Under these circumstances, it naturally fell to the admirably organized Church to keep order, when it could, by threats or persuasion; to see that sworn contracts were kept, that the wills of the dead were administered, and marriage obligations observed. It took the defenseless widow and orphan under its protection and dispensed charity; it promoted education at a time when few laymen, however rich and noble, pretended even to read. These conditions serve to explain why the Church was finally able greatly to extend the powers which it had enjoyed under the Roman Empire, and why it undertook functions which seem to us to belong to the state rather than to a religious organization.

[Sidenote: Origin of papal power.]

19. We must now turn to a consideration of the origin and growth of the supremacy of the popes, who, by raising themselves to the head of the Western Church, became in many respects more powerful than any of the kings and princes with whom they frequently found themselves in bitter conflict.

[Sidenote: Prestige of the Roman Christian community.]

While we cannot discover, either in the Acts of the Council of Nica or in the Theodosian Code, compiled more than a century later, any recognition of the supreme headship of the Bishop of Rome, there is little doubt that he and his flock had almost from the very first enjoyed a leading place among the Christian communities. The Roman Church was the only one in the West which could claim the distinction of having been founded by the immediate followers of Christ,—the "two most glorious apostles."

[Sidenote: Belief that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome.]

The New Testament speaks repeatedly of Paul's presence in Rome, and Peter's is implied. There had always been, moreover, a persistent tradition, accepted throughout the Christian Church, that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome. While there is no complete documentary proof for this belief, it appears to have been generally accepted at least as early as the middle of the second century. There is, certainly, no conflicting tradition, no rival claimant. The belief itself, whether or not it corresponds with actual events, is indubitably a fact, and a fact of the greatest historical importance. Peter enjoyed a certain preminence among the other apostles and was singled out by Christ upon several occasions. In a passage of the New Testament which has affected political history more profoundly than the edicts of the most powerful monarch, Christ says: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."[27]

[Sidenote: The Roman Church the mother church.]

It was thus natural that the Roman Church should early have been looked upon as the mother church in the West. Its doctrines were considered the purest, since they had been handed down from its exalted founders. When there was a difference of opinion in regard to the truth of a particular teaching, it was natural that all should turn to the Bishop of Rome for his view. Moreover, the majesty of the capital of the world helped to exalt its bishop above his fellows. It was long, however, before all the other bishops, especially those in the large cities, were ready to accept unconditionally the authority of the Bishop of Rome, although they acknowledged his leading position and that of the Roman community.

[Sidenote: Obscurity of early bishops of Rome.]

We know comparatively little of the bishops of Rome during the first three centuries of the Church's existence. Even as the undisputed heads of their persecuted sect, they could not have begun to exercise the political influence which they later enjoyed, until Christianity had gained the ascendancy and the power of the Empire had become greatly weakened.

[Sidenote: Period of the Church fathers.]

We are, however, much better instructed in regard to the Church of the fourth and early fifth centuries, because the century following the Council of Nica was, in the history of church literature, what the Elizabethan era was in that of England. It was the era of the great "fathers" of Christian theology, to whom all theologians since have looked back as to the foremost interpreters of their religion. Among the chief of these were Athanasius (d. 373), to whom is attributed the formulation of the creed of the Orthodox Church as opposed to the Arians, against whom he waged unremitting war; Basil (d. 379), the promoter of the monastic life; Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (d. 397); Jerome (d. 420), who prepared a new Latin version of the Scriptures, which became the standard (Vulgate) edition; and, above all, Augustine (354-430), whose voluminous writings have exercised an unrivaled influence upon the minds of Christian thinkers since his day.

Since the church fathers were chiefly interested in matters of doctrine, they say little of the organization of the Church, and it is not clear from their writings that the Bishop of Rome was accorded as yet the supreme and dominating position which the popes later enjoyed. Nevertheless, Augustine calls a contemporaneous Bishop of Rome the "head of the Western Church," and almost immediately after his death one ascended the episcopal chair at Rome whose ambition, energy, and personal bravery were a promise of those qualities which were to render his successors the kings of kings.

[Sidenote: Leo the Great, 440-461.]

[Sidenote: Decree of Valentinian III.]

With the accession of Leo the Great (440-461) the history of the papacy may, in one sense, be said to have begun. At his instance, Valentinian III, the emperor of the West, issued a decree in 445 declaring the power of the Bishop of Rome supreme, by reason of Peter's merits and apostolic headship, and by reason of the majesty of the city of Rome. He commanded that the bishops throughout the West should receive as law all that the Bishop of Rome sanctioned, and that any bishop refusing to answer a summons to Rome should be forced to obey by the imperial governor. But a council at Chalcedon, six years later, raised new Rome on the Bosphorus (Constantinople) to an ecclesiastical equality with old Rome on the Tiber. The bishops of both cities were to have a co-superiority over all the other prelates. This decree was, however, never accepted in the Western or Latin Church, which was gradually separating from the Eastern or Greek Church whose natural head was Constantinople.[28] Although the powers to which Leo laid claim were not as yet even clearly stated and there were times of adversity to come when for years they appeared an empty boast, still his emphatic assertion of the supremacy of the Roman bishop was a great step toward bringing the Western Church under a single head.

[Sidenote: Duties that devolved upon the early popes.]

Not long after the death of Leo the Great, Odoacer put an end to the western line of emperors. Then Theodoric and his East Goths settled in Italy, only to be followed by still less desirable intruders, the Lombards. During this tumultuous period the people of Rome, and even of all Italy, came to regard the pope as their natural leader. The emperor was far away, and his officers, who managed to hold a portion of central Italy around Rome and Ravenna, were glad to accept the aid and counsel of the pope. In Rome the pope watched over the elections of the city officials and directed in what manner the public money should be spent. He had to manage and defend the great tracts of land in different parts of Italy which from time to time had been given to the bishopric of Rome. He negotiated with the Germans and even directed the generals sent against them.

[Sidenote: Gregory the Great, 590-604.]

20. The pontificate of Gregory the Great, one of the half dozen most distinguished heads that the Church has ever had, shows how great a part the papacy could play. Gregory, who was the son of a rich Roman senator, was appointed by the emperor to the honorable office of prefect. He began to fear, however, that his proud position and fine clothes were making him vain and worldly. His pious mother and his study of the writings of Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose led him, upon the death of his father, to spend all his handsome fortune in founding seven monasteries. One of these he established in his own house and subjected himself to such severe discipline and deprivations that his health never entirely recovered from them. He might, in his enthusiasm for monasticism, have brought himself to an early grave if the pope had not commanded him to undertake a difficult mission to Constantinople; there he had his first opportunity to show his great ability in conducting delicate negotiations.

[Sidenote: Ancient Rome becomes medival Rome.]

When Gregory was chosen pope (in 590) and most reluctantly left his monastery, ancient Rome, the capital of the Empire, was already transforming itself into medival Rome, the capital of Christendom. The temples of the gods had furnished materials for the many Christian churches. The tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul were soon to become the center of religious attraction and the goal of pilgrimages from every part of western Europe. Just as Gregory assumed office a great plague was raging in the city. In true medival fashion, he arranged a solemn procession in order to obtain from heaven a cessation of the pest. Then the archangel Michael was seen over the tomb of Hadrian[29] sheathing his fiery sword as a sign that the wrath of the Lord had been turned away. With Gregory we leave behind us the history of the Rome of Csar and Trajan and enter upon that of Innocent III and Leo X.

[Sidenote: Gregory's writings.]

Gregory enjoyed an unrivaled reputation during the Middle Ages as a writer. He is reckoned with Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome as one of the four great Latin "fathers" of the Church. His works show, however, how much less cultivated his period was than that of his predecessors. His most popular book was his Dialogues, a collection of accounts of miracles and popular legends. It is hard to believe that it could have been composed by the greatest man of the time and that it was designed for adults. In his commentary on Job, Gregory warns the reader that he need not be surprised to find mistakes in grammar, since in dealing with so high a theme a writer should not stop to make sure whether his cases and tenses are right.[30]



[Sidenote: Gregory as a statesman.]

Gregory's letters show clearly what the papacy was coming to mean for Europe when in the hands of a really great man. While he assumed the humble title of "Servant of the servants of God," which the popes still use, Gregory was a statesman whose influence extended far and wide. It devolved upon him to govern the city of Rome,—as it did upon his successors down to the year 1870,—for the eastern emperor's control had become merely nominal. He had also to keep the Lombards out of central Italy, which they failed to conquer largely on account of the valiant defense of the popes. These duties were functions of the civil power, and in assuming them Gregory may be said to have founded the temporal power of the popes.

[Sidenote: Gregory's missionary undertakings.]

Beyond the borders of Italy, Gregory was in constant communication with the emperor, with the rulers of Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy. Everywhere he used his influence to have good clergymen chosen as bishops, and everywhere he watched over the interests of the monasteries. But his chief importance in the history of the papacy is attributable to the missionary enterprises which he undertook, through which the great countries which were one day to be called England, France, and Germany were brought under the sway of the Roman Church and its head, the pope.

