were marshalling their forces--unknown, indeed, to each other, but
preparing, according to their respective powers, for the period when
they were to be brought face to face. We shall go eastward, and follow
the triumphant march of the warriors of the Crescent from Arabia to
the shores of Africa; but first we shall cast a desponding eye on
the condition and prospects of the kingdoms of the West. Conquest,
spoliation, and insecurity had done their work. Wave after wave had
passed over the surface of the old Roman State, and obliterated almost
all the landmarks of the ancient time. The towns, to be sure, still
remained, but stripped of their old magnificence, and thinly peopled
by the dispossessed inhabitants of the soil, who congregated together
for mutual support. Trade was carried on, but subject to the exactions,
and sometimes the open robberies, of the avaricious chieftains who had
reared their fortresses on the neighbouring heights. Large tracts of
country lay waste and desolate, or were left to the happy fertility of
nature in the growth of spontaneous woods. Marshes were formed over
whole districts, and the cattle picked up an uncertain existence by
browsing over great expanses of poor and unenclosed land. These flocks
and herds were guarded by hordes of armed serfs, who camped beside
them on the fields, and led a life not unlike that of their remote
ancestors on the steppes of Tartary. A man's wealth was counted by his
retainers, and there was no supreme authority to keep the dignitaries,
even of the same tribe, from warring on each other and wasting their
rival's country with fire and sword. Agriculture, therefore, was in
the lowest state, and famines, plagues, and other concomitants of
want were common in all parts of Europe. One beautiful exception must
be made to this universal neglect of agriculture, in favour of the
Benedictine monks, established in various parts of Italy and Gaul in
the course of the preceding century. Religious reverence was a surer
safeguard to those lowly men than castles or armour could have been.
No marauder dared to trespass on lands which were under the protection
of priest and bishop. And these Western recluses, far from imitating
the slothful uselessness of the Eastern monks, turned their whole
attention to the cultivation of the soil. In this they bestowed a
double benefit on their fellow-men, for, in addition to the positive
improvement of the land, they rescued labour from the opprobrium into
which it had fallen, and raised it to the dignity of a religious
duty. Slavery, we have seen, was universally practised in all the
conquered territories, and as only the slaves were compelled to the
drudgeries of the field, the work itself borrowed a large portion of
the degradation of the unhappy beings condemned to it; and robbery,
pillage, murder, and every crime, were considered far less derogatory
to the dignity of free Frank or Burgundian than the slightest touch of
the mattock or spade. How surprised, then, were the haughty countrymen
and descendants of Clovis or Alboin to see the revered hands from which
they believed the highest blessings of Heaven to flow, employed in
the daily labour of digging, planting, sowing, reaping, thrashing,
grinding, and baking! At first they looked incredulously on. Even
the monks were disposed to consider it no part of their conventual
duties. But the founder of their institution wrote to them, "to
beware of idleness, as the greatest enemy of the soul," and not to
be uneasy if at any time the cares of the harvest hindered them from
their formal readings and regulated prayers. "No person is ever more
usefully employed than when working with his hands or following the
plough, providing food for the use of man." And the effects of these
exhortations were rapidly seen. Wherever a monastery was placed, there
were soon fertile fields all round it, and innumerable stacks of
corn. Generally chosen with a view to agricultural pursuits, we find
sites of abbeys at the present day which are the perfect ideal of a
working farm; for long after the outburst of agricultural energy had
expired among the monks of St. Benedict, the choice of situation and
knowledge of different soils descended to the other ecclesiastical
establishments, and skill in agriculture continued at all times a
characteristic of the religious orders. What could be more enchanting
than the position of their monastic homes? Placed on the bank of some
beautiful river, surrounded on all sides by the low flat lands enriched
by the neighbouring waters, and protected by swelling hills where
cattle are easily fed, we are too much in the habit of attributing the
selection of so admirable a situation to the selfishness of the portly
abbot. When the traveller has admired the graces of Melrose or of
Tintern--the description applies equally to almost all the foundations
of an early date--and has paid due attention to the chasteness of the
architecture, and beauty of "the long-resounding aisle and fretted
vault," he sometimes contemplates with a sneer the matchless charm of
the scenery, and exceeding richness of the haugh or strath in which
the building stands. "Ah," he says, "they were knowing old gentlemen,
those monks and priors. They had fish in the river, fat beeves upon
the meadow, red-deer on the hill, ripe corn on the water-side, a full
grange at Christmas, and snowy sheep at midsummer." And so they had,
and deserved them all. The head of that great establishment was not
wallowing in the fat of the land to the exclusion of envious baron or
starving churl. He was, in fact, setting them an example which it would
have been wise in them to follow. He merely chose the situation most
fitted for his purpose, and bestowed his care on the lands which most
readily yielded him his reward. It was not necessary for the monks in
those days to seek out some neglected corner, and to restore it to
cultivation, as an exercise of their ingenuity and strength. They were
free to choose from one end of Europe to the other, for the whole of
it lay useless and comparatively barren. But when these able-bodied
recluses, if such they may be called, had shown the results of patient
industry and skill, the peasants, who had seen their labours, or
occasionally been employed to assist them, were able to convey to their
lay proprietors or masters the lessons they had received. And at last
something venerable was thought to reside in the act of farming itself.
