Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1958

Abstract

Towns as centers of a population devoted to commercial activity or as communities endowed with legal entity hardly existed anywhere in medieval Europe before the eleventh century. Some towns had survived the disorder of the Dark Ages, since societies require meeting places for religious purposes, to administer justice, and to muster military forces. These early centers were often located in old Roman towns where bishops resided, along well-established trade routes over which a trickle of commerce still passed, or on high ground which afforded some defensive advantage against the lawless bands of rovers or foreign invaders. Many early town were fortresses as well as episcopal residences. Walled and protected by deep moats, the town surrounded a castle in the center which served both as the home of the territorial lord and as a place of refuge for the neighboring population. In France these fortresstowns were called bourgs, and in Germany and England they were known as burgs and boroughs respectively. During the Dark Ages towns and town life constituted but a minor part of life and involved relatively few people. Nevertheless, towns and bourgs were the steppingstones in the development of European cities. [excerpt]

Comments

This is a part of Section V: The Rise of Capitalism and the National State to 1500. The Contemporary Civilization page lists all additional sections of Ideas and Institutions of Western Man, as well as the Table of Contents for both volumes.

More About Contemporary Civilization:

From 1947 through 1969, all first-year Gettysburg College students took a two-semester course called Contemporary Civilization. The course was developed at President Henry W.A. Hanson’s request with the goal of “introducing the student to the backgrounds of contemporary social problems through the major concepts, ideals, hopes and motivations of western culture since the Middle Ages.”

Gettysburg College professors from the history, philosophy, and religion departments developed a textbook for the course. The first edition, published in 1955, was called An Introduction to Contemporary Civilization and Its Problems. A second edition, retitled Ideas and Institutions of Western Man, was published in 1958 and 1960. It is this second edition that we include here. The copy we digitized is from the Gary T. Hawbaker ’66 Collection and the marginalia are his.

COinS