THE GREAT EVENTS
BY
FAMOUS HISTORIANS
A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS
NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL
ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE. INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES. CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING
SUPERVISING EDITOR
ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.
LITERARY EDITORS
CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
DIRECTING EDITOR
WALTER F. AUSTIN, LL.M.
With a staff of specialists
CONTENTS
VOLUME V
An Outline Narrative of the Great Events
CHARLES F. HORNE
Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth and English Development
(9th to 12th Century)
WILLIAM STUBBS
Decay of the Frankish Empire
Division into Modern France, Germany, and Italy
(A.D. 843-911)
FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT
Career of Alfred the Great (A.D. 871-901)
THOMAS HUGHES
JOHN R. GREEN
Henry the Fowler Founds the Saxon Line of German Kings
Origin of the German Burghers or Middle Classes (A.D. 911-936)
WOLFGANG MENZEL
Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites (A.D. 969)
STANLEY LANE-POOLE
Growth and Decadence of Chivalry (10th to 15th Century)
LÉON GAUTIER
Conversion of Vladimir the Great
Introduction of Christianity into Russia (A.D. 988-1015)
A. N. MOURAVIEFF
Leif Ericson Discovers America (A.D. 1000)
CHARLES C. RAFN
SAGA OF ERIC THE RED
Mahometans In India
Bloody Invasions under Mahmud (A.D. 1000)
ALEXANDER DOW
Canute Becomes King of England (A.D. 1017)
DAVID HUME
Henry III Deposes the Popes (A.D. 1048)
The German Empire Controls the Papacy
FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS
JOSEPH DARRAS
Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman
Churches (A.D. 1054)
HENRY F. TOZER
JOSEPH DEHARBE
Norman Conquest of England
Battle of Hastings (A.D. 1066)
SIR EDWARD S. CREASY
Triumphs of Hildebrand
"The Turning-point of the Middle Ages"
Henry IV Begs for Mercy at Canossa (A.D. 1073-1085)
ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON
ARTAUD DE MONTOR
Completion of the Domesday Book (A.D. 1086)
CHARLES KNIGHT
Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain
Growth and Decay of the Almoravide and Almohade
Dynasties (A.D. 1086-1214)
S.A. DUNHAM
The First Crusade (A.D. 1096-1099)
SIR GEORGE W. COX
Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars (A.D. 1118)
CHARLES G. ADDISON
Stephen Usurps the English Crown
His Conflicts with Matilda
Decisive Influence of the Church (A.D. 1135-1154)
CHARLES KNIGHT
Antipapal Democratic Movement
Arnold of Brescia
St. Bernard and the Second Crusade (A.D. 1145-1155)
JOHANN A. W. NEANDER
Decline of the Byzantine Empire
Ravages of Roger of Sicily (A.D. 1146)
GEORGE FINLAY
Universal Chronology (A.D. 843-1161)
JOHN RUDD
AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE
TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF
THE GREAT EVENTS
(FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO FREDERICK BARBAROSSA)
CHARLES F. HORNE
The three centuries which follow the downfall of the empire of
Charlemagne laid the foundations of modern Europe, and made of it a
world wholly different, politically, socially, and religiously, from
that which had preceded it. In the careers of Greece and Rome we saw
exemplified the results of two sharply opposing tendencies of the Aryan
mind, the one toward individualism and separation, the other toward
self-subordination and union.
In the time of Charlemagne's splendid successes it appeared settled that
the second of these tendencies was to guide the Teutonic Aryans, that
the Europe of the future was to be a single empire, ever pushing out its
borders as Rome had done, ever subduing its weaker neighbors, until the
"Teutonic peace" should be substituted for the shattered "Roman peace,"
soldiers should be needed only for the duties of police, and a whole
civilized world again obey the rule of a single man.
Instead of this, the race has since followed a destiny of separation.
Europe is divided into many countries, each of them a vast camp
bristling with armies and arsenals. Civilization has continued
hag-ridden by war even to our own day, and, during at least seven
hundred of the years that followed Charlemagne, mankind made no greater
progress in the arts and sciences than the ancients had sometimes
achieved in a single century. We do indeed believe that at last we have
entered on an age of rapid advance, that individualism has justified
itself. The wider personal liberty of to-day is worth all that the race
has suffered for it. Yet the retardation of wellnigh a thousand years
has surely been a giant price to pay.