Gregory was, as we have seen, an enthusiastic monk, and he naturally relied chiefly upon the monks in his great work of converting the heathen. Consequently, before considering his missionary achievements, we must glance at the origin and character of the monks, who are so conspicuous throughout the Middle Ages.

General References.—There is no satisfactory history of the medival Church in one volume. Perhaps the best short account in English is FISHER, History of the Christian Church (Charles Scribner's Sons, $3.50). MOELLER, History of the Christian Church, Vols. I-II (Swan Sonnenschein, $4.00 a vol.), is a dry but very reliable manual with full references to the literature of the subject. ALZOG, Manual of Universal Church History (Clarke, Cincinnati, 3 vols., $10.00), is a careful presentation by a Catholic scholar. MILMAN, History of Latin Christianity, although rather old, is both scholarly and readable, and is to be found in most libraries. GIESELER, Ecclesiastical History (5 vols., now out of print, but not difficult to obtain), is really a great collection of the most interesting extracts from the sources, with very little indeed from the author's hand. This and Moeller are invaluable to the advanced student. HATCH, Growth of Church Institutions (Whittaker, $1.50), gives an admirably simple account of the most important phases of the organization of the Church.



CHAPTER V

THE MONKS AND THE CONVERSION OF THE GERMANS

[Sidenote: Importance of the monks as a class.]

21. It would be difficult to overestimate the variety and extent of the influence that the monks exercised for centuries in Europe. The proud annals of the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits contain many a distinguished name. The most eminent philosophers, scientists, historians, artists, poets, and statesmen may be found among their ranks. Among those whose achievements we shall study later are The Venerable Bede, Boniface, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Fra Angelico, Savonarola, Luther, Erasmus,—all these, and many others who have been leaders in various branches of human activity, were monks.

[Sidenote: Monasticism appealed to many different classes.]

The strength of monasticism lay in its appeal to many different classes of persons. The world became a less attractive place as the successive invasions of the barbarians brought ever-increasing disorder. The monastery was the natural refuge not only of the spiritually minded, but of those of a studious or contemplative disposition who disliked the life of a soldier and were disinclined to face the dangers and uncertainties of the times. The monastic life was safe and peaceful, as well as holy. Even the rude and unscrupulous warriors hesitated to destroy the property or disturb the life of those who were believed to enjoy Heaven's special favor. The monastery furnished, too, a refuge for the disconsolate, an asylum for the disgraced, and food and shelter for the indolent who would otherwise have had to earn their living. There were, therefore, many motives which helped to fill the monasteries. Kings and nobles, for the good of their souls, readily gave land upon which to found colonies of monks, and there were plenty of remote spots in the mountains and forests to tempt the recluse.

[Sidenote: Necessity for the regulation of monastic life.]

Monastic communities first developed on a large scale in Egypt in the fourth century. Just as the Germans were winning their first great victory at Adrianople, St. Jerome was engaged in showing the advantages of the ascetic Christian life, which was a new thing in the West. In the sixth century monasteries multiplied so rapidly in western Europe that it became necessary to establish definite rules for the numerous communities which proposed to desert the ordinary ways of the world and lead a peculiar life apart. The monastic regulations which had been drawn up in the East did not answer the purpose, for the climate of the West and the temperament of the Latin peoples differed too much from those of the Orient. Accordingly St. Benedict drew up, about the year 526, a sort of constitution for the monastery of Monte Cassino, in southern Italy, of which he was the head. This was so sagacious, and so well met the needs of the monastic life, that it was rapidly accepted by the other monasteries and gradually became the "rule" according to which all the western monks lived.[31]

[Sidenote: The Rule of St. Benedict.]

The Rule of St. Benedict is as important as any constitution that was ever drawn up for a state. It is for the most part natural and wholesome. It provides that, since every one is not fitted for the ascetic life, the candidate for admission to the monastery shall pass through a period of probation, called the novitiate, before he is permitted to take the solemn and irrevocable vow. The brethren shall elect their head, the abbot, whom they must obey unconditionally in all that is not sinful. Along with prayer and meditation, the monks are to work at manual occupations and cultivate the soil. They shall also read and teach. Those who were incapacitated for outdoor work were assigned lighter tasks, such as copying books. The monk was not permitted to own anything in his own right; he pledged himself to perpetual and absolute poverty, and everything he used was the property of the convent. Along with the vows of obedience and poverty, he also took that of chastity, which bound him never to marry. For not only was the single life considered more holy than the married, but the monastic organization would, of course, have been impossible unless the monks remained single. Aside from these restrictions, the monks were commanded to live rational and natural lives and not to abuse their bodies or sacrifice their physical vigor by undue fasting in the supposed interest of their souls. These sensible provisions were directed against the excesses of asceticism, of which there had been many instances in the East.

[Sidenote: The monks copy, and so preserve, the Latin authors.]

The influence of the Benedictine monks upon Europe is incalculable. From their numbers no less than twenty-four popes and forty-six hundred bishops and archbishops have been chosen. They boast almost sixteen thousand writers, some of great distinction. Their monasteries furnished retreats where the scholar might study and write in spite of the prevailing disorder of the times. The copying of books, as has been said, was a natural occupation of the monks. Doubtless their work was often done carelessly, with little heart and less understanding. But, with the great loss of manuscripts due to the destruction of libraries and the indifference of individual book-owners, it was most essential that new copies should be made. Even poor and incorrect ones were better than none. It was the monks who prevented the loss of a great part of Latin literature, which, without them, would probably have reached us only in scanty remains.

[Sidenote: The monks aid in the material development of Europe.]

The monks also helped to rescue honest manual labor, which they believed to be a great aid to salvation, from the disrepute into which slavery had brought it in earlier times. They set the example of careful cultivation on the lands about their monasteries and in this way introduced better methods into the regions where they settled. They entertained travelers at a time when there were few or no inns and so increased the intercourse between the various parts of Europe.[32]

[Sidenote: The regular and secular clergy.]

The Benedictine monks, as well as later monastic orders, were ardent and faithful supporters of the papacy. The Roman Church, which owes much to them, appreciated the aid which they might furnish and extended to them many of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy. Indeed the monks were reckoned as clergymen and were called the "regular" clergy because they lived according to a regula, or rule, to distinguish them from the "secular" clergy, who continued to live in the world (saeculum) and took no monastic vows.

[Sidenote: Monks and secular clergy supplement each other.]

The Church, ever anxious to maintain as far-reaching a control over its subjects as that of the Roman Empire, whose power it inherited, could hardly expect its busy officers, with their multiform duties and constant relations with men, to represent the ideal of contemplative Christianity which was then held in higher esteem than the active life. The secular clergy performed the ceremonies of the Church, administered its business, and guarded its property, while the regular clergy illustrated the necessity of personal piety and self-denial. Monasticism at its best was a monitor standing beside the Church and constantly warning it against permitting the Christian life to sink into mere mechanical and passive acceptance of its ceremonies as all-sufficient for salvation. It supplied the element of personal responsibility and spiritual ambition upon which Protestantism has laid so much stress.

[Sidenote: The monks as missionaries.]

22. The first great service of the monks was their missionary labors. To these the later strength of the Roman Church is in no small degree due, for the monks made of the unconverted Germans not merely Christians, but also dutiful subjects of the pope. The first people to engage their attention were the heathen Germans who had conquered the once Christian Britain.

[Sidenote: Early Britain.]

The islands which are now known as the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland were, at the opening of the Christian era, occupied by several Celtic peoples of whose customs and religion we know almost nothing. Julius Csar commenced the conquest of the islands (55 B.C.); but the Romans never succeeded in establishing their power beyond the wall which they built, from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, to keep out the wild Celtic tribes of the North. Even south of the wall the country was not completely Romanized, and the Celtic tongue has actually survived down to the present day in Wales.

[Sidenote: Saxons and Angles conquer Britain.]

At the opening of the fifth century the barbarian invasions forced Rome to withdraw its legions from Britain in order to protect its frontiers on the continent. The island was thus left to be gradually conquered by the Germans, mainly Saxons and Angles, who came across the North Sea from the region south of Denmark. Almost all record of what went on during the two centuries following the departure of the Romans has disappeared. No one knows the fate of the original Celtic inhabitants of England. It is unlikely that they were, as was formerly supposed, all killed or driven to the mountain districts of Wales. More probably they were gradually lost among the dominating Germans with whom they merged into one people. The Saxon and Angle chieftains established petty kingdoms, of which there were seven or eight at the time when Gregory the Great became pope.

[Sidenote: Conversion of Britain.]

Gregory, while still a simple monk, had been struck with the beauty of some Angles whom he saw one day in the slave market of Rome. When he learned who they were he was grieved that such handsome beings should still belong to the kingdom of the Prince of Darkness, and, had he been permitted, he himself would have gone as a missionary to their people. Upon becoming pope he sent forty monks to England from one of the monasteries that he had founded, placing a prior, Augustine, at their head and designating him in advance as Bishop of England. The heathen king of Kent, in whose territory the monks landed with fear and trembling (597), had a Christian wife, the daughter of a Frankish king. Through her influence the monks were kindly received and were assigned an ancient church at Canterbury, dating from the Roman occupation before the German invasions. Here they established a monastery, and from this center the conversion, first of Kent and then of the whole island, was gradually effected. Canterbury has always maintained its early preminence and may still be considered the religious capital of England.[33]



[Sidenote: The Irish monks.]

