come an in- fluential Medieval Towns — their Business ajid Buildings 509 Antwerp. Only gradually did the towns merge into the nations to which their people belonged. The increasing wealth of the merchants could not fail to raise The business them to a position of importance which earlier tradesmen had [^wns^be-^ not enjoyed. They began to build fine houses and to buy the various comforts and luxuries which were fijiding their way into class western Europe. They wanted their sons to be educated, and so it came about that other people besides clergymen began to learn how to read and write. As early as the fourteenth century- many of the books appear to have been written with a view of meeting the tastes and needs of the business class. Representatives of the towns were summoned to the councils of the kings — into the English Parliament and the French Estates General about the year 1300, for the monarch was obliged to ask their advice when he demanded their money to carry on his government and his wars (see above, p. 422). The rise of the business class alongside of the older orders of the clergy and nobility is one of the most momentous changes of the thirteenth century. Section 89. Gothic Architecture Almost all the medieval buildings have disappeared in the Disappear- ancient towns of Europe. The stone town walls, no longer ade- me^dieval quate in our times, have been removed, and their place taken buildings by broad and handsome avenues. The old houses have been torn down in order to widen and straighten the streets and . permit the construction of modern dwellings. Here and there one can still find a walled town, but they are few in number and are merely curiosities (see Fig. 208). Of the buildings erected in towns during the Middle Ages The churches only the churches remain, but these fill the beholder with wonder survived^ and admiration. It seems impossible that the cities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which were neither very large nor very rich, could possibly find money enough to pay for
