RELIGION OF THE GERMANS.—We know more of the Scandinavian religion through the Eddas, the Iliad of the Northmen, than of the religion of the Germans; but the two religions were closely allied. Among the chief gods worshiped by the Germans were Woden, called "Odin" in the North, the highest divinity, the god of the air and of the sky, the giver of fruits and delighting in battle; Donar (Thor), the god of thunder and of the weather, armed with a hammer or thunderbolt; Thiu (Tyr), a god of war, answering to Mars; Fro (Freyr), god of love; and Frauwa (Freya), his sister. Particular days were set apart for their worship. Their names appear in the names of the days of the week,—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sunday is the day of the sun, and Monday the day of the moon. Saturday alone is a name of Latin origin. Among the minor beings in the German mythology were fairies, elves, giants, and dwarfs. There were festivals to the gods. Their images were preserved in groves. Lofty trees were held sacred to divinities. The oak and the red ash were consecrated to Donar. Sacrifices, and among them human sacrifices, were offered to the gods. Their will was ascertained by means of the lot, the neighing of wild horses, and the flight of birds. Priests were not without influence, but were not a professional class, and were never dominant. Valiant warriors at death were admitted into Walhalla (the hall of the slain), where they sat at banquet with the gods.



THE THEODOSIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE

THEODOSIUS + THEODOSIUS I (the Great), m., 1, Flaccilla; 2, Galla sister of Valentinian II + Grantianus + Pulcheria + ARCADIUS m. Eudoxia + THEODOSIUS II m. Eudocia + Eudoxia m. VALENTINIAN III + Flaccilla + Pulcheria m. MARCIAN + Three other daughters + HONORIUS m. Maria, daughter of Stilicho + Placidia m. 1, Adolphus; 2, CONSTANTIUS + VALENTINIAN III, m. Eudoxia. + Eudoxia, m. 1, Palladius, son of MAXIMUS; 2, Huneric, son of GENSERIC. + Ideric + Placidia m. OLYBRIUS + Honoria + Honorius + Serena, m. Stilicho + Maria + Thermantia

[From Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History.]



CHAPTER II. THE TEUTONIC MIGRATIONS AND KINGDOMS.

THE GOTHS: THEODOSIUS I.—Towards the close of the fourth century, when Valens (364-378) was reigning in the East, the Huns moved from their settlements north of the Caspian, defeated the Alans, a powerful nation, and, compelling them to enter their service, invaded the empire of the Ostrogoths, then ruled by Hermanric. The Huns belonged to one branch of the Scythian race. They had migrated in vast numbers from Central Asia. Repulsive in form and visage, with short, thick bodies, and small, fierce eyes, living mostly on horseback or in their wagons, these terrible warriors, with their slings and bone-pointed arrows, struck terror into the nations whom they approached. The Gothic Empire fell. The Ostrogoths submitted, and Hermanric died, it is thought by his own hand. The Visigoths crowded down to the Danube, and implored Valens to give them an asylum upon Roman territory. They had previously been converted to Christianity, mainly by the labors of Ulphilas, who had framed for them an alphabet, and translated nearly the whole Bible into their tongue. Fragments of this Moeso-Gothic version are the oldest written monument in the Teutonic languages. Christianity was taught to them by Ulphilas in the Arian type; and this circumstance was very important, since it was the occasion of the spread of Arianism among many other Teutonic peoples. Valens granted their request to cross the Danube, and, under Fritigern and Alavivus, to settle in Moesia (376). By the connivance of the officers of Valens, they were allowed to retain their arms. The avarice of corrupt imperial governors provoked them to revolt; and, in the battle of Adrianople, Valens was defeated. The house into which the wounded emperor was carried was set on fire, and he perished. Gratian, who, since the death of Valentinian I. (375), had been the ruler of the West, summoned the valiant Theodosius from his estate in Spain, to which he had been banished, to sustain the tottering empire. Gratian made him regent in the East. His father had cleared Britain of the Picts and Scots, and restored it to the empire. Under him the son had learned to be a soldier. He had been driven into retirement by court intrigues. He now accomplished, as well as it could be done, the mighty task laid upon him. He checked the progress of the Goths, divided them, incorporated some of them in the army, and dispersed the rest in Thrace, Moesia, and Asia Minor (382). Four years later forty-thousand Ostrogoths were received into the imperial service. Once Rome had conquered the barbarians, and planted its colonies among them; now, after they had proved their power, and gained boldness by victory, it received them within its own borders. The indolence and vice of Gratian produced a revolution in the West. Maximus was proclaimed imperator by the legions of Britain, and Gratian was put to death by his cavalry (383). After sanguinary conflicts, Theodosius obtained, also, supreme power in the West. He gave to orthodoxy, in the strife with Arianism, the supremacy in the East; and, under his auspices, the General Council of Constantinople re-affirmed the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity (381). In the ancient church he had a glory second only to that of Constantine. With the exception of his harsh and inquisitorial laws for the forcible suppression of Arianism and paganism, his legislation was generally wise and beneficent.

ARCADIUS: HONORIUS.—Theodosius left the government of the East to his son Arcadius, then eighteen years of age, and that of the West to a younger son, Honorius. The empire of the East continued ten hundred and fifty-eight years after this division; that of the West, only eighty-one years. The Eastern Empire was defended by the barriers of the Danube and the Balkan mountains, by the strength of Constantinople, together with the care taken to protect it, and by the general tendency of the barbarian invasions westward. Rome, in the course of a half-century, was the object of four terrible attacks,—that of Alaric and the Visigoths; of Radagaisus with the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans; of Genseric with the Vandals; of Attila with the Huns.

ALARIC IN ITALY.—The Visigoths made Alaric—the head of their most illustrious family, the Balti—their leader. Honorius was controlled by the influence of Stilicho, a brave soldier, by birth a Vandal; Arcadius was ruled by a Goth, Rufinus, a cunning and faithless diplomatist. Alaric and his followers were enraged at the withholding of the pay which was due to them yearly from Arcadius. Rufinus, in order to keep up his sway, and out of hostility to Stilicho, arranged that they should invade Eastern Illyricum, a province on which each of the emperors had claims, and which he feared that Stilicho would seize. They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed through the undefended strait of Thermopylae, spared Athens, but devastated the rest of Greece. The only protector of the empire now was Stilicho, to whom Theodosius had committed the care of his two sons, and whose power was exercised in the West. He caused the perfidious Rufinus to be put to death by Gainas, one of the Gothic allies of Arcadius. The place of the minister was taken by Eutropius, an Armenian who had been a slave. Stilicho fought the Goths in two campaigns, but, perhaps from policy, suffered them to escape by the Strait of Naupactus (Lepanto). To prevent further ravages, Arcadius had no alternative but to appoint Alaric master-general or duke of Illyricum. This obliged Stilicho to retire. Raised upon the shield, and thus made king by his followers, Alaric led them to the conquest of Italy. Honorius fled for refuge from Milan to the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. Stilicho came to his relief, and defeated the Visigoths at Pollentia (402). But Honorius copied the example of Arcadius, made Alaric a general, and gave him the commission to conquer Illyricum for the Western Empire. After his defeat, he was moving against Rome with his cavalry, when his retreat was purchased by a pension. It was when Honorius was celebrating his triumph at Rome that a monk named Telemachus leaped into the arena to separate the gladiators. He was stoned to death by the spectators, but the result of his self-devotion was an edict putting a final stop to the gladiatorial shows. The emperor now fixed his residence, which had been at Milan, at Ravenna, a city that was covered on the land side by a wide and impassable morass, over which was an artificial causeway, easily destroyed in case it could not be defended. It had served him as an asylum during the invasion of Alaric.

RADAGAISUS.—The empire was not long left in peace. Alaric was a Christian, and partially civilized. Radagaisus was a Goth, but a heathen and a barbarian. The Suevi under his command, took their course southward from the neighborhood of the Baltic, and, drawing after them the Burgundians, Vandals, and Alans,—tribes which began to be alarmed by the hordes of Huns that were gathering behind them,—advanced to the pillage of the empire. Leaving the bulk of their companions on the borders of the Rhine, two hundred thousand of them crossed the Alps, and made their way as far as Florence. Stilicho once more saved Rome and the empire by forcing them back into the Apennines, where most of them perished from famine. Radagaisus surrendered, and was beheaded. The news of this disaster moved the host which had been left behind, joined by the remainder of the army of Radagaisus, to make an attack upon Gaul. Despite the resistance of the Ripuarian Franks, to whom Rome had committed the defense of the Rhine, they crossed that river on the last day of the year 406. For two years Gaul was a prey to their ravages, until the Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals, sought for fresh booty on the south of the Pyrenees (409). In Gaul they "destroyed the cities, ravaged the fields, and drove before them in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars." Brief as was this period of devastation, it marks the severance of Gaul from the empire.

ALARIC AGAIN IN ITALY.—Stilicho had kept up friendly relations with Alaric, and had retained in Italy thirty thousand barbarians in the pay of the empire. The brave general became an object of suspicion to Honorius, who caused him to be assassinated, and the wives and children of the barbarian troops to be massacred. The men fled to Alaric. He came back with them to avenge them. He appeared under the walls of Rome. "It was more than six hundred years since a foreign enemy had been there, and Hannibal had advanced so far, only to retreat." When the envoys of the Senate represented to Alaric how numerous was the population, he answered, "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed." But he consented to accept an enormous ransom, and retired to winter quarters in Tuscany. The court at Ravenna refused to assign lands to the Visigoths for a permanent settlement in Northern Italy. Alaric demanded the post of master-general of the Western armies. Once more he advanced to Rome, seized the "Port" of Ostia, and compelled the Senate to appoint Attalus, the prefect of the city, emperor. He besieged Ravenna without effect, quarreled with Attalus, and deposed him, and for the third time marched upon Rome. Slaves within the city opened the Salarian gate to their countrymen, and on the 24th of August, 410, the sack of the city began. To add to the horrors of the scene, a terrific thunderstorm was raging. For three days Rome was given up to pillage. Only the Christian temples were respected, which were crowded by those who sought within them an asylum. Rome had been the center of Paganism. The scattering and destruction of its patrician families was the ruin of the old religion. Alaric did not long survive his victory. He died at Consentia in Bruttium. He was buried under the little river Basentius, which was turned out of its course while the sepulcher was constructing, and then restored to its former channel. The slaves employed in the work were put to death, that the place of his burial might remain a secret (410).

