destitute of real authority, at an immeasurable height above the
loftiest of the nobles; and it will be well to preserve this in our
memory; for to the belief in this mystical dignity of the sovereign,
the monarchical principle was indebted for its triumph in all the
states of Europe. No matter how powerless the anointed ruler might
be--no matter how greatly a combination of vassals, or a single vassal,
might excel him in men and money--the ineffable supremacy of the sacred
head was never denied. This strange and ennobling sentiment had not yet
penetrated the mind of Rollo and his followers, at the great ceremonial
of his reception as a feudatory of the Crown. He declined to bend
the knee before his suzerain, but gave him his oath of obedience and
faith, standing at his full height. When a stickler for court etiquette
insisted on the final ceremony of kissing the foot of the feudal
superior, the duke made a sign to one of his piratical attendants to
go through the form instead of him. Forth stalked the Norseman towards
the overjoyed Charles, and without stooping his body laid hold of the
royal boot, and, lifting it with all his strength up to his mouth,
upset the unfortunate and short-legged monarch on his back, to the
great consternation of his courtiers, and the hilarious enjoyment of
his new subjects. But there was henceforth a new element in French
society. The wanderers were unanimously converted to Christianity, and
the shores of the whole kingdom perpetually guarded from piratical
invaders by the contented and warlike countrymen of Hastings and Rollo.
Normandy and Brittany were the appanage of the new duke, and perhaps
they were more useful to the French monarch, as the well-governed
territories of a powerful vassal, than if he had held them in full
sovereignty in their former disorganized and helpless state. Language
soon began to exert its combining influence on the peoples thus brought
into contact, and in a few years the rough Norse gave place to the
Romanized idiom of the rest of the kingdom, and the descendants of
Rollo in the next generation required an interpreter if any of their
relatives came to visit them from Denmark.
But the true characteristic event of this century was the first
establishment of real feudalism. The hereditary nature of lands and
tenements had long been recognised; the original granter had long
surrendered his right to reclaim the property on the death of the
first possessor. Gradually also, and by sufferance, the offices to
which, in the stronger periods of royalty, the favoured subjects had
been promoted for life or a definite time were considered to belong
to the descendant of the holder. But it was only now, in the weak
administration of a series of nominal kings, that the rights and
privileges of a titular nobility were legally recognised, and large
portions of the monarchy forever conveyed away from the control of
the Crown. There is a sort of natural feudalism which must always
exist where there are degrees of power and influence, and which is
as potent at this moment as in the time we are describing. A man who
expects a favour owes and performs suit and service to the man who
has the power of bestowing it. A man with land to let, with money to
lend, with patronage to exert, is in a sort of way the "superior"
of him who wants to take the farm, or borrow the money, or get the
advancement. The obligations of these positions are mutual; and only
very advanced philosophers in the theory of disunion and ingratitude
would object to the reciprocal feelings of kindness and attachment
they naturally produce. In a less settled state of society, such
as that now existing, or which lately existed, at the Cape of Good
Hope and in New Zealand, the feudal principle is fresh and vigorous,
though not recognised under that name, for the peaceful or weak are
glad to pay deference and respect to the wielder of the protective
sword. In the tenth century there were customs, but no laws, for laws
presuppose some external power able to enforce them, and the decay of
the kingly authority had left the only practical government in the
hands of the great and powerful. They gave protection in return for
obedience. But when more closely inquired into, this assumption of
authority by a nobility or upper class is found to have been purely
defensive on the part of the lay proprietors, against the advancing
tide of a spiritual Democracy, which threatened to submerge the whole
of Europe. Already the bishops and abbots had got possession of nearly
half the realm of France, and in other countries they were equally
well provided. Those great officers were the leaders of innumerable
priests and monks, and owed their dignities to the popular will. The
Pope himself--a sovereign prince when once placed in the chair of St.
