THE prospective reader deserves a friendly notice that The Reformation is not quite an honest title for this book. An accurate title would be: A History of European Civilization Outside of Italy from 1300 to 1564, or Thereabouts, Including the History of Religion in Italy and an Incidental View of Islamic and Judaic Civilization in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia. Why so meandering a thematic frontier? Because Volume IV (The Age of Faith) in this Story of Civilization brought European history only to 1300, and Volume V (The Renaissance) confined itself to Italy, 1304-1576, deferring the Italian echoes of the Reformation. So this Volume VI must begin at 1300; and the reader will be amused to find that Luther arrives on the scene only after a third of the tale has been told. But let us privately agree that the Reformation really began with John Wyclif and Louis of Bavaria in the fourteenth century, progressed with John Huss in the fifteenth, and culminated explosively in the sixteenth with the reckless monk of Wittenberg. Those whose present interest is only in the religious revolution may omit Chapters III-VI and IX-X without irreparable loss.
If the Reaper will stay his hand, there will be a concluding Volume VII, The Age of Reason, which should appear some five years hence, and should carry the story of civilization to Napoleon. There we shall make our bow and retire, deeply grateful to all who have borne the weight of these tomes on their hands, and have forgiven numberless errors in our attempt to unravel the present into its constituent past. For the present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for our understanding.
Will Durant The Story Of Civilization Pdf Download
The first volume of the expansive Pulitzer Prize-winning series The Story of Civilization. Discover a history of civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China, and Japan from the beginning; with an introduction on the nature and foundations of civilization.
There were members who boldly asserted inParliament that the Portugueze did not like theEnglish. A more groundless assertion had seldombeen hazarded there. The connexion betweenEngland and Portugal was not an ordinaryone, built upon immediate interests, and liableto change with the chance of circumstances.There were nations with whom, during the longstruggle against Buonaparte, we were in leagueone day, and at war the next, the hostility beingwithout anger, and the alliance without esteem.Our friendship with Portugal was like our enmityto France, founded upon something deeper. Fromthe day when Portugal first became a kingdom,with the exception of that unfortunate periodwhen the Philips usurped its crown, England hadbeen its tried and faithful friend. When Lisbonwas conquered from the Moors, English crusadersassisted at the siege; ... English archerscontributed to the victory of Aljubarrota, whicheffected the first deliverance of Portugal fromCastille; ... an Englishwoman, a Plantagenet,388was the mother of that Prince Henry, whosename will for ever remain conspicuous in thehistory of the world; ... the Braganzan family,when it recovered its rights, applied, and not invain, to its hereditary ally; ... and when Lisbonwas visited by the tremendous earthquake of1755, money was immediately voted by theEnglish parliament for the relief of the Portuguezepeople; and ships laden with provisionswere dispatched to them in a time of scarcity athome13. These things are not forgotten ... ifthere be a country in the world where the characterof the English is understood, and Englandis loved as well as respected, it is Portugal. Theface of its rudest mountaineer brightens whenhe hears that it is an Englishman who accostshim; and he tells the traveller that the Englishand the Portugueze were always ... always friends. 2ff7e9595c
Comments