DOWNFALL OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE
This mighty change in the course of Teutonic destiny, this breakdown of
the Frankish empire, was wrought by two destroying forces, one from
within, one from without. From within came the insubordination, the
still savage love of combat, the natural turbulence of the race. It is
conceivable that, had Charlemagne been followed on the throne by a son
and then a grandson as mighty as he and his immediate ancestors, the
course of the whole broad earth would have been altered. The Franks
would have grown accustomed to obey; further conquest abroad would have
insured peace at home; the imperial power would have become strong as in
Roman days, when the most feeble emperors could not be shaken. But the
descendants of Charlemagne sank into a decline. He himself had directed
the fighting energy of the Franks against foreign enemies. His son and
successor had no taste for war, and so allowed his idle subjects time to
quarrel with him and with one another. The next generation, under the
grandsons of Charlemagne, devoted their entire lives to repeated and
furious civil wars, in which the empire fell apart, the flower of the
Frankish race perished, and the strength of its dominion was sapped to
nothingness.[1]
[Footnote 1: See _Decay of Frankish Empire_, page 22.]
There were three of these grandsons, and, when their struggle had left
them thoroughly exhausted, they divided the empire into three. Their
treaty of Verdun (843) is often quoted as beginning the modern kingdoms
of Germany, France, and Italy. The division was in some sense a natural
one, emphasized by differences of language and of race. Italy was
peopled by descendants of the ancient Italians, with a thin
intermingling of Goths and Lombards; France held half-Romanized Gauls,
with a very considerable percentage of the Frankish blood; while Germany
was far more barbaric than the other regions. Its people, whether Frank
or Saxon, were all pure Teuton, and still spoke in their Teutonic or
German tongue.
The Franks themselves, however, did not regard this as a breaking of
their empire. They looked on it as merely a family affair, an
arrangement made for the convenience of government among the descendants
of the great Charles. So firm had been that mighty hero's grasp upon the
national imagination, that the Franks accepted as matter of course that
his family should bear rule, and rallied round the various worthless
members of it with rather pathetic loyalty, fighting for them one
against the other, reuniting and redividing the various fragments of the
empire, until the feeble Carlovingian race died out completely.
It is thus evident that there was a strong tendency toward union among
the Franks. But there was also an outside influence to disrupt their
empire. Charlemagne had not carried far enough their career of conquest.
He subdued the Teutons within the limits of Germany, but he did not
reach their weaker Scandinavian brethren to the north, the Danes and
Norsemen. He chastised the Avars, a vague non-Aryan people east of
Germany, but he could not make provision against future Asiatic swarms.
He humbled the Arabs in Spain, but he did not break their African
dominion. From all these sources, as the Franks grew weaker instead of
stronger, their lands became exposed to new invasion.
THE LAST INVADERS
Let us take a moment to trace the fortunes of these outside races,
though the main destiny of the future still lay with Teutonic Europe.
In speaking of the followers of Mahomet, we might perhaps at this period
better drop the term Arabs, and call them Saracens. They were thus known
to the Christians; and their conquests had drawn in their train so many
other peoples that in truth there was little pure Arab blood left among
them. The Saracens, then, had begun to lose somewhat of their intense
fanaticism. Feuds broke out among them. Different chiefs established
different kingdoms or "caliphates," whose dominion became political
rather than religious. Spain had one ruler, Egypt[2] another, Asia a
third. In the eleventh century an army of Saracens invaded India[3] and
added that strange and ancient land to their domain. Europe they had
failed to conquer; but their fleets commanded the Mediterranean. They
held all its islands, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, and Corsica. They
plundered the coast towns of France and Italy. There was a Saracenic
ravaging of Rome.
[Footnote 2: See _Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites_, page 94.]
[Footnote 3: See _Mahometans in India_, page 151.]