It was so uniformly found an accompaniment of the priestly character,
that it acquired a portion of its sanctity, and the rude Lombard or
half-civilized Frank looked with a kind of awe upon waving corn and
rich clover, as if they were the result of a higher intelligence and
purer life than he possessed. Even the highest officers in the Church
were expected to attend to these agricultural conquests. In this
century we find, that when kings summoned bishops to a council, or an
archbishop called his brethren to a conference, care was taken to
fix the time of meeting at a season which did not interfere with the
labours of the farm. Privileges naturally followed these beneficial
labours. The kings, in their wondering gratitude, surrounded the
monasteries with fresh defences against the envy or enmity of the
neighbouring chiefs. Their lands became places of sanctuary, as the
altar of the Church had been. Freedmen--that is, persons manumitted
from slavery, but not yet endowed with property--were everywhere put
under the protection of the clergy. Immunities were heaped upon them,
and methods found out of making them a separate and superior race.
At the Council of Paris, in 613, it was decreed that the priest who
offended against the common law should be tried by a mixed court of
priests and laymen. But soon this law, apparently so just, was not
considered enough, and the trial of ecclesiastics was given over to the
ecclesiastical tribunals, without the admixture of the civil element.
Other advantages followed from time to time. The Church was found in
all the kingdoms to be so useful as the introducer of agriculture, and
the preserver of what learning had survived the Roman overthrow, that
the ambitious hierarchy profited by the royal and popular favour. They
were the most influential, or perhaps it would be more just to say they
were the only, order in the State. There was a nobility, but it was
jarring and disunited; there were citizens, but they were powerless
and depressed; there was a king, but he was but the first of the
peers, and stood in dignified isolation where he was not subordinate
to a combination of the others. The clergy, therefore, had no enemy
or rival to dread, for they had all the constituents of power which
the other portions of the population wanted. Their property was more
secure; their lands were better cultivated; they were exempt from many
of the dangers and burdens to which the lay barons were exposed;
they were not liable to the risks and losses of private war; they had
more intelligence than their neighbours, and could summon assistance,
either in advice, or support, or money, from the farthest extremity
of Europe. Nothing, indeed, added more, at the commencement of this
century, to the authority of those great ecclesiastical chieftains,
than the circumstance that their interests were supported, not only
by their neighbouring brethren, but by mitred abbot and lordly bishop
in distant lands. If a prior or his monks found themselves ill used
on the banks of the Seine, their cause was taken up by all other
monks and priors wherever they were placed. And the rapidity of their
intercommunication was extraordinary. Each monastery seems to have had
a number of active young brethren who traversed the wildest regions
with letters or messages, and brought back replies, almost with the
speed and regularity of an established post. A convent on Lebanon was
informed in a very short time of what had happened in Provence--the
letter from the Western abbot was read and deliberated on, and an
answer intrusted to the messenger, who again travelled over the immense
tract lying between, receiving hospitality at the different religious
establishments that occurred upon his way, and everywhere treated with
the kindness of a brother. Monasteries in this way became the centres
of news as well as of learning, and for many hundred years the only
people who knew any thing of the state of feeling in foreign nations,
or had a glimpse of the mutual interests of distant kingdoms, were the
cowled and gowned individuals who were supposed to have given up the
world and to be totally immersed in penances and prayers. What could
Hereweg of the strong hand do against a bishop or abbot, who could tell
at any hour what were the political designs of conquerors or kings
in countries which the astonished warrior did not know even by name;
who retained by traditionary transmission the politeness of manner and
elegance of accomplishment which had characterized the best period of
the Roman power, when Christianized noblemen, on being promoted to an
episcopal see, had retained the delicacies of their former life, and
wrote love-songs as graceful as those of Catullus, and epigrams neither
so witty nor so coarse as those of Martial? Intelligence asserted its
superiority over brute force, and in this century the supremacy of the
Church received its accomplishment in spite of the depravation of its
principles. It gained in power and sank in morals. A hundred years of
its beneficial action had made it so popular and so powerful that it
fell into temptations, from which poverty or unpopularity would have
kept it free. The sixth century was the period of its silent services,
its lower officers endearing themselves by useful labour, and its
dignitaries distinguishing themselves by learning and zeal. In the
seventh century the fruit of all those virtues was to be gathered by
very different hands. Ambitious contests began between the different
orders composing the gradually rising hierarchy, from the monk in
his cell to the Bishop of Rome or Constantinople on their pontifical
