The end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth mark its full expansion; it is the twentieth year of life, with its poetry, its dreams, its enthusiasm, its generosity, its daring.

Love overflowed with vigor; men everywhere had but one desire--to devote themselves to some great and holy cause.
Curiously enough, though Europe was more parcelled out than ever, it felt a new thrill run through its entire extent.

There was what we might call a state of European consciousness.
In ordinary periods each people has its own interests, its tendencies, its tears, and its joys; but let a time of crisis come, and the true unity of the human family will suddenly make itself felt with a strength never before suspected.

Each body of water has its own currents, but when the hurricane is abroad they mysteriously intermingle, and from the ocean to the remotest mountain lake the same tremor will upheave them all.
It was thus in '89, it was thus also in the thirteenth century.
Never was there less of frontier, never, either before or since, such a mingling of nationalities; and at the present day, with all our highways and railroads, the people live more apart.[1] The great movement of thought of the thirteenth century is above all a religious movement, presenting a double character--it is popular and it is laic.

It comes out from the heart of the people, and it looks athwart many uncertainties at nothing less than wresting the sacred things from the hands of the clergy.
The conservatives of our time who turn to the thirteenth century as to the golden age of authoritative faith make a strange mistake.