them. Some beginnings of democracy resulted, and a constitution arose under which the rulers of
the city were elected by the citizens. In various northern cities, but especially in Bologna, there
was a learned class of lay lawyers, well versed in Roman law; moreover the rich laity, from the
twelfth century onwards, were much better educated than the feudal nobility north of the Alps.
Although they sided with the Pope against the Emperor, the rich commercial cities were not
ecclesiastical in their outlook. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many of them adopted
heresies of a Puritan sort, like the merchants of England and Holland after the Reformation. Later,
they tended to be free-thinkers, paying lip-service to the Church, but destitute of all real piety.
Dante is the last of the old type, Boccaccio the first of the new.
THE CRUSADESThe Crusades need not concern us as wars, but they have a certain importance in relation to
culture. It was natural for the papacy to take the lead in the initiating of a Crusade, since the object
was (at least ostensibly) religious; thus the power of the popes was increased by the war
propaganda and by the religious zeal that was excited. Another important effect was the massacre
of large numbers of Jews; those who were not massacred were often despoiled of their property
and forcibly baptized. There were large-scale murders of Jews in Germany at the time of the first
Crusade, and in England, at the time of the third Crusade, on the accession of Richard CÅ“ur de
Lion. York, where the first Christian Emperor had begun his reign, was, aptly enough, the scene of
one of the most appalling mass-atrocities against Jews. The Jews, before the Crusades, had almost
a monopoly of the trade in Eastern goods throughout Europe; after the Crusades, as a result of the
persecution of Jews, this trade was largely in Christian hands.
Another and very different effect of the Crusades was to stimulate literary intercourse with
Constantinople. During the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, many translations from Greek
into Latin were made as a result of this intercourse. There had always been much trade with
Constantinople, especially by Venetians; but Italia