This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1937 edition. Excerpt: ... P. Lehugeur, Histoire de Philippe le Long, p. 368 (Paris. alive deter counterfeiters from the temptation of exploiting, a state of affairs so favourable to them. From the end of the twelfth century the disorder of th& currency had reached such a point that a reform became absolutely necessary. It is significant that the initiative came from the greatest commercial centre of the age, Venice. In 1192 the doge, Henry Dandolo, caused an entirely new land of coin to be struck there, the groat, or gros or matapan, weighing a little over 2 grammes of silver and of the value of 12 of the old deniers. This groat was thus equivalent to the Carolingian sou, with the difference that the sou, originally a money of account, now became a real coin. Charlemagne's system was not abandoned and the innovation maintained his scale of coinage. All it did was to take advantage of the continual fall of the denier, to substitute for it a new denier, of twelve times the value (whence its name of grossus), which in fact corresponded exactly to the old sou, which from a mere figure now became an integral part of the currency. In other words, the new system remained faithful to the old, except that it gave it a metallic value which was twelve times higher. The old denier was not suppressed; the groat took its place beside it as the money of commerce, reducing the denier in practice to the rank of small change. The Venetian groat answered the needs of the merchants so well that it was immediately imitated in all the towns of Lombardy and Tuscany. But north of the Alps, too, attempts were made to remedy the debasement of the coinage, which was by now intolerable. In Germany, where it seems to have been worst of all, the Heller (so called from the town of Halle in Swabia...

This posthumous work of the renowned scholar Henri Pirenne (originally published in 1939) offered a new and decisive explanation of the evolution of Europe from the time of Constantine to that of Charlemagne. His revolutionary ideas overthrew many of the most cherished conceptions concerning the Middle Ages: namely that "the Germanic invasions destroyed neither the Mediterranean unity of the ancient world, nor the essential features of Roman culture" and that "the cause of the break with the tradition of antiquity was the advance of Islam..."

First published in 2005. This original study the author writing in 1936 has tried to sketch the character and general movement of the economic and social evolution of Western Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the middle of the fifteenth century.

First published in 1939, this is a reissue of Henri Pirenne's extremely popular and influential history of Europe in the middle ages. It begins with the Barbarian and Musulman invasions in the fifth century AD, which signalled the end of the Roman world in the West, and ends in the middle of the sixteenth century with the Renaissance and the Reformation. Universally praised for its detailed and impartial approach, this reissue will be very welcome news to both students of medieval history and to the general reader seeking a definitive review of the period.

First published in 1939, this is a reissue of Henri Pirenne's extremely popular and influential history of Europe in the Middle Ages. It begins with the Barbarian and Musulman invasions in the fifth century AD, which signalled the end of the Roman world in the West, and ends in the middle of the sixteenth century with the Renaissance and the Reformation. Universally praised for its detailed and impartial approach, this reissue will be very welcome news to both students of medieval history and to the general reader seeking a definitive review of the period.

Nearly a century after it was first published in 1925, "Medieval Cities" remains one of the most provocative works of medieval history ever written. Here, Henri Pirenne argues that it was not the invasion of the Germanic tribes that destroyed the civilization of antiquity, but rather the closing of Mediterranean trade by Arab conquest in the seventh century. The consequent interruption of long-distance commerce accelerated the decline of the ancient cities of Europe. Pirenne challenges conventional wisdom by attributing the origins of medieval cities to the revival of trade, tracing their growth from the tenth century to the twelfth. He also describes the important role the middle class played in the development of the modern economic system and modern culture.

Featuring a new introduction by Michael McCormick, this Princeton Classics edition of "Medieval Cities" is essential reading for all students of medieval European history.