Anyone who has studied even perfunctorily the Books of the Arts and of the Deeds of the Thirteenth Century, who has realized its accomplishments in enduring artistic creations, sublime and exemplary models and inspirations for all after time, who has appreciated what it succeeded in doing for the education of the classes and of the masses, the higher education being provided for at least as large a proportion of the people as in our present century, while the creation of what were practically great technical schools that culled out of the masses the latent geniuses who could accomplish supreme artistic results in the arts and crafts and did more and better for the masses than any subsequent generation, can scarcely help but turn with interest to read the Book of the Words of the period and to find out what forms of literature interested this surprising people. One is almost sure to think at the first moment of consideration that the literature will not be found worthy of the other achievements of the times. In most men's minds the Thirteenth Century does not readily call up the idea of a series of great works in literature, whose influence has been at all as profound and enduring as that of the universities in the educational order, or of the Cathedrals in the artistic order. This false impression, however, is due only to the fact that the literary creations of the Thirteenth Century are so diverse in subject and in origin, that they are very seldom associated with each other, unless there has been actual recognition of their contemporaneousness from deliberate calling to mind of the dates at which certain basic works in our modern literatures were composed. It is not the least surprise that comes to the student of the Thirteenth Century, to find that the great origins of what well deserves the name of classic modern literature, comprising a series of immortal works in prose and poetry, were initiated by the contemporaries of the makers of the {167} universities and the builders of the Cathedrals. If we stop to think for a moment it must be realized, that generations who succeeded in expressing themselves so effectively in other departments of esthetics could scarcely be expected to fail in literature alone, and they did not. From the Cid in Spain, through the Arthur Legends in England, the Nibelungen in Germany, the Minnesingers and the Meistersingers in the southern part of what is now the German Empire, the Trouvères in North France, the Troubadours in South France and in Italy, down to Dante, who was 35 before the century closed, there has never been such a mass of undying literature written within a little more than a single hundred years, as came during the period from shortly before 1200 down to 1300. Great as was the Fifth Century before Christ in this matter it did not surpass the Thirteenth Century after Christ in its influence on subsequent generations.