blind to everything which does not come within the straightened 
horizon of their ideas; how a mere glimpse of justice in a cause 
suffices to make them lose sight of all the injustice which it in- 
volves and permits. This outburst of the vices and imperfection 
of man, is, in my opinion, a contemplation even more melan- 
choly than the misery of his condition; his faults weigh more 
heavily upon me than his sufferings. The attempts which I have 
to describe exhibit each of these spectacles. It is necessary to 
I50 GUIZOT 
go through with them, and to be just toward those men, those 
ages, who have so often gone astray, and have so cruelly failed, 
and who, notwithstanding, have displayed such high virtues, 
made such noble efforts, merited so much glory! 
The attempts at political organization, formed from the twelfth 
to the sixteenth century, are of two kinds : the object of the one 
was to bring about the predominance of a particular social ele- 
ment, whether the clergy, the feudal nobility, or the boroughs ; 
to make all the others subordinate to this, and on these terms 
to establish unity. The other proposed to itself to reconcile all 
the particular societies, and make them act in common, leaving 
to each its liberty, and guaranteeing its share of influence. The 
first class of these attempts is much more liable to the suspicion 
of selfishness and tyranny than the second. They have, in fact, 
oftener been tainted with these vices; they are, indeed, by their 
very nature, essentially tyrannical in their means of action. 
Some of them, however, may have been — in fact, have been — 
conceived with pure views for the good and progress of 
humanity. 
The first which presents itself is the attempt at a theocratical 
organization — that is to say, the design of subduing the various 
classes of society to the principles and empire of the ecclesiastical 
society. You will call to mind what I have said concern- 
ing the history of the church. I have endeavored to show 
what principles have been developed within it, what was the 
share of legitimacy of each, how they were born of the natural 
course of events, what services they have rendered, and what 
evil they have brought about. I have characterized the various 
states into which the church passed from the eighth to the 
twelfth century; I have shown the state of the imperial church, 
the barbarian, the feudal, and lastly, the theocratical church. I 
suppose these recollections to be present to your minds; I shall 
now endeavor to indicate what the clergy did to dominate in 
Europe, and why they failed. 
The attempt at theocratical organization appeared at a very 
early period, whether in the acts of the court of Rome, or in 
those of the clergy in general; it naturally resulted from the 
political and moral superiority of the church, but we shall find 
that it encountered, from the first, obstacles which, even in its 
greatest vigor, it did not succeed in removing. 
The first was the very nature of Christianity. Wholly different 
in this respect from the greater number of religious creeds, 
Christianity was established by persuasion alone, by simply 
moral means; it was never, from the time of its birth, armed with 
force. In the early ages it conquered by the Word alone, and it 
only conquered souls. Hence it happened, that even after its 
triumph, when the church was in possession of great riches and 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 151 
consideration, we never find her invested with the direct govern- 
ment of society. Her origin, purely moral, and merely by means 
of persuasion, was found impressed in her condition. She had 
much influence, but she had no power. She insinuated herself 
into the municipal magistracies, she acted powerfully upon the 
emperors and their agents, but she had not the positive admin- 
istration of public affairs, the government, properly so called. 
Now a system of government — the theocratical or any other — 
cannot be established in an indirect manner by mere force of 
influence; it is necessary to administer, command, receive taxes, 
dispose of revenues, govern, in a word, actually to take posses- 
sion of society. When nations and governments are acted upon 
by persuasion, much may be effected, and a great empire exer- 
cised; but there would be no government, no system would be 
founded, the future could not be provided for. Such has been, 
from its very origin, the situation of the Christian church; she 
has always been at the side of the government of society, but 
she has never removed it and taken its place; a great obstacle 
which the attempt at theocratical organization could not sur- 
mount. 
She met at a very early period with a second obstacle. The 
Roman Empire once fallen, and the barbarian states founded, 
the church found herself among the conquered. The first thing 
necessary was to escape this situation; the work she had to 
commence by converting the conquerors, and thus raising her- 
self to their rank. When this task was accomplished, and the 
church aspired to domination, she encountered the pride and 
resistance of the feudal nobiHty. This was a great service ren- 
dered to Europe by the feudal laity; in the eleventh century 
nations were almost entirely subjected to the church — sover- 
eigns were scarce able to defend themselves ; the feudal nobility 
alone never received the yoke of the clergy, never humbled them- 
selves before it. one need only recall the general physiognomy 
of the middle ages to be struck by the singular mixture of 
haughtiness and submission, of blind credulity and freedom of 
mind in the relations between the lay lords and the priests ; we 
there see some wreck of their primitive condition. You will call 
to mind how I endeavored to represent to you the origin of feu- 
dalism, its first elements, and the manner in which the elementary 
feudal society was formed around the habitation of the fief- 
holder. I remarked how in that society the priest was below the 
lord. Well, there always remained in the heart of the feudal 
nobility a recollection and feeling of this situation; it always 
regarded itself, not only as independent of the church, but as 
superior to it, as alone called to possess and really govern the 
country; it was always willing to live in concord with the 
clergy, but so as to guard its own interests, and not to give in 
152 GUIZOT 
to those of the clergy. During many centuries it was the lay 
aristocracy which maintained the independence of society with 
regard to the church — that haughtily defended it when kings 
and people were subdued. It was the first to oppose, and per- 
haps contributed more than any other power to the failure of the 
attempt at a theocratical organization of society. 
A third obstacle was likewise opposed, of which in general 
but little account has been held, and often even its effects been 
misconstrued. 
Wherever a clergy has seized upon society and subjected it 
to a theocratical organization, it is upon a married clergy that 
this empire has devolved, upon a body of priests recruiting 
themselves from their own bosom, and bringing up their chil- 
dren from their very birth in and for the same situation. Exam- 
ine history : look at Asia, Egypt ; all the great theocracies are the 
work of a clergy which is a complete society in itself, which 
suffices for its own wants and borrows nothing from without. 
By the celibacy of priests the Christian clergy was in an 
entirely different position; it was obliged, in order to its per- 
petuation, to have continual recourse to the laity; to seek from 
abroad, in all social positions and professions, the means of 
duration. In vain did the esprit-de-corps labor afterward to 
assimilate these foreign elements; something of the origin of 
the new-comers always remained; burghers or nobles, they 
always preserved some trace of their ancient spirit, their former 
condition. Doubtless celibacy, in placing the Catholic clergy 
in an entirely special situation, foreign to the interests and 
common life of mankind, has been to it a chief cause of isolation ; 
but it has thus unceasingly forced it into connection with lay 
society, in order to recruit and renew itself therefrom, to receive 
and undergo some part of the moral revolutions which were ac- 
complished in it ; and I do not hesitate to say that this necessity, 
constantly renewing, has beeli much more prejudicial to the suc- 
cess of the attempt at theocratical organization than the csprit- 
de-corps, strongly maintained by celibacy, has been able to pro- 
mote it. 
The church finally encountered, within her own bosom, pow- 
erful adversaries to this attempt. Much has been said concern- 
ing the unity of the church, and it is true she has constantly 
aspired to it, and in some respects has happily attained it. But 
let us not be deceived by the pomp of words, nor by that of par- 
tial facts. What society has presented more civil dissensions, or 
undergone more dismemberment than the clergy? What na- 
tion has been more divided, more disordered, more unfixed than 
the ecclesiastical nation? The national churches of the majority 
of European countries almost incessantly struggled against the 
court of Rome ; councils struggled against popes ; heresies have 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 153 
been innumerable and constantly renewing, schisms always in 
readiness ; nowhere has there been such diversity of opinions, 
such fury in contest, such parcelling out of power. The in- 
ternal life of the church, the divisions which have broken out in 
it, the revolutions which have agitated it, have, perhaps, been 
the greatest obstacles to the triumph of that organization which 
she has attempted to impose upon society. 
All these obstacles were in action and visible in the very cradle 
of the great attempt which we have in review. They did not, 
however, prevent its following its course, nor its being in prog- 
ress for many centuries. Its most glorious time, its day of 
crisis, so to speak, was in the reign of Gregory VII, at the end 
of the eleventh century. You have already seen that the dom- 
inant idea of Gregory VII was to subjugate the world to the 
clergy, the clergy to the papal power, and Europe to a vast and 
regular theocracy. In this design, as far as it may be permitted 
us to judge of events at such a distance, this great man commit- 
ted, in my opinion, two great faults ; one the fault of a theorist, 
the other of a revolutionist. The first was that of ostentatiously 
displaying his plan, of systematically proclaiming his principles 
on the nature and rights of spiritual power, of drawing from 
them beforehand, like an intractable logician, the most distant 
consequences. He thus menaced and attacked all the lay sover- 
eignties of Europe, before being assured of the means of con- 
quering them. Success in human afifairs is neither obtained by 
such absolute proceedings, nor in the name of philosophical 
argument. Moreover, Gregory VII fell into the common 
error of revolutionists, that of attempting more than they can 
execute, and not taking the possible as the measure and limit of 
their efforts. In order to hasten the domination of his ideas, he 
engaged in contest with the empire, with all the sovereigns and 
with the clergy itself. He hesitated at no consequence, nor 
cared for any interest, but haughtily proclaimed that he willed 
to reign over all kingdoms, as well as over all minds, and thus 
raised against him, on one side, all the temporal powers, who 
saw themselves in pressing danger, and on the other the free- 
thinkers, who began to appear, and who already dreaded the 
tyranny over thought. Upon the whole, Gregory perhaps com- 
promised more than he advanced the cause he wished to serve. 
It, however, continued to prosper during the whole of the 
twelfth and down to the middle of the thirteenth century. This 
is the time of the greatest power and brilliancy of the church, 
though I do not think it can be strictly said that she made any 
great progress in that epoch. Down to the end of the reign of 
Innocent III she rather cultivated than extended her glory and 
power. It was at the moment of her greatest apparent success 
that a popular reaction declared itself against her in a large por- 
154 GUIZOT 
tion of Europe. In the south of France the heresy of the Al- 
bigenses broke forth, which took possession of an entire, numer- 
ous, and powerful community. Almost at the same time in the 
north, in Flanders, ideas and desires of the same nature ap- 
peared. A little later, in England, Wyclif attacked with talent 
the power of the church, and founded a sect which will never 
perish. Sovereigns did not long delay entering the same path 
as the people. It was at the commencement of the thirteenth 
century that the most powerful and the ablest sovereigns of 
Europe, the emperors of the house of Hohenstaufen, succumbed 
in their struggle with the papacy. During this century Saint 
Louis, the most pious of kings, proclaimed the independence of 
the temporal power, and published the first Pragmatic Sanction, 
which has been the basis of all others. At the commencement 
of the fourteenth century the quarrel broke out between Philip le 
Bel and Boniface VIII ; the king of England, Edward I, was 
not more docile toward Rome. At this epoch, it is clear, the at- 
tempt at a theocratical organization has failed; the church 
henceforth, will be on the defensive ; she will no longer under- 
take to impose her system upon Europe ; her only thought will 
be to preserve what she has conquered. It is from the end of 
the thirteenth century that the emancipation of the European 
lay society really dates ; it was then that the church ceased to 
pretend to the possession of it. 
She had long before renounced this claim, in the very sphere 
in which she seemed to have had the best chance of success. 
Long since, upon the very threshold of the church, around her 
very throne in Italy, theocracy had completely failed, and given 
place to an entirely different system — to that attempt at a demo- 
cratical organization, of which the Italian republics are the type, 
and which, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, played so 
brilliant a part in Europe. 
You recollect what I have already related of the history of the 
boroughs, and the manner in which they were formed. In 
Italy, their destiny was more precocious and powerful than any- 
where else ; the towns there were much more numerous and 
wealthy than in Gaul, Britain, or Spain ; the Roman municipal 
system remained more full of life and regular there. 
The country parts of Italy, also, were much less fit to become 
the habitation of their new masters, than those of the rest of 
Europe. They had everywhere been cleared, drained, and culti- 
vated ; they were not clothed with forests ; here the barbarians 
were unable to follow the hazards of the chase, or to lead an 
analogous life to that of Germany. Moreover, one part of this 
territory did not belong to them. The south of Italy, the Cam- 
pagna di Roma and Ravenna, continued to depend upon the 
Greek emperors. Favored by its distance from the sovereign 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 155 
and the vicissitudes of war, the repubHcan system, at an early 
period, gained strength and developed itself in this part of the 
country. And not only the whole of Italy was not in the power 
of the barbarians, but even where the barbarians did conquer it, 
they did not remain in tranquil and definitive possession. The 
Ostrogoths were destroyed and driven out by Belisarius and 
Narses. The kingdom of the Lombards succeeded no better in 
establishing itself. The Franks destroyed it ; and, without de- 
stroying the Lombard population, Pepin and Charlemagne 
judged it expedient to form an alliance with the ancient Italian 
population, in order to struggle against the recently conquered 
Lombards. The barbarians, then, were not in Italy, as else- 
where, the exclusive and undisturbed masters of the land and of 
society. Hence it was, that beyond the Alps, only a weak, thin, 
and scattered feudalism was estabhshed. The preponderance, 
instead of passing into the inhabitants of the country parts, as 
had happened in Gaul, for example, continued to appertain to 
the towns. When this result became evident, a large portion of 
the fief-holders, either from free-will or necessity, ceased to in- 
habit the country, and settled in the cities. Barbarian nobles 
became burghers. You may imagine what power and superiority 
this single fact gave the Italian towns as compared with the other 
boroughs of Europe. What we have remarked in these latter, 
was the inferiority and timidity of the population. The burghers 
appeared to us like courageous freed men painfully struggling 
against a master who was always at their gates. The burghers 
of Italy were very different ; the conquering and the conquered 
population mixed within the same walls ; the towns had not to 
defend themselves from a neighboring master; their inhab- 
itants were citizens, from all time free, at least the majority of 
them, who defended their independence and their rights against 
distant and foreign sovereigns, at one time against the Frank 
kings, at another against the emperors of Germany. Hence, the 
immense and early superiority of the towns of Italy : while else- 
where even the poorest boroughs were formed with infinite 
trouble, here we see republics, states arise. 
Thus is explained the success of the attempt at republican 
organization in this part of Europe. It subdued feudalism at a 
very early period, and became the dominant form of society. 
But it was Httle calculated to spread or perpetuate itself; it con- 
tained but few germs of amelioration, the necessary condition to 
extension and duration. 
When we examine the history of the republics of Italy, from 
the eleventh to the fifteenth century, we are struck with two ap- 
parently contradictory yet incontestable facts. We find an ad- 
mirable development of courage, activity and genius, and in con- 
sequence great prosperity; there is there a movement and lib- 
156 GUIZOT 
erty which is wanting to the rest of Europe. Let us ask, what 
was the real condition of the inhabitants, how their Hfe was 
passed, what was their share of happiness? Here the aspect 
changes; no history can be more melancholy and gloomy. 
There is, perhaps, no epoch or country in which the position of 
man appears to have been more agitated, subject to more de- 
plorable mischances, or where we meet with more dissensions, 
crimes, and misfortunes. Another fact is manifest at the same 
time ; in the political system of the greater part of the republics 
liberty continually diminished. The want of security was such 
that the factions were inevitably forced to seek refuge in a 
system less tempestuous, though less popular, than that with 
which the state had commenced. Take the history of Florence, 
Venice, Genoa, Milan, Pisa ; you will everywhere see that the 
general course of events, instead of developing liberty, and en- 
larging the circle of institutions, tends to contract it, and to con- 
centre the power within the hands of a small number of men. In 
a word, in these republics, so energetic, brilliant, and wealthy, 
two things were wanting : security of life, the first condition of 
a social state, and the progress of institutions. 
Thence a new evil, which did not allow of the extension of the 
attempt at republican organization. It was from without, from 
foreign sovereigns, that the greatest danger was threatened to 
Italy. Yet this danger had never the effect of reconciling these 
republics and making them act in concert ; they would never 
resist in common a common enemy. Many of the most enlight- 
ened Italians, accordingly, the best patriots of our time, deplore 
the republican system of Italy in the middle ages as the real cause 
of its never having become a nation. It was parcelled out, they 
say, into a multitude of petty people, too much under the control 
of their passions to allow of their confederating, or constituting 
themselves a state. They regret that their country, like the rest 
of Europe, has not passed through a despotic centralization 
which would have formed it into a nation, and have rendered it 
independent of foreigners. It seems, then, that the republican 
organization, even under the most favorable circumstances, did 
not contain within itself at this epoch the principle of progress, 
of duration, extension — that it had no future. Up to a certain 
point, one may compare the organization of Italy in the middle 
ages to that of ancient Greece. Greece also was a country full 
of petty republics, always rivals and often enemies, and some- 
times rallying toward a common end. The advantage in this 
comparison is entirely with Greece. There can be no doubt 
that, although history gives us many instances of iniquity in 
them, too, there was more order, security, and justice in the in- 
terior of Athens, Lacedaemon, Thebes, than in the Italian repub- 
lics. Yet how short was the political existence of Greece I 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 157 
What a principle of weakness existed in that parcelling out of 
power and territory! When Greece came in contact with great 
neighboring states, with Macedonia and Rome, she at once suc- 
cumbed. These small republics, so glorious and still so flour- 
ishing, could not form a coalition for defense. How much 
stronger was the reason for the same result happening in Italy, 
where society and human reason had been so much less de- 
veloped and less firm than among the Greeks. 
If the attempt at republican organization had so little chance 
of duration in Italy, where it had triumphed, where the feudal 
system had been vanquished, you may easily conceive that it 
would much sooner succumb in the other parts of Europe. 
I will rapidly place its destinies before you. 
There was one portion of Europe which bore a great resem- 
blance to Italy ; this was the south of France and the neighbor- 
ing Spanish provinces, Catalonia, Navarre, and Biscay. There 
likewise the towns had gained great development, importance, 
and wealth. Many of the petty lords were allied with the 
burghers ; a portion of the clergy had likewise embraced their 
cause; in a word, the country was in a situation remarkably 
analogous to that of Italy. Accordingly, in the course of the 
eleventh century, and at the commencement of the twelfth, the 
towns of Provence, Languedoc, and Aquitaine, aimed at a polit- 
ical flight, at forming themselves into independent republics, 
just like those beyond the Alps. But the south of France was 
in contact with a very strong feudalism, that of the north. At 
this time occurred the heresy of the Albigenses, and war broke 
out between feudal and municipal France. You know the his- 
tory of the crusade against the Albigenses, under Simon de 
Montfort. This was the contest of the feudalism of the north 
against the attempt at democratical organization of the south. 
Despite the southern patriotism, the north carried the day; 
political unity was wanting in the south, and civilization was not 
sufflciently advanced for men to supply its place by concert. 
The attempt at republican organization was put down, and the 
crusade re-established the feudal system in the south of France. 
At a later period, the republican attempt met with better suc- 
cess in the mountains of Switzerland. There the theater was 
very straitened. They had only to struggle against a foreign 
sovereign, who, although of a superior force to the Swiss, was 
by no means among the most formidable sovereigns of Europe. 
The struggle was courageously sustained. The Swiss feudal 
nobility allied themselves in a great measure with the towns — a 
powerful succor, which, however, altered the nature of the revo- 
lution which it aided, and imprinted upon it a more aristocratic 
and less progressive character than it seemed at first intended to 
bear. 
158 GUIZOT 
I now pass to the north of France, to the boroughs of Flan- 
ders, the banks of the Rhine, and the Hanseatic league. There 
the democratical organization triumphed fully in the interior of 
the towns; yet, we perceive, from its outset, that it was not 
destined to extend itself, or to take entire possession of society. 
The boroughs of the north were surrounded and oppressed by 
feudalism, by lords and sovereigns, so that they were constantly 
on the defensive. It is clear that all they did was to defend 
themselves as well as they could ; they essayed no conquests. 
They preserved their privileges, but remained shut up within 
their own walls. There the democratical organization was con- 
fined and stopped short ; if we go elsewhere into the country, we 
do not find it. 
