beware how he does injury to the Pope of Rome. Twice the Frank armies
are moved into Italy in defence of the Holy See; and at last the
Exarchate is torn from the hands of its Lombard oppressor, and handed
over in sovereignty to the Spiritual Power. Rome itself is declared
at the same time the property of the Bishop, and free forever from
the suzerainty of the Emperors of the East. No wonder the gratitude
of the Popes has made them call the kings of France the eldest sons
of the Church. Their donations raised the bishopric to the rank of
a royal state; yet it has been remarked that the generosity of the
French monarchs has always been limited to the gift of other people's
lands. They were extremely liberal in bestowing large tracts of country
belonging to the Lombard kings or the Byzantine Cæsars; but they kept
a very watchful eye on the possessions of pope and bishop within
their own domain. They reserved to themselves the usufruct of vacant
benefices, and the presentations to church and abbey. At almost all
periods, indeed, of their history, they have seemed to retain a very
clear remembrance of the position which they held towards the Papacy
from the beginning, and, while encouraging its arrogance against other
principalities and powers, have held a very contemptuous language
towards it themselves.
This, then, is the great characteristic of the present century,
the restoration of the monarchical principle in the State, and its
establishment in the Church. During all these wretched centuries, from
the fall of the Roman Empire, the progress has been towards diffusion
and separation. Kings rose up here and there, but their kingships were
local, and, moreover, so recent, that they were little more than the
first officer or representative of the warriors whose leaders they
had been. A longing for some higher and remoter influence than this
had taken possession of the chiefs of all the early invasions, and
we have seen them (even while engaged in wresting whole districts
from the sway of the old Roman Empire) accepting with gratitude
the ensigns of Roman authority. We have seen Gothic kings glorying
in the name of Senator, and Hunnish savages pacified and contented
by the title of Prætor or Consul. The world had been accustomed to
the oneness of Consular no less than Imperial Rome for more than a
thousand years; for, however the parties might be divided at home, the
great name of the Eternal City was the sole sound heard in foreign
lands. The magic letters, the initials of the Senate and People, had
been the ornament of their banners from the earliest times, and a
division of power was an idea to which the minds of mankind found it
difficult to become accustomed. It was better, therefore, to have
only a fragment of this immemorial unity than the freshness of a new
authority, however extensive or unquestionable. Vague traditions must
have come down--magnified by distance and softened by regret--of the
great days before the purple was torn in two by the transference of
the seat of power to Constantinople. There were nearly five hundred
years lying between the periods; and all the poetic spirits of the new
populations had cast longing, lingering looks behind at the image of
earthly supremacy presented to them by the existence of an acknowledged
master of the world. A pedantic sophist, speaking Greek--the language
of slaves and scholars--wearing the loftiest titles, and yet hemmed
in within the narrow limits of a single district, assumed to be the
representative of the universal "Lord of human kind," and called
himself Emperor of the East and West. The common sense of Goth and
Saxon, of Frank and Lombard, rebelled against this claim, when they
saw it urged by a person unable to support it by fleets and armies.
When, in addition to this want of power, they perceived in this
century a want of orthodox belief, or even what they considered an
impious profanity, in the successor of Augustus and Constantine, they
were still more disinclined to grant even a titular supremacy to the
Byzantine ruler. Leo, at that time wearing the purple, and zealous for
the purity of the faith, issued an order for the destruction of the
marble representations of saints and martyrs which had been used in
worship; and within the limits of his personal authority his mandate
was obeyed. But when it reached the West, a furious opposition was made
to his command. The Pope stood forward as champion of the religious
veneration of "storied urn and animated bust." The emperor was branded
with the name of Iconoclast, or the Image-breaker, and the eloquence
of all the monks in Europe was let loose upon the sacrilegious Cæsar.