On the whole, however, the wave of Mahometan conquest receded. In Spain
the remnants of the Christian population, Visigoths, Romans, and still
older peoples, pressed their way down from their old-time, secret
mountain retreats and began driving the Saracens southward.[4] The
decaying Roman Empire of the East still resisted the Mahometan attack;
Constantinople remained a splendid city, type and picture of what the
ancient world had been.
[Footnote 4: See _Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain_, page 296.]
While the Saracens were thus laying waste the Frankish empire along its
Mediterranean coasts, a more dangerous enemy was assailing it from the
east. Toward the end of the ninth century the Magyars, an Asiatic,
Turanian people, burst on Europe, as the Huns had done five centuries
before. Indeed, the Christians called these later comers Huns also, and
told of them the same extravagant tales of terror. The land which the
Magyars settled was called Hungary. They dwell there and possess it even
to this day, the only instance of a Turanian people having permanently
established themselves in an Aryan continent and at the expense of Aryan
neighbors.
From Hungary the Magyars soon advanced to the German border line, and
made fierce plundering inroads upon the more civilized regions beyond.
They came on horseback, so that the slower Teutons could never gather
quickly enough to resist them. The marauding parties, as they learned
the wealth and weakness of this new land, grew bigger, until at length
they were armies, and defeated the German Franks in pitched battles, and
spread desolation through all the country. They returned now every year.
Their ravages extended even to the Rhine and to the ancient Gallic land
beyond. The Frankish empire seemed doomed to reënact, in a smaller, far
more savage way, the fate of Rome.
Yet more widespread in destruction, more important in result than the
raids of either Saracens or Magyars, were those of the Scandinavians or
Northmen. These, the latest, and perhaps therefore the finest, flower of
the Teutonic stock, are closer to us and hence better known than the
early Goths or Franks. Shut off in their cold northern peninsulas and
islands, they had grown more slowly, it may be, than their southern
brethren. Now they burst suddenly on the world with spectacular dramatic
effect, wild, fierce, and splendid conquerors, as keen of intellect and
quick of wit as they were strong of arm and daring of adventure.
We see them first as sea-robbers, pirates, venturing even in
Charlemagne's time to plunder the German and French coasts. One tribe of
them, the Danes, had already been harrying England and Ireland. Only
Alfred,[5] by heroic exertions, saved a fragment of his kingdom from
them. Later, under Canute,[6] they become its kings. The Northmen
penetrate Russia and appear as rulers of the strange Slavic tribes
there; they settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even distant and unknown
America.[7]
[Footnote 5: See _Career of Alfred the Great_.]
[Footnote 6: See _Canute Becomes King of England_.]
[Footnote 7: _Leif Ericson Discovers America_.]
Meanwhile, after Charlemagne's death they become a main factor in the
downfall of his empire. Year after year their little ships plunder the
undefended French coast, until it is abandoned to them and becomes a
desert. They build winter camps at the river mouths, so that in the
spring they need lose less time and can hurry inland after their
retreating prey. Sudden in attack, strong in defence, they venture
hundreds of miles up the winding waterways. Paris is twice attacked by
them and must fight for life. They penetrate so far up the Loire as to
burn Orleans.
It was under stress of all these assaults that the Franks, grown too
feeble to defend themselves as Charlemagne would have done, by marching
out and pursuing the invaders to their own homes, developed instead a
system of defence which made the Middle Ages what they were. All central
authority seemed lost; each little community was left to defend itself
as best it might. So the local chieftain built himself a rude fortress,
which in time became a towered castle; and thither the people fled in
time of danger. Each man looked up to and swore faith to this, his own
chief, his immediate protector, and took little thought of a distant and
feeble king or emperor. Occasionally, of course, a stronger lord or king
bestirred himself, and demanded homage of these various petty
chieftains. They gave him such service as they wished or as they must.
This was the "feudal system."[8]
[Footnote 8: See _Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth and English
Development_.]
The inclination of each lesser lord was obviously to assert as much
independence as he could. He naturally objected to paying money or
service without benefit received; and he could see no good that this
"overlord" did for him or for his district. It seemed likely at this
time that instead of being divided into three kingdoms, the Frankish
empire would split into thousands of little castled states.
