Achievement of the Royal State.

By the later Middle Ages the various European states reached a crucial stage in their political development. England, France, and the Spanish kingdoms were each able to consolidate power and territory, asserting royal prerogatives and centralizing the administration of the realm. In France of the Capetian and Valois dynasties (987–1498) and in England of the Plantagenet dynasty (1154–1399), particularly, this resulted in the achievement of the royal state—the predecessor of the modern nation-state. The case of France is especially important because it is there that centralized political authority coincided with the development of the Gothic style—the prevailing style of European art in the later Middle Ages. Generally associated with the patronage of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis in the 1140s, outside of Paris, and emerging first in architecture, the new style very quickly came...