Peter--was indebted for his exaltation to a plurality of votes of the
clergy and people of Rome. Election was, in fact, the universal form
of constituting the rule under which men were to live. But who were
the electors? The appointment was still nominally in the people, but
the people were almost entirely under the influence of the clerical
orders. Mechanics and labourers were the serfs or dependants of the
rich monasteries, and tillers of the episcopal lands. The citizens
had not yet risen into wealth or intelligence, and, though subject in
their persons to the baron whose castle commanded their walls, they
were still under the guidance of their priests. No middle class existed
to hold the balance even between the nobility and the Church; and the
masses of the population were naturally disposed to throw power into
the hands of persons who sprang, in most instances, from families no
better than their own, and recommended themselves to popular favour
by opposition (often just, but always domineering) to the proceedings
of the lay aristocracy. The labouring serfs, who gave the vote, were
not much inferior in education or refinement to the ordained serfs who
canvassed for their favour. Abbacies, priories, bishoprics, parochial
incumbencies, and all cathedral dignities, were held by a body distinct
from the feudal gentry, and elevated, mediately or immediately, by
universal suffrage. If some stop had not been put to the aggressions of
the priesthood, all the lands in Christendom would have been absorbed
by its insatiable greed--all the offices of the State would have been
conveyed to sacerdotal holders; all kings would have been nominated by
the clerical voice alone, and freedom and progress would never have had
their birth. The monarchs--though it is almost mockery to call them so
in England--were waging an unsuccessful war with the pretensions of
St. Dunstan, who was an embodiment of the pitiless harshness and blind
ambition of a zealot for ecclesiastic supremacy. In France a succession
of imbecile rulers, whose characters are clearly enough to be guessed
from the descriptive epithets which the old chroniclers have attached
to their names, had left the Crown a prey to all its enemies. What was
to be expected from a series of governors whose mark in history is
made by such nicknames as "The Bald," "The Stammerer," "The Fat," and
finally, without circumlocution, "The Fool"? Everybody tried to get
as much out of the royal plunder as he could. Bishops got lands and
churches. Foreign pirates, we have seen, got whole counties at a time,
and in self-defence the nobility were forced to join in the universal
spoil. Counties as large as Normandy were retained as rightful
inheritances, independent of all but nominal adhesion to the throne.
Smaller properties were kept fast hold of, on the same pretence. And
by this one step the noble was placed in a position of advantage over
his rival the encroaching bishop. His power was not the mere creation
of a vote or the possession of a lifetime. His family had foundations
on which to build through a long succession of generations. Marriage,
conquest, gift, and purchase, all tended to the consolidation of his
influence; and the result was, that, instead of one feeble and decaying
potentate in the person of the king, to resist the aggressions of an
absorbing and levelling Church, there were hundreds all over the land,
democratic enough in regard to their dislike of the supremacy of the
sovereign, but burning with a deep-seated aristocratic hatred of the
territorial aggrandizement of the dissolute and low-born clergy. Europe
was either in this century to be ruled by mailed barons or surpliced
priests. Sometimes they played into each other's hands. Sometimes
the warrior overwhelmed an adversary by enlisting on his side the
sympathies of the Church. Sometimes the Church, in its controversies
with the Crown, cast itself on the protection of the warrior, but
more frequently it threw its weight into the scale of the vacillating
monarch, who could reward it with such munificent donations. But
those munificent donations were equivalent to aggressions on the
nobles. There was no use in their trying to check the aggrandizement
of the clerical power, if the Crown continued its gifts of territory
and offices to the priests and churches. And at last, when the
strong-handed barons of France were tired out with the fatuity of
their effete kings, they gave the last proof of the supremacy they had
attained, by departing from the line of Charlemagne and placing one
of themselves upon the throne. Hugh Capet, the chief of the feudal
nobles, was chosen to wear the crown as delegate and representative of
the rest. The old Mayors of the Palace had been revived in his family
for some generations; and when Louis the son of Lothaire died, after a
twelvemonth's permissive reign, in 987, the warriors and land-owners
turned instinctively to the strongest and most distinguished member
of their body to be the guardian of the privileges they had already
secured. This was an aristocratic movement against the lineal supremacy
of the Crown, and in reply to the democratic policy of the Church. But
the Pope was too clear-sighted to lose the chance of attaching another
champion to the papal chair. [A.D. 987.] He made haste to ratify the
new nomination to the throne, and pronounced Hugh Capet "King of France
in right of his great deeds."