That is, it seemed so, after the various marauding nations were disposed
of. The Northmen were pacified by presenting them outright with the
coast lands they had most harried. Their great leader, Rolf, accepted
the territory with some vague and ill-kept promise of vassalage to the
French King, and with a very firmly held determination that he would let
no pirates ravage his land or cross it to reach others. So the French
coast became Normandy, and the Northmen learned the tongue and manners
of their new home, and softened their harsh name to "Norman," even as
they softened their harsh ways, and rapidly became the most able and
most cultured of Frenchmen.
As for the Saracens, being unprogressive and no longer enthusiastic,
they grew ever feebler, while the Italian cities, being Aryan and left
to themselves, grew strong. At length their fleets met those of the
Saracens on equal terms, and defeated them, and gradually wrested from
them the control of the Mediterranean. Invaders were thus everywhere met
as they came, locally. There was no general gathering of the Frankish
forces against them.
The repulse of the Huns proved the hardest matter of all. Fortunately
for the Germans, their line of Carlovingian emperors died out. So the
various dukes and counts, practically each an independent sovereign, met
and elected a king from among themselves, not really to rule them, but
to enable them to unite against the Huns. After their first elected king
had been soundly beaten by one of his dukes, he died, and in their next
choice they had the luck to light upon a leader really great. Henry the
Fowler, more honorably known as Henry the City-builder,[9] taught them
how to defeat their foe.
[Footnote 9: See _Henry the Fowler Founds the Saxon Line of German
Kings_.]
Much to the disgust of his simple and war-hardened comrades, he first
sent to the Hungarians and purchased peace and paid them tribute. Having
thus secured a temporary respite, Henry encouraged and aided his people
in building walled cities all along the frontier. He also planned to
meet the invaders on equal terms by training his warriors to fight on
horseback. He instituted tournaments and created an order of knighthood,
and is thus generally regarded as the founder of chivalry, that fairest
fruit of mediaeval times, which did so much to preserve honor and
tenderness and respect for womankind.[10]
[Footnote 10: See _Growth and Decadence of Chivalry_.]
When he felt all prepared, Henry deliberately defied and insulted the
Hungarians, and so provoked from them a combined national invasion,
which he met and completely overthrew in the battle of Merseburg (933).
A generation later the Huns felt themselves strong enough to try again;
but Henry's son, Otto the Great, repeated the chastisement. He then
formed a boundary colony or "East-mark" from which sprang Austria; and
this border kingdom was always able to keep the weakened Huns in check.
At the same time there was growing up in Russia a Slavic civilization,
which received Christianity[11] from the South as it had received
Teutonic dominion from the North, and so developed along very similar
lines to Western Europe. The Russian states served as a barrier against
later Asiatic hordes; and this, combined with the civilizing of the last
remnants of the Scandinavians in the North, and the fading of Saracenic
power in the South, left the tottering civilization of the West free
from further barbarian invasion. We shall find destruction threatened
again in later ages by Tartar and by Turk; but the intruders never reach
beyond the frontier. The Teutons and the half-Romanized ancients with
whom they had assimilated were left to work out their own problems. All
the ingredients, even to the last, the Northmen, had been poured into
the caldron. There remains to see what the intermingling has brought
forth.
[Footnote 11: See _Conversion of Vladimir the Great_.]
FEUDAL EUROPE
We have here, then, somewhere about the middle of the tenth century, a
date which may be regarded as marking a distinctly new era. The
ceaseless work of social organization and improvement, which seems so
strong an instinct of the Aryan mind, had been recommenced again and
again from under repeated deluges of barbarism. To-day for nearly a
thousand years it has progressed uninterrupted, except by disturbances
from within; nor does it appear possible, with our present knowledge of
science and of the remoter corners of the globe, that our civilization
will ever again be even menaced by the other races.
Chronologists frequently adopt as a convenient starting-point for this
modern development the year 962, in which Otto the Great, conqueror of
the Huns, felt himself strong enough to march a German army to Rome and
assume there the title of emperor, which had been long in abeyance. To
be sure, there was still an Emperor of the East in Constantinople, but
nobody thought of him; and, to be sure, the power of Otto and the later
emperors was purely German, with scarce a pretence of extending beyond
their own country and sometimes Italy. Yet here was at least one
restored influence that made toward unity and, by its own devious and
erratic ways, toward peace.
