a system of thinking. The result was Scholasticism. From one point of view
the result was barren; from another it was full of promise for the future.
Though the workers lacked materials, were overshadowed by the mediaeval
spirit of authority, and kept their efforts clearly within limits approved
by the Church, the "heroic industry" and the "in tense application"
displayed in effecting the organization, and the logical subtlety
developed in discussing the results, promised much for the future. The
rise of university instruction, and the work of the Scholastics in
organizing the knowledge of the time, were both a resultant of new
influences already at work and a prediction of larger consequences to
follow. In a later age, and with men more emancipated from church control,
the same spirit was destined to burst forth in an effort to discover and
reconstruct the historic past.

During the thirteenth century, too, the new Estate, which had come into
existence alongside of the clergy and the nobility, began to assume large
importance. The arts-and-crafts guilds were attaining a large development,
and out of this new burgher class the great general public of modern times
has in time evolved. Trade and industry were increasing in all lands, and
merchants and successful artisans were becoming influential through their
newly obtained wealth and rights. The erection of stately churches and
town halls, often beautifully carved and highly ornamented, was taking
place. Great cathedrals, those "symphonies in stone," of which Notre Dame
(Figure 53) is a good example, were rising or being further expanded and
decorated at many places in western Europe. Mystery and miracle plays had
begun to be performed and to attract great attention. In the fourteenth
century religious pageants were added. "All art was still religion," but
an art was unmistakably arising amid cathedral-building and the setting-
forth of the Christian mysteries, and before long this was to flower in
modern forms of expression in painting, sculpture, and the drama.