Augustine and his monks were not, however, the only Christians in the British Isles. Britain had been converted to Christianity when it was a Roman province, and some of the missionaries, led by St. Patrick (d. about 469), had made their way into Ireland and established a center of Christianity there. When the Germans overran Britain and reheathenized it, the Irish monks and clergy were too far off to be troubled by the barbarians. They knew little of the traditions of the Roman Church and diverged from its customs in some respects. They celebrated Easter upon a different date from that observed by the Roman Church and employed a different style of tonsure. Missionaries from this Irish church were busy converting the northern regions of Britain, when the Roman monks under Augustine began their work in the southern part of the island.

[Sidenote: Conflict between the Roman Church and the Irish monks.]

There was sure to be trouble between the two parties. The Irish clergy, while they professed great respect for the pope and did not wish to be cut off from the rest of the Christian Church, were unwilling to abandon their peculiar usages and accept those sanctioned by Rome. Nor would they recognize as their superior the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom the pope had made the head of the British church. The pope, on his part, felt that it was all-important that these isolated Christians should become a part of the great organization of which he claimed to be the head. Neither party would make any concessions, and for two generations each went its own way, cherishing a bitter hostility toward the other.

[Sidenote: Victory of Roman Church.]

At last the Roman Church won the victory, as it so often did in later struggles. In 664, through the influence of the king of Northumbria who did not wish to risk being on bad terms with the pope, the Roman Catholic form of faith was solemnly recognized in an assembly at Whitby, and the leader of the Irish missionaries sadly withdrew to Ireland.



The king of Northumbria, upon opening the Council of Whitby, said "that it was proper that those who served one God should observe one rule of conduct and not depart from one another in the ways of celebrating the holy mysteries, since they all hoped for the same kingdom of heaven." That a remote island of Europe should set up its traditions against the customs sanctioned by the rest of Christendom appeared to him highly unreasonable. This faith in the necessary unity of the Church is one of the secrets of its strength. England became a part of the ever-growing territory embraced in the Catholic Church and remained as faithful to the pope as any other Catholic country, down to the defection of Henry VIII in the early part of the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: Early culture in England.]

[Sidenote: The Venerable Bede.]

The consolidation of the rival churches in Great Britain was followed by a period of general enthusiasm for Rome and its literature and culture. Lindisfarne, Wearmouth, and other English monasteries became centers of learning unrivaled perhaps in the rest of Europe. A constant intercourse was maintained with Rome. Masons and glassmakers were brought across the Channel to replace the wooden churches of Britain by stone edifices in the style of the Romans. The young clergy were taught Latin and sometimes Greek. Copies of the ancient classics were brought from the continent and reproduced. The most distinguished man of letters of the seventh and early eighth centuries was the English monk Bda (often called The Venerable Bede, 673-735), from whose admirable history of the Church in England most of our information about the period is derived.[34]

[Sidenote: Irish missionaries on the continent.]

[Sidenote: St. Columban and St. Gall.]

23. From England missionaries carried the enthusiasm for the Church back across the Channel. In spite of the conversion of Clovis and the wholesale baptism of his soldiers, the Franks, especially those farthest north, had been very imperfectly Christianized. A few years before Augustine landed in Kent, St. Columban, one of the Irish missionaries of whom we have spoken, landed in Gaul. He went from place to place founding monasteries and gaining the respect of the people by his rigid self-denial and by the miracles that he performed. He even penetrated among the still wholly pagan Alemanni about the Lake of Constance. When driven away by their pagan king, he turned his attention to the Lombards in northern Italy, where he died in 615.[35] St. Gall, one of his followers, remained near the Lake of Constance and attracted about him so many disciples and companions that a great monastery grew up which was named after him and became one of the most celebrated in central Europe. Other Irish missionaries penetrated into the forests of Thuringia and Bavaria. The German church looks back, however, to an English missionary as its real founder.

[Sidenote: St. Boniface, the apostle to the Germans.]

In 718, about a hundred years after the death of St. Columban, St. Boniface, an English monk, was sent by the pope as an apostle to the Germans. After four years spent in reconnoitering the field of his future labors, he returned to Rome and was made a missionary bishop, taking the same oath of obedience to the pope that the bishops in the immediate vicinity of Rome were accustomed to take. Indeed absolute subordination to the pope was a part of Boniface's religion, and he became a powerful agent in promoting the supremacy of the Roman see.

Under the protection of the powerful Frankish mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, Boniface carried on his missionary work with such zeal that he succeeded in bringing all the older Christian communities which had been established by the Irish missionaries under the papal control, as well as in converting many of the more remote German tribes who still clung to their old pagan beliefs. His energetic methods are illustrated by the story of how he cut down the sacred oak of Odin at Fritzlar, in Hesse, and used the wood to build a chapel, around which a monastery soon grew up. In 732 Boniface was raised to the dignity of Archbishop of Mayence and proceeded to establish, in the newly converted region, the German bishoprics of Salzburg, Regensburg, Wrzburg, Erfurt, and several others; this gives us some idea of the geographical extent of his labors.

[Sidenote: Boniface reforms the church in Gaul and brings it into subjection to the pope.]

After organizing the German church he turned his attention, with the hearty approval of the pope and the support of the Frankish rulers, to a general reformation of the church in Gaul. Here the clergy were sadly demoralized, and the churches and monasteries had been despoiled of much of their property in the constant turmoil of the time. Boniface succeeded, with the help of Charles Martel, in bettering affairs, and through his efforts the venerable church of Gaul, almost as old as that of Rome itself, was brought under the supremacy of the pope. In 748 the assembled bishops of Gaul bound themselves to maintain the Catholic unity of faith and follow strictly the precepts of the vicar of St. Peter, the pope, so that they might be reckoned among Peter's sheep.

General Reading.—The best history of the monks to be had in English is MONTALEMBERT, The Monks of the West from St. Benedict to St. Bernard (Longmans, Green & Co., 6 vols., $15.00). The writer's enthusiasm and his excellent style make his work very attractive. The advanced student will gain much from TAYLOR, Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (The Macmillan Company, $1.75), Chapter VII, on the origin and spirit of monasticism. See also HARNACK, Monasticism (Scribners, 50 cents). The works on church history referred to at the end of the preceding chapter all contain some account of the monks.



CHAPTER VI

CHARLES MARTEL AND PIPPIN

[Sidenote: Charles Martel, Frankish mayor of the palace, 714-741.]

24. Just as the pope was becoming the acknowledged head of the Western Church, the Frankish realms came successively under the rule of two great statesmen, Charles Martel and his son Pippin the Short, who laid the foundation of Charlemagne's vast empire.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of holding together a kingdom in the early Middle Ages.]

The difficulties which Charles Martel had to face were much the same as those which for centuries to follow confronted the sovereigns of western Europe. The great problem of the medival ruler was to make his power felt throughout his whole territory in spite of the many rich and ambitious officials, bishops, and abbots who eagerly took advantage of all the king's weaknesses and embarrassments to make themselves practically supreme in their respective districts.

[Sidenote: Origin of counts and dukes.]

The two classes of officers of which we hear most were the counts (Latin, comites) and the dukes (Latin, duces). A count ordinarily represented the king within the district comprised in an old municipality of the Empire. Over a number of counts the king might place a duke. Both of these titles were borrowed by the Germans from the names of Roman officials. While the king appointed, and might dismiss, these officers when he pleased, there was a growing tendency for them to hold their positions for life.

We find Charles fighting the dukes of Aquitaine, Bavaria, and Alemannia, each of whom was endeavoring to make the territory which he was deputed to rule in the king's interest a separate and independent country under his own supremacy. By successive campaigns against these rebellious magnates, Charles succeeded in reuniting all those outlying districts that tended to forget or ignore their connection with the Frankish empire.

[Sidenote: Charles and his bishops.]

The bishops proved almost, if not quite, as troublesome to the mayor of the palace as the dukes, and later the counts. It is true that Charles kept the choice of the bishops in his own hands and refused to give to the clergy and people of the diocese the privilege of electing their head, as the rules of the Church prescribed. But when a bishop had once got possession of the lands attached to the bishopric and exercised the wide powers and influence which fell to him, he was often tempted, especially if he were a nobleman, to use his privileged position to establish a practically independent principality. The same was true of the heads of powerful monasteries. These dangerous bishops and abbots Charles deposed in wholesale fashion. He substituted his own friends for them with little regard to the rules of the Church—for instance, he bestowed on his nephew the three bishoprics of Paris, Rouen, and Bayeux, besides two monasteries. The new incumbents were, however, no better than the old; they were, indeed, in spite of their clerical robes, only laymen, who continued to fight and hunt in their customary manner.

The most famous of Charles' deeds was his decisive defeat of the advancing Mohammedans who were pressing into Gaul from Spain. Before speaking of this a word must be said of the invaders and their religion, for the Saracens, as the followers of Mohammed were commonly called, will come into our story of western Europe now and then, especially during the Crusades.

