Ten years of experience in teaching medieval history to Freshman sections have convinced me that most students who enter our colleges are neither wide nor trained readers, and are at a loss, if thrown upon their own resources into a whole volume or even a whole chapter of the average historical work available for outside reading in addition to the textbook. It is advisable to give them brief specific readings to do, and specific questions to answer and problems to work out from such readings. No doubt each teacher will prefer for the most part to make his own selections and to ask his own questions on such reading. He may, however, find suggestive the listing of a few such specific readings and historical exercises, many of which have already been tried out in actual teaching. It is hoped that these exercises, listed at the end of the chapters, may prove still more welcome to the reader who has not the advantage of personal tuition, but who has access to a fair-sized library. Where a particular chapter or certain pages of a book are recommended, this does not imply that the rest of that volume is to be eschewed; it is simply advice where to begin. Moreover, these suggested readings are distinctly for the undergraduate and general reader, not for the advanced student, and consequently many important historical works are not mentioned. A brief list of books and periodicals where fuller bibliographical information may be found is appended at the close of this preface.
Of historical works and articles to which the present volume is indebted the list is too long to essay here. The attempt has been made—without yielding to new theories and hypotheses which have not yet been sufficiently tested—to embody the results of recent historical scholarship. Much use has been made of such works as Luch aire's six volumes on Innocent III, Beazley's Dawn of Modern Geography, Workman's The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, and the two volumes of the Cambridge Medieval History which have thus far appeared. Some passages in this book are the result of my own study of the sources and will not be found covered in any other secondary work.