ATHAULF: WALLIA.—Athaulf (called Adolphus), the brother and successor of Alaric, was an admirer of the empire. He enlisted in the service of Honorius, and married his sister, Placidia, who was in the hands of the Goths, either as a captive or as a hostage. He put down usurpers in the south of Gaul who had set themselves up as emperors, and entered Spain, in order to drive out the barbarians from that country. But he was assassinated (415). His successor, Wallia, carried forward his plans, in the name of Honorius, against the Alans, the Suevi, and the Vandals. He partly exterminated the Alans, chased the Suevi into the mountains on the north-west, and the Vandals into the district called after them, Andalusia.

THREE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS.—The kingdom of the Suevi thus established (419), under the kings reigning from 438 to 455 conquered Lusitania, and would have subdued all Spain had they not been checked by the Visigoths. As a reward for their services, the latter received from Honorius, Aquitaine in Gaul, as far as the Loire and the Rhone, with Toulouse for their capital. They conquered the Suevi in 456, and in 585 subjugated them; in 507 the Franks had driven them out of Gaul. Early in the fifth century the Burgundian kingdom grew up in South-eastern Gaul. At the end of that century the Rhone was a Burgundian river. Lyons and Vienne were Burgundian cities. Thus in the first twenty years of the fifth century there arose three barbarian kingdoms. Of these, that of the Suevi soon vanished (585), being absorbed by the Visigoths; that of the Burgundians continued until 534; while that of the Visigoths in Spain lasted until the conquest by the Arabs in 711.

CONQUEST OF AFRICA BY THE VANDALS.—Honorius died in 423. He had shown himself a zealous defender of the Church against heresy, and was the author of edicts for the suppression of heathenism, and for the destruction of heathen temples and idols. But he had proved himself inefficient in the defense of the empire. His nephew Valentinian III., the son of Placidia and of the general Constantius, whom she had married in 417, succeeded him; but he was only six years old, and for twenty-five years the government was carried on in his name by his unworthy mother. She had two able generals, Aetius and Boniface, whose discord was fatal in its effects. At the same time in the East, the government was managed by Pulcheria for her brother, Theodosius II., who had succeeded Arcadias in 408. Aetius, who was a Hun, by insidious arts persuaded Placidia to recall Boniface, who was governor of Africa, at the same time that he advised Boniface to disobey the order which he represented as a sentence of death. Boniface sent to Gonderic, king of the Vandals in Spain,—who, after the retreat of the Visigoths, were strong in that country,—an offer of an alliance. Genseric, the Vandal leader, the brother and successor of Gonderic, landed in Africa in 429 with fifty thousand men. Too late the treachery of Aetius was explained to Boniface. Genseric, with his allies, tribes of nomad Moors, defeated him in a bloody battle, and besieged Hippo for fourteen months. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, animated the courage of its defenders until his death in 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Boniface was again defeated, and Hippo was taken. The Vandals pushed on their conquest, but eight years passed before Carthage was reduced (439). Valentinian had recognized by treaty the kingdom of the Vandals. Genseric was characterized by genius and energy as well as by cruelty and avarice. He built up a navy, and made himself master of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. He was able to defy Constantinople, on account of his control of the Mediterranean. At the same time he entered into relations with the barbarians in the north, in order that Aetius, who endeavored to bring in some degree of order and obedience in the empire, might be checked and restrained on all sides. The Vandals were Arians, and made full use of the difference in faith as a motive for plundering and maltreating the orthodox Christians in Africa, whom their arms had subdued.

ATTILA: CHALONS.—The enemy whom Genseric invoked to make a diversion in his favor against the combined rulers of the East and of the West, was Attila. For a half-century the Huns had halted, in their migration, in the center of Europe, and held under their sway the Ostrogoths, the Gepids, the Marcomanni, and other tribes. The empire of Attila extended from the Baltic to the north of the Danube, and as far east as the Volga. His name inspired terror wherever it was heard. He was styled "the scourge of God." The "sword of Mars"—the point of an ancient sword which, it was said, was discovered by supernatural means, and was presented to him—was deemed the symbol of his right to the dominion of the world. Yet, notwithstanding his fierce visage and haughty mien, he was an indulgent ruler of his own people, and not without pity and other generous traits. Such was the dread of him that it was said that no blade of grass grew on the path which his armies had traversed. First, he attacked Theodosius II. in the East, to force him to recall the troops which he had sent against Genseric. He crossed the Danube, destroyed seventy cities, and forced the Eastern emperor not only to pay a tribute heavier than he had paid before, but also to cede to the Huns the right bank of the river. Theodosius failed in a treacherous attempt to assassinate him through Attila's ambassador, Edecon, whom he had bribed. Attila discovered the plot, but pardoned with disdain the ambassadors of the emperor who went to him in his wooden palace in Pannonia. He contented himself with reproaching Theodosius with "conspiring, like a perfidious slave, against the life of his master." Regarding Constantinople as impregnable, he turned to the West. He demanded of the Western emperor the half of his states; and, moving to the Rhine with six hundred thousand barbarians, he crossed that river and the Moselle, advanced on his devastating path into the heart of Gaul, crossed the Seine, and laid siege to Orleans. Everywhere the inhabitants fled before him. The courage of the people in Orleans was sustained by their bishop, who at length, as the city was just falling into the hands of the assailants, saw a cloud of dust, and cried, "It is the help of God." It was Aetius, who, on the death of Boniface, had thought it prudent to fly to the Huns, had come back to Italy at the head of sixty thousand men, obtained forgiveness of Placidia, and been made master-general of her forces. He had united to the Roman troops the barbarians who had occupied Gaul, the Visigoths under Theodoric, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. On the Catalaunian fields, a vast plain near Chalons, whither Attila now retreated to find room for the effective use of his cavalry, the two multitudinous armies, each composed of a motley collection of nations, met. It was, like the conflict at Marathon, one of the decisive battles of history. It was to determine whether the Aryan or the Scythian was to be supreme in Europe. The battle-field was strewn, it was said, with the bodies of a hundred and sixty thousand men,—an exaggeration indicating that the carnage was too great to be estimated. Attila was worsted. He encircled his camp with a rampart of wagons; and in the morning the victors saw him standing on the top of a mound composed of the trappings of horsemen, which was to serve as his funeral-pile, with torch-bearers at hand ready to light it in case of defeat. Aetius was weakened by the withdrawal of the Visigoths: the allies did not venture to attack the lion standing thus at bay, but suffered him to return to Germany (451).

ATTILA IN ITALY.—The next year Attila invaded Upper Italy. He destroyed Aquileia, the inhabitants of which fled to the lagoons of the Adriatic, where their descendants founded Venice. Padua, Verona, and other cities were reduced to ashes. At Milan he saw a painting which represented the emperor on his throne, and the chiefs of the Huns prostrate before him. He ordered a picture to be painted in which the king of the Huns sat on the throne, and the emperor was at his feet. The Italians were without the means of defense. Leo I. (Leo the Great), bishop of Rome, at the risk of his life accompanied the emperor's ambassadors to Attila's camp. Their persuasions, with rich gifts and the promise of a tribute, availed. The army of Attila was weakened by sickness, and Aetius was approaching. The king of the Huns decided to retire to his forests. The apparition of the two apostles, Peter and Paul, threatening the barbarian with instant death if he did not comply with the prayer of their successor, is the subject of one of the paintings of Raphael. Some months after he left Italy Attila died at the royal village near the Danube, probably from the bursting of an artery during the night (453). The nations which he had subjugated regained their freedom. The chiefs of the Huns contended for the crown in conflicts which dissipated their strength. The expeditions of Attila were like a violent tempest,— destructive for the moment, the traces of which soon disappear.

About the name of Attila, there gathered cycles of traditions, Gallo-Roman or Italian, East German or Gothic, West German and Scandinavian, and Hungarian. Such traditions in Germany formed, later, the germ of the national epic, the Nibelungen-lied. They testify to the powerful impression which the hero of the Huns made on the memory and imagination of the different nations.

GENSERIC.—Attila did not see Rome; but Genseric, his ally, visited it with fire and sword (455). The emperor was Petronius Maximus, a senator, who had slain Valentinian III. as the penalty for a mortal offense. The weakness of Maximus as a ruler caused him to be destroyed by the populace. Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, whom Maximus had compelled to marry the author of her husband's death, had secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals. Once more Leo showed his fearless spirit by going into the camp of the Vandal king, and interceding for Rome. He only succeeded, however, in mitigating to a limited extent the horrors that attended the pillage of the city by the fierce and greedy soldiers, the Vandals and Moors, who followed Genseric, For fourteen days (June 15-29, 455) Rome was given up to carnage and robbery. The conqueror carried off every thing of value that was capable of being transported. Eudoxia was rudely stripped of her jewels, and with her two daughters, descendants of the great Theodosius, was conveyed away with the conqueror to Carthage. For twenty years longer Genseric ruled over the Mediterranean in spite of the hostility of both empires. An expedition sent against him at the instigation of Ricimer, the Sueve, by the Eastern emperor Leo, was ill commanded by Basiliscus, and failed. But after the Vandal king died (477), his kingdom was torn by civil and religious disorders, and by the revolts of the Moors, and, fifty-seven years after the death of its founder, was conquered by the general of the Eastern Empire.