[Sidenote: Mohammed, 571-632.]

25. Just as Gregory the Great was dying in Rome, leaving to his successors a great heritage of spiritual and temporal influence, a young Arab in far-off Mecca was meditating upon the mysteries of life and laying the foundation of a religious power rivaling even that of the popes. Before the time of Mohammed the Arabs had played no important part in the world's history. The scattered tribes were at war with one another, and each worshiped its own gods, when it worshiped at all. But when the peoples of the desert accepted Mohammed as their prophet and his religion as theirs, they became an irresistible force for the dissemination of the new teaching and for the subjugation of the world.

[Sidenote: The Hejira, 622.]

Mohammed came of a good family, but was reduced by poverty to enter the employ of a rich widow, named Kadijah, who fell in love with him and became his wife. She was his first convert and kept up his courage when few among his fellow-townsmen in Mecca would believe in his visions or accept the teachings which he claimed to receive direct from the angel Gabriel. Finally he discovered that his many enemies were planning to kill him, so he fled to the neighboring town of Medina, where he had friends. His flight (the Hejira), which took place in the year 622, was taken by his followers as the beginning of a new era,—the year one, as Mohammedans reckon time. A war ensued between the people of Mecca and those in and about Medina who supported Mohammed. It was eight years before he rentered Mecca, the religious center of Arabia, with a victorious army. Before his death in 632 he had received the adhesion of all the Arab chiefs, and his faith, Islam (which means submission to God), was accepted throughout the Arabian peninsula.

[Sidenote: The Koran and the religion of Mohammed.]

Mohammed was accustomed to fall into a trance from time to time, after which he would recite to his eager listeners the messages which he received from Heaven. These were collected into a volume shortly after his death, and make up the Koran, the Bible of the Mohammedan.[36] This contains all the fundamental beliefs of the new religion, as well as the laws under which the faithful were to live. It proclaims one God, "the Lord of the worlds, the merciful, the compassionate," and Mohammed as his prophet. It announces a day of judgment in which each shall receive his reward for the deeds done in the flesh, and either be admitted to paradise or banished to an eternally burning hell. Those who die fighting for the sacred cause shall find themselves in a high garden, where, "content with their past endeavors," they shall hear no foolish word and shall recline in rich brocades upon soft cushions and rugs and be served by surpassingly beautiful maidens. Islam has much in common with Judaism and Christianity. Jesus even has a place in it, but only as one of the prophets, like Abraham, Moses, and others, who have brought religious truth to mankind.

The religion of Mohammed was simpler than that of the medival Christian Church. It provided for no priesthood, nor for any elaborate rites and ceremonies. Five times a day the faithful Mohammedan must pray, always with his face turned toward Mecca. One month in the year he must fast during the daytime. If he is educated, he will know the Koran by heart. The mosque is a house of prayer and the place for the reading of the Koran; no altars or images are permitted in it.

[Sidenote: Mohammedan conquests.]

Mohammed's successor assumed the title of caliph. Under him the Arabs went forth to conquer the great territories to the north of them, belonging to the Persians and the Roman emperor at Constantinople. They met with marvelous success. Within ten years after Mohammed's death the Arabs had established a great empire with its capital at Damascus, from whence the caliph ruled over Arabia, Persia, Syria, and Egypt. In the following decades new conquests were made all along the coast of Africa, and in 708 Tangier was taken and the Arabs could look across the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain.[37]



[Sidenote: The Arabs in Spain.]

The kingdom of the West Goths was in no condition to defend itself when a few Arabs and a much larger number of Berbers, inhabitants of northern Africa, ventured to cross over. Some of the Spanish towns held out for a time, but the invaders found allies in the numerous Jews who had been shamefully treated by their Christian countrymen. As for the innumerable serfs who worked on the great estates of the aristocracy, a change of landlords made very little difference to them. In 711 the Arabs and Berbers gained a great battle, and the peninsula was gradually overrun by new immigrants from Africa. In seven years the Mohammedans were masters of almost the whole region south of the Pyrenees. They then began to cross into Gaul and took possession of the district about Narbonne. For some years the duke of Aquitaine kept them in check, but in 732 they collected a large army, defeated the duke near Bordeaux, advanced to Poitiers, where they burned the church, and then set out for Tours.

[Sidenote: Battle of Tours, 732.]

Charles Martel at once sent out a summons to all who could bear arms and, in the same year, met and repulsed the Mohammedans near Tours. We know very little indeed of the details of the conflict, but it is certain that the followers of Mohammed retreated and that they never made another attempt to conquer western Europe.

[Sidenote: Pippin and Carloman.]

[Sidenote: Abdication of Carloman.]

26. Charles was able, before his death in 741, to secure the succession to his office of mayor of the palace for his two sons, Pippin and Carloman. The brothers left the nominal king on the throne; but he had nothing to do, as the chronicler tells us, "but to be content with his name of king, his flowing hair and long beard; to sit on his throne and play the ruler, listening to the ambassadors who came from all directions, and giving them the answers that had been taught him, as if of his own sovereign will. In reality, however, he had nothing but the royal name and a beggarly income at the will of the mayor of the palace." The new mayors had succeeded in putting down all opposition when, to the astonishment of every one, Carloman abdicated and assumed the gown of a monk. Pippin took control of the whole Frankish dominion, and we find the unusual statement in the Frankish annals that "the whole land enjoyed peace for two years" (749-750).

[Sidenote: Pippin assumes the crown with the approbation of the pope, 752.]

Pippin now felt himself strong enough to get rid of the "do-nothing" king altogether and assume for himself the nominal as well as the real kingship of the Franks. It was, however, a delicate matter to depose even a quite useless monarch, so he determined to consult the head of the Church. To Pippin's query whether it was fitting that the Merovingian king of the Franks, having no power, should continue to reign, the pope replied: "It seems better that he who has the power in the state should be king and be called king, rather than he who is falsely called king."

It will be noticed that the pope in no sense created Pippin king, as later writers claimed. He sanctioned a usurpation which was practically inevitable and which was carried out with the approbation of the Frankish nation. Raised on the shields of the counts and dukes, anointed by St. Boniface, and blessed by the pope, Pippin became in 752 the first king of the Carolingian family, which had already for several generations ruled the Franks in all but name.

[Sidenote: A new theory of kingship.]

This participation of the pope brought about a very fundamental change in the theory of kingship. The kings of the Germans up to this time had been military leaders selected, or holding their office, by the will of the people, or at least of the aristocracy. Their rule had had no divine sanction, but only that of general acquiescence backed up by sufficient skill and popularity to frustrate the efforts of rivals. By the anointing of Pippin in accordance with the ancient Jewish custom, first by St. Boniface and then by the pope himself, "a German chieftain was," as Gibbon expresses, it "transformed into the Lord's anointed." The pope uttered a dire anathema of divine vengeance against any one who should attempt to supplant the holy and meritorious race of Pippin. It became a religious duty to obey the king. He came to be regarded by the Church, when he had duly received its sanction, as God's representative on earth. Here we have the basis of the later idea of monarchs "by the grace of God," against whom, however bad they might be, it was not merely a political offense, but a sin, to revolt.

27. The sanction of Pippin's usurpation by the pope was but an indication of the good feeling between the two greatest powers in the West,—the head of the ever-strengthening Frankish state and the head of the Church. This good feeling quickly ripened into an alliance, momentous for the history of Europe. In order to understand this we must glance at the motives which led the popes to throw off their allegiance to their ancient sovereigns, the emperors at Constantinople, and turn for help to Pippin and his successors.

[Sidenote: Controversy over the veneration of images and pictures,—the so-called iconoclastic controversy.]

For more than a century after the death of Gregory the Great his successors continued to remain respectful subjects of the emperor. They looked to him for occasional help against the Lombards in northern Italy, who showed a disposition to add Rome to their possessions. In 725, however, the emperor Leo III aroused the bitter opposition of the pope by issuing a decree forbidding the usual veneration of the images of Christ and the saints. The emperor was a thoughtful Christian and felt keenly the taunts of the Mohammedans, who held all images in abhorrence and regarded the Christians as idolaters. He therefore ordered all sacred images throughout his empire to be removed from the churches, and all figures on the church walls to be whitewashed over. This aroused serious opposition even in Constantinople, and the farther west one went, the more obstinate became the resistance. The pope refused to obey the edict, for he held that the emperor had no right to interfere with practices hallowed by the Church. He called a council which declared all persons excommunicated who should "throw down, destroy, profane or blaspheme the holy images." The opposition of the West was successful, and the images kept their places.[38]

[Sidenote: The popes and the Lombards.]

[Sidenote: The pope turns to the Franks for aid.]

