text:  Yet whoever has studied the condition of European society in the ninth tenth and eleventh centuries as it has since been developed in the admirable works of Sismondi Thierry Michelet and Guizot must be aware that the services not merely of Christianity but of the superstitions which had usurped its place were during that long period incalculable; and that but for them European society would infallibly have sunk as Asiatic in every age has done beneath the desolating sword of barbarian power