You see what was the state of the republican attempt. Tri- 
umphant in Italy, but with little chance of success or progress ; 
vanquished in the south of Gaul; victorious on a small scale 
in the mountains of Switzerland ; in the north, in the boroughs 
of Flanders, the Rhine, and the Hanseatic league, con- 
demned never to pass beyond the town walls. Still, in this posi- 
tion, evidently inferior in force to the other elements of society, 
it inspired the feudal nobility with a prodigious terror. The 
lords were jealous of the wealth of the boroughs, and feared their 
power; the democratical spirit penetrated into the rural dis- 
tricts ; the insurrections of the peasants became more frequent 
and obstinate. A great coalition was formed among the feudal 
nobility against the boroughs, almost throughout Europe. The 
party was unequal ; the boroughs were isolated ; there was no 
understanding or communication between them ; all was local. 
There existed, indeed, a certain sympathy between the burghers 
of various countries. The successes or reverses of the towns in 
Flanders in the struggles with the dukes of Burgundy certainly 
excited a lively emotion in the French towns. But this emotion 
was transitory and without result. No tie, no real union, was 
established. Nor did the boroughs lend strength to one an- 
other. Feudalism, then, had immense advantages over them. 
But, itself divided and incoherent, it did not succeed in destroy- 
ing them. When the struggle had lasted a certain time, when 
they had acquired the conviction that a complete victory was im- 
possible, it became necessary to acknowledge the petty republican 
burghers, to treat with them, and to receive them as members ol 
the state. Then a new order commenced, a new attempt at 
political organization, that of mixed organization, the object of 
which was to reconcile all the elements of society, the feudal 
nobility, the boroughs, clergy and sovereigns, and to make them 
live and act together in spite of their profound hostility. 
All of you know what are the States-general in France, the 
Cortes in Spain and Portugal, the Parliament in England, and 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 1^9 
the Diets in Germany. You know, likewise, what were the ele- 
ments of these various assemblies. The feudal nobility, the 
clergy and the boroughs, collected at them with a view to unite 
themselves into a single society, into one state, under one law 
and one power. They all, under various names, have the same 
tendency and design. 
I shall take, as the type of this attempt, the fact which is the 
most interesting and the best known to us, namely, the States- 
general in France. I say the best known to us ; yet I am con- 
vinced that the name of States-general awakens in your minds 
only vague and incomplete ideas. None of you can say what 
there was fixed or regular in the States-general of France, what 
was the number of their members, what the subjects of delibera- 
tion, or what the periods of convocation, and the duration of 
sessions ; nothing is known of these things ; it is impossible to 
draw from history any clear, general, or universal results as to 
this subject. When we examine closely the character of these 
assemblies in the history of France, they look like mere acci- 
dents, political last resource alike for people and knigs ; as a last 
resource for kings when they had no money, and knew not how 
to escape from their embarrassments ; and as a last resource for 
the people when the evil became so great that they knew not 
what remedy to apply. The nobility were present in the States- 
general ; the clergy likewise took part in them ; but they came 
full of indifference, for they knew that this was not their great 
means of action, that they could not promote by it the real part 
they took in the government. The burghers themselves were 
scarcely more eager about it ; it was not a right which they took 
an interest in exercising, but a necessity which they tolerated. 
Thus may be seen the character of the political activity of these 
assemblies. They were sometimes utterly insignificant, and 
sometimes terrible. If the king was the strongest, their humility 
and docility were carried to an extreme ; if the situation of the 
crown was unfortunate, if it had absolute need of the states, 
they fell into faction and became the instruments of some aris- 
tocratical intrigue, or some ambitious leaders. In a word, they 
were sometimes mere assemblies of notables, sometimes regular 
conventions. Thus their works almost always died with them ; 
they promised and attempted much, and did nothing. None of 
the great measures which have really acted upon society in 
France, no important reform in the government, the legislation, 
or the administration, has emanated from the States-general. It 
must not, however, be supposed that they were without utility or 
effect ; they have had a moral effect, of which too little account 
is generally taken ; they have been, from one epoch to another, 
a protest against political servitude, a violent proclamation of 
certain tutelary principles; for example, that the country has 
i6o GUIZOT 
the right to impose taxes, to interfere in its own affairs, and to 
impose a responsibility upon the agents of power. 
That these maxims have never perished in France is to be at- 
tributed to the States-general, and it is no small service to render 
to a people, to maintain in its manners, and renew in its thoughts 
the remembrances and rights of liberty. The States-general 
have possessed this virtue, but they have never been a means of 
government; they have never entered into the political organi- 
zation ; they have never attained the end for which they were 
formed, that is to say, the fusion into a single body of the various 
societies which divided the country. 
The Cortes of Spain and Portugal offer us the same result. In 
a thousand circumstances, however, they are different. The im- 
portance of the Cortes varies according to place and time; in 
Aragon and Biscay, amid the debates concerning the succession 
to the crown, or the struggle against the Moors, they were more 
frequently convoked and more powerful. In certain Cortes, for 
example, in those of Castile in 1370 and 1373, the nobles and the 
clergy were not called. There is a crowd of details which it is 
necessary should be taken into account, if we look closely into 
events. But in the general view to which I am obliged to con- 
fine myself, it may be said of the Cortes, as of the States-general 
of France, that they have been an accident in history, and never 
a system, political organization, or a regular means of govern- 
ment. 
The destiny of England was different. I shall not now enter 
upon this subject in detail. I propose to devote one lecture 
especially to the political life of England ; I shall now merely 
say a few words upon the causes which have imparted to it a di- 
rection entirely different from that of the continent. 
And, first, there were no great vassals in England, no subject 
in a condition to strive personally against royalty. The English 
barons and great lords were obliged to coalesce in order to resist 
in common. Thus have prevailed, in the high aristocracy, the 
principle of association and true political manners. Moreover, 
English feudalism, the petty fief-holders, have been gradually 
led by a series of events, which I cannot enumerate at present, to 
unite themselves with the burghers, to sit with them in the 
House of Commons, which thus possessed a power superior to 
that of the continental assemblies, a force truly capable of influ- 
encing the government of the country. Let us see what was the 
state of the British Parliament in the fourteenth century. The 
House of Lords was the great council of the king, a council 
actively associated in the exercise of power. The House of 
Commons, composed of the deputies of the petty fief-holders, 
and of burghers, took scarcely any part in the government, prop- 
erly so called, but it established rights, and very energetically 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE i6i 
defended private and local interests. The Parliament, consid- 
ered as a whole, did not yet govern, but it was already a regular 
institution, a means of government adopted in principle, and 
often, in fact, indispensable. Thus the attempt at junction and 
alliance between the various elements of society, with a view to 
form of them a single political body, a regular state, was success- 
ful in England, while it had failed everywhere on the continent. 
I shall say but a few words as to Germany, and those only to 
indicate the dominant character of its history. There the at- 
tempts at fusion, unity, and general political organization, were 
followed with little ardor. The various social elements remained 
much more distinct and independent than in the rest of Europe. 
If a proof is wanted, one may be found in modern times. Ger- 
many is the only country in which the feudal election long took 
part in the creation of royalty. I do not speak of Poland, nor 
the Slavonian nations, which entered at so late an age into the 
system of European civilization. Germany is likewise the only 
country of Europe where ecclesiastical sovereigns remained; 
which preserved free towns, having a true political existence and 
sovereignty. It is clear that the attempt to combine in a single 
society the elements of primitive European society has there had 
much less activity and effect than elsewhere. 
I have now placed before you the great essays at political or- 
ganization in Europe down to the end of the fourteenth century 
and the beginning of the fifteenth. You have seen them all fail. 
I have endeavored to indicate, in passing, the causes of this ill- 
success ; indeed, truly speaking, they are reduceable to one. 
Society was not sufficiently advanced for unity ; everything was 
as yet too local, too special, too narrow, too various in existence, 
and in men^s minds. There were neither general interests nor 
general opinions capable of controlling particular interests and 
opinions. The most elevated and vigorous minds had no idea 
of administration, nor of true political justice. It was evidently 
necessary that a more active and vigorous civilization should 
first mix, assimilate, and, so to speak, grind together all these in- 
coherent elements ; it was first necessary that a powerful cen- 
tralization of interest, laws, manners, and ideas should be 
brought about ; in a word, it was necessary that a public power 
and public opinion should arise. We have arrived at the epoch 
when this great work was consummated. Its first symptoms, 
the state of mind and manners during the course of the fifteenth 
century, the tendency toward the formation of a central govern- 
ment, and a public opinion, will form the subject of our next 
Jecture. 
zx 
ELEVENTH LECTURE. 
WE touch the threshold of modern history, properly so 
called — the threshold of that society which is our 
own, of which the institutions, opinions and man- 
ners were, forty years ago, those of France, are still those of 
Europe, and still exercise so powerful an influence upon us, 
despite the metamorphosis brought about by our revolution. 
It was with the sixteenth century, as I have already said, that 
modern society really commenced. Before entering upon it, 
recall to your minds, I pray you, the roads over which we have 
passed. We have discovered amid the ruins of the Roman 
Empire all the essential elements of the Europe of the present 
day ; we have seen them distinguish and aggrandize themselves, 
each on its own account, and independently. We recognized, 
during the first epoch of history, the constant tendency of these 
elements to separation, isolation and a local and special exist- 
ence. Scarcely was this end obtained — scarcely had feudalism, 
the boroughs and the clergy each taken its distinct form and 
place, than we see them tending to approach each other, to 
reunite, and form themselves into a general society, into a 
nation and a government. In order to arrive at this result, the 
various countries of Europe addressed themselves to all the 
different systems which co-existed in its bosom ; they demanded 
the principle of social unity, the political and moral tie, from 
theocracy, aristocracy, democracy and royalty. Hitherto all 
these attempts had failed ; no system or influence had known 
how to seize upon society, and by its empire to insure it a truly 
public destiny. We have found the cause of this ill-success in 
the absence of universal interests and ideas. We have seen 
that all was, as yet, too special, individual and local ; that a long 
and powerful labor of centralization was necessary to enable so- 
ciety to extend and cement itself at the same time, to become 
at once great and regular — an end to which it necessarily 
aspired. This was the state in which we left Europe at the end 
of the fourteenth century. 
She was far from understanding her position, such as I have 
endeavored to place it before you. She did not know distinctly 
what she wanted or what she sought ; still she applied herself 
to the search as if she knew. The fourteenth century closed. 
x6a 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 163 
Europe entered naturally, and, as it were, instinctively, the 
path which led to centralization. It is the characteristic of the 
fifteenth century to have constantly tended to this result; to 
have labored to create universal interests and ideas, to make 
the spirit of specialty and locality disappear, to reunite and 
elevate existences and minds ; in fine, to create what had hitherto 
never existed on a large scale, nations and governments. The 
outbreak of this fact belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries; it was in the fifteenth that it was preparing. It is 
this preparation which we have to investigate at present — this 
siJent and concealed work of centralization, whether in social 
relations or ideas, a work accomplished by the natural course 
of events, without premeditation or design. 
Thus man advances in the execution of a plan which he has 
not himself conceived, or which, perhaps, he does not even un- 
derstand. He is the intelligent and free artificer of a work 
which does not belong to him. He does not recognize or com- 
prehend it until at a later period, when it manifests itself out- 
wardly and in realities; and even then he understands it but 
very incompletely. Yet it is by him, it is by the development 
of his intellect and his liberty that it is accomplished. Con- 
ceive a great machine, of which the idea resides in a single 
mind, and of which the different pieces are confided to different 
workmen, who are scattered, and are strangers to one another ; 
none of them knowing the work as a whole, or the definitive 
and general result to which it concurs, yet each executing with 
intelligence and liberty, by rational and voluntary acts, that of 
which he has the charge. So is the plan of Providence upon 
the world executed by the hand of mankind ; thus do the two 
facts which manifest themselves in the history of civilization 
co-exist ; on the one hand, its fatality, that which escapes science 
and the human will — and on the other, the part played therein 
by the liberty and intellect of man, that which he infuses of his 
own will by his own thought and inclination. 
In order properly to comprehend the fifteenth century — to 
obtain a clear and exact idea of this prelude, as it were, of 
modern society — we will distinguish the different classes of 
facts. We will first examine the political facts, the changes 
which have tended to form both nations and governments. 
Thence we will pass to moral facts; we will observe the 
changes which have been produced in ideas and manners, and 
we will thence deduce what general opinions were in prepara- 
tion. As regards political facts, in order to proceed simply 
and quickly, I will run over all the great countries of Europe, 
and show you what the fifteenth century made of them — in 
what state it found and lift them. 
I shall commence with France. The last half of the four- 
i64 GUIZOT 
teenth century and the first half of the fifteenth were, as you 
know, the times of great national wars — the wars against the 
English. It was the epoch of the struggle for the independence 
of France and the French name against a foreign dominion. 
A glance at history will show with what ardor, despite a mul- 
titude of dissensions and treasons, all classes of society in 
France concurred in the struggle ; what patriotism took pos- 
session of the feudal nobility, the burghers and even peasants. 
If there were nothing else to show the popular character of the 
event than the history of Joan of Arc, it would be more than 
sufficient proof. Joan of Arc sprung from the people. It was 
by the sentiments, creed and passions of the people that she 
was inspired and sustained. She was looked upon with dis- 
trust, scorn and even enmity by the people of the court and the 
chiefs of the army ; but she had the soldiers and the people ever 
on her side. It was the peasants of Lorraine who sent her to the 
succor of the burghers of Orleans. No event has more strik- 
ingly shown the popular character of this war, and the feeling 
with which the whole country regarded it. 
Thus began the formation of French nationality. Up to the 
reign of the Valois it was the feudal character which dominated 
in France; the French nation, the French mind, French pa- 
triotism, did not as yet exist. With the Valois commenced 
France, properly so called. It was in the course of their wars, 
through the phases of their destiny, that the nobility, the 
burghers and the peasants, were for the first time united by a 
moral tie, by the tie of a common name, a common honor and a 
common desire to conquer the enemy. But expect not to find 
there as yet any true political spirit, not any great purpose of 
unity in the government and institutions, such as we conceive 
them at the present day. Unity in the France of this epoch 
resided in its name, its national honor, and in the existence of a 
national royalty, whatever it might be, provided the foreigner 
did not appear therein. It is in this way that the struggle 
against the English powerfully contributed to the formation of 
the French nation, to impel it toward unity. At the same time 
that France was thus morally forming herself, and the national 
spirit was being developed, she was also forming herself ma- 
terially, so to speak — that is to say, her territory was being 
regulated, extended, strengthened. This was the period of the 
incorporation of the greater part of the provinces which have 
become France. Under Charles VII, after the expulsion of 
the English, almost all the provinces which they had occupied, 
Normandy, Angoumois, Touraine, Poitou, Saintonge, etc., 
became definitively French. Under Louis XI, ten provinces, 
three of which were afterward lost and regained, were united 
to France; namely, Roussillon and Cerdagne, Burgundy, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 165 
Franche-Comte, Picardy, Artois, Provence, Maine, Anjou and 
Perche. Under Charles VIII and Louis XII, the successive 
marriages of Anne with these two kings brought us Brittany. 
Thus, at the same epoch, and during the course of the same 
events, the national territory and mind were forming together ; 
moral and material France conjointly acquired strength and 
unity. 
Let us pass from the nation to the government ; we shall see 
the accomplishment of similar facts, shall move toward the same 
result. Never had the French government been more devoid of 
unity, connection and strength than under the reign of Charles 
VI and during the first part of that of Charles VII. At the end 
of this later reign the aspect of all things changed. There was 
evidently a strengthening, extending and organizing of power ; 
all the great means of government — taxes, military force, law — 
were created upon a great scale and with some uniformity. 
This was the time of the formation of standing armies — free 
companies, cavalry — and free archers, infantry. By these com- 
panies Charles VII re-established some order in those provinces 
which had been desolated by the disorders and exactions of 
the soldiery, even after war had ceased. All contemporary his- 
torians speak with astonishment of the marvellous effects of 
the free companies. It was at the same epoch that the poll-tax, 
one of the principal revenues of the kingdom, became perpet- 
ual ; a serious blow to the liberty of the people, but which pow- 
erfully contributed to the regularity and strength of the govern- 
ment. At this time, too, the great instrument of power, the 
administration of justice, was extended and organized; par- 
liaments multiplied. There were five new parliaments con- 
stituted within a very short period of time: under Louis XI, 
the parliament of Grenoble (in 145 1), of Bordeaux (in 1462), 
and of Dijon (in 1477) ; under Louis XII, the parHaments of 
Rouen (in 1499), and of Aix (in 1501). The parHament of 
Paris, also, at this time greatly increased in importance and 
firmness, both as regards the administration of justice and as 
charged with the policy of its jurisdiction. 
Thus, as regards military force, taxation and justice, that is, 
in what constitutes its very essence, government in France in 
the fifteenth century acquired a character of permanence and 
regularity hitherto unknown; public power definitively took 
the place of the feudal powers. 
At the same time another and far different change was 
brought about ; a change which was less visible and which has 
less impressed itself upon historians, but which was perhaps 
of still more importance — namely, the change which Louis XI 
effected in the manner of governing. 
Much has been said concerning the struggle of Louis XI 
l66 GUIZOT 
against the high nobles of the kingdom, of their abasement, 
and of his favor toward the burghers and the lower classes. 
There is truth in this, although much of it is exaggerated ; it is 
also true that the conduct of Louis XI toward the different 
classes oftener troubled than served the state. But he did 
something much more important. Up to this time the govern- 
ment had proceeded almost entirely by force and by material 
means. Persuasion, address, the managing men's minds and 
leading them to particular views, in a word, policy — policy 
doubtless of falsehood and imposition, but also of management 
and prudence, had hitherto been but little attended to. Louis 
XI substituted in the government intellectual in place of ma- 
terial means, artifice instead of force, the Italian policy in place 
of the feudal. Look at the two men whose rivalry occupies 
this epoch of our history, Charles le Temeraire and Louis XL 
Charles was the representative of the ancient form of govern- 
ing; he proceeded by violence alone, he appealed incessantly to 
war, he was incapable of exercising patience, or of addressing 
himself to the minds of men in order to make them instruments 
to his success. It was on the contrary the pleasure of Louis XI 
to avoid the use of force and take possession of men individually 
by conversation and the skilful handling of interests and minds. 
He changed neither the institutions nor the external system, 
but only the secret proceedings, the tactics of power. It was 
left for modern times to attempt a still greater revolution, by 
laboring to introduce, alike into political means as into politi- 
cal ends, justice instead of selfishness, and publicity instead of 
lying fraud. It is not less true, however, that there was great 
indication of progress in renouncing the continual employment 
of force, in invoking chiefly intellectual superiority, in govern- 
ing through mind, and not by the ruin of existences. It was 
this that Louis XI commenced, by force of his high intellect 
alone, amid all his crimes and faults, despite his bad nature. 
From France I pass to Spain ; there I find events of the same 
nature ; it was thus that the national unity of Spain was formed 
in the fifteenth century ; at that time, by the conquest of the 
kingdom of Grenada, the lengthened struggle between the 
Christians and the Arabs was put an end to. Then, also, the 
country was centralized ; by the marriage of Ferdinand the 
Catholic and Isabella, the two principal kingdoms of Castile 
and Aragon were united under one power. As in France, royalty 
was here extended and strengthened ; sterner institutions, 
and which bore a more mournful name, served as its fulcrum ; 
instead of parliament, the inquisition arose. It contained in 
germ what it was to be, but it was not then the same as in its 
maturer age. It was at first rather political than religious, and 
intended rather to maintain order than to defend the faith. The 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 167 
analogy extends beyond institutions, it is found even in the 
persons. With less artifice, mental movement and restless and 
busy activity, the character and government of Ferdinand the 
Catholic resembles that of Louis XL I hold as unimportant 
all arbitrary comparisons and fanciful parallels; but here the 
analogy is profound and visible alike in general facts and in 
details. 
We find the same in Germany. It was in the middle of the 
fifteenth century, in 1438, that the house of Austria returned to 
the empire, and with it the imperial power acquired a perma- 
nence which it had never possessed before ; election afterward 
did little more than consecrate the hereditary successor. At the 
end of the fifteenth century Maximilian I definitively founded the 
preponderance of his house and the regular exercise of central 
authority; Charles VII first created in France a standing army 
for the maintenance of order ; Maximilian was also the first, in 
his hereditary states, to attain the same end by the same means. 
Louis XI established the post-office in France ; and MaximiHan 
introduced it into Germany. Everywhere the same progressions 
of civilization were similarly cultivated for the good of central 
power. 
