Our preliminary study will therefore be wisely limited to an inquiry into the conditions of life and thought in the eleventh century which facilitated or prompted the great movement. THESE CONDITIONS WERE PROMINENTLY: 1. The intellectual and moral state of society in the eleventh century, especially its rudeness and warlike spirit. 2. The institution of chivalry, the awakening of better ideals of heroism. 3. The feudal system, which provided for the easy mobilization of men in war or adventure. 4. The impoverished condition of Europe, which forced enterprise to seek its reward in foreign countries. 5. The papal policy to consolidate and universalize the ecclesiastical empire. 6. The menace of Mohammedanism under the Saracenic and Turkish powers. 7. The prevailing superstition, which credited to pilgrimage the virtues of piety, and substituted exploits in the Holy Land for the plainer duties of holy life. CHAPTER II. STATE OF SOCIETY—IGNORANCE—DULNESS OF LIFE—SUPERSTITION—LOW SENSE OF JUSTICE—CRUELTY—TASTE FOR WAR. Cardinal Baronius, the historian of the church down to the year 1198, designated the period which then closed as the Dark Ages. The propriety of the title has insured its perpetuity. The era of the crusades is almost evenly divided by the date which all scholars, following Baronius, regard as marking the end of the worst and the beginning of better times. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were the battle-ground on which the grim spectres of the old met the bright advancing spirits of the new civilization. It must be remembered that the peoples then dominant were the descendants of those barbaric hordes whose irruption from northern Europe and western Asia had swept away the Roman empire. The fierce spirit of the Frank in Gaul, of the Goth in Spain, and of the Lombard in Italy was not yet tempered by the arts and philosophy their fathers had so nearly destroyed, and whose renaissance had not yet begun. It was but a few generations since the people that had inherited the Roman civilization had been largely exterminated. So complete had been the ravage that in the eighth century much of the land in Italy still remained forest and marsh, a condition to which it had reverted. Parcels of ground were purchased by strangers as _eremi_, the title secured by the fact of having cleared and cultivated any given spot. The reader can readily paint his own picture of the society which settled these lands by recalling such facts as that from 900 to 930 Italy was under the Huns; in 911 Normandy was conquered by Rollo the Dane; in 1029 the Normans possessed themselves of the south of Italy.