Amid all this turmoil of the upper classes, one would like much to know what was the condition, what the lives, of the common people. Unfortunately, the data are very slight. We see dimly the peasant staring from his field as the armed knights ride by; we see him fleeing to the shelter of the forests before more savage bandits. We see the people of the cities drawing together, building walls around their towns, and defying in their turn their so-called "overlords." We see Henry the City-builder thus become champion of the lower classes, despite the strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly disinterested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants drift along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of all, we see one Arnold of Brescia,[16] an Italian monk, advocating a democracy, actually urging a return to what he supposed early Rome to have been, a government by the masses. Arnold, too, you see, was in advance of his time. He was executed by the advice of even so good and wise a man as St. Bernard. But the principle of modern life was there, the germ seems to have been planted. These humble people of the cities, "citizens," grow to be rulers of the world. [Footnote 16: See _Antipapal Democratic Movement_ page 340.] There was a revival, too, of learning in this quieter age. Schools and universities become clearly visible. Abelard teaches at the great University of Paris, lectures to "forty thousand students," if one chooses to believe in such carrying power of his voice, or such radiating power of his influence at second hand through those who heard. The arts spring up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries, queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation is improved. Manuscripts are gorgeously illumined. Paintings and mosaics, though of the crudest, reappear on long-barren walls. Civilization begins to advance with increasing stride. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Of all the influences that through these wandering and desolate ages had sustained humanity and helped it onward, the mightiest has been left to speak of last. It was Christianity, a Christianity which had by now taken definite form as the Roman Catholic Church. Strongest of all the institutions bequeathed by the ancient empire to her conquerors was this Church. Indeed, it has been said that Rome had influenced Christianity quite as much as Christianity did Rome. The legal-minded Romans insisted on the laying out of exact doctrines and creeds, on the building of a definite organization, a priesthood, a hierarchy. They lent the weight of law to what had been but individual belief and impulse. Thus the Church grew hard and strong.