title: Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries
author: Thomas F. X. Noble
description: After receiving his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, Thomas Noble taught at Albion College, Michigan State University, Texas Tech University, and the University of Virginia. In 1999 he received the University of Virginia's highest award for teaching excellence and in 2008 Notre Dame's Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 2011 he received the Charles Sheedy, C.S.C., award for excellence in teaching and scholarship from Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters. In 2001 he became Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame and in 2008 chairperson of Notre Dame's history department. He is the author of Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, which won the 2011 Otto Grndler Prize, and The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825. He has edited six books. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994 and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in 1999-2000. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities (three times) and the American Philosophical Society (twice). He was elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2004. In 2012 he served as president of the American Catholic Historical Association.
zlib_text: #  THE UNITY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
  
  ###  _ESSAYS ARRANGED AND EDITED_
  
  ### BY
  
  ## F. S. MARVIN
  
  SOMETIME SENIOR SCHOLAR OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD
  
  AUTHOR OF _THE LIVING PAST_
  
  ###### Humphrey Milford  
  Oxford University Press  
  London Edinburgh Glasgow New York  
  Toronto Melbourne Bombay
  
  1915
  
  ##  PREFACE
  
  The following essays are the substance of a course of lectures delivered at a
  Summer School at the Woodbrooke Settlement, near Birmingham, in August 1915.
  The general purpose of the course will be apparent from the essays themselves.
  No forced or mechanical uniformity of view was aimed at. The writers will be
  found, very naturally and properly, to differ in detail and in the stress they
  lay on different aspects of the case. But they agree in thinking that while
  our country's cause and the cause of our Allies is just and necessary and must
  be prosecuted with the utmost vigour, it is not inopportune to reflect on
  those common and ineradicable elements in the civilization of the 