The Beginning of the Middle Ages

From the preface: "MODERN HISTORY is separated from ancient by two great and unparalleled catastrophes; and from the changes occasioned by these catastrophes in the materials and conditions of society in Europe modern history took its beginnings. One was the destruction of the Jewish State and temple. The other was the break-up of the Roman Empire. These two catastrophes, though divided by a considerable interval of time, and altogether different in their operation, were in various ways closely combined in their effects on the state of the world. They were catastrophes of the same order: the overthrow and passing away of the old, in things most deeply concerning human life, that the new might come. Without them that new settlement or direction of human affairs, under which the last fifteen centuries have been passed, would have been inconceivable and impossible. The fall of Jerusalem was the evident close of a theocracy which, up to that time, had for ages counted on a divine guarantee, and which looked forward, without doubt, to ending only in the consummation of a Messianic triumph. It was the apparent extinction of the visible kingdom of God on earth: the doom pronounced by the course of events on claims and hopes which, to those who lived under them, seemed the most sure of all things. The fall of the Roman Empire was the overthrow of the greatest, the strongest, and the most firmly-settled State which the world had ever known: the dislocation and reversal of the long-received ideas and assumptions of mankind, of their habits of thinking, of the customs of life, of the conclusions of experience. The one cleared the ground for the Christian religion and the Christian Church, to which ancient Judaism, if it had still subsisted, unhumbled and active, with its wonderful history and uncompromising pretensions, would have been a most formidable rival. The other made room, and prepared materials, not only for new nations, but for new forms of political and social order, then beyond all possibility of being anticipated or understood; for the new objects and ambitions, the new powers and achievements, which have distinguished modern times, at their worst, as well as at their best, from those of all ancient civilisations."