The history of England in the fifteenth century consists of 
two great events ; without, the struggle against the French, and 
within, that of the two roses, the foreign and the civil war. 
These two so dissimilar wars led to the same result. The strug- 
gle against the French was sustained by the English people 
with an ardor which profited only royalty. This nation, already 
more skilful and firm than any other in keeping back its forces 
and supplies, at this epoch abandoned them to its kings without 
foresight or limit. It was under the reign of Henry V that a 
considerable tax, the customs, was granted to the king from the 
commencement of his reign until his death. When the foreign 
war was ended, or almost so, the civil war, which had been as- 
sociated with it, continued alone; the houses of York at first 
and Lancaster disputed for the throne. When they came to the 
end of their bloody contests, the high English aristocracy found 
itself ruined, decimated and incapable of preserving the power 
which it had hitherto exercised. The coalition of the great 
barons could no longer influence the throne. The Tudors as- 
cended it, and with Henry VH, in 1485, commenced the epoch 
of poHtical centralization and the triumph of royalty. ' 
Royalty was not established in Italy, at least not under that 
name ; but this matters little as regards the result. It was in 
the fifteenth century that the republics fell; even where the 
name remained, the power was concentred in the hands of one 
or more families ; republican life was extinct. In the north of 
Italy, almost all the Lombard republics were absorbed in the 
1 68 GUIZOT 
duchy of Milan. In 1434 Florence fell under the domination 
of Medicis ; in 1464 Genoa became subject to the Milanese. The 
greater portion of the republics, great and small, gave place to 
sovereign houses. The pretensions of foreign sovereigns were 
soon put forth upon the north and south of Italy, upon the 
Milanese on one side, and the kingdom of Naples on the other. 
Upon v^hatever country of Europe we turn our eyes, and 
whatever portion of its history we may consider, whether it has 
reference to the nations themselves, or to their governments, to 
the institutions of the countries, we shall everywhere see the 
ancient elements and forms of society on the point of disappear- 
ing. The traditional liberties perish and new and more con- 
centrated and regular powers arise. There is something pro- 
foundly sad in the fall of the old European liberties; at the 
time it inspired the bitterest feelings. In France, Germany, 
and above all, Italy, the patriots of the fifteenth century con- 
tested with ardor, and deplored with despair, this revolution, 
which, on all sides, was bringing about what might justly be 
called despotism. one cannot help admiring their courage 
and commiserating their sorrow ; but at the same time it must 
be understood that this revolution was not only inevitable, but 
beneficial also. The primitive system of Europe, the old feudal 
and communal liberties, had failed in the organization of so- 
ciety. What constitutes social life is security and progress. 
Any system which does not procure present order and future 
progress, is vicious, and soon abandoned. Such was the fate of 
the ancient political forms, the old European liberties, in the 
fifteenth century. They could give to society neither se- 
curity nor progress. These were sought elsewhere from other 
principles and other means. This is the meaning of all the facts 
which I have just placed before you. 
From the same epoch dates another fact which has held an 
important place in the political history of Europe. It was in the 
fifteenth century that the relations of governments between 
themselves began to be frequent, regular, permanent. It was 
then for the first time that those great alliances were formed, 
whether for peace or war, which at a later period produced the 
system of equilibrium. Diplomacy in Europe dates from the 
fifteenth century. Toward the end of this century you see the 
principal powers of Continental Europe, the popes, the dukes 
of Milan, the Venetians, the emperors of Germany and the 
kings of Spain and of France, form connections, negotiate, 
unite, balance each other. Thus, at the time that Charles VII 
formed his expedition to conquer the kingdom of Naples, a 
great league was formed against him, between Spain, the pope, 
and the Venetians. The league of Cambrai was formed some 
years later (in 1508), against the Venetians. The holy league, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 169 
directed against Louis XII, succeeded in 151 1 to the league of 
Cambrai. All these alliances arose from Italian policy, from 
the desire of various sovereigns to possess Italy, and from the 
fear that some one of them, by seizing it exclusively, should ac- 
quire an overpowering preponderance. This new order of facts 
was highly favorable to the development of royalty. on the 
one hand, from the nature of the external relations of states, 
they can only be conducted by a single person or a small num- 
ber of persons, and exact a certain secrecy; on the other, the 
people had so little foresight, that the consequences of an al- 
liance of this kind escaped them ; it was not for them of any in- 
ternal or direct interest ; they cared little about it, and left such 
events to the discretion of the central power. Thus diplomacy 
at its birth fell into the hands of the kings, and the idea that it 
belonged exclusively to them, that the country, although free, 
and having the right of voting its taxes and interfering in its 
afifairs> was not called upon to mix itself in external matters — 
this idea, I say, was established in almost all European minds 
as an accepted principle, a maxim of common law. Open Eng- 
lish history at the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, you will 
see what power this idea exercised, and what obstacle it opposed 
to EngHsh liberties under the reigns of EHzabeth, James I and 
Charles I. It was always under the name of this principle that 
peace and war, commercial relations, and all external affairs, 
appertained to the royal prerogative ; and it was by this that ab- 
solute power defended itself against the rights of the country. 
Nations have been excessively timid in contesting this part of 
prerogative; and this timidity has cost them the more dear, 
since, from the epoch upon which we are now entering, that is 
to say, the sixteenth century, the history of Europe is essen- 
tially diplomatic. External relations, during nearly three cen- 
turies, are the important fact of history. Within nations be- 
came regulated, the internal government, upon the continent 
at least, led to no more violent agitations, nor absorbed public 
activity. It is external relations, wars, negotiations and al- 
liances, which attract attention, and fill the pages of history, so 
that the greater portion of the destiny of nations has been aban- 
doned to the royal prerogative and to central power. 
Indeed, it was hardly possible it should be otherwise. A very 
great progress in civilization, and a great development of intel- 
lect and political skill are necessary, before the public can inter- 
fere with any success in affairs of this kind. From the 
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the people were very far 
from being thus quahfied. See what took place under James I 
in England at the commencement of the seventeenth century : 
his son-in-law, the elector-palatine, elected king of Bohemia, 
lost his crown ; he was even robbed of his hereditary states, the 
I70 GUIZOT 
palatinate. The whole of Protestantism was interested in his 
cause, and for that reason England testified a lively interest to- 
ward him. There was a powerful ebullition of public opinion to 
force King James to take the part of his son-in-law, and regain 
for him the palatinate. Parliament furiously demanded war, 
promising all the means for carrying it on. James was unwill- 
ing ; he eluded the matter, made some attempts at negotiation, 
sent some troops to Germany, and then came to tell Parliament 
that £900,000 sterling were necessary to maintain the contest 
with any chance of success. It is not said, nor indeed does it 
appear to have been the case, that his calculation was exagger- 
ated. But the Parliament recoiled with surprise and terror at 
the prospect of such a charge, and it unwilHngly voted £70,000 
sterling to re-establish a prince, and reconquer a country three 
hundred leagues from England. Such was the political igno- 
rance and incapacity of the public in matters of this kind ; it 
acted without knowledge of facts, and without troubling itself 
with any responsibility. It was not then in a condition to inter- 
fere in a regular or efficacious manner. This is the principal 
cause of the external relations falling into the hands of the cen- 
tral power ; that alone was in a condition to direct them, I do not 
say for the public interest, for it was far from being always con- 
sulted, but with any continuity or good sense. 
You see, under whatever point of view the political history of 
Europe at this epoch is presented to us, whether we turn our 
eyes upon the internal state of nations, or upon the relations of 
nations with each other, whether we consider the administration 
of war, justice, or taxation, we everywhere find the same char- 
acter ; everywhere we see the same tendency to the centraliza- 
tion, unity, formation and preponderance of general interests 
and public powers. This was the secret work of the fifteenth 
century, a work which did not as yet lead to any very prominent 
result, nor any revolution, properly so called, in society, but 
which prepared the way for all of them. I shall immediately 
place before you facts of another nature, moral facts, facts which 
relate to the development of the human mind and universal 
ideas. There also we shall acknowledge the same phenomenon, 
and arrive at the same result. 
I shall commence with a class of facts which has often occu- 
pied us, and which, under the most various forms, has always 
held an important place in the history of Europe, namely, facts 
relative to the church. Down to the fifteenth century we have 
seen in Europe no universal and powerful ideas acting truly upon 
the masses, except those of a religious nature. We have seen the 
church alone invested with the power of regulating, promulgat- 
ing and prescribing them. Often, it is true, attempts at inde- 
pendence, even separation, were formed, and the church had 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 171 
much to do to overcome them. But hitherto she had conquered 
them; creeds repudiated by the church had taken no general 
and permanent possession of the minds of the people ; the Albi- 
genses themselves were crushed. Dissension and contest were 
of incessant occurrence in the heart of the church, but without 
any decisive or eminent result. At the beginning of the fifteenth 
century an entirely dififerent fact announced itself ; new ideas, a 
public and avowed want of change and reform, agitated the 
church herself. The end of the fourteenth and commencement 
of the fifteenth century were marked by the great schism of the 
west, the result of the translation of the holy see to Avignon, 
and of the creation of two popes, one at Avignon, the other at 
Rome. The struggle between these two papacies is what is 
called the great schism of the west. It commenced in 1378. 
In 1409, the council of Pisa wishing to end it, deposed both 
popes, and nominated a third, Alexander V. So far from being 
appeased, the schism became warmer ; there were three popes 
instead of two. The disorder and abuses continued to increase. 
In 1414 the council of Constance assembled at the summons of 
the Emperor Sigismond. It proposed to itself a work very dif- 
ferent from nominating a new pope ; it undertook the reform of 
the church. It first proclaimed the indissolubility of the gen- 
eral council, and its superiority over the papal power ; it under- 
took to make these principles prevalent in the church, and to 
reform the abuses which had crept into it, above all the exac- 
tions by which the court of Rome had procured supplies. For 
the attainment of this end, the council nominated what we will 
call a commission of inquiry, that is to say, a college of reform, 
composed of deputies of the council taken from different na- 
tions ; it was the duty of this college to seek what were the 
abuses which disgraced the church, and how they might best be 
remedied, and to make a report to the council, which would con- 
sult upon the means of execution. But while the council was 
occupied in this work, the question was mooted as to whether 
they could proceed in the reformation of abuses, without the 
visible participation of the chief of the church, without the 
sanction of the pope. The negative was passed by the influence 
of the Romanist party, supported by honest, but timid men; 
the council elected a new pope, Martin V, in 1417. The pope 
was desired to present on his part a plan of reform in the 
church. This plan was not approved, and the council sepa- 
rated. In 143 1 a new council assembled at Basle with the same 
view. It resumed and continued the work of reform of the 
council of Constance, and met with no better success. Schism 
broke out in the interior of the assembly, the same as in Chris- 
tianity. The pope transferred the council of Basle to Ferrara, 
and afterward to Florence. Part of the prelates refused to obey 
172 GUIZOT 
the pope, and remained at Basle ; and as formerly there had been 
two popes, so there were now two councils. That of Basle con- 
tinued its projects of reform, and nominated its pope, Felix V. 
After a certain time it transported itself to Lausanne; and in 
1449 dissolved itself, without having effected anything. 
Thus papacy carried the day, and remained in possession of 
the field of battle and the government of the church. The 
council could not accomplish what it had undertaken ; but it 
effected things which it had not undertaken, and which sur- 
vived it. At the time that the council of Basle failed in its at- 
tempts at reform, sovereigns seized upon the ideas which it pro- 
claimed, and the institution which it suggested. In France, 
upon the foundation of the decrees of the council of Basle, 
Charles V formed the Pragmatic Sanction, which he issued at 
Bourges in 1438; it enunciated the election of bishops, the sup- 
pression of first fruits, and the reform of the principal abuses 
which had been introduced into the church. The Pragmatic 
Sanction was declared in France the law of the state. In Ger- 
many, the diet of Mayence adopted it in 1439, ^^^ likewise made 
it a law of the German Empire. What the spiritual power had 
unsuccessfully attempted, the temporal power seemed destined 
to accomplish. 
New reverses sprung up for the projects of reform. As the 
council had failed, so did the Pragmatic Sanction. In Ger- 
many it perished very abruptly. The diet abandoned it in 1448, 
in consequence of a negotiation with Nicholas V. In 15 16, 
Francis I likewise abandoned it, and in its place substituted 
his Concordat with Leo X. The princes' reform did not suc- 
ceed any better than that of the clergy. But it must not be sup- 
posed that it entirely perished. As the council effected things 
which survived it, so also the Pragmatic Sanction had conse- 
quences which it left behind, and which played an important 
part in modern history. The principles of the council of Basle 
were powerful and fertile. Superior men, and men of ener- 
getic character, have adopted and supported them. John of 
Paris, D'Ailly, Gerson, and many distinguished men of the 
fifteenth century, devoted themselves to their defense. In vain 
was the council dissolved ; in vain was the Pragmatic Sanction 
abandoned ; its general doctrines upon the government of the 
church, and upon the reforms necessary to be carried out, had 
taken root in France ; they were perpetuated ; they passed into 
the parliaments; and became a powerful opinion. They gave 
rise first to the Jansenists and afterward to the Gallicans. All 
this series of maxims and efforts tending to reform the church, 
which commenced with the council of Constance and terminated 
with the four propositions of Bossuet, emanated from the same 
source and were directed toward the same end ; it was the same 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 173 
fact successively transformed. It was in vain that the attempt 
at legal reform in the fifteenth century failed ; not the less has 
it taken its place in the course of civilization — not the less has 
it indirectly exercised an enormous influence. 
The councils were right in pursuing a legal reform, for that 
alone could prevent a revolution. Almost at the moment when 
the council of Pisa undertook to bring the great schism of the 
west to a termination, and the council of Constance to reform 
the church, the first essays at popular religious reform violently 
burst forth in Bohemia. The predictions and progress of John 
Huss date from 1404, at which period he began to teach at 
Prague. Here, then, are two reforms marching side by side ; 
the one in the very heart of the church, attempted by the eccle- 
siastical aristocracy itself — a wise, but embarrassed and timid 
reform ; the other, outside and against the church, violent and 
passionate. A contest arose between these two powers and 
designs. The council summoned John Huss and Jerome of 
Prague to Constance, and condemned them as heretics and 
revolutionists. These events are perfectly intelligible to us at 
the present day. We can very well understand this simulta- 
neousness of separate reforms — enterprises undertaken, one by 
the governments, the other by the people, opposed to one 
another, and yet emanating from the same cause and tending to 
the same end, and, in fine, although at war with each other, still 
concurring to the same result. This is what occurred in the 
fifteenth century. 
The popular reform of John Huss was for the instant stifled ; 
the war of the Hussites broke forth three or four years after 
the death of their master. It lasted long, and was violent, but 
the empire finally triumphed. But as the reform of the councils 
had failed, as the end which they pursued had not been attained, 
the popular reform ceased not to ferment. It watched the first 
opportunity, and found it at the commencement of the sixteenth 
century. If the reform undertaken by the councils had been 
well carried out, the reformation might have been prevented. 
But one or the other must have succeeded; their coincidence 
shows a necessity. 
This, then, is the state in which Europe was left by the 
fifteenth century with regard to religious matters — an aristo- 
cratical reform unsuccessfully attempted, and a popular reform 
commenced, stifled, and always ready to reappear. But it was 
not to the sphere of religious creeds that the fermentation of the 
human mind at this epoch was confined. It was in the course 
of the fourteenth century, as you all know, that Greek and 
Roman antiquity were, so to speak, restored in Europe. You 
know with what eagerness Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and all 
their contemporaries sought for the Greek and Latin manu- 
174 GUIZOT 
scripts, and published and promulgated them, and what noise 
and transports the least discovery of this kind excited. 
In the midst of this excitement, a school was commenced in 
Europe which has played a very much more important part in 
the development of the human mind than has generally been at- 
tributed to it : this was the classical school. Let me warn you 
from attaching the same sense to this word which we give to it 
in the present day ; it was then a very different thing from a lit- 
erary system or contest. The classical school of that period 
was inflamed with admiration, not only for the writings of the 
ancients, for Virgil and Homer, but for the whole of ancient 
society, for its institutions, opinions and philosophy, as well as 
for its literature. It must be confessed that antiquity, under 
the heads of politics, philosophy and literature, was far superior 
to the Europe of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It can- 
not, therefore, be wondered at that it should exercise so great a 
sway, or that for the most part, elevated, active, refined and 
fastidious minds should take a disgust at the coarse manners, 
confused ideas, and barbarous forms of their own times, and 
that they should devote themselves with enthusiasm to the 
study, and almost to the worship of a society at once more reg- 
ular and developed. Thus was formed that school of free- 
thinkers which appeared at the commencement of the fifteenth 
century, and in which prelates, jurisconsults and scholars met 
together. 
Amid this excitement happened the taking of Constantinople 
by the Turks, the fall of the Eastern Empire, and the flight into 
Italy of the Greek fugitives. They brought with them a higher 
knowledge of antiquity, numerous manuscripts, and a thou- 
sand new means of studying ancient civilization. The re- 
doubled admiration and ardor with which the classical school 
was animated may easily be imagined. This was the time of 
the most brilliant development of the high clergy, particularly 
in Italy, not as regards political power, properly speaking, but 
in point of luxury and wealth ; they abandoned themselves with 
pride to all the pleasures of a voluptuous, indolent, elegant and 
licentious civilization — to the taste for letters and arts, and for 
social and material enjoyments. Look at the kind of life led by 
the men who played a great political and literary part at this 
epoch — by Cardinal Bembo, for instance ; you will be surprised 
at the mixture of sybaritism and intellectual development, of 
effeminate manners and hardihood of mind. one would think, 
indeed, when we glance over this epoch, when we are present 
at the spectacle of its ideas and the state of its moral relations, 
one would think we were living in France in the midst of the 
eighteenth century. There is the same taste for intellectual ex- 
citement, for new ideas, for an easy, agreeable life ; the same 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 175 
effeminateness and licentiousness ; the same deficiency in politi- 
cal energy and moral faith, with a singular sincerity and activity 
of mind. The literati of the fifteenth century were, with regard 
to the prelates of the high church, in the same relation as men of 
letters and philosophers of the eighteenth century with the high 
aristocracy ; they all had the same opinions and the same man- 
ners, lived harmoniously together and did not trouble them- 
selves about the commotions that were in preparation around 
them. The prelates of the fifteenth century, commencing with 
Cardinal Bembo, most certainly no more foresaw Luther and 
Calvin than the people of the court foresaw the French revo- 
lution. The position, however, was analogous. 
Three great facts, then, present themselves at this epoch in 
the moral order : first, an ecclesiastical reform attempted by the 
church herself ; secondly, a popular reHgious reform ; and finally 
an intellectual reform, which gave rise to a school of free-think- 
ers. And all these metamorphoses were in preparation amid 
the greatest political change which had taken place in Europe, 
amid the work of centralization of people and governments. 
This was not all. This also was the time of the greatest ex- 
ternal activity of mankind ; it was a period of voyages, enter- 
prises, discoveries and inventions of all kinds. This was the 
time of the great expeditions of the Portuguese along the coast 
of Africa, of the discovery of the passage of the Cape of Good 
Hope by Vasco de Gama, of the discovery of America by Chris- 
topher Columbus, and of the wonderful extension of European 
commerce. A thousand new inventions came forth ; others al- 
ready known, but only within a narrow sphere, became popular 
and of common use. Gunpowder changed the system of war, 
the compass changed the system of navigation. The art of oil- 
painting developed itself and covered Europe with masterpieces 
of art: engraving on copper, invented in 1460, multiplied and 
promulgated them. Linen paper became common ; and lastly, 
from 1436 to 1452, printing was invented ; printing, the theme 
of so much declamation and so many commonplaces, but the 
merit and effects of which no commonplace nor any declama- 
tion can ever exhaust. 
You see what was the greatness and activity of this century — 
a greatness still only partially apparent, an activity, the results 
of which have not yet been fully developed. Violent reforms 
seem unsuccessful, governments strengthened and nations paci- 
fied. It might be thought that society was preparing to enjoy 
a better order of things, amid a more rapid progress. But the 
powerful revolutions of the sixteenth century were impending : 
the fifteenth had been preparing them. They will be the sub- 
ject of my next lecture. 
TWELFTH LECTURE. 