Hugh Capet had been first of the feudal nobility; but from thenceforth
he laboured to be "every inch a king." He tried to please both parties,
and to humble them at the same time. He did not lavish crown-lands or
lofty employments on the clergy; he took a new and very economical way
of attaching them to his cause. He procured his election, it is not
related by what means, to the highest dignities in the Church, and,
although not in holy orders, was invested with the abbacies of St.
Denis and St. Martin's and St. Germain's. The clergy were delighted
with the increase to the respectability of their order, which had thus
a king among its office-bearers. The Pope, we have seen, was first to
declare his legitimacy; the bishops gave him their support, as they
felt sure that, as a threefold abbot, he must have interests identical
with their own. He was fortunate, also, in gaining still more venerated
supporters; for while he was building a splendid tomb at St. Valery,
the saint of that name appeared to him and said, with larger promise
than the witches to Banquo, "Thou and thy descendants shall be kings to
the remotest generations."
With the nobles he proceeded in a different manner. His task, you
will remember, was to regain the universal submission of the nation;
and success at first seemed almost hopeless, for his real power,
like that of the weakest of his immediate predecessors, extended no
further than his personal holdings. In his fiefs of France proper (the
small district including Paris) and Burgundy he was all-powerful;
but in the other principalities and dukedoms he was looked on merely
as a neighbouring potentate with some shadowy claims of suzerainty,
with no right of interference in their internal administration. The
other feudatories under the old monarchy, but who were in reality
independent sovereigns under the new, were the Dukes of Normandy and
Flanders, and Aquitaine and Toulouse. These made the six lay peerages
of the kingdom, and, with the six ecclesiastical chief rulers, made
the Twelve Peers of France. Of the lay peerages it will be seen that
Hugh was in possession of two--the best situated and most populous of
all. The extent of his possessions and the influence of his name were
excellent starting-points in his efforts to restore the power of the
Crown; but other things were required, and the first thing he aimed at
was to place his newly-acquired dignity on the same vantage-ground of
hereditary succession as his dukedoms had long been. [A.D. 989.] With
great pomp and solemnity he himself was anointed with the holy oil by
the hands of the Pope; and he took advantage of the self-satisfied
security of the other nobles to have the ceremony of a coronation
performed on his son during his lifetime, and by this arrangement the
appearance of election was avoided at his death. Its due weight must
be given to the universal superstition of the time, when we attribute
such importance to the formal consecration of a king. Externals, in
that age, were all in all. Something mystic and divine, as we have
said before, was supposed to reside in the very fact of having the
crown placed on the head with the sanction and prayers of the Church.
Opposition to the wearer became not only treason, but impiety; and
when the same policy was pursued by many generations of Hugh's
successors, in always procuring the coronation of their heirs before
their demise, and thus obliterating the remembrance of the elective
process to which they owed their position, the royal power had the
vast advantage of hereditary descent added to its unsubstantial but
never-abandoned claim of paramount authority. The effects of this
momentous change in the dynasty of one of the great European nations
were felt in all succeeding centuries. The family connection between
the house of France and the Empire was dissolved; and the struggle
between the old condition of society and the rising intelligence of
the peoples--which is the great characteristic of the Middle Ages--took
a more defined form than before: aristocracy assumed its perfected
shape of king and nobility combined for mutual defence on one side,
and on the other the towns and great masses of the nations striving
for freedom and privilege under the leadership of the sympathizing and
democratic Church; for the Church was essentially democratic, in spite
of the arrogance and grasping spirit of some of its principal leaders.
