The historical sketches and fragments that are here submitted to the general reader deal only with a few phases of the rich and varied life of the period known usually as the Middle Ages. The chapters are Gregory the Great and the Barbarian World Justinian the Great 527-565 The Religion of Islam Catholicism in the Middle Ages The Christians of Saint Thomas The Medieval Teacher The Book of a Medieval Mother German Schools in the Sixteenth Century Baths and Bathing int eh Middle Ages Clercy and People in Medieval England The Cathedral Buildings of Medieval Europe The Results of the Crusades The Italian Renaissance Let us consider this on Bathing: "The primitive Christians frequented the public baths, as may be easily deduced from the well known anecdote of St. John and Cerinthus which St. Irenreus has handed down to us. Clement of Alexandria enumerates the reasons for which a Christian man or woman may visit the baths, and that chapter of the "Predagogus" might be read yet" with profit, so moderate and sensible is it. ... We frequently meet these ecclesiastical baths in the succeeding centuries. Toward the end of the eighth the baths of St. John Lateran and St. Peter's become famous in Europe. The popes of that time restore the ancient aqueducts to feed those baths, build approaches and staircases, line the halls with marble, and provide accommodations for the poor and strangers. Of one, Pope Hadrian (died 795), it is said that he built baths at St. Peter's, "where our brethren, the poor of Christ, are wont to bathe," and his successor, Leo III. (died 816), improved greatly this same establishment. We may, therefore, conclude with the great scholar and canonist, Van Espen, that the custom of bathing was never forbidden or discouraged by the Church authorities."