PLAN OF THE WORK—THE CITY OF ROME IN ANCIENT TIMES AND IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The aim of these volumes is to present a comprehensive history of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages; a subject which, apart from its connection with the Papacy and the Empire, has not hitherto been dealt with. The Romans themselves, upon whom the task of writing it should more especially have fallen, have been withheld by a variety of causes from making the attempt, and have only contributed a quantity of valuable material towards so truly national a work. Will it therefore be considered presumptuous in one not of the Latin race, but a German, to venture on this arduous undertaking? I do not fear the imputation; not only because the domain of knowledge is free territory, but also because, that next to the Romans and Italians, no other people in the Middle Ages had relations with Rome so close and so international as the Germans. Since the Goths of Theodoric, who first subjugated Rome and then reverently upheld her; since the Franks of Pepin and Charles, who freed the city from the yoke of the Lombards and Byzantines and again restored her to prosperity, for centuries, through the Germanised Roman Empire, Germany has stood in no ordinary relations to Rome. To the German nation Rome is an imperishable title of glory, and the mediaeval history of the city has become an element inseparable from that of Germany.