WE have often deplored the disorder and chaos of Euro- 
pean society ; we have complained of the difficulty of 
understanding and describing a society thus scat- 
tered, incoherent and broken up; we have longed for, and 
patiently invoked, the epoch of general interests, order and so- 
cial unity. We have now arrived at it ; we are entering upon 
the epoch when all is general facts and general ideas, the epoch 
of order and unity. We shall here encounter a difficulty of 
another kind. Hitherto we have had much trouble in connect- 
ing facts with one another, in making them co-ordinate, in per- 
ceiving whatever they may possess in common, and distinguish- 
ing some completeness. Everything reverses itself in modem 
Europe; all the elements and incidents of social life modify 
themselves and act and react on one another; the relations of 
men among themselves become much more numerous and com- 
plicated. It is the same in their relations with the government 
of the state, the same in the relations of the states among them- 
selves, the same in ideas and in the works of the human mind. 
In the times which we have gone through a large number of 
facts passed away, isolated, foreign to one another, and without 
reciprocal influence. We shall now no longer find this isola- 
tion ; all things touch, commingle and modify as they meet. Is 
there anything more difficult than to seize the true unity amid 
such diversity, to determine the direction of a movement so ex- 
tended and complex, to recapitulate this prodigious number of 
various elements so clearly connected with one another ; in fine, 
to ascertain the general dominant fact, which sums up a long 
series of facts, which characterizes an epoch, and is the faithful 
ｅxpression of its influence and its share in the history of civili- 
zation? You will measure with a glance this difficulty in the 
great event which now occupies our attention. We encoun- 
tered, in the twelfth century, an event which was religious in its 
origin if not in its nature ; I mean the crusades. Despite the 
greatness of this event, despite its long duration and the va- 
riety of incidents to which it led, we found it difficult enough to 
distinguish its general character, and to determine with any 
precision its unity and its influence. We have now to consider 
the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, usually called 
176 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 177 
the Reformation. Permit me to say, in passing, that I shall use 
the word reformation as a simple and understood term, as 
synonymous with religious revolution, and without implying any 
judgment of it. You see at the very commencement how diffi- 
cult it is to recognize the true character of this great crisis, to say 
in a general manner what it was and what it effected. 
It is between the commencement of the sixteenth and the 
middle of the seventeenth century that we must look for the 
reformation ; for that period comprises, so to speak, the life of 
the event, its origin and end. All historical events, have, so to 
speak, a limited career; their consequences are prolonged to 
infinity ; they have a hold upon all the past and all the future ; but 
it is not the less true that they have a particular and limited exist- 
ence, that they are born, that they increase, that they fill with 
their development a certain duration of time, and then decrease 
and retire from the scene in order to make room for some new 
event. 
The precise date assigned to the origin of the reformation is 
of little importance; we may take the year 1520, when Luther 
pubHcly burnt, at Wittemberg, the bull of Leo X, which con- 
demned him, and thus formally separated himself from the 
Roman church. It was between this epoch and the middle of 
the seventeenth century, the year 1648, the date of the treaty of 
Westphalia, that the life of the reformation was comprised. 
Here is the proof of it. The first and greatest effect of the re- 
ligious revolution was to create in Europe two classes of states 
— the Catholic states and the Protestant states, to place them op- 
posite each other, and open the contest between them. With 
many vicissitudes, this struggle lasted from the commencement 
of the sixteenth century down to the middle of the seventeenth. 
It was by the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, that the Catholic 
and Protestant states at last acknowledged one another ; agreed 
to, then, a mutual existence, and promised to live in society and 
peace, independently of the diversity of religion. Dating from 
1648, diversity in religion ceased to be the dominant principle 
of the classification of states, of their external policy, their re- 
lations, and alliances. Up to this epoch, in spite of great varia- 
tions, Europe was essentially divided into a Catholic and a 
Protestant league. After the treaty of Westphalia, this dis- 
tinction vanished ; states were either allied or divided upon other 
considerations than religious creeds. At that point, then, the 
preponderance, that is to say, the career, of the reformation 
stopped, although its consequences did not then cease to de- 
velop themselves. Let us now glance hastily over this career ; 
and without doing more than naming the events and men, let 
us indicate what it contains. You will see by this mere indica- 
tion, by this dry and incomplete nomenclature, what must be 
12 
178 GUIZOT 
the difficulty of recapitulating a series of facts so varied and so 
complex — of recapitulating them, I say, in one general fact ; of 
determining what was the true character of the religious revolu- 
tion of the sixteenth century, and of assigning its part in the his- 
tory of our civilization. At the moment when the reformation 
broke forth, it fell, so to speak, into the midst of a great political 
event, the struggle between Francis I and Charles V, between 
France and Spain; a contest, first for the possession of Italy, 
afterward for that of the empire of Germany, and, lastly, for the 
preponderance in Europe. It was then the house of Austria 
elevated itself, and became dominant in Europe. It was then, 
also, that England, under Henry VIII, interfered in continental 
politics with more regularity, permanence, and to a greater ex- 
tent that she had hitherto done. 
Let us follow the course of the sixteenth century in France. 
It was filled by the great religious wars of the Protestants and 
Catholics, the means and the occasion of a new attempt of the 
great lords to regain the power they had lost. This is the politi- 
cal purport of our religious wars, of the League, of the struggle 
of the Guises against the Valois, a struggle which ended by the 
accession of Henry IV. 
In Spain, during the reign of Philip II, the revolution of the 
United Provinces broke out. The inquisition and civil and re- 
ligious liberty waged war under the names of the Duke of Alva 
and the Prince of Orange. While liberty triumphed in Holland 
by force of perseverance and good sense, she perished in the in- 
terior of Spain, where absolute power prevailed, both lay and 
ecclesiastical. 
In England, during this period, Mary and Elizabeth reigned ; 
there was the contest of Elizabeth, the head of Protestantism, 
against Philip II. This period is also marked by the accession 
of James Stuart to the throne of England, and by the com- 
mencement of the great quarrels between royalty and the Eng- 
lish people. 
About the same time new powers were created in the north. 
Sweden was reinstated by Gustavus Vasa in 1523. Prussia 
was created by the secularizing of the Teutonic Order. The 
powers of the north then took in European politics a place 
which they had never hitherto occupied, the importance of 
which was soon to be shown in the Thirty Years' War. 
I return to France. The reign of Louis XIII ; Cardinal 
Richelieu changed the internal administration of France, en- 
tered into relations with Germany, and lent aid to the Protestant 
party. In Germany, during the last part of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, the contest took place against the Turks ; and at the com- 
mencement of the seventeenth century the Thirty Years' War, 
the greatest event of modern Eastern Europe. At this time 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 179 
flourished Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein, Tilly, the Duke of 
Brunswick and the Duke of Weimar, the greatest names that 
Germany has yet to pronounce. 
At the same epoch, in France, Louis XIV ascended the 
throne; the Fronde commenced. In England, the revolution 
which dethroned Charles I broke out. 
I only take the leading events of history, events whose name 
every one knows; you see their number, variety and impor- 
tance. If we seek events of another nature, events which are 
less apparent, and which are less summed up in names, we shall 
find this epoch equally full. This is the period of the greatest 
changes in the political institutions of almost all nations, the 
time when pure monarchy prevailed in the majority of great 
states, while in Holland the most powerful republic in Europe 
was created, and in England constitutional monarchy tri- 
umphed definitively, or nearly so. In the church, this was the 
period when the ancient monastic orders lost almost all political 
power, and were replaced by a new order of another character, 
and the importance of which, perhaps erroneously, is held as far 
superior to theirs, the Jesuits. At this epoch the council of 
Trent effaced what might still remain of the influence of the 
councils of Constance and Basle, and secured the definitive tri- 
umph of the court of Rome in the ecclesiastical order. Let us 
leave the church and cast an eye upon philosophy, upon the free 
career of the human mind ; two men present themselves, Bacon 
and Descartes, the authors of the greatest philosophical revolu- 
tion which the modern world has undergone, the chiefs of the 
two schools which disputed its empire. This also was the 
period of the brilliancy of Italian literature, and of the com- 
mencement of French and of English literature. And lastly, it 
was the time of the foundation of great colonies and the most 
active developments of the commercial system. Thus, under 
whatever point of view you consider this epoch, its political, 
ecclesiastical, philosophical and literary events are in great num- 
ber, and more varied and important than in any century preced- 
ing it. The activity of the human mind manifested itself in 
every way : in the relations of men between themselves, in their 
relations with power, in the relations of states, and in purely in- 
tellectual labors ; in a word, it was a time for great men and for 
great things. And in the midst of this period, the religious rev- 
olution which occupies our attention is the greatest event of all ; 
it is the dominant fact of this epoch, the fact which gives to it 
its name and determines its character. Among so many power- 
ful causes which have played so important a part, the reforma- 
tion is the most powerful, that in which all the others ended, 
which modified them all, or was by them modified. So that 
what we have to do at present is to truly characterize and ac- 
i8o GUIZOT 
curately sum up the event which in a period of the greatest 
events, dominated over all, the cause which effected more than 
all others in a time of the most influential causes. 
You will easily comprehend the difficulty of reducing facts 
so various, so important, and so closely united to a true his- 
torical unity. It is, however, necessary to do this. When 
events are once consummated, when they have become history, 
what are more important, and what man seeks above all things, 
are general facts, the connection of causes and effects. These, 
so to speak, are the immortal part of history, that to which all 
generations must refer in order to understand the past and to 
understand themselves. The necessity for generalization and 
rational result is the most powerful and the most glorious of all 
intellectual wants ; but we should be careful not to be contented 
with incomplete and precipitate generalizations. Nothing can 
be more tempting than to give way to the pleasure of assigning 
immediately and at the first view, the general character and per- 
manent results of an epoch or event. The human mind is like 
the will, always urgent for action, impatient of obstacles, and 
eager for liberty and conclusions ; it willingly forgets facts 
which impede and cramp it ; but in forgetting, it does not de- 
stroy them ; they subsist to condemn it some day and convict it 
of error. There is but one means for the human mind to escape 
this danger ; that is, courageously and patiently to exhaust the 
study of facts before generalizing and concluding. Facts are 
to the mind what rules of morality are to the will. It is bound 
to know them and to bear their weight ; and it is only when it has 
fulfilled this duty, when it has viewed and measured their whole 
extent, it is then only that it is permitted to unfold its wings and 
take flight to the higher region where it will see all things in 
their totality and their results. If it attempt to mount too 
quickly, and without having gained a knowledge of all the 
territory which it will have to contemplate from thence, the 
chance of error and failure is very great. It is the same as in an 
arithmetical calculation, where one error leads to others, ad 
infinitum. So in history, if in the first labor we do not attend to 
all the facts, if we give ourselves up to the taste for precipitate 
generalization, it is impossible to say to what mistakes we may 
be led. 
I am warning you in a measure against myself. I have only 
made, and, indeed, could only make, attempts at generalization, 
general recapitulations of facts which we have not studied 
closely and at large. But having arrived at an epoch when this 
undertaking is much more difficult than at any other, and when 
the chances of error are much greater, I have thought it a duty 
thus to warn you. That done, I shall now proceed and attempt 
as to the reformation what I have done as to other events; I 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE i8l 
shall endeavor to distinguish its dominant fact, to describe its 
general character, to say, in a word, what is the place and the 
share of this great event in European civiHzation. 
You will call to mind how we left Europe at the end of the 
fifteenth century. We have seen in its course, two great at- 
tempts at religious revolution and reform: an attempt at legal 
reform by the councils, and an attempt at revolutionary reform 
in Bohemia by the Hussites ; we have seen them stifled and fail- 
ing, one after the other ; but still we have seen that it was im- 
possible the event should be prevented, that it must be repro- 
duced under one form or another ; that what the fifteenth century 
had attempted, the sixteenth would inevitably accomplish. I 
shall not recount in any way the details of the religious revolu- 
tion of the sixteenth century : I take it for granted that they are 
almost universally known. I attend only to its general influence 
upon the destinies of the human race. 
When the causes which determined this great event have 
been investigated, the adversaries of the reformation have im- 
puted it to accidents, to misfortunes in the course of civilization ; 
for example, to the sale of indulgences having been confided to 
the Dominicans, which made theAugustines jealous; Luther was 
an Augustine, and, therefore, was the determining cause of the 
reformation. Others have attributed it to the ambition of sov- 
ereigns, to their rivalry with the ecclesiastical power, and to the 
cupidity of the lay nobles, who wished to seize upon the prop- 
erty of the church. They have thus sought to explain the re- 
ligious revolution merely from the ill side of men and human 
affairs, by suggestions of private interests and personal pas- 
sions. 

on the other hand, the partisans and friends of the reforma- 
tion have endeavored to explain it merely by the necessity for 
reform in the existing abuses of the church ; they have repre- 
sented it as a redressing of religious grievances, as an attempt 
conceived and executed with the sole design of reconstituting 
a pure and primitive church. Neither of these explanations 
seems to me sound. The second has more truth in it than the 
first; at least it is more noble, more in unison with the extent 
and importance of the event ; still I do not think it correct. In 
my opinion, the reformation was neither an accident, the result 
of some great chance, of personal interest, nor a mere aim at 
religious amelioration, the fruit of an Utopia of humanity and 
truth. It had a far more powerful cause than all this, and 
which dominates over all particular causes. It was a great 
movement of the liberty of the human mind, a new necessity 
for freely thinking and judging on its own account, and with its 
own powers, of facts and ideas which hitherto Europe had re- 
ceived, or was held bound to receive, from the hands of authority. 
i82 GUIZOT 
It was a grand attempt at the enfranchisement of the human 
mind ; and to call things by their proper names, an insurrection 
of the human mind against absolute power in the spiritual order. 
Such I believe to be the true, general and dominant character of 
the reformation. 
When we consider the state at this epoch, of the human 
mind on the one hand, and on the other that of the church which 
governed the human mind, we are struck by this twofold fact : 
on the part of the human mind there was much more activity, 
and much more thirst for development and empire than it had 
ever felt. This new activity was the result of various causes, 
but which had been accumulating for ages. For example, there 
had been ages when heresies took birth, occupied some space of 
time, fell, and were replaced by others ; and ages when philo- 
sophical opinions had run the same course as the heresies. The 
labor of the human mind, whether in the religious or in the 
philosophical sphere, had accumulated from the eleventh to the 
sixteenth century: and at last the moment had arrived when 
it was necessary that the result should appear. Moreover, all 
the means of instruction created or encouraged in the very 
bosom of the church bore their fruits. Schools had been in- 
stituted : from these schools had issued men with some knowl- 
edge, and their number was daily augmented. These men 
wished at last to think for themselves, and on their own ac- 
count, for they felt stronger than they had ever yet done. 
Finally arrived that renewal and regeneration of the human 
mind by the restoration of antiquity, the progress and effects of 
which I have described to you. 
The union of all these causes at the commencement of the 
sixteenth century, impressed upon the mind a highly energetic 
movement, an imperative necessity for progress. 
The situation of the government of the human mind, the 
spiritual power, was quite different; it, on the contrary, had 
fallen into a state of indolence and immobility. The political 
credit of the church, of the court of Rome, had much dimin- 
ished ; European society no longer belonged to it ; it had passed 
into the dominion of lay governments. Still the spiritual 
power preserved all its pretensions, all its splendor and external 
importance. It happened with it as it has more than once done 
with old governments. The greater part of the complaints 
urged against it were no longer applied. It is not true that the 
court of Rome in the sixteenth century was very tyrannical ; nor 
is it true that its abuses, properly so called, were more numer- 
ous or more crying than they had been in other times. on the 
contrary, perhaps ecclesiastical government had never been 
more easy and tolerant, more disposed to let all things take 
their course, provided they did not put itself in question, pro- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 183 
vided it was so far acknowledged as to be left in the enjoyment 
of the rights which it had hitherto possessed, that it was secured 
the same existence and paid the same tributes. It would will- 
ingly have left the human mind in tranquillity if the human mind 
would have done the same toward it. But it is precisely when 
governments are least held in consideration, when they are the 
least powerful, and do the least evil that they are attacked, be- 
cause then they can be attacked, and formerly they could not be. 
It is evident, then, by the mere examination of the state of the 
human mind, and that of its government at this epoch, that the 
character of the reformation must have been a new impulse of 
liberty, a great insurrection of the human intellect. Do not 
doubt but this was the dominant cause, the cause which rose 
above all the others — a cause superior to all interests, whether 
of nations or sovereigns — superior also to any mere necessity 
for reform, or the necessity for redressing of grievances which 
were then complained of. 
I will suppose that after the first years of the reformation, 
when it had displayed all its pretensions, set forth all its griev- 
ances, the spiritual power had suddenly fallen in with its views, 
and had said, "Well, so be it. I will reform everything ; I will 
return to a more legal and religious order ; I will suppress all 
vexations, arbitrariness and tributes ; even in doctrinal matters, 
I will modify, explain, and return to the primitive meaning. But 
when all grievances are thus redressed, I will preserve my posi- 
tion — I will be as formerly, the government of the human mind, 
with the same power and the same rights." Do you suppose 
that on these conditions the religious revolution would have 
been content, and would have stopped its progress ? I do not 
think it. I firmly believe that it would have continued its 
career, and that after having demanded reformation, it would 
have demanded liberty. The crisis of the sixteenth century 
was not merely a reforming one, it was essentially revolutionary. 
It is impossible to take from it this character, its merits and its 
vices ; it had all the effects of this character. 
Let us cast a glance upon the destinies of the reformation; 
let us see, especially and before all, what it effected in the differ- 
ent countries where it was developed. Observe that it was de- 
veloped in very various situations, and amid very unequal 
chances. If we find that In spite of the diversity of situations, 
and the inequality of chances, it everywhere pursued a 
certain end, obtained a certain result, and preserved a certain 
character, it will be evident that this character, which sur- 
mounted all diversities of situation, and all unequalities of 
chances, must have been the fundamental character of the 
event — that this result must have been its essential aim. 
Well, wherever the religious revolution of the sixteenth cen- 
i84 GUIZOT 
tury prevailed, if it did not effect the entire enfranchisement of 
the human mind, it procured for it new and very great increase 
of Hberty. It doubtless often left the mind to all the chances of 
the liberty or servitude of political institution ; but it abolished 
or disarmed the spiritual power, the systematic and formidable 
government of thought. This is the result which the reforma- 
tion attained amid the most various combinations. In Ger- 
many there was no political liberty; nor did the reformation 
introduce it. It fortified rather than weakened the power of 
princes. It was more against the free institutions of the middle 
ages than favorable to their development. Nevertheless, it re- 
suscitated and maintained in Germany a liberty of thought 
greater, perhaps, than anywhere else. 
In Denmark, a country where absolute power dominated, 
where it penetrated into the municipal institutions as well as 
into the general institutions of the state, there also, by the in- 
fluence of the reformation, thought was enfranchised and freely 
exercised in all directions. 
In Holland, in the midst of a republic, and in England, under 
constitutional monarchy, and despite a religious tyranny of 
long duration, the emancipation of the human mind was like- 
wise accomplished. And, lastly, in France, in a situation which 
seemed the least favorable to the effects of the religious revolu- 
tion, in a country where it had been conquered, there even it 
was a principle of intellectual independence and liberty. Down 
to 1685, that is to say, until the revocation of the edict of Nantes, 
the reformation had a legal existence in France. During this 
lengthened period it wrote and discussed, and provoked its ad- 
versaries to write and discuss with it. This single fact, this 
war of pamphlets and conferences between the old and new 
opinions, spread in France a liberty far more real and active 
than is commonly believed — a liberty which tended to the profit 
of science, the honor of the French clergy, as well as to the 
profit of thought in general. Take a glance at the conferences 
of Bossuet with Claude upon all the religious polemics of that 
period, and ask yourselves whether Louis XIV would have 
allowed a similar degree of liberty upon any other subject. It 
was between the reformation and the opposite party that there 
existed the greatest degree of liberty in France during the seven- 
teenth century. Religious thought was then far more bold, and 
treated questions with more freedom than the political spirit of 
Fenelon himself in "Telemachus." This state of things did not 
cease until the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Now, from 
1685 to the outburst of the human mind in the eighteenth cent- 
ury, there were not forty years ; and the influence of the re- 
ligious revolution in favor of intellectual liberty had scarcely 
ceased when that of the philosophical revolution commenced. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 185 
You see that wherever the reformation penetrated, wherever 
it played an important part, victorious or vanquished, it had 
as a general, dominant and constant result, an immense prog- 
ress in the activity and liberty of thought, and toward the eman- 
cipation of the human mind. 
