ies of silk and sugar, which were transported into Italy
from Greece and Egypt. But the intellectual wants of the Latins were
more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of studious curiosity was
awakened in Europe by different causes and more recent events; and,
in the age of the crusades, they viewed with careless indifference the
literature of the Greeks and Arabians. Some rudiments of mathematical
and medicinal knowledge might be imparted in practice and in figures;
necessity might produce some interpreters for the grosser business
of merchants and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not
diffused the study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of
Europe. [66] If a similar principle of religion repulsed the idiom of the
Koran, it should have excited their patience and curiosity to understand
the original text of the gospel; and the same grammar would have
unfolded the sense of Plato and the beauties of Homer. Yet in a reign
of sixty years, the Latins of Constantinople disdained the speech and
learning of their subjects; and the manuscripts were the only treasures
which the natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was
indeed the oracle of the Western universities, but it was a barbarous
Aristotle; and, instead of ascending to the fountain head, his Latin
votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version, from the Jews
and Moors of Andalusia. The principle of the crusades was a savage
fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.
Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics
of Greece and Palestine; [67] and each relic was preceded and followed
by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was
corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the
establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and
friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of
idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active
spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion;
and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the
thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.

[Footnote 65: Windmills, first invented in the dry country of Asia
Minor, were used in Normandy as early as the year 1105, (Vie privee des
Francois, tom. i. p. 42, 43. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p. 474.)]

[Footnote 66: See the complaints of Roger Ba