In spite of their abhorrence of the iconoclastic Leo and his successors, the popes did not give up all hope that the emperors might aid them in keeping the Lombards out of Rome. At last a Lombard ruler arose, Aistulf, a "son of iniquity," who refused to consider the prayers or threats of the head of the Church. In 751 Aistulf took Ravenna and threatened Rome. He proposed to substitute his supremacy for that of the eastern emperor and make of Italy a single state, with Rome as its capital. This was a critical moment for the peninsula. Was Italy, like Gaul, to be united under a single German people and to develop, as France has done, a characteristic civilization? The Lombards had progressed so far that they were not unfitted to organize a state that should grow into a nation. But the head of the Church could not consent to endanger his independence by becoming the subject of an Italian king. It was therefore the pope who prevented the establishment of an Italian kingdom at this time and who continued for the same reason to stand in the way of the unification of Italy for more than a thousand years, until he was dispossessed of his realms not many decades ago by Victor Emmanuel. After vainly turning in his distress to his natural protector, the emperor, the pope had no resource but to appeal to Pippin, upon whose fidelity he had every reason to rely. He crossed the Alps and was received with the greatest cordiality and respect by the Frankish monarch, who returned to Italy with him and relieved Rome (754).

[Sidenote: Pippin subdues the Lombards.]

No sooner had Pippin recrossed the Alps than the Lombard king, ever anxious to add Rome to his possessions, again invested the Eternal City. Pope Stephen's letters to the king of the Franks at this juncture are characteristic of the time. The pope warmly argues that Pippin owes all his victories to St. Peter and should now hasten to the relief of his successor. If the king permits the city of the prince of the apostles to be lacerated and tormented by the Lombards, his own soul will be lacerated and tormented in hell by the devil and his pestilential angels. These arguments proved effective; Pippin immediately undertook a second expedition to Italy, from which he did not return until the kingdom of the Lombards had become tributary to his own, as Bavaria and Aquitaine already were.

[Sidenote: Donation of Pippin.]

Pippin, instead of restoring to the eastern emperor the lands which the Lombards had recently occupied, handed them over to the pope,—on exactly what terms we do not know, since the deed of cession has disappeared. In consequence of these important additions to the former territories of St. Peter, the popes were thereafter the nominal rulers of a large district in central Italy, extending across the peninsula from Ravenna to a point well south of Rome. If, as many writers have maintained, Pippin recognized the pope as the sovereign of this district, we find here the first state that was destined to endure into the nineteenth century delimited on the map of Europe. A map of Italy as late as the year 1860 shows the same region still marked "States of the Church."

[Sidenote: Significance of Pippin's reign.]

The reign of Pippin is remarkable in several ways. It witnessed the strengthening of the kingly power in the Frankish state, which was soon to embrace most of western Europe and form the starting point for the development of the modern countries of France, Germany, and Austria. It furnishes the first instance of the interference of a northern prince in the affairs of Italy, which was destined to become the stumbling-block of many a later French and German king. Lastly, the pope had now a state of his own, which, in spite of its small size, proved one of the most important and permanent in Europe.

Pippin and his son Charlemagne saw only the strength and not the disadvantage that accrued to their title from the papal sanction. It is none the less true, as Gibbon says, that "under the sacerdotal monarchy of St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice of seeking, on the banks of the Tiber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of their fate." We shall have ample evidence of this as we proceed.

General Reading.—For Mohammed and the Saracens, GILMAN, The Saracens (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50). Gibbon has a famous chapter on Mohammed and another upon the conquests of the Arabs. These are the fiftieth and fifty-first of his great work. See also MUIR, Life of Mohammed (Smith, Elder & Co., $4.50).



CHAPTER VII

CHARLEMAGNE

28. Charlemagne is the first historical personage among the German peoples of whom we have any satisfactory knowledge.[39] Compared with him, Theodoric, Charles Martel, Pippin, and the rest are but shadowy figures. The chronicles tell us something of their deeds, but we can make only the vaguest inferences in regard to their character and temperament.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne's personal appearance.]

The appearance of Charlemagne, as described by his secretary, so exactly corresponds with the character of the king as exhibited in his great reign, that it is worthy of attention. He was tall and stoutly built; his face was round, his eyes were large and keen, his nose somewhat above the common size, his expression bright and cheerful. Whether he stood or sat, his form was full of dignity; for the good proportion and grace of his body prevented the observer from noticing that his neck was rather short and his person somewhat too stout. His step was firm and his aspect manly; his voice was clear, but rather weak for so large a body. He was active in all bodily exercises, delighted in riding and hunting, and was an expert swimmer. His excellent health and his physical alertness and endurance can alone explain the astonishing swiftness with which he moved about his vast realm and conducted innumerable campaigns in widely distant regions in startlingly rapid succession.

[Sidenote: His education, his attitude toward learning, and his public spirit.]

Charles was an educated man and one who knew how to appreciate and encourage scholarship. When at dinner he had some one read to him; he delighted especially in history and in St. Augustine's City of God. He could speak Latin well and understood Greek readily. He tried to learn to write, but began too late in life and got no farther than signing his name. He called scholarly men to his court, took advantage of their learning, and did much toward restablishing a regular system of public instruction. He was also constantly occupied with buildings and other public works calculated to adorn and benefit his kingdom. He himself planned the remarkable cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle and showed the greatest interest in its furnishings. He commenced two palaces of beautiful workmanship, one near Mayence and the other at Nimwegen, in Holland, and had a long bridge constructed across the Rhine at Mayence.

[Sidenote: The Charlemagne of romance.]

The impression which his reign made upon men's minds grew even after his death. He became the hero of a whole cycle of romantic but wholly unhistoric adventures and achievements which were as devoutly believed for centuries as his most authentic deeds. In the fancy of an old monk in the monastery of St. Gall,[40] writing of Charlemagne not long after his death, the king of the Franks swept over Europe surrounded by countless legions of soldiers who formed a very sea of bristling steel. Knights of superhuman valor formed his court and became the models for the chivalrous spirit of the following centuries. Distorted but imposing, the Charlemagne of poetry meets us all through the Middle Ages.

A study of Charlemagne's reign will substantiate our first impression that he was a truly remarkable person, one of the greatest figures in the world's records and deservedly the hero of the Middle Ages. To few men has it been given to influence so profoundly the course of European progress. We shall consider him first as a conqueror, then as an organizer and creator of governmental institutions, and lastly as a promoter of culture and enlightenment.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne's idea of a great Christian empire.]

29. It was Charlemagne's ideal to bring all the German peoples together into one great Christian empire, and he was wonderfully successful in attaining his end. Only a small portion of what is now called Germany was included in the kingdom ruled over by Pippin. Frisia and Bavaria had been Christianized, and their native rulers had been induced by the efforts of Charlemagne's predecessors and of the missionaries, especially Boniface, to recognize formally the overlordship of the Franks. Between these two half-independent countries lay the unconquered Saxons. They were as yet pagans and appear to have still clung to much the same institutions as those under which they lived when the Roman historian Tacitus described them seven centuries earlier.

[Sidenote: The conquest of the Saxons.]

The Saxons occupied the region beginning somewhat east of Cologne and extending to the Elbe, and north to where the great cities of Bremen and Hamburg are now situated. The present kingdom of Saxony would hardly have come within their boundaries. The Saxons had no towns or roads and were consequently very difficult to conquer, as they could retreat, with their few possessions, into the forests or swamps as soon as they found themselves unable to meet an invader in the open field. Yet so long as they remained unconquered they constantly threatened the Frankish kingdom, and the incorporation of their country was essential to the rounding out of its boundaries. Charlemagne never undertook, during his long military career, any other task half so serious as the subjugation of the Saxons, and it occupied his attention for many years. Nine successive rebellions had to be put down, and it was finally owing rather to the Church than to Charlemagne's military prowess that the great task was brought to a successful issue.

[Sidenote: Conversion of the Saxons.]

Nowhere do we find a more striking example of the influence of the Church than in the reliance that Charlemagne placed upon it in his dealings with the Saxons. He deemed it quite as essential that after a rebellion they should promise to honor the Church and be baptized as that they should pledge themselves to remain true and faithful vassals of the king. He was in quite as much haste to found bishoprics and abbeys as to build fortresses. The law for the newly conquered Saxon lands, issued sometime between 775 and 790, provides the same death penalty for him who "shall have shown himself unfaithful to the lord king," and him who "shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan." Charlemagne believed the Christianizing of the Saxons so important a part of his duty that he decreed that all should suffer death who entered a church by violence and carried off anything by force, or even failed to abstain from meat during Lent.[41] No one, under penalty of heavy fines, was to make vows, in the pagan fashion, at trees or springs, or partake of any heathen feasts in honor of the demons (as the Christians termed the heathen deities), or fail to present infants for baptism before they were a year old.

For the support of the local churches, those who lived in the parish were to give toward three hundred acres of land and a house for the priest. "Likewise, in accordance with the mandate of God, we command that all shall give a tithe of their property and labor to the churches and the priests; let the nobles as well as the freemen, likewise the serfs, according to that which God shall have given to each Christian, return a part to God."

[Sidenote: Coperation of the civil government and the Church.]