FALL OF ROME: ODOACER.—After the death of Maximus, Avitus was appointed emperor by the king of the Visigoths in Gaul. The barbarians hesitated to assume the purple themselves, but they determined on whom it should be bestowed. Of the emperors that succeeded, Majorian (457-461)—who was raised to the throne by Ricimer, military leader of the German mercenaries in the Roman army—presents an instance of a worthy character in a corrupt time. At last another leader of mercenaries (Orestes, a Pannonian) made his son emperor,—a boy six years old, called Romulus Augustulus (475). Odoacer, who commanded the Heruli, Rugii, and other federated tribes,—mercenaries to whom Orestes refused to grant a third part of the lands of Italy,—made himself ruler of that country. The Senate of Rome, in pursuance of his wishes, in an address to the Eastern emperor Zeno, declared that an emperor in the West was no longer necessary, and asked him to make Odoacer patrician, and prefect of the diocese of Italy. It was in this character—not as king, but in nominal subordination to Zeno, the head of the united Roman Empire—that Odoacer governed (476). For more than a half-century people had been accustomed to see the barbarians exercise supreme control, so that the extinguishment of the Western Empire was an event less marked in their eyes than it seemed to the view of subsequent ages.

OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM OF THEODORIC.—When Odoacer had reigned twelve years, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths in Moesia,—who in his youth had lived at the court of Constantinople, had defended the Eastern emperor, but had been provoked to hostility to him,—was authorized by Zeno to move upon Italy. A host consisting of two hundred thousand fighting-men, together with their families and goods, followed the Gothic leader. Defeated at Verona (489), Odoacer was forced to make a treaty for a division of power, and to surrender Ravenna, where he had taken refuge; but very soon, in the tumult of a banquet, he was slain by Theodoric's own hand, either from fear of a rival, or because he suspected that Odoacer was plotting against him. From this time the long reign of Theodoric was one of justice and of peace. More by negotiation than by war, he extended his dominion so that it embraced Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhoetia, and, in the West, Southeastern Gaul (Provence). The Bavarians paid him tribute; the Alemanni invoked his assistance against the Franks, against whom he afforded succor to the Goths of Aquitaine. In his administration he showed reverence for the old imperial system, and for its laws and institutions. He fostered agriculture, manufactures, and trade. Although he could not write, he encouraged learning; and a learned Roman, Cassiodorus, he appointed to high offices. He permitted the Goths alone to bear arms. He caused to be compiled from the Roman law a collection of statutes for the Goths and for his new subjects, and established mixed tribunals for causes in which both were parties. Cassiodorus ascribes to Theodoric the words, "Let other kings seek to procure booty, or the downfall of conquered cities: our purpose is, with God's help, so to conquer that our subjects shall lament that they have too late come under our rule." He did what he could to promote peace among other barbarian nations. The prosperity of Italy, and the increase of its population, were a proof of the good government which it enjoyed. An Arian, he respected the Catholics, confirmed the immunities enjoyed by the churches, and generally allowed the Romans to elect their own bishop. He also protected the Jews. The persecution of the Arians in the East (524) by Justin I., awakened in his mind the belief that a conspiracy was forming against him. He accused Boethius of being a partner in it, and adjudged him to death (524). While in prison at Pavia, this cultivated man, whom Theodoric had highly esteemed, composed a work on the "Consolations of Philosophy," which has made his name immortal in literature. The course of Theodoric at this time drew upon him the severe displeasure of his orthodox subjects. Soon after his death (526) his ashes were taken out of the tomb, and scattered to the winds. Hence nothing remains of his sepulcher at Ravenna but his empty mausoleum.

Before the close of the century, as we shall see, another German tribe, the Lombards, founded a powerful state in Italy, which continued for more than two hundred years (568-774).

THE FRANKS: CLOVIS.—When Clovis (481-511), a warlike and ambitious chief of the Merovingian family of princes, became king of the Franks, they numbered but a few thousand warriors. The remnant of the Roman dominion on the Seine and the Loire he annexed, after having put to death Syagrius, the Roman governor, who was delivered up to him by the Visigoths. He made Soissons, and then Paris, the seat of his authority. A Salian Frank himself, he joined to himself the Ripuarian Franks on the Lower Rhine, and made war on the Alemanni, who were planted on both sides of the river. Before a battle (formerly thought to have been at Tolbiac), he vowed, that, if the victory were given him, he would worship the God of the Christians, of whom his wife Clotilde was one. Clotilde was the niece of the Burgundian king, who was an Arian; but she was orthodox. The victory was won. Clovis, with three thousand of his nobles, was baptized by Remigius (St. Remi), Archbishop of Rheims. Hearing a sermon on the crucifixion, Clovis exclaimed, that, if he and his faithful Franks had been there, vengeance would have been taken on the Jews. He was a barbarian still, and the new faith imposed little restraint on his ambition and cruelty. But his conversion was an event of the highest importance. The Gallic church and clergy lent him their devoted support. The Franks were destined to become the dominant barbarian people. It was now settled that power was to be in the hands of Catholic—as distinguished from heretical Arian—Christianity. Clovis forced Gundobald, the Burgundian king, to become tributary, and to embrace the Catholic faith. He extended his kingdom to the Rhone on the east, and on the south (507-511), confined the Visigoths in Gaul to the strip of territory called Septimania, which they held for three centuries longer. Brittany alone remained independent under its king. Clovis was hailed as the "most Christian king" and the second Constantine, and was made patrician and consul by the Eastern emperor Anastasius, in which titles, with their insignia, he rejoiced. In the closing part of his life he took care to destroy other Frank chieftains who might possibly undertake to dispute or divide with him his sovereignty.

DISTRIBUTION OF TRIBES.—If we look at the map at the close of the fifth century, we find that all the western dominions of Rome are subject to Teutonic kings. The Franks, still retaining Western and Central Germany, rule in Northern Gaul, and are soon to extend their sway to the Pyrenees, and to conquer Burgundy. The West Goths are the masters in Spain, and still hold Aquitaine, the most of which, however, is soon to be lost to the Franks. Italy and the lands north of the Alps and the Adriatic form the East Gothic kingdom of Theodoric. Africa is governed by the Arian Vandals. To the north of the Franks, the tribes of Germany, which were never subject to Rome, have already begun their conquests in Britain. With the exception of Britain, which is falling under the power of the Saxons, and Africa, these countries are still nominally parts of the Roman Empire, of which Constantinople is the capital. In the east, the boundaries of the empire, notwithstanding the aggressions and insults which it has suffered, are but little altered.

THE MEROVINGIANS.—The dominion of Clovis was partitioned among his four sons (511). Theodoric, the eldest, in Rheims, ruled the Eastern Franks, in what soon after this time began to be called Austrasia, on both banks of the Rhine. Neustria, or the rest of the kingdom north of the Loire, was governed in parts by the other three. Theodoric gained by conquest the land of the Thuringians, whose king, Hermanfrid, he treacherously destroyed. A part of this land was given to the Saxons. The history of the Franks for half a century lacks unity. The several rulers rarely acted in concert. They made expeditions against the Burgundians, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths. Twice they attacked the Burgundians. The last time, in 534, they conquered them, deprived them of their national kings, and forced them to become Catholic. In 531 they made war on the Visigoths to avenge the wrongs inflicted on Clotilde, a princess of their family who suffered indignities at the hands of the Arian king Amalaric. They crossed the Pyrenees, and brought away Clotilde. A second division of the kingdom was made in 561 among the grandsons of Clovis, and consummated in 567. Austrasia, having Rheims for its capital, had a population chiefly German. Neustria, where the Gallo-Roman manners were adopted, had Soissons for its capital; and Burgundy had its capital at Orleans. The population in both these last dominions was more predominantly Romano-Celtic, or "Romance." Family contests, and wars full of horrors,—in which the tragic feud of two women, Brunhilde of Austrasia, a daughter of Athanagild, king of the Visigoths, and Fredegunde of Neustria, played a prominent part,—ensued. In 613 Clotaire II. of Neustria united the entire kingdom. Brunhilde was captured, and put to death in a barbarous manner. The son of Clotaire, Dagobert, was a worthless king. The Frank sovereigns of the royal line are inefficient, and the virtual sovereignty is in the hands of the "Mayors of the Palace," the officers whose function it was to superintend the royal household, and who afterwards were leaders of the feudal retainers. The family of the Pipins, who were of pure German extraction, acquired the hereditary right to this office, first in Austrasia and later in Neustria. The descendants of Pipin of Heristal, as dukes of the Franks, had regal power, while the title of king was left to the Merovingian princes. The race of Pipin was afterwards called Carolingians, or Karlings. The preponderance of power at first had been with Neustria, but it shifted to the ruder and more energetic Austrasians. The battle of Testry, in which Pipin of Heristal at their head overcame the Neustrians, determined the supremacy of Germany over France (687). His son and successor, Charles Martel (715-741), made himself sole "Duke of the Franks;" and Pipin the Short (741-768), the son of Charles Martel, became king, supplanting the Merovingian line (752).

SAXON CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.—In the fourth century, when the power of Rome was declining, the Picts and Scots from the North began to make incursions into the Roman province of Britain. At the same time Teutonic tribes from the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe, began to land as marauders upon the coast. Honorius withdrew the Roman troops from the island in 411; and it was conquered by these invading tribes, especially the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They became one people, called Anglo-Saxons, Angles or English. They were fierce barbarians, who drove the Celts whom they did not kill or enslave—and whom they called Welsh, or strangers—into Wales and Cornwall. They formed kingdoms, the first of which, Kent, was the result of the coming of Hengist and Horsa, whom Vortigern, the native prince, had invited to help him against the Picts (449). There were seven of these Saxon kingdoms (the Heptarchy), not all of which were at any one time regular communities. They were almost constantly at war with one another and with the natives. They had a king elected from the royal family. Freemen were either Earls or Churls, the "gentle" or the "simple." The churl was attached to some one lord whom he followed in war. The thanes were those who devoted themselves to the service of the king or some other great man. The thanes of the king became gentlemen and nobles. There were thralls, or slaves, either prisoners in war, or made slaves for debt or for crime. Connected with the king was a sort of Parliament, called the Witenagemot, or Meeting of the Wise, composed originally of all freemen, and then of the great men, the Ealdormen, the king's thanes. After the Saxons were converted, the bishops and abbots belonged to it. In minor affairs, the "mark," or township, governed itself.

CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS—The seven kingdoms, in the ninth century (828), were united under Egbert, who became king of Wessex in 802. He was called the king of England. Towards the Celtic Christians the heathen Saxons were hostile. The conversion of the Saxons was due to the labors of Augustine and forty monks, whom Gregory the Great (Gregory I.) sent to the island as missionaries in 597. Their first conversions were in Kent, whose king, Ethelbert, had married Bertha, the daughter of a Frankish king. Augustine, who had great success, became the first archbishop of Canterbury, and he consecrated a bishop of London. During the seventh century the other Saxon kingdoms were gradually converted. York became a seat of a second archbishopric. While Britain had been cut off from close relations with the continent, the Celtic Church there had failed to keep pace with the changes of rite and polity which had taken place among Christians beyond the channel. The consequence was a strife on these points between the converted Saxons, who were devoted to the holy see, and the "Culdees" or Old British Christians.

CONVERSION OF THE IRISH.—About the middle of the fifth century the gospel had been planted in Ireland, mainly by the labors of Patrick, who had been carried to that country from Scotland by pirates when he was a boy, and had returned to it as a missionary. The cloisters, and the schools connected with them, which he founded, flourished, became nurseries of study as well as of piety, and sent out missionaries to other countries of Western Europe.

CHARACTER OF THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS.—The Teutonic tribe was made up of freemen and of their dependents. The rights of freemen, such as the right to vote, continued; but these were modified as differences of rank and wealth arose. Their leaders in peace and war were the duke (dux), the count (comes, or graf), and the herzog (duke of higher grade) over larger provinces. The companions of the king and the local chiefs grew into a nobility. Once or twice in the year there was a gathering of the freemen in assemblies, to decree war or to sanction laws. Land was partly held in common, partly by individuals either as tenants of the community, or as individual owners. The soil was shared in proportions by the conquerors and the conquered.

THE CHURCH.—The Germanic tribes were generally more or less acquainted with the Romans, and were Christians by profession. They were subject to the influences of religion, of law, and of language, in the countries where they settled. Power passed from the Empire to the Church. The Church was strong in its moral force. Its bishops commanded the respect of the barbarians. They were moral and social leaders. In the period of darkness and of tempest, the voices of the Christian clergy were heard in accents of fearless rebuke and of tender consolation. In the cities of Italy and Gaul, the bishops, at the call of the people, informally took the first place in civil affairs. Remarkable men arose in the Church, who were conspicuous as ambassadors and peace-makers, as intercessors for the suffering, and courageous protectors of the injured. Such a man was Leo the Great. The barbarians were awed by the kingdom of righteousness, which, without exerting force, opposed to force and passion an undaunted front. There was often a conflict between their love of power and passionate impatience of control, and their reverence for the priest and for the gospel. They could not avoid feeling in some measure the softening and restraining influence of Christian teaching, and learning the lessons of the cross. Socially, the Church, as such, "was always on the side of peace, on the side of industry, on the side of purity, on the side of liberty for the slave, and protection for the oppressed. The monasteries were the only keepers of literary tradition: they were, still more, great agricultural colonies, clearing the wastes, and setting the example of improvement. They were the only seats of human labor which could hope to be spared in those lands of perpetual war." Nevertheless, the religious condition of the West, the condition of the Church and of the clergy, could not fail to be powerfully affected for the worse by the influx of barbarism, and the corrupting influence of the barbarian rulers. A great deterioration in the Church and in its ministry ensued after the first generation following the Germanic conquests passed away. This demoralization was more among the secular clergy than the monastic.

The "History of the Franks," by Gregory of Tours (540-594), is an instructive memorial of the times. He was himself an intrepid prelate, who did not quail before Chilperic I. and Fredegunde, but braved their wrath. Chilperic proposed to establish by his authority a new view of the Trinity of his own devising, but was resisted by Gregory, who told him that no one but a lunatic would embrace such an opinion. A still more crude reform of the alphabet, which the Frankish king contrived, and proposed to put in force by having existing books rewritten, Gregory effectually resisted.

ROMAN LAW.—The barbarians were profoundly impressed by the system of Roman law. This they recognized as the rule for the Roman population in the different countries. More and more they incorporated its exact provisions into their own codes. Among the West Goths in Spain the two elements were ultimately fused into one body of laws (642-701). Under the Franks, the Roman municipal system was not extinguished; the Teutonic count or bishop standing in the room of the Roman president or consular, and a more popular body taking the place of the restricted municipality. The Roman civil polity, with its definite enactments for every relation in life and every exigency, was always at hand, and exercised an increasing control.

STATE OF LEARNING.—The Latin language—the rustic Latin of the lower classes—was spoken by the conquered peoples. Latin was the language of the Church and of the Law. The consequence was, that the two languages, the tongue of the conquerors and of the Roman subjects, existed side by side in an unconscious struggle with one another. In the west and south of Europe, the victory was on the side of the Latin. The languages of these countries, the "Latin nations," grew out of the rustic dialects spoken in Roman times. In these nations the result of the mixture of the races was the final predominance of the Latin element in the civilization. In Gaul, the Franks yielded to Latin influences: France was the product. With the fall of the empire, classical culture died out. The cathedral and cloister schools preserved the records of literature. The study of language, and the mental discrimination and refinement which spring from it and from literary discipline, passed away. Centuries of comparative illiteracy—dark centuries—followed. Yet the monks were often active in their own rude style of composition; and among them were not only good men, but men of eminent natural abilities, who were unconsciously paving the way for a better time.

SAXON ENGLAND.—In England, by the Saxon conquest, a purely Teutonic kingdom was built up. The Saxons were heathen, who had never felt the civilizing influence of Rome. The traces of the earlier state of things in the province which had long been sundered from the empire, they swept away in the progress of their conquest.



CHAPTER III. THE EASTERN EMPIRE.

RELIGIOUS DISPUTES.—While the West was beginning to recover from the shock of the barbarian invasions, society in the Eastern Empire was growing more enervated and corrupt. For a considerable period the Byzantine government was managed by the influence of women. Thus Theodosius II., the successor of Arcadius (408-450), was governed during his whole reign by his sister Pulcheria. In the East, there was an intense interest felt in the abstruse questions of metaphysical theology. The Greek mind was speculative; and eager and often acrimonious debate on such questions as were raised by Nestorius respecting the two natures of the Saviour, was heard even in the shops and markets. The court meddled actively in these heated controversies, and was swayed to one party or the other by the theologians whom, for the time, it took into its favor. The emperors assumed the high prerogative of personally deciding in doctrinal disputes, and of dictating opinions to the clergy, who gradually lost their independence, and became abjectly subservient to the imperial will.

THE HIPPODROME.—The rage for doctrinal dispute in the sixth century was only exceeded by the passions kindled in connection with the circus, or hippodrome, at Constantinople. In old Rome the competitors in the chariot-races were organized, the drivers wore their respective badges,—red, white, blue, or green,—and emperors of the baser sort, like Caligula and Caracalla, visited the stables, and were enrolled on the lists of the rival factions. But in Constantinople the factions of the blue and the green, not content with the contest of the race-course, were violent political parties in which courtiers and the emperor himself took sides. The animosity of the blues and the greens broke out in frequent bloody conflicts in the streets. Their respective adherents spread into the provinces. On one occasion, under Justinian, they raised a sedition called Nika (from the watchword used by the combatants), which well-nigh subverted the throne. In this period the body-guard of the emperor played a part resembling that of the old praetorians at Rome.

JUSTINIAN.—A new dynasty began with Justin I., who succeeded Anastasius in 518. A peasant from Dardania (Bulgaria), who to the end of life was obliged to sign his name by means of an engraved tablet, but, from being prefect of the Guard, became emperor, Justin was still not without merit as a ruler. He educated his nephew, Justinian I. (527-565), and made him his successor. Justinian married Theodora, who had been a comedian and a courtesan, and was famous for her beauty. She was the daughter of Acacius, who had had the care of the wild beasts maintained by one of the factions of the circus. She joined the blues, and it was her brave spirit that prevented Justinian from taking flight when he was in imminent danger from the revolt of the Nika. The most important proceedings and decisions in affairs of state were determined by her will. Outwardly correct in her life, and zealous for orthodoxy, her vigor of mind and cleverness were not without service to the government; but her vindictive passions had full indulgence. Justinian's reign was the most brilliant period in the Byzantine history after the time of Constantine. Under his despotic rule the last vestiges of republican administration were obliterated. His love of pomp and of extravagant expenditure, in connection with his costly wars, subjected the people to a crushing weight of taxation.

WAR WITH PERSIA.—The brilliant achievements in war during Justinian's reign were owing to the skill and valor of his generals, especially of the hero Belisarius. After a hundred years of amity with Persia, war with that kingdom broke out once more under Anastasius and Justin. Belisarius saved the Asiatic provinces, and defended the empire on the east against Cobad, and against his successor, Chosroes I. (531-579), who was, perhaps, the greatest of the Persian kings of the Sassanid dynasty. The "endless peace" made with him in 533 lasted but seven years. Chosroes captured Antioch in 540. The worst consequences of this success were again averted by Belisarius, who was recalled from Italy in all haste. In the treaty of 562, Justinian ingloriously agreed to pay for the honor of being the protector of the Christians in Persia the annual tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold.

CONQUEST OF AFRICA—From a military point of view the conquests of Justinian in Africa, in Italy, and in Spain, were the signal events of his reign. Victory proved fatal to the barbarian conquerors in those countries. They were weakened by the southern climate, by sensual indulgence, and by strife among themselves. Justinian was ready to profit by this diminished capacity of resistance. Gelimer, king of the Vandals, had put to death Hilderic, a kinsman of Theodosius I. The emperor made this an occasion of attacking the Vandal kingdom, which was distracted by religious differences and contention. Belisarius sailed to Africa with a fleet of six hundred vessels, manned with twenty thousand sailors and fifteen thousand troops. Three months after landing he gained a decisive victory, and took possession of Africa, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles (534). He carried Gelimer as a captive to Constantinople, and presented him to Justinian and Theodora, seated side by side in the hippodrome to receive the triumphal procession in honor of the victor. The captive ruler could only exclaim, "Vanity, vanity! All is vanity!"

