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Baldwin, M. W. (ed.) / The first hundred years
(1969)
I: Western Europe on the Eve of the Crusades, pp. [2]-29
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Page 29
Ch. I WESTERN EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE CRUSADES 29 and extensive exterior sculpture. Appropriately enough the queen of all Romanesque churches graced the abbey of Cluny. In all the varied phases of civilization the eleventh century was a period of vital growth and energetic development. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were to see the flowering of medieval civilization, but the plant matured and the buds were formed in the eleventh. The men of western Europe had faith in God and in their own strong arms. They also had a willingness to adventure, to innovate, and to organize. The two great complexes of insti tutions, the church and the feudal system, had achieved the strength of maturity without losing their capacity for further development and expansion. And it was the church and the feudal system that made the crusades possible.
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