THIS book aims to give as full and fair an account of medieval civilization,
from A.D. 325 to 1300, as space and prejudice will permit. Its method
is integral history--the presentation of all phases of a culture or an age in one
total picture and narrative. The obligation to cover the economic, political,
legal, military, moral, social, religious, educational, scientific, medical, philo-
sophic, literary, and artistic aspects of four distinct civilizations--Byzantine,
Islamic, Judaic, and West European--has made unification and brevity dif-
ficult. The meeting and conflict of the four cultures in the Crusades provides
a measure of unity; and the tired reader, appalled by the length of the book,
may find some consolation in learning that the original manuscript was half
again longer than the present text. ^* Nothing has been retained except what
seemed necessary to the proper understanding of the period, or to the life
and color of the tale. Nevertheless certain recondite passages, indicated by
reduced type, may be omitted by the general reader without mortal injury.

These two volumes constitute Part IV of a history of civilization. Part I,
Our Oriental Heritage ( 1935), reviewed the history of Egypt and the Near
East to their conquest by Alexander about 330 B.C., and of India, China, and
Japan to the present century. Part II, The Life of Greece ( 1939), recorded
the career and culture of Hellas and the Near East to the Roman Conquest
of Greece in 146 B.C.Part III, Caesar and Christ ( 1944), surveyed the history
of Rome and Christianity from their beginnings, and of the Near East from
146 B.C., to the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. This book continues the study
of the white man's life to the death of Dante in 1321. Part V, The Renaissance
and the Reformation, covering the period from 1321 to 1648, should appear
in 1955; and Part VI, The Age of Reason, carrying the story to our own
time, should be ready by 1960. This will bring the author so close to senility
that he must forgo the privilege of applying the integral method to the two
Americas.

Each of these volumes is designed as an independent unit, but readers
familiar with Caesar and Christ will find it easier to pick up the threads of
the present narrative. Chronology compels us to begin with those facets of
the quadripartite medieval civilization which are most remote from our
normal interest--the Byzantine and the Islamic. The Christian reader will be
surprised by the space given to the Moslem culture, and the Moslem scholar
will mourn the brevity with which the brilliant civilization of medieval

-vii-