And not only had the reformation this result, but with this 
it was satisfied ; wherever it obtained that, it sought for nothing 
further, so much was it the foundation of the event, its prim- 
itive and fundamental character. Thus, in Germany it ac- 
cepted, I will not say political servitude, but, at least, the ab- 
sence of liberty. In England it consented to the constitutional 
hierarchy of the clergy and the presence of a church with quite 
as many abuses as there had ever been in the Romish church, 
and far more servile. 
Why should the reformation, so passionate and stubborn in 
some respects, show itself in this so easy and pliant? It was 
because it had obtained the general fact to which it tended, the 
abolition of spiritual power, the enfranchisement of the human 
mind. I repeat, that wherever it attained this end, it accom- 
modated itself to all systems and all situations. 
Let us now take the counter-proof of this inquiry ; let us see 
what happened in countries into which the religious revolution 
had not penetrated, where it had been stifled in the beginning, 
where it had never been developed. History shows that there 
the human mind has not been enfranchised ; two great countries, 
Spain and Italy, will prove this. While in those European 
countries where the reformation had taken an important place, 
the human mind, during the three last centuries, has gained an 
activity and a freedom before unknown ; in those where it has 
not penetrated, it has fallen, during the same period, into ef- 
feminacy and indolence; so that the proof and counter-proof 
have been made, so to speak, simultaneously, and given the 
same result. 
Impulse of thought and the abolition of absolute power in 
the spiritual order, are therefore the essential character of the 
reformation, the most general result of its influence and the 
dominant fact of its destiny. 
I designedly say, the fact. The emancipation of the human 
mind was in reality, in the course of the reformation, a fact 
rather than a principle, a result rather than an intention. In 
this respect I think the reformation executed more than it had 
undertaken; more perhaps than it had even desired. Con- 
trary to most other revolutions, which have remained far be- 
hind their wishes, of which the event is far inferior to the 
thought, the consequences of the revolution surpassed its views ; 
it is greater as an event than as a plan ; what it effected it did 
not fully foresee, nor fully avow. 
1 86 GUIZOT 
What were the reproaches with which its adversaries con- 
stantly upbraid the reformation ? Which of its results did they 
in a manner cast in its teeth to reduce it to silence ? 
Two principal ones. First: The multiplicity of sects, the 
prodigious license allowed to mind, the dissolutions of the re- 
ligious society as a whole. Second : Tyranny and persecution. 
" You provoke Hcense," said they to the reformers ; "you even 
produce it ; and when you have created it, you wish to restrain 
and repress it. And how do you repress it? By the most 
severe and violent means. You yourselves persecute heresy, 
and by virtue of an illegitimate authority." 
Survey and sum up all the great attacks directed against the 
reformation, discarding the purely dogmatical questions ; these 
are the two fundamental reproaches to which they reduce them- 
selves. 
The reformed party was greatly embarrassed by them. When 
they imputed it to the multiplicity of sects, instead of avowing 
them, and maintaining the legitimacy of their development, it 
anathematized them, deplored their existence and denied them. 
Taxed with persecution, it defended itself with the same em- 
barrassment ; it alleged the necessity ; it had, it said, the right 
to repress and punish error, because it was in the possession of 
truth ; its creed and institutions alone were legitimate ; and if 
the Roman church had not the right to punish the reformers, 
it was because she was in the wrong as against them. 
And when the reproach of persecution was addressed to the 
dominant party in the reformation, not by its enemies, but by 
its own offspring, when the sects which it anathematized said 
to it, " We only do what you have done ; we only separate our- 
selves as you separated yourselves," it was still more embar- 
rassed for an answer, and often only replied by redoubled rigor. 
In fact, while laboring for the destruction of absolute power 
in the spiritual order, the revolution of the sixteenth century 
was ignorant of the true principles of intellectual liberty, it en- 
franchised the human mind, and yet pretended to govern it by 
the law ; in practice it was giving prevalence to free inquiry, and 
in theory it was only substituting a legitimate in place of an 
illegitimate power. It did not elevate itself to the first cause, 
nor descend to the last consequences of its work. Thus it fell 
into a double fault; on the one hand, it neither knew nor re- 
spected all the rights of human thought ; at the moment that 
it clamored for them on its own account, it violated them with 
regard to others ; on the other hand, it knew not how to meas^ 
ure the rights of authority in the intellectual order; I do not 
speak of coercive authority, which in such matters should possess 
none, but of purely moral authority, acting upon the mind alone, 
and simply by way of influence. Something is wanting in most 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 187 
of the reformed countries, to the good organization of the intel- 
lectual society, and to the regular action of ancient and general 
opinions. They could not reconcile the rights and wants of 
tradition with those of hberty, and the cause doubtless lay in 
this fact, that the reformation did not fully comprehend and 
receive its own principles and effects. 
Hence, also, it had a certain air of inconsistency and narrow- 
mindedness, which often gave a hold and advantage over it to 
its adversaries. These last knew perfectly well what they did, 
and what they wished to do ; they went back to the principles 
of their conduct, and avowed all the consequences of it. There 
was never a government more consistent and systematic than 
that of the Roman church. In practice the court of Rome has 
greatly yielded and given way, much more so than the refor- 
mation; in theory, it has much more completely adopted its 
peculiar system, and kept to a much more coherent conduct. 
This is a great power, this full knowledge of what one does 
and wishes, this complete and rational adoption of a doctrine 
and a design. The religious revolution of the sixteenth century 
presented in its course a striking example of it. Every one 
knows that the chief power instituted to struggle against it 
was the order of Jesuits. Throw a glance upon their history ; 
they have everywhere failed. Wherever they have interfered 
to any extent, they have carried misfortune into the cause with 
which they mixed. In England they ruined kings; in Spain 
the people. The general course of events, the development 
of modern civilization, the liberty of the human mind, all these 
powers against which the Jesuits were called upon to contest, 
fought and conquered them. And not only have they failed, 
but call to mind the means they have been obliged to employ. 
No splendor or grandeur ; they brought about no great events, 
nor put in motion powerful masses of men; they have acted 
only by underhanded, obscure and subordinate means ; by ways 
which are nothing suited to strike the imagination, to conciliate 
that public interest which attaches to great things, whatever 
may be their principle or end. The party against which it 
struggled, on the contrary, not only conquered, but conquered 
with splendor; it did great things, and by great means; it 
aroused the people, it gave to Europe great men, and changed, 
in the face of day, the fashion and form of states. In a word, 
everything was against the Jesuits, both fortune and appear- 
ances; neither good sense, which desires success, nor imag- 
ination, which requires splendor, were satisfied by their career. 
And yet nothing can be more certain than that they have had 
grandeur ; that a great idea is attached to their name, their in- 
fluence, and their history. How so? 
It is because they knew what they were doing, and what they 
i88 GUIZOT 
desired to do ; because they had a full and clear acquaintance 
with the principles upon which they acted, and the aim to which 
they tended ; that is to say, they had greatness of thought and 
greatness of will, and this saved them from the ridicule which 
attaches itself to constant reverses and contemptible means. 
Where, on the contrary, the event was greater than the thought, 
where the actors appeared to want a knowledge of the first prin- 
ciples and last results of their action, there remained something 
incomplete, inconsistent and narrow, which placed the conquer- 
ors themselves in a sort of rational and philosophical inferiority, 
of which the influence has been sometimes felt in events. This 
was, I conceive, in the struggle of the old against the new 
spiritual order, the weak side of the reformation, the circum- 
stance which often embarrassed it, and hindered it from de- 
fending itself as it ought to have done. 
We might consider the religious revolution of the sixteenth 
century under many other aspects. I have said nothing, and 
have nothing to say, concerning its dogmas, concerning its 
effect on religion, in regard to the relations of the human soul 
with God and the eternal future ; but I might exhibit it to you 
in the diversity of its relations with the social order, bringing 
on, in all directions, results of mighty importance. For in- 
stance, it awoke religion amid the laity, and in the world of 
the faithful. Up to that time religion had been, so to speak, 
the exclusive domain of the clergy, of the ecclesiastical order, 
who distributed the fruits but disposed themselves of the tree, 
and had almost alone the right to speak of it. The reformation 
caused a general circulation of religious creeds ; it opened to 
believers the field of faith, which hitherto they had had no right 
to enter. It had, at the same time, a second result — it banished, 
or nearly banished, religion from politics; it restored the in- 
dependence of the temporal power. At the very moment when, 
so to speak, religion came again to the possession of the faith- 
ful, it quitted the government of society. In the reformed 
countries, notwithstanding the diversity of ecclesiastical con- 
stitutions, even in England, where that constitution is nearer 
to the ancient order of things, the spiritual power no longer 
makes any serious pretensions to the direction of the temporal 
power. 
I might enumerate many other consequences of the reforma- 
tion, but I must check myself, and rest content with having 
placed before you its principal character, the emancipation of 
the human mind, and the abolition of absolute power in the 
spiritual order — an abolition which, no doubt, was not com- 
plete, but nevertheless formed the greatest step that has, up 
to our days, been taken in this direction. 
Before concluding, I must pray you to remark the striking 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 189 
similarity of destiny which, in the history of modern Europe, 
presents itself as existing between the civil and religious so- 
cieties, in the revolutions to which they have been subject. 
The Christian society, as we saw when I spoke of the church, 
began by being a perfectly free society, and formed solely in 
virtue of a common creed, without institutions or government, 
properly so called, and regulated only by moral powers, vary- 
ing according to the necessity of the moment. Civil society 
commenced in like manner in Europe, or partially at least, with 
bands of barbarians ; a society perfectly free, each one remain- 
ing in it because he thought proper, without laws or constituted 
powers. At the close of this state, which could not co-exist 
with any considerable development, religious society placed 
itself under an essentially aristocratic government; it was the 
body of the clergy, the bishops, councils and ecclesiastical 
aristocracy which governed it. A fact of the same kind hap- 
pened in civil society at the termination of barbarism; it was 
the lay aristocracy, the lay feudal chiefs, by which it was 
governed. Religious society left the aristocratic form to as- 
sume that of pure monarchy; that is the meaning of the tri- 
umph of the court of Rome over the councils and over the 
European ecclesiastical aristocracy. The same revolution ac- 
complished itself in civil society; it was by the destruction of 
aristocratical power that royalty prevailed and took possession 
of the European world. In the sixteenth century, in the bosom 
of religious society, an insurrection burst forth against the sys- 
tem of pure monarchy, against absolute power in the spiritual 
order. This revolution brought on, consecrated, and estab- 
lished free inquiry in Europe. In our own days we have seen 
the same event occurring in the civil order. Absolute tem- 
poral power was attacked and conquered. Thus you have seen 
that the two societies have undergone the same vicissitudes, 
have been subject to the same revolutions; only religious so- 
ciety has always been the foremost in this career. 
We are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern 
society — namely, free inquiry, the liberty of the human mind. 
We have seen that, at the same time, political centralization al- 
most everywhere prevailed. In my next lecture I shall treat 
of the English revolution — that is to say, of the event in which 
free inquiry and pure monarchy, both results of the progress 
of civilization, found themselves for the first time in conflict. 
THIRTEENTH LECTURE. 
YOU have seen that during the sixteenth century all the 
elements and features that had belonged to former Eu- 
ropean society resolved themselves into two great facts, 
free inquiry and the centralization of power. The first pre- 
vailed among the clergy, the second among the laity. There 
simultaneously triumphed in Europe the emancipation of the 
human mind, and the establishment of pure monarchy. 
It was scarcely to be expected but that sooner or later a 
struggle should arise between these two principles; for they 
were contradictory; the one was the overthrow of absolute 
power in the spiritual order, the other was its victory in the tem- 
poral ; the first paved the way for the decay of the ancient ec- 
clesiastical monarchy, the last perfected the ruin of the ancient 
feudal and communal liberties. The fact of their advent being 
simultaneous arose, as you have seen, from the revolution in re- 
ligious society advancing with a more rapid step than that in the 
civil society ; the one occurred exactly at the time of the enfran- 
chisement of the individual mind, the other not until the mo- 
ment of the centralization of universal power under one head. 
The coincidence of these two facts, so far from springing out of 
their similitude, did not prevent their inconsistency. They 
were each advances in the course of civilization, but they 
were advances arising from dissimilar situations, and of 
a different moral date, if I may be allowed the ｅxpression, al- 
though contemporary. That they should run against one an- 
other before they came to an understanding was inevitable. 
Their first collision was in England. In the struggle of 
free inquiry, the fruit of the reformation, against the ruin of 
political liberty, the fruit of the triumph of pure monarchy; 
and in the effort to abolish absolute power, both in the tem- 
poral and spiritual orders, we have the purport of the English 
revolution, its share in the course of our civilization. 
The question arises, why should this struggle take place in 
England sooner than elsewhere? Wherefore should the rev- 
olutions in the political order have coincided more closely with 
those in the moral order in that country than on the continent? 
Royalty in England has undergone the same vicissitudes as 
on the continent. Under the Tudors it attained to a concen- 
190 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 191 
tration and energy which it has never known since. It does 
not follow that the despotism of the Tudors was more violent, 
or that it cost dearer to England than that of their predeces- 
sors. I believe that there were at least as many acts of tyranny 
and instances of vexation and injustice under the Plantagenets 
as under the Tudors, perhaps even more. And I beHeve, like- 
wise, that at this era the government of pure monarchy was 
more harsh and arbitrary on the continent than in England. 
The new feature under the Tudors was that absolute power be- 
came systematic ; royalty assumed a primitive and independent 
sovereignty; it adopted a style hitherto unknown. The theo- 
retical pretensions of Henry VIII, of EHzabeth, of James I, 
or of Charles I, are entirely different to those of Edward I or 
Edward III ; though the power of these two last kings was 
neither less arbitrary nor less extensive. I repeat, that it was 
the principle, the rational system of monarchy, rather than its 
practical power, which experienced a mutation in England 
during the sixteenth century ; royalty assumed absolute power, 
and pretended to be superior to all laws, to those even which it 
had declared should be respected. 
Again, the religious revolution was not accomplished in Eng- 
land in the same manner as on the continent ; here it was the 
work of the kings themselves. Not but that in this country, 
as elsewhere, there had long been the germs of, and even at- 
tempts at a popular reformation, which would probably, ere 
long, have been carried out. But Henry VIII took the initia- 
tive; power became revolutionary. The result was that, in 
its origin, at least, as a redress of ecclesiastical tyranny and 
abuse, and as the emancipation of the human mind, the refor- 
mation was far less complete in England than on the continent. 
It consulted, and very naturally, the interest of its authors. 
The king and the retained episcopacy shared the riches and 
power, the spoils of the preceding government, of the papacy. 
It was not long before the consequence was felt. It was said 
that the reformation was finished ; yet most of the motives which 
had made it necessary still existed. It reappeared under a pop- 
ular form ; it exclaimed against the bishops as it had done 
against the court of Rome ; it accused them of being so many 
popes. As often as the general character of the religious 
reformation was compromised, whenever there was a question 
of a struggle with the ancient church, all portions of the re- 
formed party rallied and made head against the common 
enemy; but the danger passed, the interior struggle recom- 
menced ; popular reform again attacked regal and aristocratical 
reform, denounced its abuses, complained of its tyranny, called 
upon it for a fulfillment of its promises, and not again to estab- 
lish the power which it had dethroned. 
192 
GUIZOT 
There was, about the same time, a movement of enfranchise- 
ment manifested in civil society, a need for political freedom, till 
then unknown, or at least powerless. During the sixteenth 
century the commercial prosperity of England increased with 
excessive rapidity; at the same time territorial wealth, landed 
property, in a great measure changed hands. The division of 
land in England in the sixteenth century, consequent on the 
ruin of the feudal aristocracy and other causes, too many for 
present enumeration, is a fact deserving more attention than has 
yet been given to it. All documents show us the number of 
landed proprietors increasing to an immense extent, and the 
larger portion of the lands passing into the hands of the gentry, 
or inferior nobility, and the citizens. The upper house, the 
higher nobility, was not nearly so rich at the commencement of 
the seventeenth century as the House of Commons. There was 
then at the same time a great development of commercial wealth, 
and a great mutation in landed property. Amid these two in- 
fluences came a third — the new movement in the minds of men. 
The reign of Elizabeth is, perhaps, the greatest period of Eng- 
lish history for literary and philosophical activity, the era of 
lofty and fertile imaginations; the Puritans without hesitation 
followed out all the consequences of a vigorous although nar- 
row doctrine ; the opposite class of minds, less moral and more 
free, strangers to any principle or method, received with en- 
thusiasm everything which promised to satisfy their curiosity 
or feed their excitement. Wherever the impulse of intelligence 
brings with it a lively pleasure, liberty will soon become a want, 
and will quickly pass from the public mind into the government. 
There was on the Continent, in some of those countries where 
the reformation had gone forth, a manifestation of a similar 
feeling, a certain want of political liberty; but the means of 
satisfying it were wanting ; they knew not where to look for it ; 
no aid for it could be found either in the institutions or in man- 
ners; they remained vague and uncertain, seeking in vain to 
satisfy their want. In England, it was very different : there the 
spirit of political freedom, which reappeared in the sixteenth 
century, following the reformation, found its fulcrum and the 
means of action in the ancient institutions and social conditions. 
Every one knows the origin of the free institutions of Eng- 
land ; it is universally known how the union of the great barons 
in 12 1 5 forced Magna Charta from King John. What is not so 
generally known is that the great charter was from time to 
time recalled and again confirmed by most of the succeeding 
kings. There were more than thirty confirmations of it be- 
tween the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. And not only 
was the charter confirmed, but new statutes were introduced 
for the purpose of maintaining and developing it. It therefore 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 193 
lived, as it were, without interval or interruption. At the same 
time, the House of Commons was formed, and took its place 
among the supreme institutions of the country. It was under 
the Plantagenets that it truly struck root ; not that it took any 
great part in the state during that period ; the government did 
not, properly speaking, belong to it even in the way of influ- 
ence ; it only interfered therein at the call of the king, and then 
always reluctantly and hesitatingly, as if it was more fearful of 
engaging and compromising itself than desirous of augment- 
ing its power. But when the matter in hand was the defence of 
private rights, the families of fortunes of the citizens, in a word, 
the liberties of the individual, the House of Commons acquitted 
itself of its duty with much energy and perseverance, and 
founded all those principles which have become the basis of the 
English constitution. 
After the Plantagenets, and especially under the Tudors, the 
House of Commons, or rather the entire Parliament, presented 
itself under a different aspect. It no longer defended the in- 
dividual liberties, as under the Plantagenets. Arbitrary deten- 
tions, the violation of private rights, now become much more 
frequent, are often passed over in silence. on the other hand, 
the Parliament took a much more active part in the general gov- 
ernment of the state. 
In changing the religion, and in regulating the order of suc- 
cession, Henry VIII had need of some medium, some public 
instrument, and in this want he was supplied by the Parliament, 
and especially by the House of Commons. Under the Planta- 
genets it had been an instrument of resistance, the guardian of 
private rights; under the Tudors it became an instrument of 
government and general policy ; so that at the end of the six- 
teenth century, although it had undergone almost every species 
of tyranny, its importance was much augmented, its great 
power began, that power upon which the representative gov- 
ernment depends. 
When we glance at the state of the free institutions of Eng- 
land at the end of the sixteenth century, we find first, funda- 
mental rules and principles of liberty, of which neither the 
country nor the legislature had ever lost sight ; second, prece- 
dents, examples of liberty, a good deal mixed, it is true, with 
inconsistent examples and precedents, but sufficing to legalize 
and sustain the claims, and to support the defenders of liberty 
in any struggle against tyranny or despotism ; third, special and 
local institutions, replete with germs of liberty; the jury, the 
right of assembling, and of being armed ; the independence of 
municipal administrations and jurisdictions; fourth, and last, 
the Parliament and its power, of which the crown had more need 
than ever, since it had lavished away the greater part of its in- 
13 
194 
GUIZOT 
dependent revenues, domains, feudal rights, etc., and was de- 
pendent for its very support upon the national vote. 
The political condition of England, therefore, in the six- 
teenth century was wholly different from that of the continent. 