It must not be supposed, of course, that there was no more war. But, as
it became a private affair between relatives, or at least acquaintances,
its ravages were greatly reduced. It was accepted as the "pastime of
gentlemen," "the sport of kings;" and though we may quote the phrases
to-day with kindling sarcasm, yet they open a very different vision from
that of the older inroads by unknown hordes, frenzied with the passion
and the purpose of the brute. The usefulness of the common people was
recognized, and they were allowed to continue to live and cultivate the
ground; while all the great dukes and even the lesser nobles, having
secured as many castles as possible, intrenched themselves in their
strongholds and defied all comers.
They asserted their right of "private war" and attacked each other upon
every conceivable provocation, whether it were the disputed succession
to some vast estate or the ravage spread by a reckless cow in a foreign
field. Indeed, it is not always easy to distinguish these private wars
from mere robberies or plundering expeditions; and it is not probable
that the wild barons exercised any very delicate discrimination. Even
Otto the Great had little real influence or authority over such lords as
these. His immediate successors found themselves with even less.
In short, it was the golden age of feudalism, of the individual feudal
lords. In Italy there was no central authority whatever, nor among the
little Christian states gradually arising in Spain. In France and
England the title of king was but a name. France was really composed of
a dozen or more independent counties and dukedoms. For a while its lords
elected a king as the Germans did; and gradually the title became
hereditary in the Capet family, the counts of Paris, who had fought most
valiantly against the Northmen. But the entire power of these so-called
kings lay in their own estates, in the fact that they were counts of
Paris, and by marriage or by force were slowly adding new possessions to
their old. Any other noble might have been equally fortunate in his
investments, and wrested from them their purely honorary title. In fact,
there was more than once a king of Aquitaine.
Yet, in 1066, William the Conqueror was able to form for a moment a
strong and centralized monarchy in England.[12] With him we reach the
period of the second Northmen, or now Norman, outbreak. The marauders
had grown polished, but not peaceful, in their French home. They had
become more numerous and more restless, until we find them again taking
to their ships and seeking newer lands to master. Only they go now as a
civilizing as well as a devastating influence.
[Footnote 12: See _Norman Conquest of England_.]
Most famed of their undertakings, of course, was William's Conquest of
England. But we find them also sailing along the Spanish coast, entering
the Mediterranean, seizing the Balearic Isles, making out of Sicily and
most of Southern Italy a kingdom which lasted until 1860, and finally
ravaging the Eastern Empire, and entering Constantinople itself.[13]
Last and mightiest of the wandering races, they accomplished what all
their predecessors had failed to do.
[Footnote 13: See _Decline of the Byzantine Empire_, page 353.]
In England, William, with the shrewdness of his race, recognized the
tendencies of the age, and erected a state so planned that there could
be no question as to who was master. He gave fiefs liberally to his
followers; but he took care that the gifts should be in small and
scattered parcels. No one man controlled any region sufficiently
extensive to give him the faintest chance of defying the King. William
had the famous _Domesday Book_[14] compiled, that he might know just
what every freeman in his dominions owned and for what he could be held
accountable. The England of the later days of the Conqueror seemed far
advanced upon our modern ways.
[Footnote 14: See _Completion of the Domesday Book_, page 242.]
But what can one man, however able and advanced, do against the current
of his age? History shows us constantly that the great reformers have
been those who felt and followed the general feeling of their times, who
became mouthpieces for the great mass of thought and effort behind them,
not those who struggled against the tide. William's successors failed to
comprehend what he had done, or why. By the time of Stephen (1135)[15]
we find the barons of England wellnigh as powerful as those of other
lands. A civil war arises in which Stephen and his rival Matilda are
scarce more than pawns upon the board. The lords shift sides at will,
retreat to safety in their strong castles, plunder the common folk, and
make private war quite as they please.
[Footnote 15: See _Stephen Usurps the English Crown_, page 317.]