CONQUEST OF ITALY.—Professedly to avenge the wrongs of Amalasontha, the ambitious and intriguing daughter of Theodoric, who had been killed as a consequence of the disaffection of the Goths, Belisarius was sent to Italy. Sicily was conquered (535), and Naples and Rome were taken (536). Vitiges, the new king of the Goths, united the forces of the nation; but he was driven to shut himself up in Ravenna, and Ravenna surrendered (540). The Goths had offered the sovereignty of the country to Belisarius. The jealousy of Justinian, and war with Persia, led to the recall of Belisarius before he could complete the work of conquest. The Goths under Totila, a nephew of the late king, regained the greater part of Italy. Belisarius (544-549) was sent for the second time to conquer that country. He gained important successes, and recaptured Rome; but he was feebly supported by the suspicious and envious ruler at Constantinople, and was at length called home. Narses, a eunuch, insignificant in person, but as crafty as he was brave, was commissioned to accomplish what Belisarius had not been allowed to effect. He entered Italy at the head of an army, made up mostly of Huns, Heruli, and other barbarians, and defeated Totila, who died of his wounds (552). The Ostrogothic kingdom fell. The Gothic warriors who survived had leave to quit the country with their property, they having taken an oath never to return. The Ostrogoths, as a nation, vanish from history. The EXARCHATE, or vice-royalty of the Eastern Empire, was established, with its seat at Ravenna. In Spain, Justinian obtained Corduba, Assidona, Segontia (554), in reward of the assistance which he had rendered to Athanagild against a competitor for the throne. Constantinople was saved by Belisarius from a threatened attack of the Bulgarians, who had crossed the Danube on the ice (559). This great general, whose form and stature and benign manners attracted the admiration of the people, as his noble but poorly requited services gave him a right to the gratitude of the sovereign, was accused, in 563, of conspiracy against the life of Justinian. His property was confiscated, but his innocence was finally declared. The story that he was deprived of his eyes, and compelled to beg his bread, is not credited. He died in 565. A few months later Justinian himself died at the age of eighty-three. He has been aptly compared, as to his personal character and the character of his reign, to Louis XIV. of France. Among the many structures which he reared was the temple of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and countless fortresses for the defense of the capital, of the Danube, and of other parts of the exposed frontier.

THE CIVIL LAW.—Justinian's principal distinction in history grows out of his relation to legislation, and to the study of the law. He caused a famous lawyer, Tribonian, with the aid of a body of jurists, to make those collections of ancient law which are still in force in many countries. The Code included the imperial constitutions and edicts in twelve books (527, 528). This was followed (533) by the Institutes, embracing the principles of Roman jurisprudence, which was to be studied in the schools of Constantinople, Berytus, and Rome; and the Digest, or Pandects, comprising the most valuable passages from the writings of the old jurists, that were deemed of authority. In this last work three million lines were reduced to a hundred and fifty thousand. Finally a fourth work, The Novels, embraced the laws of Justinian after the publication of the code (534-565). These works, taken together, form the Civil Law,—the Corpus Juris Civilis. They are the legacy of Rome to later times. Humane principles are incorporated into the civil law, but, likewise, the despotic system of imperialism.

THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY.—In the great "Wandering of the Nations," the German tribe of Lombards, or Langobards, had made their way into Pannonia. To the east of them, in Dacia, there had arisen the kingdom of the Gepidae, a people akin to the Goths. In that region, also, were the Turanian Avars, with whom the Lombards allied themselves, and overthrew the kingdom of the Gepidae. After the conquest of Italy, Narses had established there the Byzantine system of rule and of grinding taxation. Discontent was the natural result. The enemies of Narses at Constantinople persuaded Justin II. and his queen Sophia, who had great influence over him, that prudence demanded the recall of the able, but avaricious and obnoxious, governor. The queen was reported to have said, that "he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the women of the palace, where a distaff should be placed in the eunuch's hand." "I will spin her such a thread," Narses is said to have replied, "as she shall not unravel her life long." He forthwith invited the Lombards into Italy, an invitation which they were not both to accept. Alboin was their leader, who had married the beautiful Rosamond, daughter of the Gepid king whom he had slain. Narses repented of his rash proceeding, but he died before he could organize a resistance to the invaders. These founded the great Lombard kingdom in the north of Italy, and the smaller Lombard states of Spoleto and Beneventum. Ravenna,—the residence of the Exarchs,—Rome, Naples, and the island city of Venice, were centers of districts still remaining subject to the Greek emperor, as were also the southern points of the two peninsulas of Southern Italy, and, for the time, the three main islands. Alboin was killed in 574 at the instigation of Rosamond, to whom, it was said, at a revel he had sent wine to drink in the skull of Cunimund, her father. The Lombards were not like the Goths. They formed no treaties, but seized on whatever lands they wanted, reserving to themselves all political rights. The new-comers were Arian in religion, and partly heathen. There was little intermixture by marriage between the two classes of inhabitants. Lombard and Roman was each governed by his own system of law. Later, especially under the kings Liutprand, Rachis, and Aistulf (749-756), this antagonism was much lessened, and the Roman law gained a preponderating influence in the Lombard codes. Gradually the power of the independent Lombard duchies increased. The strength of the Lombard kingdom was thus reduced. The Lombards more and more learned the arts of civilized life from the Romans, and shared in the trading and industrial pursuits of the cities. Their gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity brought the two peoples still nearer together. It was within half a century of the Lombard conquest that Gregory I. (Gregory the Great) held the papal office (590-604).

AFTER JUSTINIAN.—During the century and a half that followed the death of Justinian, the history of the Byzantine court and empire is an almost unbroken tale of crime and degeneracy. The cruelty of such emperors as Phocas (602-610) and Justinian II. surpasses the brutality of Nero and Domitian. The reign of Heraclius is the only refreshing passage in this dreary and repulsive record. He led his armies in person in a series of campaigns against Chosroes II., the Persian king. At the very time when Constantinople was besieged in vain by a host of Persians and Avars, he conducted his forces into the heart of the Persian Empire; and in a great battle near Nineveh in 627, he won a decisive victory. With the reign of Heraclius, the transient prosperity of the Greek Empire comes to an end. It was exhausted, even by its victories. Overwhelmed with taxation, it was ruined in its trade and industry. Despotism in the rulers, sensuality and baseness in rulers and subjects, undermined public and private virtue. In addition to other enemies on every side, it was attacked by the Arabians; and Heraclius lived to see the loss of Syria and of Egypt, and the capture of Alexandria, by these new assailants.

CONTROVERSY ON IMAGE WORSHIP.—The period of theological debate, when at its height in the fourth and fifth centuries, whatever extravagances of doctrinal zeal attended it, dealt with themes of grave importance; and controversy was often waged by men of high ability and moral worth. After that time, there succeeded to the tempest an intellectual stagnation, under the blighting breath of despotism, coupled with the effect of a lassitude, the natural sequel of the long-continued disputation. But, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a new controversy took place, which convulsed the Eastern Empire, and extended to the West. The matter in dispute was the use of images in worship. Pictorial representations had been gradually introduced in the earlier centuries, but had been opposed, especially in Egypt and in the African Church. After the time of Constantine, they came by degrees into universal use. This formed a ground of reproach on the part of the Mohammedans. The warfare upon images was begun by Leo III., the Isaurian (717-741), a rough soldier with no appreciation of art, who issued an edict against them. The party of "image-breakers," or iconoclasts, had numerous adherents; and the opposite party of "image-worshipers," who had a powerful support from the monks in the convents, were ardent and inflexible in withstanding the imperial measures. Neither the remonstrances of John of Damascus, the last of the Greek Fathers, nor of the Roman bishop, made an impression on Leo. The agitation spread far and wide. Subsequent emperors followed in his path. At length, however, the Empress Irene (780-802) restored image-worship; and, in 842, the Empress Theodora finally confirmed this act. In the controversy, religious motives were active, but they were mingled on both sides with political considerations. The alienation of feeling on the part of the Roman bishops was one cause of the separation of Italy from the Greek Empire.

LITERATURE AND CULTURE.—While there was a prevalence of illiteracy in the West, there continued in the Eastern Empire an interest in letters, and a respect for classical literature. Devoted Greek monks taught the Gospel to the Bulgarians and to the Slavonian tribes on its borders. Cyril and Methodius, faithful missionaries, gave the Bible to the Moravians in their own tongue. In the seventh century, John of Damascus compiled from the Greek Fathers a celebrated treatise on theology. But the period of original thought in theology, as elsewhere, had passed by. This work of the Damascene was made up chiefly of excerpts from the Fathers before him. In earlier days the church in the East had been served by erudite theologians of great talents and of great excellence, such as Basil the Great (328-379), Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzum (326-390); all of whom were liberal-minded men, strenuous defenders of orthodox doctrine, and yet not unfriendly to philosophical study. Of even wider fame was John Chrysostom (347-407), a preacher of captivating eloquence and of an earnest Christian spirit, whose censure of the vices of the Byzantine court provoked the wrath of the Empress Eudoxia, and twice drove him into banishment. In the declining days of the empire, literary effort was mainly confined to compilations and comments. Eusebius, in the fourth century, had written a History of the Church, and a Chronicle, or General History; and, a century later (about 432), Zosimus composed a History in a spirit of antipathy to Christianity and of sympathy with the old religion. To Procopius (who died about 565) we owe an interesting history of the times of Justinian. After the seventh century, all traces of life and spirit vanish from the pages of the Byzantine historians. In mathematics and astronomy, in architecture and mechanics, the Byzantine Greeks were the teachers of the Arabians and of the new peoples of the West. The Byzantine style of architecture was of a distinct type, and was widely diffused.

THE SLAVONIC TRIBES.—In the sixth century the Slavonian tribes come into view. The Avars stirred up such a commotion among those tribes as the Huns had created among the Germans. The Slaves were driven to the northwest, where later they came into relations with Germany; and to the southwest, where, as conquerors and as learners, they stood, in some degree, in relation to the Eastern Empire, in the same position as that of the Germans in reference to the Western. North and East of the Adriatic arose Slavonian States, as Servia, Croatia, Carinthia. Istria and Dalmatia, except the cities on the coast, became Slavonic. The Slaves displaced the old Illyrian race. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Macedonia and Greece were largely occupied by Slavonians. The Bulgarians were a Turanian people, who mixed with the Slavonians, and adopted their language. In 895 the Magyars, a Turanian people, crowded into Dacia and Pannonia; and thus the Bulgarians were confined to the lands south of the Danube. The Magyars formed the kingdom of Hungary. The Slavonian Russians were cut off from the Southern tribes of the same race.