Interest, it is to be feared, added fresh energy to their conscientious
denunciations, for the monks had attracted to themselves a complete
monopoly of the manufacture of these aids to devotion--and obedience
to Leo's order would have impoverished the monasteries all over the
land. A Western emperor, it was at once perceived, would not have been
so blind to the uses of those holy sculptures, and soon an intense
desire was manifested throughout the Western nations for an emperor
of their own. Already they were in possession of a spiritual chief,
who claimed the inheritance of the Prince of the Apostles, and looked
down on the Patriarchs of Constantinople as bishops subordinate to his
throne. Why should not they also have a temporal ruler who should renew
the old glories of the vanished Empire, and exercise supremacy over
all the governors of the earth? Why, indeed, should not the first of
those authorities exert his more than human powers in the production
of the other? He had converted a Mayor of the Palace into a King of
the Franks. Could he not go a step further, and convert a King of the
Franks into an Emperor of the West? With this hope, not yet perhaps
expressed, but alive in the minds of Pepin and the prelates of France,
no attempt was made to check the Roman pontiffs in the extravagance
of their pretensions. Lords of wide domains, rich already in the
possession of large tracts of country and wealthy establishments
in other lands, they were raised above all competition in rank and
influence with any other ecclesiastic; and relying on spiritual
privileges, and their exemption from active enmity, they were more
powerful than many of the greatest princes of the time. Everywhere the
mystic dignity of their office was dwelt upon by their supporters.
For a long time, as we have seen, their omnipotence was acknowledged
by the two classes who saw in the use of that spiritual dominion a
counterpoise to the worldly sceptres by which they were crushed. But
now the worldly sceptres came to the support of the spiritual dominion.
Its limit was enlarged, and made to include the regulation of all human
affairs. [A.D. 768.] It was its office to subdue kings and bind nobles
in links of iron; and when the son of Pepin, Charles, justly called the
Great, though travestied by French vanity into the name of Charlemagne,
sat on the throne of the Franks, and carried his arms and influence
into the remotest States, it was felt that the hour and the man were
come; and the Western Empire was formally renewed.
The curious thing is, that this longing for a restoration of the Roman
Empire, and dwelling on its usefulness and grandeur, were dominant,
and productive of great events, in populations which had no drop of
Roman blood in their veins. The last emperor resident in Rome had never
heard the names of the hordes of savages whose descendants had now
seized the plains of France and Italy. Yet it seemed as if, with the
territory of the Roman Empire, they had inherited its traditions and
hopes. They might be Saxons, or Franks, or Burgundians, or Lombards,
by national descent, but by residence they were Romans as compared
with the Greeks in the East,--and by religion they were Romans as
compared with the Sclaves and Saracens, who pressed on them on the
North and South. It would not be difficult in this country to find
the grandchildren of French refugees boasting with patriotic pride of
the English triumphs at Cressy and Agincourt--or the sons of Scottish
parents rejoicing in their ancestors' victory under Cromwell at Dunbar;
and here, in the eighth century, the descendants of Alaric and Clovis
were patriotically loyal to the memory of the old Empire, and were
reminded by the victories of Charlemagne of the trophies of Scipio and
Marius. These victories, indeed, were not, as is so often found to
be the case, the mere efforts of genius and ambition, with no higher
object than to augment the conqueror's power or reputation. They were
systematically pursued with a view to an end. In one advancing tide,
all things tended to the Imperial throne. Whatever nation felt the
force of Charlemagne's sword felt also a portion of its humiliation
lightened when its submission was perceived to be only an advancement
towards the restoration of the old dominion. It might have been
degrading to acknowledge the superiority of the son of Pepin--but who
could offer resistance to the successor of Augustus? So, after thirty
years of uninterrupted war, with campaigns succeeding each in the most
distant regions, and all crowned with conquest; after subduing the
Saxons beyond the Weser, the Lombards as far as Treviso, the Arabs
under the walls of Saragossa, the Bavarians in the neighbourhood of
Augsburg, the Sclaves on the Elbe and Oder, the Huns and Avars on the
Raab and Danube, and the Greeks themselves on the coast of Dalmatia;
when he looked around and saw no rebellion against his authority,
but throughout the greater part of his domains a willing submission
to the centralizing power which rallied all Christian states for the
defence of Christianity, and all civilized nations for the defence
of civilization,--nothing more was required than the mere expression
in definite words of the great thing that had already taken place,
and Charlemagne, at the extreme end of this century, bent before the
successor of St. Peter at Rome, and stood up crowned Emperor of the
West, and champion and chief of Christendom.