In spite of the tyranny of the Tudors, and the systematic tri- 
umph of pure monarchy, there was still a fixed fulcrum, a sure 
means of action for the new spirit of liberty. 
There were, then, two national wants in England at this 
period: on one side was the need of religious revolution and 
liberty in the heart of the reformation already commenced ; and 
on thfe other, was required political liberty in the heart of the 
pure monarchy then in progress ; and in the course of their 
progress these two wants were able to invoke all that had al- 
ready been done in either direction. They combined. The 
party who wished to pursue religious reformation invoked polit- 
ical liberty to the assistance of its faith and conscience against 
the king and the bishops. The friends of political liberty again 
sought the aid of the popular reformation. The two parties 
united to struggle against absolute power in the temporal and 
in the spiritual orders, a power now concentrated in the hands 
of the king. This is the origin and purport of the English revo- 
lution. 
It was thus essentially devoted to the defence or achievement 
of liberty. For the religious party it was a means, and for the 
political party an end ; but with both liberty was the question, 
and they were obliged to pursue it in common. There was no 
real religious quarrel between the Episcopal and Puritan party ; 
little dispute upon dogmas, or concerning faith ; not but there 
existed real differences of opinion between them, differences of 
great importance ; but this was not the principal point. Prac- 
tical liberty was what the Puritans wished to force from the 
Episcopal party: it was for this that they strove. There was 
also another religious party who had to found a system, to es- 
tablish its dogmas, ecclesiastical constitution, and discipline; 
this was the Presbyterian party : but although it worked to the 
utmost of its power, it did not in this point progress in propor- 
tion to its desire. Placed on the defensive, oppressed by the 
bishops, unable to act without the assent of the political re- 
formers, its allies and chief supporters, its dominant aim was 
liberty, the general interest and common aim of all the parties, 
whatever their diversity, who concurred in the movement. 
Taking everything together, the English revolution was essen- 
tially political ; it was brought about in the midst of a religious 
people and in a religious age ; religious thoughts and passions 
were its instruments ; but its chief design and definite aim were 
political, were devoted to liberty, and the abolition of all abso- 
lute power. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 195 
I shall now glance at the different phases of this revolution 
and its great parties ; I shall then connect it with the general 
course of European civilization ; I shall mark its place and in- 
fluence therein ; and show you by a detail of the facts, as at the 
first view, that it was the first blow which had been struck in 
the cause of free inquiry and pure monarchy, the first manifes- 
tation of a struggle between these two great powers. 
Three principal parties sprung up in this great crisis, three 
revolutions in a manner were comprised in it, and successively 
appeared upon the scene. In each party, and in each revolu- 
tion, two parties are allied, and work conjointly, a political and 
a religious party ; the first at the head, the second followed, but 
each necessary to the other; so that the twofold character of 
the event is impressed upon all its phases. 
The first party which appeared was the party of legal reform, 
under whose banner all the others at first ranged themselves. 
When the English revolution commenced, when the Long Par- 
liament was assembled in 1640, it was universally said, and by 
many sincerely believed, that the legal reform would suffice for 
all things ; that in the ancient laws and customs of the country 
there was that which would remedy all abuses, and which would 
re-establish a system of government entirely conformable to the 
public wishes. This party loudly censured and sincerely wished 
to prevent the illegal collecting of taxes, arbitrary imprison- 
ments, in a word, all acts disallowed by the known laws of the 
country. At the root of its ideas was the belief in the king's 
sovereignty — that is, in absolute power. A secret instinct 
warned it, indeed, that there was something false and dangerous 
therein; it wished, therefore, to say nothing of it; pushed to 
the extremity, however, and forced to explain itself, it admitted 
in royalty a power superior to all human origin, and 
above all control, and, when need was, defended it. It be- 
lieved at the same time that this sovereignty, absolute in 
theory, was bound to observe certain forms and rules ; that it 
could not extend beyond certain limits ; and these rules, forms, 
and limits were sufficiently established and guaranteed in the 
great charter, in the confirmatory statutes, and in the ancient 
laws of the country. Such was its political idea. In religious 
matters, the legal party thought that the Episcopal power was 
excessive ; that the bishops had too much political power, that 
their jurisdiction was too extensive, and that it was necessary to 
overlook and restrain its exercise. Still, it firmly supported the 
episcopacy, not only as an ecclesiastical institution, and as a sys- 
tem of church government, but as a necessary support for the 
royal prerogative, as a means of defending and maintaining the 
supremacy of the king in religious matters. The sovereignty 
of the king in the political order being exercised according to 
196 GUIZOT 
known forms, and within the limits of acknowledged rules, roy- 
alty in the religious order should be sustained by the episcopacy ; 
such was the twofold system of the legal party, of which the 
chiefs were Clarendon, Colepepper, Lord Capel, and Lord Falk- 
land himself, although an ardent advocate of public liberty, and 
a man who numbered in his ranks almost all the high nobility 
who were not servilely devoted to the court. 
Behind these followed a second party, which I shall call the 
party of the political revolution ; these were of opinion that the 
ancient guarantees and legal barriers had been and still were in- 
sufficient ; that a great change, a regular revolution was neces- 
sary, not in the forms, but in the realities of government : that 
it was necessary to withdraw from the king and his counsel the 
independence of their power, and to place the political prepon- 
derance in the House of Commons ; that the government, prop- 
erly so called, should belong to this assembly and its chiefs. This 
party did not give an account of their ideas and intentions as 
clearly and systematically as I have done ; but this was the es- 
sence of its doctrines, of its political tendencies. Instead of the 
sovereignty of the king, pure monarchy, it believed in the sover- 
eignty of the House of Commons as the representative of the 
country. Under this idea was hidden that of the sovereignty of 
the people, an idea, the bearing of which and its consequences, 
the party was very far from contemplating, but which presented 
itself, and was received under the form of the sovereignty of the 
House of Commons. 
A religious party, that of the Presbyterians, was closely united 
with the party of the political revolution. The Presbyterians 
wished to bring about in the church a revolution analogous to 
that meditated by their allies in the state. They wished to gov- 
ern the church by assemblies, giving the religious power to an 
hierarchy of assemblages agreeing one with the other, as their 
allies had invested the House of Commons with the political 
power. But the Presbyterian revolution was more vigorous 
and complete, for it tended to change the form as well as the prin- 
ciple of the government of the church, while the political party 
wished only to moderate the influences and preponderating 
power of institutions, and did not meditate an overthrow of the 
form of the institutions themselves. 
But the chiefs of the political party were not all of them favor- 
able to the Presbyterian organization of the church. Many of 
them, as for instance, Hampden and Holies, would have pre- 
ferred, it seems, a moderate episcopacy, confined to purely ec- 
clesiastical duties, and more freedom of conscience. But they 
resigned themselves to it, being unable to do without their fanat- 
ical allies. 
A third party was yet more exorbitant in its demands ; this 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 197 
party asserted that an entire change was necessary, not only in 
the form of government, but in government itself ; that the 
whole political constitution was bad. This party repudiated the 
past ages of England, renounced the national institutions and 
memories, with the intention of founding a new government, 
according to a pure theory, or what it supposed to be such. It 
was not a mere reform in the government, but a social revolu- 
tion which this party wished to bring about. The party of which 
I just now spoke, that of the political revolution, wished to in- 
troduce important changes in the relations between the Parlia- 
ment and the crown ; it wished to extend the power of Parlia- 
ment, particularly that of the House of Commons, giving them 
the nomination to high public offices, and the supreme direction 
in general affairs ; but its project of reform extended very little 
further than this. For instance, it had no idea of changing the 
electoral, judicial or municipal and administrative systems of 
the country. The republican party meditated on all these 
changes, and proclaimed their necessity ; and, in a word, wished 
to reform, not only the public administration, but also the social 
relations and the distribution of private rights. 
This party, like that which preceded it, was partly religious 
and partly political. The political portion included the repub- 
licans, properly so called, the theorists, Ludlow, Harrington, 
Milton, etc. on that side were ranged the republicans from in- 
terest, the chief officers of the army, Ireton, Cromwell, and Lam- 
bert, who, more or less sincere at the onset, were soon swayed 
and guided by interested views and the necessities of their situa- 
tions. Around these collected the religious republican party, 
which included all those enthusiasts who acknowledged no legiti- 
mate power except that of Jesus Christ, and who, while waiting 
for his advent, wished to be governed by his elect. And, lastly, 
the party was followed by a large number of inferior free-think- 
ers, and fantastical dreamers, the one set in hope of license, the 
other of equality of property and universal suffrage. 
In 1653, after a struggle of twelve years, all these parties had 
successively failed ; at least, they had reason to believe they had 
failed, and the public was convinced of their failure. The legal 
party, which quickly disappeared, had seen the ancient laws and 
constitution disdained and trodden under foot, and innovation 
visible upon every side. The party of political reform saw par- 
liamentary forms perish under the new use which they wished to 
make of them ; they saw the House of Commons, after a sway of 
twelve years, reduced by the successive expulsion of the royal- 
ists and the Presbyterians to a very trifling number of members, 
and those looked upon by the public with contempt and detesta- 
tion, and incapable of governing. The republican party seemed 
to have succeeded better : it remained, to all appearance, master 
198 GUIZOT 
of the field of battle, of power ; the House of Commons reckoned 
no more than from fifty to sixty members, and all of these were 
republicans. They might fairly deem themselves and declare 
themselves masters of the country. But the contrary absolutely 
rejected them ; they could nowhere carry their resolutions into 
effect ; they exercised no practical influence either over the 
army or over the people. There no longer subsisted any social 
tie, any social security ; justice was no longer administered, or, 
if it was, it was no longer justice, but the arbitrary rendering of 
decrees at the dictation of passion, prejudice, party. And not 
only was there an entire disappearance of security from the social 
relations of men, there was none whatever on the highways, 
which were covered with thieves and robbers ; material anarchy, 
as well as moral anarchy, manifested itself in every direction, and 
the House of Commons and the Republican Council were wholly 
incapable of repressing either the one or the other. 
The three great parties of the revolution had thus been called 
successively to conduct it, to govern the country according to 
their knowledge and will, and they had not been able to do 
it ; they had all three of them completely failed ; they could do 
nothing more. " It was then," says Bossuet, " that a man was 
found who left nothing to fortune which he could take from it 
by council or foresight ;" an ｅxpression full of error, and con- 
troverted by all history. Never did man leave more to fortune 
than Cromwell ; never has man hazarded more, gone on with 
more temerity, without design or aim, but determined to go as 
far as fate should carry him. An unlimited ambition, an ad- 
mirable faculty of extracting from every day and circumstance 
some new means of progress, the art of turning chance to profit, 
without pretending to rule it — all these were Cromwell's. It 
was with Cromwell, as perhaps it has been with no other man in 
his circumstances ; he sufficed for all the most various phases of 
the revolution ; he was a man for its first and latest epochs ; 
first of all, he was the leader of insurrection, the abettor of an- 
archy, the most fiery of the English revolutionists ; afterward 
the man for the anti-revolutionary reaction, for the re-establish- 
ment of order, and for social organization ; thus performing 
singly all the parts which, in the course of revolutions, are divid- 
ed among the greatest actors. one can hardly say that Crom- 
well was a Mirabeau ; he wanted eloquence, and, although very 
active, did not make any show during the first years of the Long 
Parliament. But he was successively a Danton and a Bona- 
parte. He, more than any others, had contributed to the over- 
throw of power ; and he raised it up again because none but he 
knew how to assume and manage it ; some one must govern ; 
all had failed, and he succeeded. That constituted his title. 
once master of the government, this man, whose ambition had 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 199 
shown itself so bold and insatiable, who, in his progress had al- 
ways driven fortune before him, determined never to stop, now 
displayed a good sense, prudence, and knowledge of the possible, 
which dominated all his most violent passions. He had, no 
doubt, a great love for absolute power and a strong desire to 
place the crown on his own head and establish it in his family. 
He renounced this last design, the danger of which he saw in 
time ; and, as to the absolute power, although, in fact, he exer- 
cised it, he always knew that the tendency of his age was against 
it ; that the revolution in which he had co-operated and which 
he had followed through all its phases, had been directed against 
despotism, and that the imperishable desire of England was to 
be governed by a parliament and in parliamentary forms. There- 
fore, he himself, a despot by inclination and in fact, undertook 
to have a parliament and to govern in a parliamentary manner. 
He addressed himself unceasingly to all parties ; he endeavored 
to form a parliament of reHgious enthusiasts, of republicans, of 
Presbyterians, of officers of the army. He attempted all means 
to constitute a parliament which could and would co-operate 
with him. He tried in vain : all parties, once seated in West- 
minster, wished to snatch from him the power which he exer- 
cised, and rule in their turn. I do not say that his own interest 
and personal passion were not first in his thoughts ; but it is not 
therefore the less certain that, if he had abandoned power, he 
would have been obliged to take it up again the next day. 
Neither Puritans nor royalists, republicans nor officers, none, 
besides Cromwell, was in condition to govern with any degree 
of order or justice. The proof had been shown. It was impos- 
sible to allow the Parliament, that is to say, the parties sitting in 
Parliament, to take the empire which they could not keep. Such, 
then, was the situation of Cromwell ; he governed according to 
a system which he knew very well was not that of the country ; 
he exercised a power acknowledged as necessary, but accepted 
by no one. No party regarded his dominion as a definitive 
government. The royalists, the Presbyterians, the republicans, 
the army itself, the party which seemed most devoted to Crom- 
well, all were convinced that he was but a transitory master. 
At bottom he never reigned over men's minds; he was never 
anything but a make-shift, a necessity of the moment. The 
protector, the absolute master of England, was all his life 
obliged to employ force in order to protect his power ; no party 
could govern like him, but no party wished him for governor : 
he was constantly attacked by all parties at once. 
At his death the republicans alone were in a condition to seize 
upon power ; they did so, and succeeded no better than they had 
done before. This was not for want of confidence, at least as 
regards the fanatics of the party. A pamphlet of Milton, pub- 
200 GUIZOT 
lished at this period and full of talent and enthusiasm, is entitled, 
" A ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth." You 
see what was the blindness of these men. They very soon fell 
again into that impossibility of governing which they had already 
experienced. Monk undertook the conduct of the event which 
all England looked for. The restoration was accomplished. 
The restoration of the Stuarts in England was a deeply na- 
tional event. It presented itself with the advantages at once of 
an ancient government, of a government which rests upon its 
traditions, upon the recollections of the country and with the 
advantages of a new government, of which no recent trial has 
been made and of which the faults and weight have not been ex- 
perienced. The ancient monarchy was the only species of gov- 
ernment which for the last twenty years had not been despised 
for its incapacity and ill-success in the administration of the 
country. These two causes rendered the restoration popular ; 
it had nothing to oppose it but the remnants of violent parties, 
and the public ralHed around it heartily. It was, in the opinion 
of the country, the only means of legal government ; that is to 
say, of that which the country most ardently desired. This was 
also what the restoration promised, and it was careful to present 
itself under the aspect of a legal government. 
The first royalist party which, at the return of Charles II, un- 
dertook the management of affairs was, in fact, the legal party, 
represented by its most able chief, the Chancellor Clarendon. 
You are aware that, from 1660 to 1667, Clarendon was prime 
minister, and the truly predominating influence in England. 
Clarendon and his friends reappeared with their ancient system, 
the absolute sovereignty of the king, kept within legal limits, 
and restrained, in matters of taxation, by Parliament, and in 
matters of private rights and individual liberties, by the tribu- 
nals ; but possessing, as regards government, properly so called, 
an almost complete independence, the most decisive preponder- 
ance, to the exclusion, or even against the wishes of the ma- 
jority in Parliament, especially in the House of Commons. As 
to the rest, they had a due respect for legal order, a sufficient 
solicitude for the interests of the country, a noble sentiment of 
its dignity, and a grave and honorable moral tone; such was the 
character of Clarendon's administration of seven years. 
But the fundamental ideas upon which this administra- 
tion rested, the absolute sovereignty of the king, and the govern- 
ment, placed beyond the influence of the preponderating opinion 
of Parliament, these ideas, I say, were obsolete, impotent. In 
spite of the reaction of the first moments of the restoration, 
twenty years of parliamentary rule, in opposition to royalty, had 
irremediably ruined them. A new element soon burst forth in 
the center of the royalist party: free-thinkers, rakes and liber- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 201 
tines, who participated in the ideas of the time, conceived that 
power was vested in the Commons, and caring very httle for 
legal order or the absolute sovereignty of the king, troubled 
themselves only for their own success, and sought it whenever 
they caught a glimpse of any means of influence or power. 
These formed a party which became allied with the national dis- 
contented party, and Clarendon was overthrown. 
Thus arose a new system of government, namely, that of that 
portion of the royalist party which I have now described: profli- 
gates and libertines formed the ministry, which is called the min- 
istry of the Cabal, and many other administrations which suc- 
ceeded it. This was their character; no care for principles, laws 
or rights; as little for justice and for truth; they sought upon 
each occasion to discover the means of succeeding; if success 
depended upon the influence of the Commons, they chimed in 
with their opinions ; if it seemed expedient to flout the House of 
Commons, they did so, and begged its pardon on the morrow. 
Corruption was tried one day, flattery of the national spirit, 
another; there was no regard paid to the general interests of the 
country, to its dignity, or to its honor; in a word, their govern- 
ment was profoundly selfish and immoral, a stranger to all pub- 
lic doctrine or views ; but at bottom, and in the practical admin- 
istration of affairs, very intelligent and liberal. Such was the 
character of the Cabal, of the ministry of the Earl of Danby, and 
of the entire English government, from 1667 to 1678. Notwith- 
standing its immorality, notwithstanding its contempt of the 
principles and the true interests of the country, this government 
was less odious and less unpopular than the ministry of Claren- 
don had been: and why? because it was much better adapted to 
the times, and because it better understood the sentiments of the 
people, even in mocking them. It was not antiquated and for- 
eign to them, like that of Clarendon; and though it did the coun- 
try much more harm, the country found it more agreeable. 
Nevertheless, there came a moment when corruption, servility 
and contempt of rights and public honor were pushed to such 
a point that the people could no longer remain resigned. There 
was a general rising against the government of the profligates. 
A national and patriotic party had formed itself in the bosom of 
the House of Commons. The king decided upon calling its 
chiefs to the council. Then came to the direction of affairs Lord 
Essex, the son of him who had commanded the first parliament- 
ary armies during the civil war. Lord Russell, and a man who, 
without having any of their virtues, was far superior to them in 
political ability. Lord Shaftesbury. Brought thus to the man- 
agement of affairs, the national party showed itself incompetent ; 
it knew not how to possess itself of the moral force of the country ; 
it knew not how to treat the interests either of the king, the court 
or of any of those with whom it had to do. It gave to no one ; 
202 GUIZOT 
neither to the people nor to the king, any great notion of its 
abiHty and energy. After remaining a short time in power, it 
failed. The virtue of its chiefs, their generous courage, the 
nobleness of their deaths, have exalted them in history, and have 
justly placed them in the highest rank ; but their political capac- 
ity did not answer to their virtue, and they knew not how to 
wield the power which could not corrupt them, nor to secure 
the triumph of the cause for the sake of which they knew how to 
die. 
This attempt having failed, you perceive the condition of the 
English restoration ; it had, after a manner, and like the revolu- 
tion, tried all parties and all ministries, the legal ministry, the 
corrupted ministry, and the national ministry, but none had suc- 
ceeded. The country and the court found themselves in much 
the same situation as that of England in 1653, at the end of the 
revolutionary tempest. Recourse was had to the same ex- 
pedient; what Cromwell had done for the good of the revolution, 
Charles II did for the good of his crown; he entered the career 
of absolute power. 
James II succeeded his brother. Then a second question was 
added to that of absolute power; namely, the question of reli- 
gion. James II desired to bring about the triumph of popery 
as well as that of despotism. Here, then, as at the beginning of 
the revolution, we have a religious and a political warfare, both 
directed against the government. It has often been asked, what 
would have happened had William III never existed, or had he 
not come with his Hollanders to put an end to the quarrel which 
had arisen between James II and the English nation? I firmly 
believe that the same event would have been accomplished. Ail 
England, except a very small party, had rallied, at this epoch, 
against James, and, under one form or another, it would have 
accomplished the revolution of 1688. But this crisis was pro- 
duced by other and higher causes than the internal state of Eng- 
land. It was European as well as English. It is here that the 
English revolution connects itself by facts themselves, and inde- 
pendently of the influence which its example may have had with 
the general course of European civilization. 
