The Balearic Islands, lying in such convenient proximity to the mainland, were then possessed by the active and enterprising Moors--that most daring and doing race, who had planted the standard of the Prophet in Southern Europe. From these convenient islands they could organize pleasant surprises upon the coasts of Italy, and gratify themselves with much plunder. While human nature can bear and does bear much marauding, there comes a time when endurance ceases to be a virtue, and then--war ensues. Such a time had come in the twelfth century, when the Pisans, and their friends along the Italian coasts, determined to plunder, rather than be plundered; and then they pounced upon the hated Moors of the islands, and turned the tables upon them. It is believed that, among the spoils carried away to Italy, were many pieces of the peculiar wares made by the Moors in these islands as well as in Spain. That these examples, and some of the potters themselves, were carried away to the Italian coast, is most likely; and that the Italians, always a people with quick sensibilities, and a ready perception of the beautiful, if not of the good or the true, at once saw that here was a manufacture ready to their hands, which combined use and beauty, as their own did not. At any rate, it was during the most vivid period of the _Italian Renaissance_ (1350 to 1600) that the production of the highly-decorated fictile work, known as Maiolica, sprang up, culminated, and went to decay. Through the centuries called the Dark Ages, art and literature had not died; their fires were kept bright in the monkish cell, where some Alcuin, in England or in France, traced with painful pen the lives of the saints, or the romaunts of the Lady; and touched their illuminated margins with those exquisite colors which feed the eye with a pleasant surprise now, when centuries have passed, and books lie about our feet as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa's vales. During this dark time art and literature flourished among the Saracens along the African coast, and grew into splendor in the halls of Cordova and Seville. But a day was at hand when Peter the Hermit made his pilgrimage to the "Holy City" (1093), and came back to preach his fiery crusades against the abominations with which the Moslems defiled the sepulchre of the Lord. Then through some two centuries Europe was converted into religious camps, from which streamed out toward Jerusalem the armies of the Cross--the Crusaders--and that Oriental world was thus mingled in a great warlike confusion with the Occidental world of Europe.