CHAPTER IV. MOHAMMEDANISM AND THE ARABIC CONQUESTS.

CONDITION OF ARABIA.—In the sixth century the influence of the Greek and of the Persian Empires, especially of the Persian, was prevalent in Arabia. It was then inhabited mostly by tribes either distinct or loosely bound together, and contained no independent state of any considerable importance. The Arabs of that day had "all the virtues and vices of the half-savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and its bounty." In the Hejaz district—situated between fertile and more civilized Yemen, or Arabia Felix, in the south-west of the peninsula and the Sinaitic region,—and in Nejd to the east of Hejaz, which were the two districts in which Islam and the Arabian Empire took their rise, dwelt tribes whose common sanctuary was the Kaaba at Mecca, in the wall of which was the quadrangular black stone kissed by all devotees, and supposed to have been received from the angel Gabriel. The religion of the Arabs was polytheism in many different forms, in which idol-worship was prominent; but all agreed in acknowledging one supreme God, Allah, in whose name solemn oaths were taken. Once in the year the tribes gathered in Mecca for their devotions; and a great fair in the vicinity, attended by a poetical contest, made the city prosperous. The town was made up of separate Septs, or patriarchal families, each under its own head, of which septs the Omayyads were of principal importance, and had charge of the Kaaba. Mohammed belonged to the Hashimites, another and poorer branch of the leading tribe of Koreish. The Koreishites, by their trading-journeys to Syria, had acquired more culture then others, whether Bedouins, or residents of Medina. At the time when Mohammed was born, which was probably in 572, the religion of the Arabs had sunk into idolatry or indifference. There were three hundred and sixty images in the Kaaba. But there were some who were called hanifs, who were serious and earnest, and turned away from idolatrous worship. Besides the Sabian religion of the Persian sun-worshipers, the leading tenets and rites of Christianity and of Judaism, both in the degenerate types which they assumed on the Syrian borders, were not unfamiliar to Arabs dwelling in the caravan routes on the borders of the Red Sea.

CAREER OF MOHAMMED.—Mohammed was early left an orphan under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. In his youth he tended sheep, and gathered wild berries in the desert. In his twenty-fifth year he became the commercial agent of a wealthy widow, Khadija, made journeys for her into Palestine and Syria,—where he may have received religious knowledge and impressions from Christian monks and Jewish rabbis,—and, after a time, married her. He is described as having a commanding presence, with piercing eyes, fluent in speech, and with pleasing ways. Eventually he came into close contact with the hanifs. He followed the custom of retiring for meditation and prayer to the lonely and desolate Mount Hira. A vivid sense of the being of one Almighty God and of his own responsibility to God, entered into his soul. A tendency to hysteria in the East a disease of men as well as of women—and to epilepsy helps to account for extraordinary states of body and mind of which he was the subject. At first he ascribed his strange ecstasies, or hallucinations, to evil spirits, especially on the occasion when an angel directed him to begin the work of prophesying. But he was persuaded by Khadija that their source was from above. He became convinced that he was a prophet inspired with a holy truth and charged with a sacred commission. His wife was his first convert. His faith he called Islam, which signifies "resignation to the divine will." His cousin Ali, his friend Abubekr, and a few others, believed in him. There is no doubt that the materials of Mohammed's creed were drawn from Jewish and Christian sources: Abraham was the hanif, whose pure monotheism he claimed to re-assert; but the animating spirit was from within. The sum of his doctrine was, that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is the apostle of God.

AFTER THE HEGIRA.—The Koreishites, the rulers and the elders, persecuted him. They flung out the reproach, that his adherents were from the poor or from the rank of slaves. This provoked him to denounce them, and to threaten them with the Divine judgment and with perdition. He lost his uncle in 619: his wife had died before. He had found sympathy with his claims from pious men from Medina. They offered him an asylum. Thither he went in 622, the date of his Hijira, or flight from Mecca, from which the Mohammedan calendar is reckoned. At Medina he won influence: he was frequently resorted to as an adviser, and as a judge to settle disputes. His activity in this direction was beneficent. His injunctions respecting the rights of property, and the protection due to women, were, in the main, discreet and wholesome. Naturally and speedily he became a political leader as well as a religious reformer. This new course on which he entered made a breach between him and the Jews, whom he had hoped to conciliate. He drew off from fellowship with them, made Friday the principal day of public worship, and Mecca its principal seat. For the Jewish fast he substituted the month of Ramadan. His plan was to cement together the Arab tribes, superseding the old tie of blood by the new bond of fellowship in adherence to him. The project of a holy war to conquer and to crush the idolaters, and to establish his own authority, was the means to this end. Mecca was the first object of assault. He attacked and plundered a Meccan caravan in 623. The next year he defeated the Koreishites in the battle of Bedr. In the battle of Ohod (625) his followers were worsted. Other conflicts ensued, with attacks on the Jews in the intervals, until, in 630, he entered Mecca at the head of ten thousand men, and destroyed all the idols. This event secured the adhesion of the Arabian tribes, together with the chiefs of Yemen and of the other more civilized districts. Hearing that the Emperor Heraclius was proposing to attack him, he went forth to meet him, but found that the rumor was false. He was preparing a new expedition against the Greeks when he died, in 632.

CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED.—From the time of the flight of Mohammed to Medina, the prophet turned more and more into the politician. Under the circumstances, this was, perhaps, an almost inevitable change. But one consequence was the bringing out of his natural vindictiveness, and the transformation of the enthusiast into the fanatic. Beginning as the prophet of Arabia, he came to think that he was the prophet of the whole world. There was a call to a wider warfare against idolatry. A crusade, partly political and partly religious, involved a mixture of craft and cruelty which exhibit his character in a new light. Yet it is probable that he always sincerely felt that his work in general was one to which he was called of God. Even the prosaic regulations and "orders of the day," which are placed in the Koran, if not the reproduction, in cataleptic visions, of his previous thoughts, may have been regarded by him as having a divine sanction. The extent of possible self-deception in so extraordinary a combination of qualities, it is not easy to define. His conduct was, for the most part, on a level with his precepts. There was one exception; he allowed not more than four wives to a disciple: he himself, at one time, had eleven. While Khadija lived he was wedded to her alone.

THE KORAN.—The Koran is regarded as the word of God by a hundred millions of disciples. It is very unequal in style. In parts it is vigorous, and here and there imaginative, but generally its tone is prosaic. Its narrative portions are chiefly about scriptural persons, especially those of the Old Testament. Mohammed's acquaintance with these must have been indirect, from rabbinical and apocryphal sources. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ are acknowledged as prophets. The deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity are repudiated. The miracles of Jesus are acknowledged. Mohammed does not claim for himself miraculous power. Predestination is taught, but this became a conspicuous tenet of Moslems after the death of the founder. The immortality of the soul is admitted, the pains of hell are threatened to the wicked and to "infidels;" and a sensual paradise is promised to the faithful, although it is declared that higher spiritual joys are the lot of the most favored. The faith of Mohammed was, in substance, Judaism, the religion of the Old Testament; power being set before holiness, however, in the conception of God, and the supernatural mission of Mohammed substituted for the future Messianic reign of righteousness and peace, and coupled with the emphatic proclamation of the last judgment. The law in the Koran is a civil as well as a moral code. Notwithstanding his countenance of sensuality by his own practice, as well as by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink and gambling were prohibited.

The gem of the Koran is "The Lord's Prayer of the Moslems:" "In the name of God, the compassionate Compassioner, the Sovereign of the day of judgment. Thee do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way; in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, in whom there is no wrath, and who go not astray."

THE ARABIC CONQUESTS: SYRIA, PERSIA, EGYPT.—Mohammed made no provision for the succession. The Caliphs, or "successors," combined in themselves civil, military and religious authority. They united the functions of emperor and pope. Ali, the husband of Fatima, Mohammed's favorite daughter, had hoped to succeed him. But, by the older companions of the prophet, Abubekr, Mohammed's father-in-law was appointed. The Shiites were supporters of Ali, while the Sunnites, who adhered to "the traditions of the elders," were against him. These two parties have continued until the present day; the Persians being Shiites, and the Turks, Sunnites. Mohammed, before he died, was inflamed with the spirit of conquest. Full of the fire of fanaticism, mingled with a thirst for dominion and plunder, the Arabians rapidly extended their sway. These warriors, to their credit be it said, if terrible in attack, were mild in victory. Their two principal adversaries were the Eastern Empire and Persia. Mohammedanism snatched from the empire those provinces in which the Greek civilization had not taken deep root, and it made its way into Europe. It conquered Persia, and became the principal religion of those Asiatic nations with which history mainly has to do. Mohammed had made a difference in his injunctions between heathen, apostates, and schismatics, all of whom were to embrace Islam or to perish, and Jews and Christians, to both of whom was given the choice of the Koran, tribute, or death. They must buy the right to exercise their religion, if they refused to say that "Allah is God, and Mohammed is His prophet." Omar (634-644), the next caliph after Abubekr, and a leader distinguished alike for his military energy and his simplicity of manners and life, first brought all Arabia, which was impelled as much by a craving for booty as by religious zeal, into a cordial union under his banner. Then he carried the war beyond the Arabian borders. Palestine and Syria were wrested from the Greek Empire; the old cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Damascus fell into the hands of the impetuous Saracens. A mosque was erected on the site of Solomon's Temple. The Persian Empire was invaded, and, after a series of sanguinary battles, especially the battle of Cadesia (636), followed by the battle of Nehavend (641), was destroyed. Ctesiphon, with all its riches, was captured, and Persepolis was sacked. The last king of the line of Sassanids, Yezdegerd III., having lived for many years as a fugitive, perished by the hand of an assassin (652). Meantime Egypt had submitted to the irresistible invaders under Amr, who was aided by the Christian sect of the Copts, out of hostility to the Greek Orthodox Church. After a siege of fourteen months, Alexandria was taken; but it is probably not true that the library was burned by Omar's order. In the disorders of the times, the great collections of books had probably, for the most part, been dispersed and destroyed. Six friends of Mohammed, selected by Omar, chose Othman (644-656) for his successor, who stirred up enmity by his pride and avarice. Under him the Christian Berbers in Africa were won over to the faith of Islam, and paved the way for its further advance.