From hereditary aristocracy and hereditary royalty it was equally
excluded; and the celibacy of the clergy has had this good effect,
if no other: Its members were recruited from the people, and derived
all their influence from popular support. In Germany the same process
was going on, though without the crowning consummation of making the
empire non-elective. [A.D. 962.] Otho, however--worthier of the name
of Great than many who have borne that ambitious title--succeeded in
limiting that highest of European dignities to the possessors of the
German crown, and commenced the connection between Upper Italy and the
Emperors which still subsists (so uneasily for both parties) under the
house of Austria.
In England the misery of the population had reached its maximum. The
immigration of the Norsemen had been succeeded by numberless invasions,
accompanied with all the horrors of barbarism and religious hatred; for
the Danes who devastated the shores in this age were as remorselessly
savage, and as bitterly heathen, as their predecessors a hundred
years before. No place was safe for the unhappy Christianized Saxons.
Their sufferings were of the same kind as those of the inhabitants of
Normandy when Rollo began his ravages. Their priest-ridden kings and
impoverished nobles could give them no protection. Bribes were paid to
the assailants, and only brought over increasing and hungrier hordes.
The land was a prey to wretchedness of every kind, and it was slender
consolation to the starving and trampled multitudes that all the world
was suffering to almost the same extent. Saracens were devastating the
coasts of Italy, and a wild tribe of Sclaves trying to burst through
the Hungarian frontier. At Rome itself, the capital of intellect
and religion, such iniquities were perpetrated on every side that
Protestant authors themselves consent to draw a veil over them for the
sake of human nature; and in those sketches we require to do nothing
more than allude to the crimes and wickedness of the papal court as
one of the features by which the century was marked. Women of high
rank and infamous character placed the companions of their vices in
the highest offices of the Church, and seated their sons or paramours
on the papal throne. Spiritual pretensions rose almost in proportion
to personal immorality, and the curious spectacle was presented of a
power losing all respect at home by conduct which the heathen emperors
of the first century scarcely equalled; of popes alternately dethroning
and imprisoning each other--sometimes of two popes at a time--always
dependent for life or influence on the will of the emperor, or whoever
else might be dominant in Italy--and yet successfully claiming the
submission and reverence of distant nations as "Bishop of all the
world" and lineal "successors of the Prince of the Apostles." This
claim had never been expressly made before, and is perhaps the most
conclusive proof of the darkness and ignorance of this period. Men were
too besotted to observe the incongruity between the life and profession
of those blemishes of the Church, even when by travelling to the seat
of government they had the opportunity of seeing the Roman pontiff and
his satellites and patrons. The rest of the world had no means of
learning the real state of affairs. Education had almost died out among
the clergy themselves. Nobody else could write or read. Travelling
monks gave perverted versions, we may believe, of every thing likely to
be injurious to the interests of the Church; and the result was, that
everywhere beyond the city-walls the thunder of a Boniface the Seventh,
or a John the Twelfth, was considered as good thunder as if it had
issued from the virtuous indignation of St. Paul.