[A.D. 786-814.]
The period of Charlemagne is a great date in history; for it is the
legal and formal termination of an antiquated state of society. It was
also the introduction to another, totally distinct from itself and from
its predecessor. It was not barbarism; it was not feudalism; but it
was the bridge which united the two. By barbarism is meant the uneasy
state of governments and peoples, where the tribe still predominated
over the nation; where the Frank or Lombard continued an encamped
warrior, without reference to the soil; and where his patriotism
consisted in fidelity to the traditions of his descent, and not to
the greatness or independence of the land he occupied. In the reign
of Charlemagne, the land of the Frank became practically, and even
territorially, France; the district occupied by the Lombards became
Lombardy. The feeling of property in the soil was added to the ties
of race and kindred; and at the very time that all the nations of the
Invasion yielded to the supremacy of one man as emperor, the different
populations asserted their separate independence of each other, as
distinct and self-sufficing kingdoms--kingdoms, that is to say, without
the kings, but in all respects prepared for those individualized
expressions of their national life. For though Charlemagne, seated in
his great hall at Aix-la-Chapelle, gave laws to the whole of his vast
domains, in each country he had assumed to himself nothing more than
the monarchic power. To the whole empire he was emperor, but to each
separate people, such as Franks and Lombards, he was simply king. Under
him there were dukes, counts, viscounts, and other dignitaries, but
each limited, in function and influence, to the territory to which he
belonged. A French duke had no pre-eminence in Lombardy, and a Bavarian
graf had no rank in Italy. Other machinery was at times employed by
the central power, in the shape of temporary messengers, or even of
emissaries with a longer tenure of office; but these persons were sent
for some special purpose, and were more like commissioners appointed
by the Crown, than possessors of authority inherent in themselves. The
term of their ambassadorship expired, their salary, or the lands they
had provisionally held in lieu of salary, reverted to the monarch,
and they returned to court with no further pretension to power or
influence than an ambassador in our days when he returns from the
country to which he is accredited. But when the great local nobility
found their authority indissolubly connected with their possessions,
and that ducal or princely privileges were hereditary accompaniments
of their lands, the foundations of modern feudalism were already laid,
and the path to national kingship made easy and unavoidable. When
Charlemagne's empire broke into pieces at his death, we still find, in
the next century, that each piece was a kingdom. Modern Europe took
its rise from these fragmentary though complete portions; and whereas
the breaking-up of the first empire left the world a prey to barbaric
hordes, and desolation and misery spread over the fairest lands, the
disruption of the latter empire of Charlemagne left Europe united as
one whole against Saracen and savage, but separated in itself into many
well-defined states, regulated in their intercourse by international
law, and listening with the docility of children to the promises or
threatenings of the Father of the Universal Church. For with the
empire of Charlemagne the empire of the Papacy had grown. The temporal
power was a collection of forces dependent on the life of one man; the
spiritual power is a principle which is independent of individual aid.
So over the fragments, as we have said, of the broken empire, rose
higher than ever the unshaken majesty of Rome. Civil authority had
shrunk up within local bounds; but the Papacy had expanded beyond the
limits of time and space, and shook the dreadful keys and clenched the
two-edged sword which typified its dominion over both earth and heaven.
NINTH CENTURY.
Emperors.
A.D. _West._
800. CHARLEMAGNE, (crowned by the Pope.)
814. LOUIS THE DEBONNAIRE.
840. CHARLES THE BALD.
877. LOUIS THE STAMMERER.
879. LOUIS III. and CARLOMAN.
884. CHARLES THE FAT.
887. ARNOLD.
899. LOUIS IV.
A.D. _East._
NICEPHORUS--(_cont_.)
811. MICHAEL.
813. LEO THE ARMENIAN.
821. MICHAEL THE STAMMERER.
829. THEOPHILUS.
842. MICHAEL III.
886. LEO THE PHILOSOPHER.
Kings of France.
A.D.
887. EUDES, (Count of Paris.)
898. CHARLES THE SIMPLE.
Kings of England.
A.D.
