Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

248 ST. LOUIS.
in the feudal ages was hidden from the multitude, and the
common life was left poor and unsavoury. In the thirteenth
century, however, the language of the people began to be
used freely by the cultivated to express their thoughts. The
life of St. Louis was written by a layman in the vernacular
speech, and in the next generation Dante gave to the world
one of its grandest works of literature in a language which
could be understood by the people at large. Imagine the
elevation of secular life which would arise from this source
alone ;
the richest and the poorest having a common organ
of communication
;
the best thoughts
of the best minds en
shrining themselves in, and thereby purifying and elevating,
the language of the poor.
II. The growth of the towns and of commerce. The
reign of Philip Augustus was marked by the rapid growth
of the towns. He re-founded Paris
;
he gave
it its cathedral,
market, pavement, hospitals, aqueducts, boundaries, arms, and
above all, a university, which dates from the year 1200.
Population increased and tended to centres. The people
were beginning as a class to feel their power, and they
naturally drew together. Towns waxed strong, obtained
charters, and attracted citizens by the security they afforded.
The intercourse of town life develops intelligence and
diffuses interest in political affairs. And thus in a score of
ways these centres of population grew, and in growingenlarged
and elevated the secular life of men.
III. The influence of the Crusades in the same direction
was immense. They extended commerce, enriched new
classes, created an order of men of business to attend to
the carrying on of distant enterprises, and spread a taste
for a more refined mode of living, though they did also
much to corrupt the simplicity of feudal society. The age
of St. Louis saw the close of the Crusades. Why ? Because
men saw their folly
? Not in the least. Columbus, one of