The late Professor C. W. Previté-Orton was invited by the Syndics of the Press in 1939 to write his own, concise version of the Cambridge Medieval History, of which he had been one of the editors.

Editorial note.

The history of the Middle Ages begins with the double revolution worked by the Emperor Constantine the Great within the ancient and decaying Roman Empire and the declining civilization of Antiquity which the Empire embodied.

Chapter 1. The Roman empire under Constantine the Great.