While this struggle, which I have sketched in outline, this 
struggle of absolute power against civil and religious liberty, 
was taking place in England, a struggle of the same kind was 
going on upon the continent, very different, indeed, as regards 
the actors, forms and theater, but at bottom the same, and 
originated by the same cause. The pure monarchy of Louis 
XIV endeavored to become an universal monarchy; at least it 
gave reason for the fear that such was the case; and, in fact, 
Europe did fear that it was. A league was made in Europe, 
between various political parties, in order to resist this attempt, 
and the chief of this league was the chief of the party in favor of 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 203 
civil and religious liberty upon the continent, William, Prince of 
Orange. The Protestant republic of Holland, with William at 
its head, undertook to resist the pure monarchy represented and 
conducted by Louis XIV. It was not civil and religious liberty 
in the interior of the states, but their external independence 
which was apparently the question. Louis XIV and his adver- 
saries did not imagine that, in fact, they were contesting between 
them the question which was being contested in England. This 
struggle went on, not between parties, but between states; it pro- 
ceeded by war and diplomacy, not by political movements and 
by revolutions. But, at bottom, one and the same question was 
at issue. 
When, therefore, James II resumed in England the contest 
between absolute power and liberty, this contest occurred just in 
the midst of the general struggle which was going on in Europe 
between Louis XIV and the Prince of Orange, the represent- 
atives, severally, of the two great systems at war upon the banks 
of the Scheldt, as well as on those of the Thames. The league 
was so powerful against Louis XIV that, openly, or in a hidden 
but very real manner, sovereigns were seen to enter it, who were 
assuredly very far from being interested in favor of civil and 
religious liberty. The emperor of Germany and Pope Innocent 
XI supported William III against Louis XIV. William passed 
into England, less in order to serve the internal interests of the 
country than to draw it completely into the struggle against 
Louis XIV. He took this new kingdom as a new power of 
which he was in want, and of which his opponent had, up to that 
time, made use against them. While Charles II and James II 
reigned, England belonged to Louis XIV; he had directed its 
external relations, and had constantly opposed it to Holland. 
England was now snatched from the party of pure and universal 
monarchy in order to become the instrument and strongest sup- 
port of the party of religious liberty. This is the European 
aspect of the revolution of 1688; it was thus that it occupied a 
place in the total result of the events of Europe, independently of 
the part which it played by means of its example, and the influ- 
ence which it exercised upon minds in the following century. 
Thus you see that, as I told you in the beginning, the true 
meaning and essential character of this revolution was the at- 
tempt to abolish absolute power in temporal as well as spiritual 
things. This act discovers itself in all the phases of the revo- 
lution — in its first period up to the restoration, in the second up 
to the crisis of 1688 — and whether we consider it in its internal 
development or in its relations with Europe in general. 
It now remains for us to study the same great event upon the 
continent, the struggle of pure monarchy and free inquiry, or, 
at least, its causes and approaches. This will be the subject of 
our next lecture. 
FOURTEENTH LECTURE. 
IN my last lecture I endeavored to determine the true char- 
acter and political meaning of the English revolution. We 
have seen that it was the first shock of the two great facts 
to which all the civilization of primitive Europe reduced itself in 
the course of the sixteenth century, namely, pure monarchy on 
one hand and free inquiry on the other; those two powers came 
to strife for the first time in England. Attempts have been made 
to infer from this fact the existence of a radical difference 
between the social state of England and that of the continent; 
some have pretended that no comparison was possible between 
countries of destinies so different; they have affirmed that the 
English people had existed in a kind of moral isolation analo- 
gous to its material situation. 
It is true that there had been an important difference between 
English civilization and the civilization of the continental 
states — a difference which we are bound to calculate. You 
have already, in the course of my lectures, been enabled to catch 
a glimpse of it. The development of the different principles and 
elements of society occurred in England simultaneously, and, as 
it were, abreast; at least far more so than upon the continent. 
When I attempted to determine the peculiar physiognomy of 
European civilization as compared with the ancient and Asiatic 
civilizations, I showed you the first, varied, rich and complex; 
that it never fell under the dominion of an exclusive principle; 
that therein the various elements of the social state were modi- 
fied, combined, and struggled with each other, and had been 
constantly compelled to agree and live in common. This fact, 
the general characteristic of European civilization, has above all 
characterized the English civilization; it was in England that 
this character developed itself with the most continuity and ob- 
viousness ; it was there that the civil and religious orders, aris- 
tocracy, democracy, royalty, local and central institutions, moral 
and political developments, progressed and increased together, 
pell-mell, so to speak, and if not with an equal rapidity, at least 
always within a short distance of each other. Under the reign 
of the Tudors, for instance, in the midst of the most brilliant 
progress of pure monarchy, we see the democratical principle, 
the popular power, arising and strengthening itself at the same 
204 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 205 
time. The revolution of the seventeenth century burst forth ; it 
was at the same time reHgious and poHtical. The feudal aristoc- 
racy appeared here in a very weakened condition, and with all 
the symptoms of decline; nevertheless, it was ever in a position 
to preserve a place and play an important part therein, and to 
take its share in the results. It is the same with the entire 
course of English history : never has any ancient element com- 
pletely perished ; never has any new element wholly triumphed, 
or any special principle attained to an exclusive preponderance. 
There has always been a simultaneous development of different 
forces, a compromise between their pretensions and their in- 
terests. 
Upon the continent the progress of civilization has been much 
less complex and complete. The various elements of society — 
the religious and civil orders — monarchy, aristocracy and 
democracy, have developed themselves, not together and 
abreast, but in succession. Each principle, each system has 
had, after a certain manner, its turn. Such a century belongs, I 
will not say exclusively, which would be saying too much, but 
with a very marked preponderance, to feudal aristocracy, for ex- 
ample; another belongs to the monarchical principle; a third to 
the democratical system. 
Compare the French with the English middle ages, the 
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our history with 
the corresponding centuries beyond the channel; you will find 
that at this period in France feudalism was almost absolutely 
sovereign, while royalty and the democratical principle were 
next to nullities. Look to England: it is, indeed, the feudal 
aristocracy which predominates ; but royalty and democracy 
were nevertheless powerful and important. 
Royalty triumphed in England under Elizabeth, as in France 
under Louis XIV; but how many precautions was it obliged to 
take ; to how many restrictions — now from the aristocracy, now 
from the democracy, did it submit! In England, also, each sys- 
tem and each principle has had its day of power and success, but 
never so completely, so exclusively as upon the continent; the 
conqueror has always been compelled to tolerate the presence 
of his rivals, and to allow each his share. 
With the differences in the progress of the two civilizations are 
connected advantages and disadvantages, which manifest them- 
selves, in fact, in the history of the two countries. There can be 
no doubt, for instance, but that this simultaneous development 
of the different social elements greatly contributed to carry 
England, more rapidly than any other of the continental states, 
to the final aim of all society — namely, the establishment of a 
government at once regular and free. It is precisely the nature 
of a government to concern itself for all interests and all powers, 
2o6 GUIZOT 
to reconcile them, and to induce them to live and prosper in com- 
mon ; now, such, beforehand, by the concurrence of a multitude 
of causes, was the disposition and relation of the different ele- 
ments of English society ; a general and somewhat regular gov- 
ernment had therefore less difficulty in becoming constituted 
there. So the essence of liberty is the manifestation and simul- 
taneous action of all interests, rights, powers and social ele- 
ments. England was therefore much nearer to its possessions 
than the majority of other states. For the same reasons, na- 
tional good sense, the comprehension of public affairs, neces- 
sarily formed themselves there more rapidly than elsewhere; 
political good sense consists in knowing how to estimate all 
facts, to appreciate them, and render to each its share of consid- 
eration ; this, in England, was a necessity of the social state, a 
natural result of the course of civilization. 

on the other hand, in the continental states, each system, each 
principle having had its turn, having predominated after a more 
complete and more exclusive manner, its development was 
wrought upon a larger scale, and with more grandeur and brill- 
iancy. Royalty and feudal aristocracy, for instance, came upon 
the continental stage with far greater boldness, extension and 
freedom. Our political experiments, so to speak, have been 
broader and more finished : the result of this has been that politi- 
cal ideas (I speak of general ideas, and not of good sense ap- 
plied to the conduct of affairs) and political doctrines have risen 
higher, and displayed themselves with much more rational 
vigor. Each system having, in some measure, presented itself 
alone, and having remained a long time upon the stage, men 
have been enabled to consider it in its entirety, to mount up to 
its first principles, to follow it out into its last consequences, and 
fully to unfold its theory. Whoever attentively observes the 
English character must be struck with a twofold fact — on the 
one hand, with the soundness of its good sense and its practical 
ability ; on the other, with its lack of general ideas, and its pride 
as to theoretical questions. Whether we open a work upon 
English history, upon jurisprudence, or any other subject, it is 
rarely that we find the grand reason of things, the fundamental 
reason. In all things, and especially in the political sciences, 
pure doctrine, philosophy and science, properly so called, have 
prospered much better on the continent than in England ; their 
flights have, at least, been far more powerful and bold ; and we 
cannot doubt but that the different developments of civilization 
in the two countries have greatly contributed to this result. 
For the rest, whatever we may think of the advantages or dis- 
advantages which this difference has entailed, it is a real and 
incontestable fact, the fact which most deeply distinguishes 
England from the continent. But it does not follow, because 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 207 
the different principles and social elements have been there de- 
veloped more simultaneously, here more successively, that, at 
bottom, the path and the goal have not been one and the same. 
Considered in their entirety, the continent and England have 
traversed the same grand phases of civilization ; events have, in 
either, followed the same course, and the same causes have led 
to the same effects. You have been enabled to convince your- 
selves of this fact from the picture which I have placed before 
you of civilization up to the sixteenth century, and you will 
equally recognize it in studying the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. The development of free inquiry, and that of pure 
monarchy, almost simultaneous in England, accomplished 
themselves upon the continent at long intervals ; but they did 
not accomplish themselves, and the two powers, after having 
successively preponderated with splendor, came equally, at last, 
to blows. The general path of societies, considering all things, 
has thus been the same, and though the points of difference are 
real, those of resemblance are more deeply seated. A rapid 
sketch of modern times will leave you in no doubt upon this 
subject. 
Glancing over the history of Europe in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, it is impossible not to perceive that France 
has advanced at the head of European civilization. At the 
beginning of this work I have already insisted upon this fact, 
and I have endeavored to point out its cause. We shall now 
find it more striking than ever. 
The principle of pure monarchy, of absolute royalty, pre- 
dominated in Spain under Charles V and Phillip II, before de- 
veloping itself in France under Louis XIV. In the same man- 
ner the principle of free inquiry had reigned in England in the 
seventeenth century, before developing itself in France in the 
eighteenth. Nevertheless, pure monarchy and free inquiry 
came not from Spain and England to take possession of the 
world. The two principles, the two systems remained, in a 
manner, confined to the countries in which they had arisen. It 
was necessary that they should pass through France in order 
that they might extend their conquests ; it was necessary that 
pure monarchy and free inquiry should become French in order 
to become European. This communicative character of French 
civilization, this social genius of France, which has displayed 
itself at all periods, was thus more than ever manifest at the 
period with which we now occupy ourselves. I will not further 
insist upon this fact ; it has been developed to you with as much 
reason of brilliancy in other lectures wherein you have been 
called upon to observe the influence of French literature and 
philosophy in the eighteenth century. You have seen that 
philosophic France possessed more authority over Europe, in 
20S GUIZOT 
regard to liberty, than even free England. You have seen that 
French civilization showed itself far more active and contagious 
than that of any other country. I need not, therefore, pause 
upon the details of this fact, which I mention only in order to 
rest upon it any right to confine my picture of modern European 
civilization to France alone. Between the civilization of France 
and that of the other states of Europe at this period, there have, 
no doubt, been differences, which it would have been necessary 
to bear in mind, if my present purpose had been a full and faith- 
ful exposition of the history of those civilizations ; but I must go 
on so rapidly that I am compelled to omit entire nations and 
ages, so to speak. I choose rather to concentrate your atten- 
tion for a moment upon the course of French civilization, an 
image, though imperfect, of the general course of things in 
Europe. 
The influence of France in Europe during the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries, presents itself under very different 
aspects. In the former it was French government that acted 
upon Europe and advanced at the head of general civiliza- 
tion. In the latter it was no longer to the government, but 
France herself, that the preponderance belonged. In the first 
case, it was Louis XIV and his court, afterward France and her 
opinion, that governed minds and attracted attention. In the 
seventeenth century there were peoples who, as peoples, ap- 
peared more prominently upon the scene and took a greater 
part in events, than the French people. Thus, during the thirty 
years' war, the German nation, in the English revolution, the 
English people played, in their own destinies, a much greater 
part than was played at this period by the French in theirs. So, 
also, in the eighteenth century, there were governments 
stronger, of greater consideration and more to be dreaded, than 
the French government. No doubt Frederick II, Catherine II 
and Maria Theresa, had more influence and weight in Europe 
than Louis XV; nevertheless, at both periods, it was France 
that was at the head of European civilization, placed there first, 
by its government, afterward by itself; now by the political 
action of its masters, now by its peculiar intellectual develop- 
ment. 
In order to fully understand the predominant influence in the 
course of civilization in France, and therefore in Europe, we 
must study, in the seventeenth century, French government, in 
the eighteenth, French society. We must change the plan and 
the drama according as time alters the stage and the actors. 
When we occupy ourselvies with the government of Louis 
XIV, when we endeavor to appreciate the causes of his power 
and influence in Europe, we scarcely think of anything but his 
renown, his conquests, his magnificence and the literary glory 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 209 
of his time. It is to external causes that we apply ourselves and 
attribute the European preponderance of the French govern- 
ment. But I conceive that this preponderance had deeper and 
more serious foundations. We must not believe that it was 
simply by means of victories, fetes^ or even master-works of 
genius, that Louis XIV and his government, at this epoch, 
played the part which it is impossible to deny them. 
Many of you may remember, and all of you have heard speak 
of the effect which the consular government produced in France 
twenty-nine years ago, and of the condition in which it found 
our country. Without was impending foreign invasion, and 
continual disasters were occurring in our armies ; within was an 
almost complete dissolution of power and of the people ; there 
were no revenues, no public order ; in a word, society was pros- 
trate, humiliated and disorganized : such was France on the ad- 
vent of the consulate government. Who does not recall the 
prodigious and felicitous activity of this government, that ac- 
tivity which, in a little time, secured the independence of the 
land, revived national honor, reorganized the administration, 
remodelled the legislation and, after a manner, regenerated 
society under the hand of power. 
Well, the government of Louis XIV when it commenced, did 
something analogous to this for France ; with great differences 
of times, proceedings and forms, it pursued and attained nearly 
the same results. 
Recall to your memory the state into which France was fallen 
after the government of Cardinal Richelieu, and during the 
minority of Louis XIV : the Spanish armies always on the fron- 
tiers, sometimes in the interior; continual danger of an in- 
vasion ; internal dissensions urged to extremity, civil war, the 
government weak and discredited at home and abroad. Society 
was perhaps in a less violent, but still sufficiently analogous 
state to ours, prior to the eighteenth Brumaire. It was from 
this state that the government of Louis XIV extricated France. 
His first victories had the effect of the victory of Marengo: 
they secured the country, and retrieved the national honor. I 
am about to consider this government under its principal 
aspects — in its wars, in its external relations, in its administra- 
tion, and in its legislation ; and you will see, I imagine, that the 
comparison of which I speak, and to which I attach no puerile 
importance (for I think very little of the value of historical par- 
allels), you will see, I say, that this comparison has a real founda- 
tion, and that I have a right to employ it. 
First of all let us speak of the wars of Louis XIV. The wars 
of Europe have originated, as you know, and as I have often 
taken occasion to remind you, in great popular movements. 
Urged by necessity, caprice, or any other cause, entire popula- 
14 
310 GUIZOT 
tions, sometimes numerous, sometimes in simple bands, have 
transported themselves from one territory to another. This 
was the general character of European wars until after the cru- 
sades, at the end of the thirteenth century. 
At that time began a species of wars scarcely less diflferent 
from modern wars than the above. These were the distant 
wars, undertaken no longer by the people, but by governments, 
which went at the head of their armies to seek states and ad- 
venturers afar oflf. They quitted their countries, abandoned 
their own territories, and plunged, some into Germany, others 
into Italy, and others into Africa, with no other motives than 
personal caprice. Almost all the wars of the fifteenth and even 
of a part of the sixteenth century were of this description. What 
interest — I speak not of legitimate interest — but what pos- 
sible motive had France that Charles VIII should possess the 
kingdom of Naples ? This evidently was a war dictated by no 
political consideration : the king conceived that he had a per- 
sonal right to the kingdom of Naples, and with a personal aim 
and to satisfy his personal desire, he undertook the conquest of 
a distant country, which was in no way adapted for annexation 
to his kingdom ; which, on the contrary, did nothing but com- 
promise his power externally, and internally his repose. It was 
the same with the expedition of Charles the Fifth to Africa. The 
latest war of this kind was the expedition of Charles XII 
against Russia. The wars of Louis XIV had no such character ; 
they were the wars of a regular government, fixed in the centre 
of its states, and laboring to make conquests around it, to extend 
or consolidate its territory ; in a word, they were political wars. 
They may have been just or unjust; they may have cost 
France too dearly ; there are a thousand reasons which might be 
adduced against their morality and their excess ; but they bear a 
character incomparably more rational than the antecedent 
wars : they were no longer undertaken for whim or adventure ; 
they were dictated by some serious motive ; it was some natural 
limit that it seemed desirable to attain ; some population speak- 
ing the same language that they aimed at annexing ; some point 
of defence against a neighboring power, which it was thought 
necessary to acquire. No doubt personal ambition had a share 
in these wars; but examine one after another of the wars of 
Louis XIV, particularly those of the first part of his reign, and 
you will find that they had truly political motives ; and that they 
were conceived for the interest of France, for obtaining power, 
and for the country's safety. 
The results are proofs of the fact. France of the present day 
is still, in many respects, what the wars of Louis XIV have 
made it. The provinces which he conquered, Franche-Comte, 
Flanders and Alsace, remain yet incorporated with France. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 211 
There are sensible as well as senseless conquests: those of Louis 
XIV were of the former species; his enterprises have not the un- 
reasonable and capricious character which, up to this time, was 
so general; a skilful, if not always just and wise poHcy, presided 
over them. 