If any sage before the reign of the Emperor Barbarossa, that is, before
the middle of the twelfth century, had studied to predict the course of
society, he would probably have said that the empire was wholly
destroyed, and that the principle of separation was becoming ever more
insistent, that even kings were mere fading relics of the past, and that
the future world would soon see every lordship an independent state.
THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY UNDER FEUDALISM
Amid all this turmoil of the upper classes, one would like much to know
what was the condition, what the lives, of the common people.
Unfortunately, the data are very slight. We see dimly the peasant
staring from his field as the armed knights ride by; we see him fleeing
to the shelter of the forests before more savage bandits. We see the
people of the cities drawing together, building walls around their
towns, and defying in their turn their so-called "overlords." We see
Henry the City-builder thus become champion of the lower classes,
despite the strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly
disinterested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants drift
along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of all, we see one
Arnold of Brescia,[16] an Italian monk, advocating a democracy, actually
urging a return to what he supposed early Rome to have been, a
government by the masses. Arnold, too, you see, was in advance of his
time. He was executed by the advice of even so good and wise a man as
St. Bernard. But the principle of modern life was there, the germ seems
to have been planted. These humble people of the cities, "citizens,"
grow to be rulers of the world.
[Footnote 16: See _Antipapal Democratic Movement_ page 340.]
There was a revival, too, of learning in this quieter age. Schools and
universities become clearly visible. Abelard teaches at the great
University of Paris, lectures to "forty thousand students," if one
chooses to believe in such carrying power of his voice, or such
radiating power of his influence at second hand through those who heard.
The arts spring up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair
of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries,
queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation
is improved. Manuscripts are gorgeously illumined. Paintings and
mosaics, though of the crudest, reappear on long-barren walls.
Civilization begins to advance with increasing stride.
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
Of all the influences that through these wandering and desolate ages had
sustained humanity and helped it onward, the mightiest has been left to
speak of last. It was Christianity, a Christianity which had by now
taken definite form as the Roman Catholic Church. Strongest of all the
institutions bequeathed by the ancient empire to her conquerors was this
Church. Indeed, it has been said that Rome had influenced Christianity
quite as much as Christianity did Rome. The legal-minded Romans insisted
on the laying out of exact doctrines and creeds, on the building of a
definite organization, a priesthood, a hierarchy. They lent the weight
of law to what had been but individual belief and impulse. Thus the
Church grew hard and strong.
In the same manner that the early emperors had ordered the persecution
of Christianity, so the later ones ordered the persecution of
heathendom, nor had the Church grown civilized or Christian enough to
oppose this method of conversion. Luckily for all parties, however, the
heathen were scarce sufficiently enthusiastic to insist on martyrdom,
and so the persecuting spirit which man ultimately imparted to even the
purest of religions remained latent.
With the downfall of Rome there came another interval in which the
Church was weak, and was trampled on by barbarians, and was heroic. Then
the bishops of Rome joined forces with Pépin and Charlemagne.
Christianity became physically powerful again. The Saxons were converted
by the sword. So, also, in Henry the Fowler's time, were the Slavic
Wends. These Roman bishops, or "popes," were accepted unquestioned
throughout Western Europe as the leaders of a militant Christianity, a
position never after denied them until the sixteenth century. In the
East, however, the bishops of Constantinople insisted on an equal, if
not higher, authority, and so the two churches broke apart.[17]
[Footnote 17: See _Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman
Churches_.]
In the West, Christianity undoubtedly did great good. Its teachings,
though applied by often fallible instruments and in blundering ways, yet
never completely lost sight of their own higher meanings of mercy and
peace. From the Abbey of Cluny originated that quaint mediaeval idea of
the "truce of God," by which nobles were very widely persuaded to
restrict their private wars to the middle of the week, and reserve at
least Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as days of brotherly love and
religious devotion. The Church also, from very early days, founded
monasteries, wherein learning and the knowledge of the past were kept
alive, where pity continued to exist, where the oppressed found refuge.
It is from these monasteries that all the arts and scholarship of the
eleventh century begin dimly to emerge.