But just as this century drew to a close, various circumstances
concurred to produce a change in men's minds. It was a
universally-diffused belief that the world would come to an end when
a thousand years from the Saviour's birth were expired. The year 999
was therefore looked upon as the last which any one would see. And if
ever signs of approaching dissolution were shown in heaven and earth,
the people of this century might be pardoned for believing that they
were made visible to them. Even the breaking up of morals and law, and
the wide deluge of sin which overspread all lands, might be taken as a
token that mankind were deemed unfit to occupy the earth any more. In
addition to these appalling symptoms, famines were renewed from year to
year in still increasing intensity and brought plague and pestilence
in their train. The land was left untilled, the house unrepaired, the
right unvindicated; for who could take the useless trouble of ploughing
or building, or quarrelling about a property, when so few months were
to put an end to all terrestrial interests? Yet even for the few
remaining days the multitudes must be fed. Robbers frequented every
road, entered even into walled towns; and there was no authority left
to protect the weak, or bring the wrong-doer to punishment. Corn and
cattle were at length exhausted; and in a great part of the Continent
the most frightful extremities were endured; and when endurance could
go no further, the last desperate expedient was resorted to, and human
flesh was commonly consumed. One man went so far as to expose it for
sale in a populous market-town. The horror of this open confession of
their needs was so great, that the man was burned, but more for the
publicity of his conduct than for its inherent guilt. Despair gave
a loose to all the passions. Nothing was sacred--nothing safe. Even
when food might have been had, the vitiated taste made bravado of
its depravation, and women and children were killed and roasted in
the madness of the universal fear. Meantime the gentler natures were
driven to the wildest excesses of fanaticism to find a retreat from
the impending judgment. Kings and emperors begged at monastery-doors
to be admitted brethren of the Order. Henry of Germany and Robert of
France were saints according to the notions of the time, and even now
deserve the respect of mankind for the simplicity and benevolence of
their characters. Henry the Emperor succeeded in being admitted as a
monk, and swore obedience on the hands of the gentle abbot who had
failed in turning him from his purpose. "Sire," he said at last, "since
you are under my orders, and have sworn to obey me, I command you to
go forth and fulfil the duties of the state to which God has called
you. Go forth, a monk of the Abbey of St. Vanne, but Emperor of the
West." Robert of France, the son of Hugh Capet, placed himself, robed
and crowned, among the choristers of St. Denis, and led the musicians
in singing hymns and psalms of his own composition. Lower men were
satisfied with sacrificing the marks of their knightly and seignorial
rank, and placed baldrics and swords on the altars and before the
images of saints. Some manumitted their serfs, and bestowed large
sums upon charitable trusts, commencing their disposition with words
implying the approaching end of all. Crowds of the common people would
sleep nowhere but in the porches, or at any rate within the shadow,
of the churches and other holy buildings; and as the day of doom drew
nearer and nearer, greater efforts were made to appease the wrath of
Heaven. Peace was proclaimed between all classes of men. From Wednesday
night till Monday evening of each week there was to be no violence or
enmity or war in all the land. It was to be a Truce of God; and at
last, all their strivings after a better state, acknowledgments of
a depraved condition, and heartfelt longings for something better,
purer, nobler, received their consummation, when, in the place of the
unprincipled men who had disgraced Christianity by carrying vice and
incredulity into the papal chair, there was appointed to the highest of
ecclesiastical dignities a man worthy of his exaltation; and the good
and holy Gerbert, the tutor, guide, and friend of Robert of France, was
appointed Pope in 998, and took the name of Sylvester the Second.
ELEVENTH CENTURY.
Emperors of Germany.
A.D.
OTHO III.--(_cont_.)
1002. HENRY OF BAVARIA.
1024. CONRAD II.
1039. HENRY III.
1056. HENRY IV.
Kings of England.
A.D.
ETHELRED II.--(_cont._)
1013. SWEYN. }
1015. CANUTE THE GREAT. }
1017. EDMUND II. } Danes.
1039. HAROLD and HARDICANUTE. }
1042. EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
1066. HAROLD, (son of Godwin.)
1066. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
1087. WILLIAM RUFUS.
Emperors of the East.
A.D.
BASILIUS.--(_cont._)
1028. ROMANUS III.
1042. EMPRESS ZOE and THEODORA.
1056. MICHAEL VI.
1057. ISAAC COMNENUS.
1059. CONSTANTINE X., (DUCAS.)
1067. EUDOXIA and CONSTANTINE XI.
1068. ROMANUS IV., (DIOGENES.)
1071. MICHAEL.
1078. { Two princes of the
1081. { House of the Comneni.
1081. ALEXIS I.
Kings of France.
A.D.
ROBERT THE WISE.--(_cont._)
1031. HENRY I.
1060. PHILIP I.
1096. THE FIRST CRUSADE.
Authors.
ANSELM, (1003-1079,) ABELARD, (1079-1142,) BERENGARIUS, ROSCELIN,
LANFRANC, THEOPHYLACT, (1077.)
THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.
THE COMMENCEMENT OF IMPROVEMENT--GREGORY THE SEVENTH--FIRST CRUSADE.