Leaving the wars of Louis XIV, and passing to the consider- 
ation of his relations with foreign states, of his diplomacy, prop- 
erly so called, I find an analogous result. I have insisted upon 
the occurrence of the birth of diplomacy in Europe at the end of 
the fifteenth century. I have endeavored to show how the rela- 
tions of governments and states between themselves, up to that 
time accidental, rare and transitory, became at this period more 
regular and enduring, how they took a character of great pub- 
lic interest; how, in a word, at the end of the fifteenth, and 
during the first half of the sixteenth century, diplomacy came to 
play an immense part in events. Nevertheless, up to the seven- 
teenth century, it had not been, truly speaking, systematic; it 
had not led to long alliances, or to great, and, above all, durable 
combinations, directed, according to fixed principles, toward a 
constant aim, with that spirit of continuity which is the true 
character of established governments. During the course of 
the religious revolution, the external relations of states were 
almost completely under the power of the religious interest; the 
Protestant and CathoHc leagues divided Europe. It was in the 
seventeenth century, after the treaty of Westphalia, and under 
the influence of the government of Louis XIV, that diplomacy 
changed its character. It then escaped from the exclusive in- 
fluences of the rehgious principle; alliances and political combi- 
nations were formed upon other considerations. At the same 
time it became much more systematic, regular, and constantly 
directed toward a certain aim, according to permanent prin- 
ciples. The regular origin of this system of balance in Europe 
belongs to this period. It was under the government of Louis 
XIV that the system, together with all the considerations at- 
tached to it, truly took possession of European policy. When 
we investigate what was the general idea in regard to this sub- 
ject, what was the predominating principle of the policy of Louis 
XIV, I believe that the following is what we discover: 
I have spoken of the great struggle between the pure mon- 
achy of Louis XIV, aspiring to become universal monarchy, 
and civil and religious liberty, and the independence of states, 
under the direction of the Prince of Orange, William III. You 
have seen that the great fact of this period was the division of the 
powers under these two banners. But this fact was not then 
estimated as we estimate it now; it was hidden and unknown 
even to those who accompHshed it; the suppression of the 
system of pure monarchy and the consecration of civil and re- 
3X3 GUIZOT 
ligious liberty was, at bottom, the necessary result of the resist- 
ance of Holland and its allies to Louis XIV, but the question 
was not thus openly enunciated between absolute power and 
liberty. It has been often said that the propagation of absolute 
power was the predominant principle of the diplomacy of Louis 
XIV; but I do not believe it. This consideration played no 
very great part in his policy, until latterly, in his old age. The 
power of France, its preponderance in Europe, the humbling of 
rival powers, in a word, the political interest and strength of the 
state, was the aim which Louis XIV constantly pursued, 
whether in lighting against Spain, the Emperor of Germany or 
England ; he acted far less with a view to the propagation of ab- 
solute power than from a desire for the power and aggrandize- 
ment of France and of its government. Among many proofs, I 
will adduce one which emanates from Louis XIV himself. In 
his Memoirs, under the year 1666, if I remember right, we find a 
note nearly in these words : 
" I have had, this morning, a conversation with Mr. Sidney, 
an English gentleman, who maintained to me the possibility of 
reanimating the republican party in England. Mr. Sidney 
demanded from me, for that purpose, 400,000 livres. I told him 
that I could give no more than 200,000. He induced me to 
summon from Switzerland another English gentleman named 
Ludlow, and to converse with him of the same design." 
And, accordingly, we find among the Memoirs of Ludlow, 
about the same date, a paragraph to this effect : 
" I have received from the French government an invitation 
to go to Paris, in order to speak of the affairs of my country ; but 
I am distrustful of that government." 
And Ludlow remained in Switzerland. 
You see that the diminution of the royal power in England 
was, at this time, the aim of Louis XIV. He fomented internal 
dissensions, and labored to resuscitate the republican party, to 
prevent Charles II from becoming too powerful in his country. 
During the embassy of Barillon in England the same fact con- 
stantly reappears. Whenever the authority of Charles seemed 
to obtain the advantage and the national party seemed on the 
point of being crushed, the French ambassador directed his in- 
fluence to this side, gave money to the chiefs of the opposition, 
and fought, in a word, against absolute power, when that 
became a means of weakening a rival power to France. When- 
ever you attentively consider the conduct of external relations 
under Louis XIV, it is with this fact that you will be the most 
struck. 
You will also be struck with the capacity and skill of French 
diplomacy at this period. The names of MM. de Torcy, 
d'Avaux, de Bonrepos, are known to all well-informed persons. 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 213 
When we compare the despatches, the memoirs, the skill and 
conduct of these counsellors of Louis XIV with those of Span- 
ish, Portuguese, and German negotiators, we must be struck 
with the superiority of the French ministers ; not only as re- 
gards their earnest activity and their application to affairs, but 
also as regards their liberty of spirit. These courtiers of an 
absolute king judged of external events, of parties, of the re- 
quirements of liberty, and of popular revolutions, much better 
even than the majority of the English ministers themselves at 
this period. There was no diplomacy in Europe in the seven- 
teenth century which appears equal to the French, except the 
Dutch. The ministers of John de Witt and of William of 
Orange, those illustrious chiefs of the party of civil and re- 
ligious liberty, were the only ministers who seemed in con- 
dition to wrestle with the servants of the great and absolute 
king. 
You see, then, that whether we consider the wars of Louis 
XIV, or his diplomatical relations we arrive at the same results. 
We can easily conceive that a government, which conducted 
its wars and negotiations in this manner, should have assumed 
a high standing in Europe, and presented itself therein, not only 
as dreadworthy, but as skilful and imposing. 
Let us now consider the interior of France, the administra- 
tion and legislation of Louis XIV ; we shall there discern new 
explanations of the power and splendor of his government. 
It is difficult to determine with any degree of precision what 
we ought to understand by administration in the government 
of a state. Nevertheless, when we endeavor to investigate 
this fact, we discover, I believe, that, under the most general 
point of view, administration consists in an aggregate of means 
destined to propel, as promptly and certainly as possible, the 
will of the central power through all parts of society, and to 
make the force of society, whether consisting of men or money, 
return again, under the same conditions, to the central power. 
This, if I mistake not, is the true aim, the predominant charac- 
teristic of administration. Accordingly we find that in times 
when it is above all things needful to establish unity and order 
in society, administration is the chief means of attaining this 
end, of bringing together, of cementing, and of uniting inco- 
herent and scattered elements. Such, in fact, was the work of 
the administration of Louis XIV. Up to this time, there 
had been nothing so difficult, in France as in the 
rest of Europe, as to eflfect the penetration of the action 
of the central power into all parts of society, and to gather 
into the bosom of the central power the means of force 
existing in society. To this end Louis XIV labored, and 
succeeded, up to a certain point ; incomparably better, at least, 
214 GUIZOT 
than preceding governments had done. I cannot enter into 
details : just run over, in thought, all kinds of public services, 
taxes, roads, industry, military administration, all the estab- 
lishments which belong to whatsoever branch of administra- 
tion ; there is scarcely one of which you do not find either the 
origin, development, or great amelioration under Louis XIV. 
It was as administrators that the greatest men of his time, 
Colbert and Louvois, displayed their genius and exercised their 
ministry. It was by the excellence of its administration that 
his government acquired a generality, decision, and consistency 
which were wanting to all the European governments around 
him. 
Under the legislative point of view this reign presents to you 
the same fact. I return to the comparison which I have al- 
ready made use of, to the legislative activity of the consular 
government, to its prodigious work of revising and generally 
recasting the laws. A work of the same nature took place 
under Louis XIV. The great ordinances which he promul- 
gated, the criminal ordinances, the ordinances of procedure, 
commerce, the marine, waters, and woods, are true codes, 
which were constructed in the same manner as our codes, dis- 
cussed in the council of state, some of them under the presi- 
dency of Lamoignon. There are men whose glory consists 
in having taken part in this labor and this discussion, M. Pus- 
sort, for instance. If we were to consider it in itself, we should 
have much to say against the legislation of Louis XIV; it was 
full of vices, which now fully declare themselves, and which no 
one can deny ; it was not conceived in the interest of true justice 
and of liberty, but in the interest of public order, and for giving 
more regularity and firmness to the laws. But even that was 
a great progress ; and we cannot doubt but that the ordinances 
of Louis XIV, so very superior to anything preceding them, 
powerfully contributed to advance French society in the career 
of civilization. 
You see that under whatever point of view we regard this 
government, we very soon discover the source of its power and 
influence. It was the first government that presented itself to 
the eyes of Europe as a power sure of its position, which had 
not to dispute its existence with internal enemies — tranquil as 
to its dominions and the people, and intent only on governing. 
Up to that time all European governments had been unceasing- 
ly thrown into wars, which deprived them of security as well as 
leisure, or had been so beset with parties and internal enemies 
that they were compelled to spend their time in fighting for 
their lives. The government of Louis XIV appeared as the 
first which applied itself solely to the conduct of affairs, as a 
power at once definitive and progressive ; which was not afraid 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 215 
of innovating, because it could count upon the future. There 
have, in fact, existed very few governments of such an inno- 
vating spirit. Compare it with a government of the same 
nature, with the pure monarchy of PhiHp II in Spain; it was 
more absolute than that of Louis XIV, and yet far less regular 
and less tranquil. But how did Philip II succeed in establish- 
ing absolute power in Spain? By stifling the activity of the 
country, by refusing to it every species of amelioration, by ren- 
dering the condition of Spain completely stationary. The gov- 
ernment of Louis XIV, on the contrary, showed itself active 
in all kinds of innovations, favorable to the progress of letters, 
of arts, of riches, and, in a word, of civilization. These are the 
true causes of its preponderance in Europe; a preponderance 
such that it became upon the continent, during the whole of the 
seventeenth century, the type of government, not only for sov- 
ereigns, but even for nations. 
And now we inquire — and it is impossible to help doing so — 
how it happened that a power, thus brilliant, and, judging from 
the facts which I have placed before you, thus well established, 
so rapidly fell into decline ? How, after having played such a 
part in Europe, it became, in the next century, so inconsistent, 
weak, and inconsiderable ? The fact is incontestable. In the 
seventeenth century the French government was at the head 
of European civilization; in the eighteenth century it disap- 
peared ; and it was French society, separated from its govern- 
ment, often even opposed to it, that now preceded and guided 
the European world in its progress. 
It is here that we discover the incorrigible evil and the in- 
fallible effect of absolute power. I will not go into any detail 
concerning the faults of the government of Louis XIV ; he com- 
mitted many; I will speak neither of the war of the Spanish 
succession, nor of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, nor 
of excessive expenses, nor of many other of the fatal measures 
that compromised his fortunes. I will take the merits of the; 
government as I have described them. I will agree that per- 
haps there has never existed an absolute power more fully rec- 
ognized by its age and nation, nor one which has rendered more 
real services to the civilization of its country and of Europe in 
general. But, by the very fact that this government had no 
other principle than absolute power, and reposed upon no other 
base than this, its decline became sudden and well merited. 
What France, under Louis XIV, essentially wanted, was po- 
litical institutions and forces, independent, subsisting of them- 
selves, and, in a word, capable of spontaneous action and re- 
sistance. The ancient French institutions, if they merited that 
name, no longer existed : Louis XIV completed their ruin. He 
took no care to endeavor to replace them by new institutions ; 
2i6 GUIZOT 
they would have cramped him, and he did not choose to be 
cramped. All that appeared conspicuous at that period was 
will, and the action of central power. The government of 
Louis XIV was a great fact, a fact powerful and splendid, but 
without roots. 
Free institutions are a guarantee, not only of the wisdom 
of governments, but also of their duration. No system 
can endure except by means of institutions. When absolute 
power has endured, it has been supported by true in- 
stitutions, sometimes by the division of society into strongly 
distinct castes, sometimes by a system of religious institutions. 
Under the reign of Louis XIV institutions were wanting to 
power as well as to Hberty. In France, at this period, nothing 
guaranteed either the country against the illegitimate actions 
of the government, or the government itself against the inevita- 
ble action of time. Thus we see the government helping on 
its own decay. It was not Louis XIV alone who was becoming 
aged and weak at the end of his reign : it was the whole abso- 
lute power. Pure monarchy was as much worn out in 171 2 as 
was the monarch himself : and the evil was so much the more 
grave, as Louis XIV had abolished political morals as well as 
political institutions. There are no political morals without 
independence. He alone who feels that he has a strength of 
his own is always capable either of serving or opposing power. 
Energetic characters disappear with independent situations, 
and dignity of soul alone gives birth to security of rights. 
This, then, is the state in which Louis XIV left France and 
power: a society in full development of riches, power and all 
kinds of intellecttial activity; and side by side with this pro- 
gressive society, a government essentially stationary, having 
no means of renewing itself, of adapting itself to the move- 
ment of its people ; devoted, after half a century of the greatest 
splendor, to immobility and weakness, and already, during the 
life of its founder, fallen into a decline which seemed like disso- 
lution. Such was the condition of France at the conclusion 
of the seventeenth century, a condition which impressed the 
epoch that followed with a direction and a character so dif- 
ferent 
I need hardly say that the onward impulse of the human 
mind, that free inquiry was the predominating feature, the es- 
sential fact of the eighteenth century. You have already heard 
much concerning this fact from this chair; already you have 
heard that powerful epoch characterized by a philosophical ora- 
tor, and by that of an eloquent philosopher. I cannot pretend, 
in the short space of time which remains to me, to trace all 
the phases of the great moral revolution which then accom- 
plished itself, I would, nevertheless, fain not leave you with- 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 217 
out calling your attention to some characteristics which have 
been too little remarked upon. 
The first — one which strikes me most, and which I have 
already mentioned — is the, so to speak, almost complete dis- 
appearance of the government in the course of the eighteenth 
century, and the appearance of the human mind as the prin- 
cipal and almost the only actor. 
Except in that which is connected with external relations un- 
der the ministry of the Due de Choiseul, and in certain great 
concessions made to the general tendency of opinion, for in- 
stance, in the American war; except, I say, in some events of 
this nature, perhaps there has scarcely ever been so inactive, 
apathetic and inert a government as was the French govern- 
ment of this period. Instead of the energetic, ambitious gov- 
ernment of Louis XIV which appeared everywhere, and put 
itself at the head of everything, you have a government which 
labored only to hide itself, to keep itself in the background, 
so weak and compromised did it feel itself to be. Activity and 
ambition had passed over wholly to the people. It was the 
nation which, by its opinion and its intellectual movement, 
mingled itself with all things, interfered in all, and, in short, 
alone possessed moral authority, which is the only true au- 
thority. 
A second characteristic which strikes me, in the condition 
of the human mind in the eighteenth century, is the universality 
of free inquiry. Up to that time, and particularly in the sev- 
enteenth century, free inquiry had been exercised within a lim- 
ited and partial field; it had had for its object sometimes re- 
ligious questions, sometimes religious and political questions 
together, but it did not extend its pretensions to all subjects. In 
the eighteenth century, on the contrary, the character of free 
inquiry is universality ; religion, politics, pure philosophy, man 
and society, moral and material nature, all at the same time be- 
came the object of study, doubt and system; ancient sciences 
were overturned, new sciences were called into existence. The 
movement extended itself in all directions, although it had 
emanated from one and the same impulse. 
This movement, moreover, had a peculiar character; one 
which, perhaps, is not to be met elsewhere in the history of 
the world ; it was purely speculative. Up to that time, in all 
great human revolutions, action had commingled itself with 
speculation. Thus, in the sixteenth century, the religious rev- 
olution began with ideas, with purely intellectual discussions, 
but it very soon terminated in events. The heads of intellec- 
tual parties soon became the heads of political parties; the 
realities of life were mixed with the labor of the understanding. 
Thus, too, it happened in the seventeenth century, in the Eng- 
2i8 GUIZOT 
lish revolution. But in France, in the eighteenth century, you 
find the human spirit exercising itself upon all things, upon 
ideas which, connecting themselves with the real interests of 
life, seemed calculated to have the most prompt and powerful 
influence upon facts. Nevertheless, the leaders and actors of 
these great discussions remained strangers to all species of 
practical activity — mere spectators, who observed, judged and 
spoke, without ever interfering in events. At no other time 
has the government of facts, of external realities, been so 
completely distinct from the government of minds. The sep- 
aration of the spiritual and temporal orders was never com- 
pletely real in Europe until the eighteenth century. For the 
first time, perhaps, the spiritual order developed itself wholly 
apart from the temporal order; an important fact, and one 
which exercised a prodigious influence upon the course of 
events. 
It gave to the ideas of the time a singular character of 
ambition and inexperience ; never before had philosophy 
aspired so strongly to rule the world, never had philosophy 
been so little acquainted with the world. It became obvious 
that a day must arrive for coming to facts ; for the intellectual 
movement to pass into external events ; and as they had been 
totally separated, their meeting was the more difficult, the shock 
far more violent. 
How can we now be surprised with another character of 
the condition of the human mind at this epoch, I mean its pro- 
digious boldness? Up to that time its greatest activity had 
always been confined by certain barriers ; the mind of man had 
always existed amid facts, whereof some inspired it with cau- 
tion, and, to a certain extent, checked its movements. In the 
eighteenth century, I should be at a loss to say what external 
facts the human mind respected, or what external facts exer- 
cised any empire over it ; it hated or despised the entire social 
state. It concluded, therefore, that it was called upon to re- 
form all things ; it came to consider itself a sort of creator ; 
institutions, opinions, manners, society, and man himself, all 
seemed to require reform, and human reason charged itself 
with the enterprise. What audacity equal to this had ever be- 
fore been imagined by it ! 
Such was the power which, in the course of the eighteenth 
century, confronted what still remained of the government of 
Louis XIV. You perceive that it was impossible to avoid the 
occurrence of a shock between these two so unequal forces. 
The predominant fact of the English revolution, the struggle 
between free inquiry and pure monarchy, was now also to burst 
forth in France. No doubt the differences were great, and 
these necessarily perpetuated themselves in the results; but, 
CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE 219 
at bottom, the general conditions were similar, and the defini- 
tive event had the same meaning. 
I do not pretend to exhibit the infinite consequences of this 
struggle. The time for concluding this course of lectures has 
arrived ; I must check myself. I merely desire, before leaving 
you, to call your attention to the most grave, and, in my opinion, 
the most instructive fact which was revealed to us by this great 
struggle. This is the danger, the evil, and the insurmountable 
vice of absolute power, whatever form, whatever name it may 
bear, and toward whatever aim it may direct itself. You have 
seen that the government of Louis XIV perished by almost 
this cause only. Well, the power which succeeded it, the human 
mind, the true sovereign of the eighteenth century, suffered the 
same fate ; in its turn, it possessed an almost absolute power ; it, 
in its turn, placed an excessive confidence in itself. Its on- 
ward impulse was beautiful, good, most useful; and were it 
necessary that I should express a definitive opinion, I should 
say that the eighteenth century appears to me to have been 
one of the greatest ages of history, that which, perhaps, has done 
the greatest services for humanity, that which has in the great- 
est degree aided its progress, and rendered that progress of the 
most general character : were I asked to pronounce upon it as a 
public administration, I should pronounce in its favor. But it is 
not the less true that, at this epoch, the human mind, possessed 
of absolute power, became corrupted and misled by it; hold- 
ing established facts and former ideas in an illegitimate disdain 
and aversion ; an aversion which carried it into error and tyr- 
anny. The share of error and tyranny, indeed, which mingled 
itself with the triumph of human reason, at the end of this cen- 
tury, a portion which we cannot conceal from ourselves, was 
very great and which we must proclaim and not deny; this 
portion of error and tyranny was chiefly the result of extrava- 
gance into which the mind of man had been thrown, at this 
period, by the extension of his power. 
It is the duty, and, I believe, it will be the peculiar merit of 
our times, to know that all power, whether intellectual or tem- 
poral, whether belonging to governments or people, to philos- 
ophers or ministers, whether exercising itself in one cause or 
in another, bears wathin itself a natural vice, a principle of weak- 
ness and of abuse which ought to render it limited. Now 
nothing but the general freedom of all rights, all interests and 
all opinions, the free manifestation and legal co-existence of all 
these forces, can ever restrain each force and each power within 
its legitimate limits, prevent it from encroaching on the rest, 
and, in a word, cause the real and generally profitable existence 
of free inquiry. Herein consists for us the grand lesson of 
the struggle which occurred at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
2 20 GUIZOT 
tury, between absolute temporal power and absolute spiritual 
power. 
I have now arrived at the term which I proposed to myself. 
You remember that my object in commencing this course was 
to present you with a general picture of the development of 
European civilization, from the fall of the Roman Empire to 
our own days. I have traversed this career very rapidly and 
without being able to inform you, far from it, of all that was 
important, or to bring proofs of all that I have said. I have 
been compelled to omit much and often to request you to be- 
lieve me upon my word. I hope, nevertheless, that I have at- 
tained my aim, which was to mark the grand crisis in the de- 
velopment of modern society. Allow me yet one word more. 
I endeavored, in the beginning, to define civilization and to 
describe the fact which bears this name. Civilization seemed 
to me to consist of two principal facts: the development of 
human society and that of man himself ; on the one hand, po- 
litical and social development ; on the other, internal and moral 
development. I have confined myself so far to the history of 
society. I have presented civilization only under the social 
point of view; and have said nothing of the development of 
man himself. I have not endeavored to unfold to you the 
history of opinions, of the moral progress of humanity. I pro- 
pose, when we meet again, to confine myself especially to 
France, to study with you the history of French civilization, to 
study it in detail and under its various aspects. I shall en- 
deavor to make you acquainted, not only with the history of 
society in France, but also with that of man ; to be present with 
you at the progress of institutions, of opinions and of intellectual 
works of all kinds; and to arrive thus at a complete under- 
standing of the development of our glorious country in its 
entirety. In the past, as well as in the future, our country may 
well lay claim to our tenderest affections. 
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