Moreover, the fact that the Teutons were all of a common religion
undoubtedly held them much closer together, made them more merciful
among themselves, more nearly a unit against the outside world. Perhaps
in this respect more important even than the religion was the Church;
that is, the hierarchy, the vast army of monks and priests, abbots and
bishops, spread over all kingdoms, yet looking always toward Rome. Here
at least was one common centre for Western civilization, one mighty
influence that all men acknowledged, that all to some faint extent
obeyed.
THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY
The power thus concentrating in the Roman papacy made the office one to
attract eager ambition. It has a political history of its own. At first
the Christian populace that continued to dwell in Rome despite the
repeated spoliations, elected, from among themselves, their own pope or
bishop, regarding him not only as their spiritual guide, but as their
earthly leader and protector also. Naturally, in their distress, they
chose the very ablest man they could, their wisest and their noblest. It
was no pleasant task being pope in those dark days; and sometimes the
bravest shrank from the position.
But centuries of war and self-defence developed a Roman populace more
fierce and savage and degenerate, while the growing importance of their
pope beyond the city's walls brought wealth and splendor to his office.
The result was that some very unsaintly popes were elected amid unseemly
squabbles. The conditions surrounding the high office became so bad that
they were felt as a disgrace throughout all Christendom; and in 1046 the
German emperor Henry III took upon himself to depose three fiercely
contending Romans, each claiming to be pope. He appointed in their stead
a candidate of his own, not a dweller in the city at all, but a German.
Henry, therefore, must have considered the duties of the pope as bishop
of the Romans to be far less important than his duties as head of the
Church outside of Rome.[18]
[Footnote 18: See _Henry III Deposes the Popes_.]
So necessary had this interference by the Emperor become that it was
everywhere approved. Yet as he continued to appoint pope after pope,
churchmen realized that in the hands of an evil emperor this method of
securing their head might prove quite as dangerous and unsatisfactory as
the former one. So the Church took the matter in hand and declared that
a conclave of its own highest officials should thereafter choose the man
who was to lead them.
Under this surely more suitable arrangement, the papal office rose at
once in dignity. It was held for a time by true leaders, earnest
prelates of the highest worth and ability. We have said that the rank of
the bishop of Rome as head of the Church had never been seriously
questioned among the Teutons; but now the popes asserted a political
authority as well. They regarded themselves, theoretically, as supreme
heads of the entire Christian world. They claimed and even partly
exercised the right to create and depose kings and emperors. To such a
supremacy as this, however, the Teutons were still too rude and warlike
to submit. Much is made of the fact that the Emperor Henry IV was
compelled to come as a suppliant to Pope Gregory at Canossa, 1077.[19]
But this submission was only forced on him by quarrels with his barons,
who welcomed the Pope as a chance ally. It proved the power of feudalism
rather than that of religion. Still we may trace here the beginnings of
a later day when spirit was really to dominate bodily force, when ideas
should prove stronger than swords.
[Footnote 19: See _Triumphs of Hildebrand_.]
THE FIRST CRUSADE
Under these aroused and able popes, the Western world was stirred to the
first widespread religious enthusiasm since the ancient days of
persecution. Jerusalem, long in the hands of a tolerant sect of Saracens
who welcomed the coming of Christian worshippers as a source of revenue,
was captured in 1075 by another more fanatic Mahometan sect, and word
came back to Europe that pilgrimage was stopped.
The crusades followed. A great mass of warriors from every nation of the
West, men who certainly had never intended to go on pilgrimage
themselves, were roused to what seems a somewhat perverse anger of
religious devotion. Under the lead of Godfrey of Bouillon they marched
eastward, saw the wonders of Constantinople, marvellous indeed to their
ruder eyes, defeated the sultans of Asia Minor and of Antioch, and ended
by storming Jerusalem, and erecting there a Christian kingdom where
Mahometanism had ruled for nearly five hundred years.[20]
[Footnote 20: See _The First Crusade_, page 276.]
Of course, a great flow of pilgrims followed them. Religious orders of
knighthood were formed[21] to help defend the shrine of Christ and to
extend Christian conquest farther through the surrounding regions.
