The all-embracing despotism of Rome was
replaced by the endless local divisions and subdivisions of feudal
tenure. The multiform rites and beliefs of polytheism were replaced by
the single faith and paramount authority of the Catholic Church. The
philosophies of Greece were dethroned, and the scholastic theology
reigned in their stead. The classic tongues crumbled away, and out of
their _debris_ arose the modern idioms of France, Italy, and Spain, to
which were added in Northern Europe the new forms of Teutonic speech.
The fine and useful arts took a new departure; slavery was mitigated
into serfdom; industry and commerce became powers in the world as they
had never been before; the narrow municipal polity of the old world
was in time succeeded by the broader national institutions based on
various forms of representation. Gunpowder, America, and the art of
printing were discovered, and the most civilised portion of mankind
passed insensibly into the modern era.
Such was the wide expanse which spread out before Gibbon when he
resolved to continue his work from the fall of the Western Empire to
the capture of Constantinople.
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