Unfortunately, the data are very slight. We see dimly the peasant
staring from his field as the armed knights ride by; we see him fleeing
to the shelter of the forests before more savage bandits. We see the
people of the cities drawing together, building walls around their
towns, and defying in their turn their so-called "overlords." We see
Henry the City-builder thus become champion of the lower classes,
despite the strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly
disinterested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants drift
along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of all, we see one
Arnold of Brescia,[16] an Italian monk, advocating a democracy, actually
urging a return to what he supposed early Rome to have been, a
government by the masses. Arnold, too, you see, was in advance of his
time. He was executed by the advice of even so good and wise a man as
St. Bernard. But the principle of modern life was there, the germ seems
to have been planted. These humble people of the cities, "citizens,"
grow to be rulers of the world.

[Footnote 16: See _Antipapal Democratic Movement_ page 340.]

There was a revival, too, of learning in this quieter age. Schools and
universities become clearly visible. Abelard teaches at the great
University of Paris, lectures to "forty thousand students," if one
chooses to believe in such carrying power of his voice, or such
radiating power of his influence at second hand through those who heard.

The arts spring up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair
of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries,
queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation
is improved. Manuscripts are gorgeously illumined. Paintings and
mosaics, though of the crudest, reappear on long-barren walls.