These provisions are characteristic of the theory of the Middle Ages according to which the civil government and the Church went hand in hand in ordering and governing the life of the people. Defection from the Church was regarded by the state as quite as serious a crime as treason against itself. While the claims of the two institutions sometimes conflicted, there was no question in the minds either of the king's officials or of the clergy that both the civil and ecclesiastical government were absolutely necessary; neither class ever dreamed that they could get along without the other.

[Sidenote: Foundation of towns in northern Germany.]

Before the Frankish conquest the Saxons had no towns. Now, around the seat of the bishop, or about a monastery, men began to collect and towns and cities to grow up. Of these the chief was Bremen, which is still one of the most important ports of Germany.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne becomes king of the Lombards.]

30. Pippin, it will be remembered, had covenanted with the papacy to protect it from its adversaries. The king of the Lombards had taken advantage of Charlemagne's seeming preoccupation with his German affairs to attack the city of Rome again. The pope immediately demanded the aid of Charlemagne, who prepared to carry out his father's pledges. He ordered the Lombard ruler to return the cities that he had taken from the pope. Upon his refusal to do this, Charlemagne invaded Lombardy in 773 with a great army and took Pavia, the capital, after a long siege. The Lombard king was forced to become a monk, and his treasure was divided among the Frankish soldiers. Charlemagne then took the extremely important step, in 774, of having himself recognized by all the Lombard dukes and counts as king of the Lombards.



[Sidenote: Aquitaine and Bavaria incorporated in Charlemagne's empire.]

The considerable provinces of Aquitaine and Bavaria had never formed an integral part of the Frankish realms, but had remained semi-independent under their native dukes up to the time of Charlemagne. Aquitaine, whose dukes had given Pippin much trouble, was incorporated into the Frankish state in 769. As for the Bavarians, Charlemagne felt that so long as they remained under their duke he could not rely upon them to defend the Frankish empire against the Slavs, who were constantly threatening the frontiers. So he compelled the duke of Bavaria to surrender his possessions, shut him up in a monastery, and proceeded to portion out the duchy among his counts. He thus added to his realms the district that lay between his new Saxon conquest and the Lombard kingdom.

[Sidenote: Foreign policy of Charlemagne.]

31. So far we have spoken only of the relations of Charlemagne with the Germans, for even the Lombard kingdom was established by the Germans. He had, however, other peoples to deal with, especially the Slavs on the east (who were one day to build up the kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia, and the vast Russian empire) and, on the opposite boundary of his dominion, the Arabs in Spain. Against these it was necessary to protect his realms, and the second part of Charlemagne's reign was devoted to what may be called his foreign policy. A single campaign in 789 seems to have sufficed to subdue the Slavs, who lay to the north and east of the Saxons, and to force the Bohemians to acknowledge the supremacy of the Frankish king and pay tribute to him.

[Sidenote: The marches and margraves.]

The necessity of insuring the Frankish realms against any new uprising of these non-German nations led to the establishment, on the confines of the kingdom, of marches, i.e., districts under the military control of counts of the march, or margraves.[42] Their business was to prevent any hostile incursions into the interior of the kingdom. Much depended upon the efficiency of these men; in many cases they founded powerful families and later helped to disintegrate the Empire by establishing themselves as practically independent rulers.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne in Spain.]

At an assembly that Charlemagne held in 777, ambassadors appeared before him from certain disaffected Mohammedans. They had fallen out with the emir of Cordova[43] and now offered to become the faithful subjects of Charlemagne if he would come to their aid. In consequence, he undertook his first expedition to Spain in the following year. The district north of the Ebro was conquered by the Franks after some years of war, and Charlemagne established the Spanish March.[44] In this way he began that gradual expulsion of the Mohammedans from the peninsula which was to be carried on by slowly extending conquests until 1492, when Granada, the last Mohammedan stronghold, fell.[45]

[Sidenote: Charlemagne crowned emperor by the pope.]

32. But the most famous of all the achievements of Charlemagne was his restablishment of the Western Empire in the year 800. It came about in this wise. Charlemagne went to Rome in that year to settle a controversy between Pope Leo III and his enemies. To celebrate the satisfactory adjustment of the dispute, the pope held a solemn service on Christmas day in St. Peter's. As Charlemagne was kneeling before the altar during this service, the pope approached him and set a crown upon his head, saluting him, amid the acclamation of those present, as "Emperor of the Romans."

[Sidenote: Charlemagne merited the title of emperor.]

The reasons for this extraordinary act, which Charlemagne afterward persistently asserted took him completely by surprise, are given in one of the Frankish histories, the Chronicles of Lorsch, as follows: "The name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they were enduring the reign of a woman [Irene], wherefore it seemed good both to Leo, the apostolic pope, and to the holy fathers [the bishops] who were in council with him, and to all Christian men, that they should name Charles, king of the Franks, as Emperor. For he held Rome itself, where the ancient Csars had always dwelt, in addition to all his other possessions in Italy, Gaul and Germany. Wherefore, as God had granted him all these dominions, it seemed just to all that he should take the title of Emperor, too, when it was offered to him at the wish of all Christendom."

Charlemagne appears to have accepted gracefully the honor thus thrust upon him. Even if he had no right to the imperial title, there was an obvious propriety and expediency in granting it to him under the circumstances. Before his coronation by the pope he was only king of the Franks and the Lombards; but his conquests seemed to entitle him to a more comprehensive designation which should include his outlying dependencies. Then the imperial power at Constantinople had been in the hands of heretics, from the standpoint of the Western Church, ever since Emperor Leo issued his edict against the veneration of images. What was still worse, the throne had been usurped, shortly before the coronation of Charlemagne, by the wicked Irene, who had deposed and blinded her son, Constantine VI. The coronation of Charlemagne was, therefore, only a recognition of the real political conditions in the West.[46]

[Sidenote: Continuity of the Roman Empire.]

The empire now restablished in the West was considered to be a continuation of the Roman Empire founded by Augustus. Charlemagne was reckoned the immediate successor of Constantine VI, whom Irene had deposed. Yet, in spite of this fancied continuity, it is hardly necessary to say that the position of the new emperor had little in common with that of Marcus Aurelius or Constantine. In the first place, the eastern emperors continued to reign in Constantinople for centuries, quite regardless of Charlemagne and his successors. In the second place, the German kings who wore the imperial crown after Charlemagne were generally too weak really to rule over Germany and northern Italy, to say nothing of the rest of western Europe. Nevertheless, the Western Empire, which in the twelfth century came to be called the Holy Roman Empire, endured for over a thousand years. It came to an end only in 1806, when the last of the emperors, wearied of his empty if venerable title, laid down the crown.

[Sidenote: The title of emperor a source of trouble to the German rulers.]

The assumption of the title of emperor was destined to make the German rulers a great deal of trouble. It constantly led them into futile efforts to maintain a supremacy over Italy, which lay without their natural boundaries. Then the circumstances under which Charlemagne was crowned made it possible for the popes to claim, later, that it was they who had transferred the imperial power from the old eastern line of emperors to the Carolingian house, and that this was a proof of their right to dispose of the crown as they pleased. The difficulties which arose necessitated many a weary journey to Rome for the emperors, and many unworthy conflicts between the temporal and spiritual heads of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne's system of government.]

33. The task of governing his vast and heterogeneous dominions taxed even the highly gifted and untiring Charlemagne; it quite exceeded the capacity of his successors. The same difficulties continued to exist that had confronted Charles Martel and Pippin,—above all a scanty royal revenue and over-powerful officials who were prone to neglect the interests and commands of their sovereign. Charlemagne's distinguished statesmanship is nowhere so clearly seen as in his measures for extending his control to the very confines of his realms.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne's farms.]

His income, like that of all medival rulers, came chiefly from his royal estates, as there was no system of general taxation such as had existed under the Roman Empire. He consequently took the greatest care that his numerous plantations should be well cultivated and that not even a turnip or an egg which was due him should be withheld. An elaborate set of regulations for his farms is preserved, which sheds much light upon the times.[47]

[Sidenote: Origin of titles of nobility.]

The officials upon whom the Frankish kings were forced to rely chiefly were the counts, the "hand and voice of the king" wherever he could not be in person. They were to maintain order, see that justice was done in their district, and raise troops when the king needed them. On the frontier were the counts of the march, or margraves (marquises), already mentioned. These titles, together with that of duke, still exist as titles of nobility in Europe, although they are no longer associated with governmental duties except where their holders have the right to sit in the upper house of parliament.

[Sidenote: The missi dominici.]

To keep the counts in order, Charlemagne appointed royal commissioners (the missi dominici), whom he dispatched to all parts of his realm to investigate and report to him how things were going in the districts assigned to them. They were sent in pairs, a bishop and a layman, so that they might act as a check on one another. Their circuits were changed each year so that they should have no chance to enter into conspiracy with the counts whom it was their special business to watch.[48]

The revival of the Roman Empire in the West made no difference in Charlemagne's system of government, except that he required all his subjects above twelve years of age to take a new oath of fidelity to him as emperor. He held important assemblies of the nobles and prelates each spring or summer, where the interests of the Empire were considered. With the sanction of his advisers, he issued an extraordinary series of laws, called capitularies, a number of which have been preserved. With the bishops and abbots he discussed the needs of the Church, and above all the necessity of better schools for both the clergy and laity. The reforms which he sought to introduce give us an opportunity of learning the condition in which Europe found itself after four hundred years of disorder.