827. EGBERT.
837. ETHELWOLF.
857. ETHELBALD.
860. ETHELBERT.
866. ETHELRED.
872. ALFRED THE GREAT.
Authors.
JOHN SCOTUS, (ERIGENA,) HINCMAR, HERIC, (preceded Des Cartes in
philosophical investigation,) MACARIUS.
THE NINTH CENTURY.
DISMEMBERMENT OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE--DANISH INVASION OF
ENGLAND--WEAKNESS OF FRANCE--REIGN OF ALFRED.
The first year of this century found Charlemagne with the crown of
the old Empire upon his head, and the most distant parts of the world
filled with his reputation. As in the case of the first Napoleon, we
find his antechambers crowded with the fallen rulers of the conquered
territories, and even with sovereigns of neighbouring countries. Among
others, two of our Anglo-Saxon princes found their way to the great
man's court at Aix-la-Chapelle. Eardulf of Northumberland pleaded his
cause so well with Charlemagne and the Pope, that by their good offices
he was restored to his states. But a greater man than Eardulf was also
a visitor and careful student of the vanquisher and lawgiver of the
Western world. Originally a Prince of Kent, he had been expelled by the
superior power or arts of Beortrick, King of the West Saxons, and had
betaken himself for protection, if not for restoration, to the most
powerful ruler of the time. Whether Egbert joined in his expeditions or
shared his councils, we do not know, but the history of the Anglo-Saxon
monarchies at this date (800 to 830) shows us the exact counterpart,
on our own island, of the actions of Charlemagne on the wider stage
of continental Europe. Egbert, on the death of Beortrick, obtained
possession of Wessex, and one by one the separate States of the British
Heptarchy were subdued; some reduced to entire subjection, others only
to subordinate rank and the payment of tribute, till, when all things
were prepared for the change, Egbert proclaimed the unity of Southern
Britain by assuming the title of Bretwalda, in the same way as his
prototype had restored the unity of the empire by taking the dignity
of Emperor. It is pleasant to pause over the period of Charlemagne's
reign, for it is an isthmus connecting two dark and unsatisfactory
states of society,--a past of disunion, barbarity, and violence,
and a future of ignorance, selfishness, and crime. The present was
not, indeed, exempt from some or all of these characteristics. There
must have been quarrellings and brutal animosities on the outskirts
of his domain, where half-converted Franks carried fire and sword,
in the name of religion, among the still heathen Saxons; there must
have been insolence and cruelty among the bishops and priests, whose
education, in the majority of instances, was limited to learning the
services of the Church by heart. Many laymen, indeed, had seized on the
temporalities of the sees; and, in return, many bishops had arrogated
to themselves the warlike privileges and authority of the counts and
viscounts. But within the radius of Charlemagne's own influence, in his
family apartments, or in the great Hall of Audience at Aix-la-Chapelle,
the astonishing sight was presented of a man refreshing himself, after
the fatigues of policy and war, by converting his house into a college
for the advancement of learning and science. From all quarters came
the scholars, and grammarians, and philosophers of the time. Chief
of these was our countryman, the Anglo-Saxon monk Alcuin, and from
what remains of his writings we can only regret that, in the infancy
of that new civilization, his genius, which was undoubtedly great,
was devoted to trifles of no real importance. Others came to fill up
that noble company; and it is surely a great relief from the bloody
records with which we have so long been familiar, to see Charlemagne
at home, surrounded by sons and daughters, listening to readings and
translations from Roman authors; entering himself into disquisitions on
philosophy and antiquities, and acting as president of a select society
of earnest searchers after information. To put his companions more at
their ease, he hid the terrors of his crown under an assumed name, and
only accepted so much of his royal state as his friends assigned to him
by giving him the name of King David. The best versifier was known as
Virgil. Alcuin himself was Horace; and Angelbert, who cultivated Greek,
assumed the proud name of Homer. These literary discussions, however,
would have had no better effect than refining the court, and making
the days pass pleasantly; but Charlemagne's object was higher and
more liberal than this. Whatever monastery he founded or endowed was
forced to maintain a school as part of its establishment. Alcuin was
presented with the great Abbey of St. Martin of Tours, which possessed
on its domain twenty thousand serfs, and therefore made him one of the
richest land-owners in France. There, at full leisure from worldly
