[Gibbon by James Cotter Morison]@TWC D-Link book
Gibbon

CHAPTER IX
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CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL.
The thousand years between the fifth and the fifteenth century comprise the middle age, a period which only recently, through utterly inadequate conceptions of social growth, was wont to be called the dark ages.

That long epoch of travail and growth, during which the old field of civilisation was broken up and sown afresh with new and various seed unknown to antiquity, receives now on all hands due recognition, as being one of the most rich, fertile, and interesting in the history of man.

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.


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