[Sidenote: The dark century before Charlemagne.]

34. Charlemagne was the first important king since Theodoric to pay any attention to book learning, which had fared badly enough since the death of Boethius, three centuries before. About 650 the supply of papyrus had been cut off, owing to the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs, and as paper had not yet been invented there was only the very expensive parchment to write upon. While this had the advantage of being more durable than papyrus, its cost discouraged the multiplication of copies of books. The eighth century, that immediately preceding Charlemagne's coronation, is declared by the learned Benedictine monks, in their great history of French literature, to have been the most ignorant, the darkest, and the most barbarous period ever seen, at least in France. The documents of the Merovingian period often indicate great ignorance and carelessness on the part of those who wrote them out.

[Sidenote: The elements of learning preserved by the Church.]

Yet, in spite of this dark picture, there was promise for the future. It was evident, even before Charlemagne's time, that the world was not to continue indefinitely in the path of ignorance. Latin could not be forgotten, for that was the language of the Church and all its official communications were in that tongue. The teachings of the Christian religion had to be gathered from the Bible and other books, and the church services formed a small literature by themselves. Consequently it was absolutely necessary that the Church should maintain some sort of education in order to perform its complicated services and conduct the extensive duties which devolved upon it. All the really efficient church officers, whatever their nationality, must have been able to read the Latin classics, if they were so inclined. Then there were the compilations of ancient knowledge already mentioned,[49] which, incredibly crude and scanty as they were, kept up the memory of the past. They at least perpetuated the names of the various branches of knowledge and contained, for example, enough about arithmetic and astronomy to help the isolated churchman to calculate each year the date of Easter.

[Sidenote: Two letters of Charlemagne's respecting the neglect of education among the clergy.]

Charlemagne was the first temporal ruler to realize the serious neglect of education, even among the clergy, and we have two interesting letters from him, written before he was made emperor, relating to this subject. In one to an important bishop, he says: "Letters have been written to us frequently in recent years from various monasteries, stating that the brethren who dwelt therein were offering up holy and pious supplications in our behalf. We observed that the sentiments in these letters were exemplary but that the form of expression was uncouth, because what true devotion faithfully dictated to the mind, the tongue, untrained by reason of neglect of study, was not able to express in a letter without mistakes. So it came about that we began to fear lest, perchance, as the skill in writing was less than it should be, the wisdom necessary to the understanding of the Holy Scriptures was also much less than was needful. We all know well that, although errors of speech are dangerous, errors of understanding are far more dangerous. Therefore, we exhort you not merely not to neglect the study of letters, but with a most humble mind, pleasing to God, earnestly to devote yourself to study, in order that you may be able the more easily and correctly to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures."

In the other letter he says: "We have striven with watchful zeal to advance the cause of learning which has been almost forgotten through the negligence of our ancestors; and by our own example, we invite all those who can, to master the studies of the liberal arts. In this spirit, God aiding us, we have already carefully corrected all the books of the Old and New Testaments, corrupted by the ignorance of the copyists."

]

It seemed to Charlemagne that it was the duty of the Church not only to look after the education of its own officers but to provide the opportunity of at least an elementary education for the people at large. In accordance with this conviction, he issued (789) an admonition to the clergy to gather together the children both of freemen and serfs in their neighborhood and establish schools "in which the boys may learn to read."[51]

[Sidenote: Establishment of monastery schools and the 'school of the palace.']

It would be impossible to say how many of the innumerable abbots and bishops established schools in accordance with Charlemagne's recommendations. It is certain that famous centers of learning existed at Tours, Fulda, Corbie, Orleans, and other places during his reign. Charlemagne further promoted the cause of education by the establishment of the famous "school of the palace" for the instruction of the sons of his nobles and of his own children. He placed the Englishman, Alcuin, at the head of the school, and called distinguished men from Italy and elsewhere as teachers. The best known of these was the historian, Paulus Diaconus, who wrote a history of the Lombards, to which we owe most of what we know about them.

Charlemagne appears to have been particularly impressed with the constant danger of mistakes in copying books, a task frequently turned over to ignorant and careless persons. After recommending the founding of schools, he continues: "Correct carefully the Psalms, the signs used in music, the [Latin] grammar, and the religious books used in every monastery or bishopric; since those who desire to pray to God properly often pray badly because of the incorrect books. And do not let your boys misread or miswrite them. If there is any need to copy the Gospel, Psalter or Missal, let men of maturity do the writing with great diligence." These precautions were amply justified, for a careful transmission of the literature of the past was as important as the attention to education. It will be noted that Charlemagne made no attempt to revive the learning of Greece and Rome. He deemed it quite sufficient if the churchmen would learn their Latin well enough to read the missal and the Bible intelligently.

The hopeful beginning that was made under Charlemagne in the revival of education and intellectual interest was destined to prove disappointing in its immediate results. It is true that the ninth century produced a few noteworthy men who have left works which indicate acuteness and mental training. But the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, the struggles between his descendants, the coming of new barbarians, and the disorder caused by the unruly feudal lords, who were not inclined to recognize any master, all conspired to keep the world back for at least two centuries more. Indeed, the tenth and the first half of the eleventh centuries seem, at first sight, little better than the seventh and eighth. Yet ignorance and disorder never were quite so prevalent after, as they were before, Charlemagne.

General Reading.—The best life of Charlemagne in English is MOMBERT, A History of Charles the Great (D.C. Appleton & Co., $5.00). See also HODGKIN, Charles the Great (The Macmillan Company, 75 cents), and WEST, Alcuin (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00).



CHAPTER VIII

THE DISRUPTION OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE

[Sidenote: Louis the Pious succeeds Charlemagne.]

35. It was a matter of great importance to the world whether Charlemagne's extensive empire was, after his death, to remain one or to fall apart. He himself appears to have had no expectation that it would hold together, for in 806 he divided it up in a very arbitrary manner among his three sons. We do not know whether he was led thus to undo his life's work simply because the older tradition of a division among the king's sons was as yet too strong to permit him to hand down all his possessions to his eldest son, or because he believed it would be impossible to keep together so vast and heterogeneous a realm. However this may have been, the death of his two eldest sons left only Louis, who succeeded his father both as king and emperor.

[Sidenote: Partition of Charlemagne's empire among the sons of Louis the Pious.]

Louis the Pious had been on the throne but a few years before he took up the all-important problem of determining what share each of his sons should have in the empire after his death. As they were far too ambitious to submit to the will of their father, we find no less than six different partitions between the years 817 and 840. We cannot stop to trace these complicated and transient arrangements, or the rebellions of the undutiful sons, who set the worst possible example to the ambitious and disorderly nobles. On the death of Louis the Pious, in 840, his second son, Louis the German, was in possession of Bavaria and had at various times been recognized as ruler of most of those parts of the empire now included in Germany. The youngest son, Charles the Bald, had all the western portion of the Frankish possessions, while Lothaire, the eldest, had been designated as emperor and ruled over Italy and the district lying between the possessions of the younger brothers. Charles and Louis promptly combined to resist the attempts of Lothaire to assert his superiority as emperor, and defeated him at Fontenay (841). The treaty of Verdun, which followed, is one of the most memorable in the history of western Europe.[52]



[Sidenote: Treaty of Verdun, 843.]

In the negotiations which led up to the treaty of Verdun there appears to have been entire agreement among the three parties that Italy should go to Lothaire, Aquitaine to Charles the Bald, and Bavaria to Louis the German. The real difficulty lay in the disposal of the rest of the empire. It seemed appropriate that the older brother, as emperor, should have, in addition to Italy, the center of the Frankish dominions, including the capital, Aix-la-Chapelle. A state of the most artificial kind, extending from Rome to northern Holland, was thus created, which had no natural unity of language or custom. Louis the German was assigned, in addition to Bavaria, the country north of Lombardy and westward to the Rhine. As for Charles the Bald, his realm included a great part of what is France to-day, as well as the Spanish March and Flanders.

36. The great interest of the treaty of Verdun lies in the tolerably definite appearance of a western and an eastern Frankish kingdom, one of which was to become France and the other Germany. In the kingdom of Charles the Bald the dialects spoken by the majority of the people were derived directly from the spoken Latin, and in time developed into Provenal and French. In the kingdom of Louis the German, on the other hand, both people and language were German. The narrow strip of country between these regions, which fell to Lothaire, came to be called Lotharii regnum, or kingdom of Lothaire.[53] This name was perverted in time into Lotharingia and, later, into Lorraine. It is interesting to note that this territory has formed a part of the debatable middle ground over which the French and Germans have struggled so obstinately down to our own day.

[Sidenote: The Strasburg oaths.]