cares, he composed a vast number of books, of very poor philosophy
and very incorrect astronomy, and perhaps looked down from his lofty
eminence of wealth and fame on the humble labours of young Eginhart,
the secretary of Charlemagne, who has left us a Life of his master,
infinitely more interesting and useful than all the dissertations of
the sage. From this great Life we learn many delightful characteristics
of the great man, his good-heartedness, his love of justice, and
blind affection for his children. But it is with his public works,
as acting on this century, that we have now to do. Throughout the
whole extent of his empire he founded Academies, both for learning
and for useful occupations. He encouraged the study and practice of
agriculture and trade. The fine arts found him a munificent patron;
and though the objects on which the artist's skill was exercised were
not more exalted than the carving of wooden tables, the moulding of
metal cups, and the casting of bells, the circumstances of the time
are to be taken into consideration, and these efforts may be found
as advanced, for the ninth century, as the works of the sculptors
and metallurgists of our own day. It is painful to observe that the
practice of what is now called adulteration was not unknown at that
early period. There was a monk of the name of Tancho, in the monastery
of St. Gall, who produced the first bell. Its sound was so sweet and
solemn, that it was at once adopted as an indispensable portion of the
ornament of church and chapel, and soon after that, of the religious
services themselves. Charlemagne, hearing it, and perhaps believing
that an increased value in the metal would produce a richer tone, sent
him a sufficient quantity of silver to form a second bell. The monk,
tempted by the facility of turning the treasure to his own use, brought
forward another specimen of his skill, but of a mixed and very inferior
material. What the just and severe emperor might have done, on the
discovery of the fraud, is not known; but the story ended tragically
without the intervention of the legal sword. At the first swing of the
clapper it broke the skull of the dishonest founder, who had apparently
gone too near to witness the action of the tongue; and the bell was
thenceforth looked on with veneration, as the discoverer and punisher
of the unjust manufacturer.
The monks, indeed, seem to have been the most refractory of subjects,
perhaps because they were already exempted from the ordinary
punishments. In order to produce uniformity in the services and
chants of the Church, the emperor sent to Rome for twelve monkish
musicians, and distributed them in the twelve principal bishoprics of
his dominions. The twelve musicians would not consent to be musical
according to order, and made the confusion greater than ever, for each
of them taught different tunes and a different method. The disappointed
emperor could only complain to the Pope, and the Pope put the recusant
psalmodists in prison. But it appears the fate of Charlemagne, as of
all persons in advance of their age, to be worthy of congratulation
only for his attempts. The success of many of his undertakings was not
adequate to the pains bestowed upon them. He held many assemblages,
both lay and ecclesiastical, during his lengthened reign; he published
many excellent laws, which soon fell into disuse; he tried many reforms
of churches and monasteries, which shared the same fortune; he held the
Popes of Rome and the dignitaries of his empire in perfect submission,
but professed so much respect for the office of Pontiff and Bishop,
that, when his own overwhelming superiority was withdrawn, the Church
rebelled against the State, and claimed dominion over it. His sense
of justice, as well as the custom of the time, led him to divide his
states among his sons, which not only insured enmity between them, but
enfeebled the whole of Christendom. Clouds, indeed, began to gather
over him some time before his reign was ended. One day he was at a
city of Narbonese Gaul, looking out upon the Mediterranean Sea. He
saw some vessels appear before the port. "These," said the courtiers,
"must be ships from the coast of Africa, Jewish merchantmen, or British
traders." But Charlemagne, who had leaned a long time against the
wall of the room in a passion of tears, said, "No! these are not the
ships of commerce; I know by their lightness of movement. They are
the galleys of the Norsemen; and, though I know such miserable pirates
can do me no harm, I cannot help weeping when I think of the miseries
they will inflict on my descendants and the lands they shall rule." A
true speech, and just occasion for grief, for the descents of these
Scandinavian rovers are the great characteristic of this century, by
which a new power was introduced into Europe, and great changes took
place in the career of France and England.