thrones. It is very sad, after the view we have taken of the early
benefits bestowed on many nations by the labours and example of the
priests and monks, to see in the period we have reached the total
cessation of life and energy in the Church;--of life and energy, we
ought to say, in the fulfilment of its duties; for there was no want of
those qualities in the gratification of its ambition. Forgetful of what
Gregory had pronounced the chief sign of Antichrist, when he opposed
the pretension of his rival metropolitan to call himself Universal
Bishop, the Bishops of Rome were deterred by no considerations of
humility or religion from establishing their temporal power. Up to this
time they had humbly received the ratification of their election from
the Emperors of the East, whose subjects they still remained. But the
seat of their empire was far off, their power was a tradition of the
past, and great thoughts came into the hearts of the spiritual chiefs,
of inroads on the territory of the temporal rulers. In this design they
looked round for supporters and allies, and with a still more watchful
eye on the quarters from which opposition was to be feared. The bishops
as a body had fallen not only into contempt but hatred. One century
had sufficed to extinguish the elegant scholarship I have mentioned,
at one time characteristic of the Christian prelates. Ignorance had
become the badge of all the governors of the Church--ignorance and
debauchery, and a tyrannical oppression of their inferiors. The wise
old man in Rome saw what advantage he might derive from this, and
took the monks under his peculiar protection, relieved them from the
supervision of the local bishop, and made them immediately dependent on
himself. By this one stroke he gained the unflinching support of the
most influential body in Europe. Wherever they went they held forth
the Pope as the first of earthly powers, and began already, in the
enthusiasm of their gratitude, to speak of him as something more than
mortal. To this the illiterate preachers and prelates had nothing to
reply. They were sunk either in the grossest darkness, or involved in
the wildest schemes of ambition, bishoprics being even held by laymen,
and by both priest and laymen used as instruments of advancement and
wealth. From these the Pontiff on the Tiber, whose weaknesses and vices
were unknown, and who was held up for invidious contrast with the
bishops of their acquaintance by the libellous and grateful monks, had
nothing to fear. He looked to another quarter in the political sky, and
perceived with satisfaction that the kingly office also had fallen into
contempt. Having lost the first impulse which carried it triumphantly
over the dismembered Roman world, and made it a tower of strength in
the hands of warriors like Theodoric the Goth and Clovis the Frank, it
had forfeited its influence altogether in the pitiful keeping of the
bloodthirsty or do-nothing kings who had submitted to the tutelage of
the Mayors of the Palace.
One of the great supports of the royal influence was the fiction of
the law by which all lands were supposed to hold of the Crown. As
in ancient days, in the German or Scythian deserts, the ambitious
chieftain had presented his favourite with spear or war-horse in token
of approval, so in the early days of the conquest of Gaul, the leader
had presented his followers with tracts of land. The war-horse, under
the old arrangement, died, and the spear became rotten; but the land
was subject neither to death nor decay. What, then, was to become
of the warrior's holding when he died? On this question, apparently
so personal to the barbaric chiefs of the time of Dagobert of Gaul,
depended the whole course of European history. The kings claimed
the power of re-entering on the lands in case of the demise of the
proprietor, or even in case of his rebellion or disobedience. The
Leud, as he was called--or feudatory, as he would have been named at
a later time--disputed this, and contended for the perpetuity and
inalienability of the gift. It is easy to perceive who were the winners
in this momentous struggle. From the success of the leuds arose the
feudal system, with limited monarchies and national nobilities. The
success of the kings would have resulted in despotic thrones and
enslaved populations. Foremost in the struggle for the royal supremacy
had been the famous and unprincipled Brunehild, a woman more resembling
the unnatural creation of a romance than a real character. She had
succeeded at one time in subordinating the leuds, by exterminating the
recusants with remorseless cruelty; and her triumph might have been
final and irrevocable if she had not had the bad luck or impolitic
hardihood to offend the Church. The Abbot Columba, a holy man from the
far-distant island of Iona in the Hebrides of Scotland, had ventured to
upbraid her with her crimes. She banished him from the Abbey of Luxeuil
with circumstances of peculiar harshness, and there was no hope for her
more. The leuds she might have overcome singly, for they were disunited
and scattered; but now there was not a monastery in Europe which did
not side with her foes. Clotaire, her grandson, marched against her
at the instigation of priests and leuds combined. She was conquered
and taken. She was tortured for three days with all the ingenuity of
hatred, and on the fourth was tied to the tails of four wild horses and
torn to pieces, though the mother, sister, daughter, of kings, and now
more than eighty years of age. And this brings us to the institution
and use of the strange officers we have already named Mayors of the
Palace.
