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The gold money of the Byzantine Empire "is accepted everywhere from end to end of the earth. It is admired by all men and in all kingdoms, because no kingdom has a currency that can be compared to it." These boastful words of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a contemporary of Justinian die Great, are a typical expression of die pride of die Greek nation. Cosmas was a monk who tried to demonstrate from the Scriptures that the earth was flat, but in his youth he had been an adventurous merchant and traveler, and well he knew where the true primacy of his nation lay. While die armies of Justinian had not marched as far as those of Trajan, and his law was not enforced in all die countries which had obeyed Theodosius, the monetary empire of New Rome was even greater than that of Old Rome. The gold nomisma (or bezant, as die Westerners later called it) was as peerless as die sovereign whose effigy it bore. Procopius, another contemporary of Justinian die Great, stated: "It is not right for die Persian king or for any odier sovereign in die whole barbarian world to imprint his own likeness on a gold stater, and that, too, though he has gold in his own kingdom; for they are unable to tender such a coin to those widi whom they transact business."

One of the most impressive testimonies to the unity of mankind lies in the fact that certain basic features of social structure have been determined in different areas by the existence of similar conditions. Thus in ancient Egypt, in Japan, in early American cultures and among Indo-European peoples sociological analysis shows the rise of aristocracy to have been due to the coincidence of certain irrational, deepseated, retrospective convictions with certain economic conditions. Repeatedly the evolution of a ruling class runs back into that prehistoric darkness when related tribes first united to form a primordial political community; in the earliest historic age of such a community we find the members of this regarded as descendants of the gods or even as their earthly embodiments. It is on this belief in their divine origins that the great base their claim to a monopoly of political and economic power, the latter including disposal of the labor of the unfree. The same belief leads them to perpetuate themselves as a caste; their family lines must not be contaminated by the blood of the low-born. The mass of the free-born accepts this social order as divinely ordained. There is no sign of any consciousness of oppression nor thought of revolt against the privileges of the aristocracy. The latter for its part carefully heeds the rights of common mortals. There is either no tradition of a golden age of equality, or if there is some legend of a lost paradise, it fails to incite revolt against an order sanctified by immemorial existence. A society based on respect for an hereditary aristocracy that monopolized the best land could not be subverted by any forces generated solely within the lower classes. Discontent could become revolutionary only through the cultural developments that made it possible to ask the question, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

Before dealing with the Battle of Soissons itself and its effects on penitential discipline, the author discusses its historical background and setting. The end of the Ninth and the beginning of the Tenth Century saw the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire. The French Royal house in particular was submitted to two destructive forces. The first of these were the predatory raids of the Norsemen on the lands held for the King. In order to put an end to these activities, Charles the Simple ceded in 911 a whole province of his kingdom, later to be known as Normandy, thus recognizing an occupation which had already taken place, in return for which the Normans undertook to embrace Christianity. This point is of importance in view of the behaviour of these recent converts at the Battle of Soissons some twelve years later.

During the first millenium A.D. a series of states were formed by Turkic and Mongol peoples, the nomadic pastoralists of the Asian steppes - the Tatars of European and Chinese record. These political enterprises enlarged their scope and power during the period of a millenium, reaching a climax in the empire of Chingis Khan in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; from this climactic achievement they have since declined. The social and political organization as well as the economy of these peoples are at once simple and complex, primitive and advanced. The characterization of this cultural world has been given focus in a sharp controversy, the controversy over the establishment and internal ordering of the political system.