THE OMAYYADS: CONQUEST OF AFRICA AND SPAIN.—Othman was assassinated by three fanatics, and Ali was then raised to the caliphate; but Muawiyah, representing the family of the Omayyads, made himself the head of an opposing party, and, after the assassination of Ali, became sole caliph (661). He removed the seat of the caliphate to Damascus. He carried the Arabian conquests as far as the Indus and Bokhara. He created a fleet on the Mediterranean, under an "Admiral," that is, a commander on the sea. In seven successive years he menaced Constantinople with his navy. At a later time, in 717, under the caliph Soliman, another great attempt was made on the capital of the Greek Empire. With an army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, he traversed Asia Minor and the Hellespont, and was supported in his attack by a fleet of eighteen hundred sail. But the energetic defense, which was aided by the use of "the Greek fire,"—an artificial compound which exploded and burned with an unquenchable flame,—caused the grand expedition to fail; and the Eastern Empire had another long lease of life. The successors of Muawiyah accomplished the subjugation of Africa. They were invited by the native inhabitants, who groaned under the burdens of taxation laid on them by the Greek emperors. About A.D. 700 the Arab governor, Musa, completed the conquest of the African dominion of the Greeks as far as the Atlantic. The amalgamation of the Berbers with the other inhabitants of that region, and with the Arabs, resulted in the race called Moors. At this time the Spanish Visigothic kingdom, which had become Catholic (586-601), was much enfeebled, and a prey to discord. Under Tarik—from whom Gibraltar, or the mountain of Tarik near which he landed, is named—the Arabs crossed into Spain, and for the first time found themselves face to face with the barbarians of the North. In the great battle of Xeres de la Frontera, near the Guadalquivir, in 711, which lasted for three days, the fate of the Visigothic kingdom was decided. Eight years were occupied in conquering Spain. In 720 the Saracens occupied Septimania north of the Pyrenees, a dependency of the Gothic kingdom. Gaul now lay open before them. The Mohammedan power threatened to encircle Christendom, and to destroy the Church and Christianity itself. In the plains between Tours and Poitiers, the Saracens were met by the Austrasian Franks under Charles Martel (732). The impetuous charges of the Saracen cavalry were met and beaten back by the infantry of the Franks, which confronted them like an iron wall. The Mohammedan defeat saved Christian Europe from being trampled under foot by the Mussulman; it saved the Christian people of the Aryan nations from being subjugated by the Semitic disciples of the Koran. At the same time that Spain was overrun, the Turkish lands on the east of the Caspian were subdued. The old antipathy between the Iranians and Turanians, the Schiite Persians and the Sunnite Turks, was afterwards carried into Europe by the Ottoman Moslems.

THE ABBASSIDES: BAGDAD.—Misgovernment embittered the faithful against the rule of the Omayyads in Damascus, although Syria had become a source of higher culture for the Arabians: there they became acquainted with Greek learning. The adherents of Ali found vigorous champions in the Abbassides, who, as Hashimites, laid claim to the caliphate. One of them, Abul Abbas, was made caliph by the soldiers in 750. The fierce cruelty of his party against the Omayyads led to the murder of all of them except Abderrahman, who fled to Africa, and, in 755, founded an independent caliphate at Cordova. The Abbassides attached themselves to the Sunnite creed. Under Almansor, the brother and successor of Abbas, Bagdad, a city founded by Almansor (754-775) on the banks of the Tigris, was made the seat of the caliphate, and so continued until the great Mongolian invasion in 1258. Bagdad was built on the west bank of the Tigris, but, by means of bridges, stretched over to the other shore. It was protected by strong, double walls. It was not only the proud capital of the caliphate: it was, besides, the great market for the trade of the East, the meeting-place of many nations, where caravans from China and Thibet, from India, and from Ferghana in the modern Turkestan, met throngs of merchants from Armenia and Constantinople, from Egypt and Arabia. There trading-fleets gathered which carried the products of the North and West down the great rivers to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Bagdad was to the caliphs what Byzantium was to Constantine, or Alexandria to the Ptolemies. It became the grandest city in the world. Canals to the number of six hundred ran through it, and a hundred and five bridges bound its two parts together. It was furnished with many thousand mosques and as many baths. The palace of the caliphs comprised in itself all the splendor which Asiatic taste and extravagance could collect and combine in one edifice.

THE EASTERN CALIPHATE.—Deprived of the western extremity of their empire, the Abbassides still ruled over Asia and Africa. In their luxurious and splendid court, the caliphs, served by a vast retinue of officers with the Vizier at their head, copied the magnificence of the ancient Persians. The most famous of the caliphs of Bagdad is Harun-al-Rashid, or "Aaron the Just" (786-809). His name is familiar even to children as the wonderful hero of the "Arabian Nights." His reign, like that of Solomon in ancient Judaea, was considered in after times the golden age of the caliph dominion. As in the case of Charlemagne, poetry and romance invested his character and reign with all that can give glory and honor to a king and a sage. Brilliant pictures were drawn of the boundless wealth and luxury of his court, and of his admirable piety and wisdom. About him there was assembled a host of jurists, linguists, and poets. Three hundred scholars traveled at his expense through different lands. Righteous judgments were ascribed to him, and oracular sayings. He was made the ideal ruler of Oriental fancy. His real character fell much below the later popular conception. He behaved like an Eastern despot towards all his kindred who stood in his way. The Persian family of Barmecides he exterminated, when his passionate attachment to one of them turned to hatred on account of an obscure affair connected with the harem. Stories told by Western chroniclers of his relations with Charlemagne require to be sifted. The Greek emperor Nicephorus, who had rashly defied him, he addressed as the "Roman dog." Nine times Harun invaded the Greek Empire, left its provinces wasted as by a hurricane, and extorted from it a tribute which he obliged the emperors, who repented of their daring, to pay in coin stamped with his image. His best distinction is in the liberal patronage which he, no doubt, extended to learning. In this he was imitated by his son Al Mamun (813-833), who founded numerous schools, and expended vast sums in behalf of science and letters. The caliphate was weakened by the introduction of the Turks, somewhat as the Roman Empire fared from its relations with the Germans. Motasem (833-842), the eighth of the Abbassides, brought in a Turkish guard of forty thousand slaves, purchased in Tartary. These soldiers, instead of remaining servants, became lawless masters, and disposed of the throne as the praetorians at Rome had done. The palace of the caliphs was filled with violence. Revolution and anarchy, kept up during two centuries, broke the caliphate into fragments. Conspiracies and insurrections were the order of the day. Africa had detached itself in the time of Harun-al-Rashid. In Asia various independent dynasties arose, formed mostly by Turkish governors of provinces.

THE TURKISH EMIRS.—In the eleventh century, the Seljukian Turks despoiled the Arabs of their sovereignty in the East. The caliph at Bagdad gave up all his temporal power to Togrul Bey (1058), and retained simply the spiritual headship over orthodox Mussulmans. To the Turk who bore the title Emir al Omra, was given the military command. He was what the Mayor of the Palace had been among the Franks. In 1072 his son, Malek Shah, made Ispahan his capital, and governed Asia from China to the vicinity of Constantinople.

THE FATIMITE CALIPHATE.—In the ninth and tenth centuries the Aglabites (800-909), whose capital was Cairoan (in Tunis), were dominant in the Western Mediterranean, established themselves, in their marauding expeditions, in Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and several times attacked Italy. In 909 they, with the Edrisites, adherents of Ali, in Fez, formed, under a Fatimite chief, Moez, with Egypt, the African Caliphate, the seat of which was at Cairo (968). The Fatimite caliphs extended their power over Syria. The most famous of the caliphs of Cairo was Hakem (996-1020), a monster of cruelty, who claimed to be the incarnation of Deity. These caliphs claimed to be the descendants of Ali and of Fatima. Their dynasty was extinguished by Saladin in 1171.

THE CALIPHS OF CORDOVA.—In Spain the caliphs of Cordova allowed to the Christians freedom of worship and their own laws and judges. The mingling of the conquerors with the conquered gave rise to a mixed Mozarabic population. The Franks conquered the country as far as the Ebro (812). Under Mohammed I. (852), the Saracen governors of the provinces sought to make themselves independent; but the most brilliant period of the caliphate of Cordova followed, under Abderrahman III. (912-961). In the eleventh century there was anarchy, produced by the African guard of the caliphs, which played a part like that of the Turkish guard at Bagdad, and by reason of the rebellion of the governors. In 1031 the last descendant of the Omayyads was deposed, and in 1060 the very title of caliph vanished. The caliphate gave place to numerous petty Moslem kingdoms. The African Mussulmans came to their help, and thus gave the name of Moors to the Spanish Mohammedans. Their language and culture, however, remained Arabic. The Arabian conquests had moved like a deluge to the Indus, to the borders of Asia Minor, and to the Pyrenees. In Syria they were not generally resisted by the people. Egypt, for the same reason, was an easy conquest. It took the Moslems sixty years to conquer Africa. In three years nearly all Spain was theirs; and it was not until seven hundred years after this time that they were utterly driven out of that country.

THE MOSLEM GOVERNMENT—The Moslem civilization rested on the Koran. Grammar, lexicography, theology, and law stood connected at first with the study and understanding of the Sacred Book. The Caliph was the fountain of authority. There was a fixed system of taxation, the poll-tax and land-tax being imposed only on non-Moslem subjects. All Moslems received a yearly pension, a definite sum determined by their rank. The empire was divided into provinces, each governed by a Prefect, who was a petty sovereign, subject only to the Caliph. The Generals were appointed by the caliph, by the prefects, or by the Vizier, who was the prime minister. The Judges (cadis) were appointed by the same officers. There was a court of appeal over which the caliph presided. There were inspectors of the markets, who were also censors of morals. The Imam had for his function to recite the public prayers in the mosque. The leader of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca was an officer of the highest dignity.