To aid them in their efforts against the royal assumptions, the leuds
long ago had elected one of themselves to be domestic adviser of the
king, and also to command the armies in war. This soon became the
recognised right of the Mayor of the Palace; and as in that state of
society the wars were nearly perpetual, and bearers of arms the only
wielders of power, the person invested with the command was in reality
the supreme authority in the State. When the king happened to be feeble
either in body or mind, the mayor supplied his place, without even the
appearance of inferiority; and when Dagobert, the last active member
of the Merovingian family, died in 638, his successors were merely the
nominal holders of the Crown. A new race rose into importance, and
it will not be very long before we meet the hereditary Mayors of the
Palace as hereditary Kings of the Franks. Here, then, was the whole of
Europe heaving with some inevitable change. It will be interesting to
look at the position of its different parts before they settled into
their new relations. The constitutions of the various kingdoms were
very nearly alike at this time. There were popular assemblies in every
nation. In France they were called the "Fields of May" or of "March,"
in England the "Wittenagemot," in Spain the "Council of Toledo." These
meetings consisted of the freemen and landholders and bishops. But it
was soon found inconvenient for the freemen and smaller proprietors to
attend, in consequence of the length of the journey and the miserable
condition of the roads; and the nobles and bishops were the sole
persons who represented the State. The nobles held a parallel rank
to each other in all countries, though called by different names. In
France, a person in possession of any office connected with the court,
or of lands presented by the Crown, was called a leud or entrustion, a
count or companion, or vassal. In England he was called a royal thane.
The lower order of freemen were called herimans, or inferior thanes;
in Latin _liberi_, or more simply, _boni homines_, good men. Below
these were the Romans, or old inhabitants of the country; below these,
the serfs or bondmen attached to the soil; and far down, below them
all, out of all hope or consideration, the slaves, who were the mere
chattels of their lords. This, then, was the constitution of European
society when the Arabian conquests began--at the head of the nation
the King, at the head of the people the Church; the nobles followed
according to their birth or power; the freemen, whether citizens
engaged in the first infant struggles of trade, or occupying a farm,
came next; and the wretched catalogue was ended by the despoiled serf,
from whom every thing, even his property in himself, had been taken
away. There were laws for the protection or restraint of each of these
orders, and we may gather an idea of the ranks they held in public
estimation by the following table of the price of blood:--
Sols.
For the murder of a freeman, companion, or leud of the king,
killed in his palace by an armed band 1800
A duke--among the Bavarians, a bishop 960
A relation of a duke 640
The king's leud, a count, a priest, a judge 600
A deacon 500
A freeman, of the Salians or Ripuarians 200
A freeman, of the other tribes 160
The slave--a good workman in gold 100
The man of middle station, a colon, or good workman in silver 100
The freedman 80
The slave, if a barbarian--that is, of the conquering tribe 55
The slave, a workman in iron 50
The serf of the Church or the king 45
The swineherd 30
The slave, among the Bavarians 20
Distinctions of dress pointed out still more clearly the difference of
rank and station. The principal variety, however, was the method of
wearing the hair. The chieftain among the Franks considered the length
and profusion of his locks as the mark of his superiority. His broad
flowing tresses were divided up the middle of his head, and floated
over his shoulders. They were curled and oiled--not with common butter,
like some other nations, says an author quoted by Chateaubriand; not
twisted in little plaits, like those of the Goths, but carefully
combed out to their full luxuriance. The common soldier, on the other
hand, wore his hair long in front, but trimmed close behind. They
swore by their hair as the most sacred of their oaths, and offered
a tress to the Church on returning from a successful war. From this
peculiar consideration given to the hair arose the custom, still
prevalent, of shaving the heads of ecclesiastics. They were the serfs
of God, and sacrificed their locks in token that they were no longer
free. When a chief was dishonoured, when a king was degraded, when a
rival was to be rendered incapable of opposition, he was not, as in
barbarous countries, put to death: he was merely made bald. No amount
of popularity, no degree of right, could rouse the people in support of
a person whose head was bare. When his hair grew again, he might again
become formidable; but the scissors were always at hand. A tyrannical
king clipped his enemies' hair, instead of taking off their heads. They
were condemned to the barber instead of the executioner, and sometimes
thought the punishment more severe. The sons of Clothilde sent an
emissary to her, bearing in his hand a sword and a pair of scissors.
"O queen," he said, "your sons, our masters, wish to know whether you
will have your grandchildren slain or clipped." The queen paused for a
moment, and then said, "If my grandchildren are doomed not to mount the
throne, I would rather have them dead than hairless."