hanging conditions
were tending to dislocate the whole structure of mediaeval existence.
The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had struck a heavy
blow at the commerce of the Bavarian cities which had come by way of
Constantinople and Venice. This latter city lost one by one its
trading centres in the East, and all Oriental traffic by way of the
Black Sea was practically stopped. It was the Dutch cities which
inherited the wealth and influence of the German towns when Vasco da
Gama's discovery of the Cape route to the East began to have its
influence on the trade of the world. This diversion of Oriental
traffic from the old overland route was the starting-point of the
modern merchant navy, and it must be placed amongst the most potent
causes of the break-up of mediaeval civilization. The above change,
although immediately felt by the German towns, was not realized by
them in its full importance either as to its causes or its
consequences for more than a century; but the decline of their
prosperity was nevertheless sensible, even now, and contributed
directly to the coming upheaval.

The impatience of the prince, the prelate, the noble, and the wealthy
burgher at the restraints which the system of the Middle Ages placed
upon his activity as an individual in the acquisition for his own
behoof, and the disposal at his own pleasure, of wealth, regardless of
the consequences to his neighbour, found expression, and a powerful
lever, in the introduction from Italy of the Roman law in place of the
old canon and customary law of Europe. The latter never regarded the
individual as an independent and autonomous entity, but invariably
treated him with reference to a group or social body, of which he
might be the head or merely a subordinate member; but in any case the
filaments of custom and religious duty attached him to a certain
humanity outside himself, whether it were a village community, a
guild, a township, a province, or the empire. The idea of a right to
individual autonomy in his dealings with men never entered into the
mediaeval man's conception. Hence the mere possession of property was
not recognized by mediaeval law as conferring any absolute rights in
its holder to its unregulated use, and the basis of the mediaeval
notions of property was the association of responsibility and duty
with ownership. In other words, the notion of _trust_ was never
completely divorced from that of _possession_.

The Roman