We have a curious and important evidence of the difference of language just referred to, in the so-called Strasburg oaths (842). Just before the settlement at Verdun, the younger brothers had found it advisable to pledge themselves, in an especially solemn and public manner, to support one another against the pretensions of Lothaire. First, each of the two brothers addressed his soldiers in their own language, absolving them from their allegiance to him should he desert his brother. Louis then took the oath in what the chronicle calls the lingua romana, so that his brother's soldiers might understand him, and Charles repeated his oath in the lingua teudisca for the benefit of Louis' soldiers.[54] Fortunately the texts of both of these oaths have been preserved. They are exceedingly interesting and important as furnishing our earliest examples, except some lists of words, of the language spoken by the common people, which was only just beginning to be written. Probably German was very rarely written before this time, as all who could write at all wrote in Latin. The same is true of the old Romance tongue (from which modern French developed), which had already drifted far from the Latin.



[Sidenote: New divisions of the empire corresponding to France, Germany, and Italy.]

37. When Lothaire died (855) he left Italy and the middle kingdom to his three sons. By 870 two of these had died, and their uncles, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, did not hesitate to appropriate the middle kingdom and divide it between them by the treaty of Mersen. Italy was left to Lothaire's only surviving son, together with the imperial crown, which was to mean nothing, however, for a hundred years to come. The result was that, as early as 870, western Europe was divided into three great districts which corresponded with startling exactness to three important states of modern Europe, i.e., France, Germany, and Italy.

[Sidenote: The empire temporarily reunited under Charles the Fat.]

Louis the German was succeeded in the East-Frankish kingdom by his son, Charles the Fat. In 884, owing to the death of the sons and the grandsons of Charles the Bald, there was no one to represent his line except a child of five years. So the aristocracy of the West-Frankish kingdom invited Charles the Fat to become their king. In this way it came about that the whole empire of Charlemagne was reunited for two or three years under a single ruler.[55]

[Sidenote: Charles the Fat and the Northmen.]

Charles the Fat was ill and proved an incompetent emperor, entirely unequal to the serious task of governing and protecting his vast territories. His weakness was especially shown in his pusillanimous treaties with the Northmen. When Paris was making an heroic defense against them under its count, Odo, Charles, instead of marching at the head of an army to relieve it, agreed to pay the invaders seven hundred pounds of silver if they would raise the siege. They were then permitted to take up their winter quarters far inland, in Burgundy, where they proceeded to burn and pillage at will.

[Sidenote: Charles the Fat deposed and succeeded by Arnulf.]

This degrading agreement so disgusted the West-Frankish nobility that they were glad to join a conspiracy set on foot by Charles' nephew, the brave Arnulf of Carinthia, who had resolved to supplant his inefficient uncle. Charles was deposed and deserted by all his former supporters in 887. No one, except Napoleon, has ever again succeeded in bringing the eastern, western, and southern parts of Charlemagne's empire under his control, even for a brief period. Arnulf, although enjoying the title of emperor, could scarcely hope to be recognized as king in all parts of the Frankish empire. Even nominal unity was no longer possible. As one of the chronicles of the time puts it, "While Arnulf was frittering away his time, many little kingdoms grew up."

[Sidenote: Origin of the kingdom of Burgundy, or Arles.]

In the West-Frankish territory the nobility of the northern part chose Odo, the hero of the siege of Paris, as their king; but in the south another enterprising nobleman, Count Boso of Vienne, succeeded in inducing the pope to crown him king of a certain district on the Rhone which included Provence. Immediately after Boso's death a large territory about the Lake of Geneva, which he had hoped to win for himself, became a separate kingdom under its own ruler. This region and that which Boso ruled to the south were later united into the kingdom of Burgundy, or, as it is often called, Arles.

Even before the deposition of Charles the Fat, many of the counts and other important landowners began to take advantage of the weakness of their king to establish themselves as the rulers of the districts about them, although they did not assume the title of king. In the East-Frankish kingdom the various German peoples whom Charlemagne had managed to control, especially the Bavarians and Saxons, began to revive their old national independence. In Italy the disruption was even more marked than in the north.[57]

[Sidenote: Causes of disruption.]

[Sidenote: Poor roads.]

38. It is clear, from what has been said, that none of the rulers into whose hands the fragments of Charlemagne's empire fell, showed himself powerful and skillful enough to govern properly a great territory like that embraced in France or Germany to-day. The difficulties in the way of establishing a well-regulated state, in the modern sense of the word, were almost insurmountable. In the first place, it was well-nigh impossible to keep in touch with all parts of a wide realm. The wonderful roads which the Romans had built had generally fallen into decay, for there was no longer a corps of engineers maintained by the government to keep them up and repair the bridges. In those parts of Charlemagne's possessions that lay beyond the confines of the old Roman Empire, the impediments to travel must have been still worse than in Gaul and on the Rhine; there not even the vestiges of Roman roads existed.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of money for paying government officers and maintaining armies.]

In addition to the difficulty of getting about, the king had to contend with the scarcity of money in the Middle Ages. This prevented him from securing the services of a great corps of paid officials, such as every government finds necessary to-day. Moreover, it made it impossible for him to support the standing army which would have been necessary to suppress the constant insubordination of his officials and of the powerful and restless nobility, whose chief interest in life was fighting.

[Sidenote: New invasions,—the Northmen, Slavs, Hungarians, and Saracens.]

The disintegration of the Frankish empire was hastened by the continued invasions from all sides. From the north—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—came the Scandinavian pirates, the Northmen.[58] They were skillful and daring seamen, who not only harassed the coast of the North Sea, but made their way up the rivers, plundering and burning towns inland as far as Paris. On the eastern boundary of the empire the Germans were forced to engage in constant warfare with the Slavs. Before long the Hungarians, a savage race, began their terrible incursions into central Germany and northern Italy. From the south came the Saracens, who had got possession of Sicily (in 827), and terrorized southern Italy and France, even attacking Rome itself.

[Sidenote: Growing power and independence of the great landed proprietor.]

39. In the absence of a powerful king with a well-organized army at his back, each district was left to look out for itself. Doubtless many counts, margraves, bishops, and other great landed proprietors who were gradually becoming independent princes, earned the loyalty of the people about them by taking the lead in defending the country against its invaders and by establishing fortresses as places of refuge when the community was hard pressed. These conditions serve to explain why such government as continued to exist during the centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was necessarily carried on mainly, not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders. The grim fortresses of the medival lords, which appeared upon almost every point of vantage throughout western Europe during the Middle Ages, would not have been tolerated by the king, had he been powerful enough to destroy them. They plainly indicate that their owners were practically independent rulers.

When the traveler in France or Germany comes upon the picturesque ruins of a medival castle, perched upon some rocky cliff, accessible from one side only, and commanding the surrounding country, he cannot but see that those massive walls, with their towers and battlements, their moat and drawbridge, were never intended as a dwelling place for the peaceful household of a private citizen, but rather as the fortified palace of a ruler. We can picture the great hall crowded with armed retainers, who were ready to fight for the proprietor when he was disposed to attack a neighboring lord, and who knew that below were the dungeons to which the lord might send them if they ventured to rebel against his authority.



[Sidenote: The landed proprietor and the manor.]

In order to understand the position of the medival noble and the origin of feudalism we must consider the situation of the great landowners. A large part of western Europe in the time of Charlemagne appears to have been divided up into great estates, resembling the Roman villas. Just how these originated we do not know. These estates, or manors, as they were called, were cultivated mainly by serfs, who were bound to the land and were under the control of its proprietor. They tilled such part of the estate as the owner reserved for his own particular use, and provided for his needs and their own without the necessity of buying much from the outside. When we speak of a medival landowner we mean one who held one or more of these manors, which served to support him and left him free to busy himself fighting with other proprietors in the same position as himself.[59]

[Sidenote: Immunities.]

It had been common even before Charlemagne's time to grant to monasteries and churches, and even to individuals, an extraordinary privilege which exempted their lands from the presence or visits of government officials. No public officer with the power to hear cases, exact fines, obtain lodging or entertainment for the king and his followers when traveling about, or make requisitions of any kind, was to enter the lands or villages belonging to the monastery or person enjoying the immunity. These exemptions were evidently sought with a view to getting rid of the exactions of the king's officials and appropriating the various fines and fees, rather than with the purpose of usurping governmental prerogatives. But the result was that the monasteries or individuals who were thus freed from the requisitions of the government were left to perform its functions,—not, however, as yet in their own right, but as representatives of the king.[60] It is not hard to see how those who enjoyed this privilege might, as the central power weakened, become altogether independent. It is certain that a great many landowners who had been granted no exemption from the jurisdiction of the king's officers, and a great many of the officers themselves, especially the counts and margraves, gradually broke away altogether from the control of those above them and became the rulers of the regions in which they lived.

[Sidenote: Tendency to hereditary offices.]

The counts were in a particularly favorable position to usurp for their own benefit the powers which they were supposed to exercise for the king. Charlemagne had chosen his counts and margraves in most cases from the wealthy and distinguished families of his realms. As he had little money, he generally rewarded their services by grants of estates, which only served to increase their independence. They gradually came to look upon their office and their land as private property, and they were naturally disposed to hand it on to their sons after them. Charlemagne had been able to keep control of his agents by means of the missi. After his death his system fell into disuse and it became increasingly difficult to get rid of inefficient or rebellious officers.