[Illustration: FIG. 59. THE EDUCATIONAL PYRAMID
(From Smith, W. R., _Educational Sociology_, p. 176)
The concave pyramid suggests comparative numbers. Formal education began
at the top, and has slowly worked downward.]
THE REVIVAL OF COMMERCE. The first city of mediaeval Europe to obtain
commercial prominence was Venice. She early sold salt and fish obtained
from the lagoons to the Lombards in the Valley of the Po, and sent trading
ships to the Greek East. By the year 1000 Venetian ships were bringing the
luxuries and riches of the Orient to Venice, and the city soon became a
great trading center. There the partially civilized Christian knight
"spent splendidly," and the Bohemian, German, and Hunnish lords came [30]
to buy such of the luxuries of the East as they could afford. By 1100
Venice was a free City-State, the mistress of the Adriatic, and the trade
of the East with Christian Europe passed over her wharves. From the
Crusades she profited greatly, carrying knights eastward in the great
fleet she had developed, and carpets, fabrics, perfumes, spices, dyes,
drugs, silks, and precious stones on the return voyage. From Tana and
Trebizond her traders penetrated far into the interior. Her ships and
merchants "held the Golden East in fee." By 1400 she was the wealthiest
and most powerful city in Europe.
[Illustration: FIG. 60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES]
Genoa in time became the great rival of Venice. Marseilles also developed
a large trade in the Mediterranean and with the north. From these three
cities trade routes ran to the cities of Flanders, England, and Germany,
as is shown in the map below. By the thirteenth century, Augsburg,
Nuremburg, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Luebeck, Bremen, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres,
Bruges, and London were developing into great commercial cities. Despite
bad roads, bad bridges, [31] bad inns, "robber knights" and bandits, the
commerce once carried on by Rome with her provinces was reviving. Great
fairs, or yearly markets, came to be held in the large interior towns, to
which merchants came from near and far to display and exchange their
wares, and, still more important, from the standpoint of advancing general
education, to exchange ideas and experiences. The "luxuries" displayed at
these markets by traveling merchants from the south--salt, pepper, spices,
sugar, drugs, dyestuffs, glass beads, glassware, table implements,
perfumes, ornaments, underwear, articles of dress, silks, velvets,
carpets, rugs--dazzled and astounded the simple townspeople of western
Europe. These fairs became educational forces of a high order.
THE REVIVAL OF INDUSTRY AND BANKING. The trading of articles at seaports
and at the interior city fairs came first, and this soon worked a
revolution in industry. Instead of agriculture being almost the only
occupation, and the feeding of the local population the only purpose, with
only such arts and industries practiced as were needed to supply the wants
of the townsmen, it now became possible to create a surplus to barter at
the fairs for luxuries from the outside. Local industries, heretofore of
but little importance, now developed into trades, and the manufacture of
articles for outside sale was begun. At first manufacturing was very
limited in scope, and confined largely to local handicrafts or the
imitation of imported articles, but later new and important industries
arose--the glass industry in Venice, the gold and silver industry of
Florence, the weaving industry at Mainz and Erfurt, and the wool industry
of Flanders. The craftsman and artisan, as well as the merchant and
trader, were now developed in the towns, and soon became important members
of the new social order. As serfs and villeins [32] were set free from the
land [33] they came to the towns, adding more members to the new