THEOLOGY: LAW: LITERATURE.—The Mohammedans entered into discussions of theology, which gave rise to differences, and to schools and sects. The nature of the Deity, predestination, the future life, were subjects of profound and subtle inquiry. More than once, pantheistic doctrine was broached by speculative minds, such as Avicenna and Averrhoes. In Persia, Sufism, a form of mysticism, made great progress. It extolled the unselfish love of God, and a contemplative and ascetic life. Law was studied; and on the basis of the Koran, and of reasonings upon it, systems of jurisprudence were created. Science and Literature kept pace with legal studies. Poetry flourished through the whole period of the Eastern caliphate. There were, also, Persian poets who hold an important place in the history of literature, of whom Firdousi (about 940 to 1020) and Saadi (who died in 1291) are the most eminent. Under the Abbassides in Syria, through Christian scholars and by translations, the Arabians became acquainted with the Greek authors. They cultivated geography. The Moslems were students of astronomy, and carried the study of mathematics, which they learned from the Greeks and Hindus, very far. But they apparently felt no interest in the poets, orators, and historians of antiquity. In the study of Aristotle, and in metaphysical philosophy, they were proficients. Medicine, also, they cultivated with success. They delved in Alchemy in the search for the transmutation of metals.

COMMERCE AND THE ARTS.—The Moslems engaged actively in commerce. They acquired much skill in various branches of mechanical art. The weapons of Damascus and of Toledo, the silks of Granada, the saddles of Cordova, the muslins, silks, and carpets of the Moslem dominions in the East, were highly prized in Christian countries. They manufactured paper. Forbidden to represent the human form in painting and sculpture, their distinction in the fine arts is confined to architecture. Peculiar to them is the Arabesque ornamentation found in their edifices: the idea of the arch was borrowed from the Byzantine style. One of their most famous monuments is the mosque at Cordova. The ruins of the Alhambra, in Spain, a palace and a fortress, illustrate the richness and elegance of the Saracenic style of building.

THE ARABIAN MIND.—Neither in architecture, nor in any other department, were the Arabs in a marked degree original. They invented nothing. They were quick to learn, and to assimilate what they learned. They were apt interpreters and critics, but they produced no works marked by creative genius. Many of the scholars at the court of the caliphs were Christians and Jews. Yet Bagdad, Samarcand, Cairo, Grenada, Cordova, were centers of intellectual activity and of learning when the nations of Western Europe had not escaped from the barbarism resulting from the Teutonic invasions.

LITERATURE.—Lives of Mohammed by MUIR, SPRENGER (German), Irving: Encycl. Brit., Art. Mohammedanism; Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religions; Noeldeke, Gesch. d. Quorans (1860); Muir, The Coran (1878); R. B. Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism (1875); Stobart, Islam and its Founder; Ockley, History of the Saracens (sixth edition, 1857); FREEMAN, History and Conquests of the Saracens (1870).



THE CARLOVINGIAN HOUSE

PIPIN of Heristal, d. 714. + Charles Martel, d. 741. + PIPIN the Short, king 752-768. + CHARLEMANGE, 768-814 (emperor 800). + Pipin, King of Italy, d. 810. + BERNARD, d. 818. + Charles, King of Franconia. + LOUIS the Pious, 814-840. LOTHARINGIA + LOTHAR I, 843-855. + LOUIS II, 855-875 + Hermingarde, m. BOSO I, King of Provence, 879-887 + LOUIS, 887-905 (emperor 901) m. Eadgifu, daughter of Edward the Elder + Lothar II, d. 869. + Charles, d. 863 GERMANY + LOUIS the German, 843-876. + CARLOMAN, d. 880. + ARNULF, King of Germany, 887-899 (emperor 896). + LOUIS the Child, 900-911. + LOUIS the Younger. d 880. + CHARLES the Fat (emperor 881-887), d. 888. FRANCE + CHARLES the Bald, 843-877 (emperor 875). + LOUIS II, 877-879. + LOUIS III, 879-882 + Carloman, 879-884 + CHARLES the Simple, m. Eadgifu, daughter of Edward the Elder + LOUIS IV (D'Outremer), 936-954. + Matilda, m. CONRAD the Peaceful. + RUDOLPH III, 993-1032 + LOTHAR, 954-986. + LOUIS V, 986-987. + Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, d. 994. + Carloman, 768-771.



RIVAL KINGS OF FRANCE NOT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE.

Robert the Strong, d. 866. + EUDES, king 887-893. + ROBERT, king 922-923. + Emma, m. RUDOLPH of Burgundy; king 923-926. + Hugh the Great (father of Hugh Capet).



PERIOD II. FROM THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK KINGS TO THE ROMANO-GERMANIC EMPIRE. (A.D. 751-962.)



CHAPTER I. THE CARLOVINGIAN EMPIRE TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE (A.D. 814).

PIPIN THE SHORT.—The great event of the eighth century was the organization and spread of the dominion of the Franks, and the transfer to them of the Roman Empire of the West. Three Frank princes—Charles Martel, Pipin the Short, and Charlemagne, or Karl the Great—were the main instruments in bringing in this new epoch in European history. They followed a similar course, as regards the wars which they undertook, and their general policy. Charles Martel, the conqueror of the Saracens at Poitiers, rendered great services to the Church; but he provoked the lasting displeasure of the ecclesiastics by his seizures of church property. He rewarded his soldiers with archbishoprics. Pipin, however, was earnestly supported by the clergy. He had the confidence and favor of the Franks, and in 751, with the concurrence of Pope Zacharias, deposed Childeric III., and assumed the title of king. The long hair of Childeric, the badge of the Frank kings, was shorn, and he was placed in a monastery. In 752 Pipin was anointed and crowned at Soissons by Boniface, the bishop of Mentz, who exerted himself to restore order and discipline in the Frank Church, which had fallen into disorder in the times of Charles Martel.

PIPIN IN ITALY.—The controversy with the Greeks about the use of images had alienated the popes from the Eastern Empire. The encroachments of the Lombards threatened Rome itself, and were a constant menace to the independence of its bishops. Pope Stephen III. resorted to Pipin for help against these aggressive neighbors; and, in 754, Stephen solemnly repeated, in the cathedral of St. Denis, the ceremony of his coronation. The Carlovingian usurpation was thus hallowed in the eyes of the people by the sanction of the Church. The alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, so essential to both, was cemented. Pipin crossed the Alps in 754, and humbled Aistulf, the Lombard king; but, as Aistulf still kept up his hostility to the Pope, Pipin once more led his forces into Italy, and compelled him to become tributary to the Frank kingdom, and to cede to him the territory which he had won from the Greek Empire,—the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, or the lands and cities between the Apennines and the Adriatic, from Ferrara to Ancona. This territory the Frank king formally presented to St. Peter. Thus there was founded the temporal kingdom of the popes in Italy. Pipin was called Patricius of Rome, which made him its virtual sovereign, although the office and title implied the continued supremacy of the Eastern Empire. He united under him all the conquests which had been made by Clovis and his successors. His sway extended over Aquitaine and as far as the Pyrenees. It was the rule of the Teutonic North over the more Latin South, which had no liking for the Frank sovereignty.

CHARLEMAGNE: THE SAXONS AND SARACENS.—Pipin died in 768. By the death of his younger son, Carloman, his older son, Charles, in 771 became the sole king of the Franks. Charlemagne is more properly designated Karl the Great, for he was a German in blood and speech, and in all his ways. He stands in the foremost rank of conquerors and rulers. His prodigious energy and activity as a warrior may be judged by the number of his campaigns, in which he was uniformly successful. The eastern frontier of his dominions was threatened by the Saxons, the Danes, the Slaves, the Bavarians, the Avars. He made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slaves, four against the Avars. Adding to these his campaigns against the Saracens, Lombards, and other peoples, the number of his military expeditions is not less than fifty-three. In all but two of his marches against the Saxons, however, he accomplished his purpose without a battle. That he was ambitious of conquest and of fame, is evident. That he had the rough ways of his German ancestors, and was unsparing in war, is equally certain. Yet he was not less eminent in wisdom than in vigor; and his reign, on the whole, was righteous as well as glorious. The two most formidable enemies of Charlemagne were the Saxons and the Saracens. The Saxon war "was checkered by grave disasters, and pursued with undismayed and unrelenting determination, in which he spared neither himself nor others. It lasted continuously—with its stubborn and ever-recurring resistance, its cruel devastations, its winter campaigns, its merciless acts of vengeance—as the effort which called forth all Charles's energy for thirty-two years" (772-804). The Saxons were heathen. The conquest of them was the more difficult because it involved the forced introduction of Christianity in the room of their old religion. More than once, when they seemed to be subdued, they broke out in passionate and united revolt. Their fiercest leader in insurrection was Witikind. A last and terrible uprising, in consequence of the slaughter of forty-five hundred Saxons on the Aller as a punishment for breach of treaty, was put down in 785, when Witikind submitted, and consented to receive Christian baptism. During the progress of the Saxon war, at the call of the Arab governor of Saragossa for aid against the caliph Abderrahman, Charles marched into Spain, and conquered Saragossa and the whole land as far as the Ebro. On his return, in the valley of Ronceveaux, the Frank rear guard was surprised and destroyed by the Basques. There fell the Frank hero Roland, whose gallant deeds were a favorite subject of mediaeval romances. The duchy of Bavaria was abolished after a second revolt of its duke, Tassilo (788). One of the most brilliant of Charlemagne's wars was that against the Hunnic Avars (791). Their land between the Ems and Raab he annexed to his empire. Bavarian colonists were planted in it. Enormous treasures which they had gathered, in their incursions, from all Europe, were captured, with their "Ring," or palace-camp. The Slavonic tribes were kept in awe. Brittany was subjugated in 811. In the closing years of Charles's reign, the Danes became more and more aggressive and formidable. He visited the northern coasts, made Boulogne and Ghent his harbors and arsenals, and built fleets for defense against the audacious invaders.