Under the action of Latin Christianity and the antique culture the mediaeval genius developed, as it fused the constituents of its growth into temperament and power. Its energies were neither to produce an extension of knowledge, nor originate substantial novelties either of thought or imaginative conception. They were rather to expend themselves in the creation of new forms--forms of apprehending and presenting what was (or might be) known from the old books, and all that from century to century was ever more plastically felt. This principle is most important for the true appreciation of the intellectual and emotional phenomena of the Middle Ages. When a sublime religion is presented to capable but half-civilized peoples, and at the same time an acquaintance is opened to them with the education, the knowledge, the literature of a great civilization, they cannot create new forms or presentations of what they have received, until the same has been assimilated, and has become plastic in their minds, as it were, part of their faculty and feeling. Manifestly the northern peoples could not at once transmute the lofty and superabundant matter of Latin Christianity and its accompanying Latin culture, and present the same in new forms. Nor in truth could Italy, involved as she was in a disturbed decadence, wherein she seemed to be receding from an understanding of the nobler portions of her antique and Christian heritage, rather than progressing toward a vital use of one or the other. In Spain and France there was some decadence among Latinized provincials; and the Teutonic conquerors were novices in both Christianity and Latinity. In these lands neither decadence nor the novelty of the matter was the sole embarrassment, but both combined to hinder creativeness, although the decadence was less obvious than in Italy, and the newness of the matter less utter than in Germany. The ancient material was appropriated, and then re-expressed in new forms, through two general ways of transmutation, the intellectual and the emotional. Although patently distinguishable, these would usually work together, with one or the other dominating the joint progress.