Travel began again. Europe, after having forgotten Asia for seven
centuries, was introduced once more to its languor, its splendor, and
its vices. The Aryan peoples had at last filled full their little world
of Western Europe. They had reached among themselves a state of law and
union, confused and weak, perhaps, yet secure enough to enable them once
more to overflow their boundaries and become again the aggressive,
intrusive race we have seen them in earlier days.
[Footnote 21: See _Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars_, page
301.]
FEUDALISM: ITS FRANKISH BIRTH AND ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT
NINTH TO TWELFTH CENTURY
WILLIAM STUBBS
(That social system--however varying in different times and places--in
which ownership of land is the basis of authority is known in history as
feudalism. From the time of Clovis, the Frankish King, who died in A.D.
511, the progress of the Franks in civilization was slow, and for more
than two centuries they spent their energies mainly in useless wars. But
Charles Martel and his son, Pépin the Short--the latter dying in
768--built up a kingdom which Charlemagne erected into a powerful
empire. Under the predecessors of Charlemagne the beginnings of
feudalism, which are very obscure, may be said vaguely to appear.
Charles Martel had to buy the services of his nobles by granting them
lands, and although he and Pépin strengthened the royal power, which
Charlemagne still further increased, under the weak rulers who followed
them the forces of the incipient feudalism again became active, and the
State was divided into petty countships and dukedoms almost independent
of the king.
The gift of land by the king in return for feudal services was called a
feudal grant, and the land so given was termed a "feud" or "fief." In
the course of time fiefs became hereditary. Lands were also sometimes
usurped or otherwise obtained by subjects, who thereby became feudal
lords. By a process called "subinfeudation," lands were granted in
parcels to other men by those who received them from the king or
otherwise, and by these lower landholders to others again; and as the
first recipient became the vassal of the king and the suzerain of the
man who held next below him, there was created a regular descending
scale of such vassalage and suzerainty, in which each man's allegiance
was directly due to his feudal lord, and not to the king himself. From
the king down to the lowest landholder all were bound together by
obligation of service and defence; the lord to protect his vassal, the
vassal to do service to his lord.
These are the essential features of the social system which, from its
early growth under the later Carlovingians in the ninth century, spread
over Europe and reached its highest development in the twelfth century.
At a time midway between these periods it was carried by the Norman
Conquest into England. The history of this system of distinctly Frankish
origin--a knowledge of which is absolutely essential to a proper
understanding of history and the evolution of our present social
system--is told by Stubbs with that discernment and thoroughness of
analysis which have given him his rank as one of the few masterly
writers in this field.)
Feudalism had grown up from two great sources--the _beneficium_, and the
practice of commendation--and had been specially fostered on Gallic soil
by the existence of a subject population which admitted of any amount of
extension in the methods of dependence.
The beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land made by the
kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and servants, with a
special undertaking to be faithful; partly in the surrender by
land-owners of their estates to churches or powerful men, to be received
back again and held by them as tenants for rent or service. By the
latter arrangement the weaker man obtained the protection of the
stronger, and he who felt himself insecure placed his title under the
defence of the church.
By the practice of commendation, on the other hand, the inferior put
himself under the personal care of a lord, but without altering his
title or divesting himself of his right to his estate; he became a
vassal and did homage. The placing of his hands between those of his
lord was the typical act by which the connection was formed; and the
oath of fealty was taken at the same time. The union of the beneficiary
tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation--
the twofold engagement: that of the lord, to defend; and that of the
vassal, to be faithful. A third ingredient was supplied by the grants of
immunity by which in the Frank empire, as in England, the possession of
land was united with the right of judicature; the dwellers on a feudal
property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the rights
which had belonged to the nation or to its chosen head were devolved
upon the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of the system thus
originated, and the assimilation of all other tenures to it, may be
regarded as the work of the tenth century; but as early as A.D. 877
Charles the Bald recognized the hereditary character of all benefices;
and from that year the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence may be
held to date.
The system testifies to the country and causes of its birth. The
beneficium is partly of Roman, partly of German origin; in the Roman
system the usufruct--the occupation of land belonging to another
person--involved no diminution of status; in the Germanic system he who
tilled land that was not his own was imperfectly free; the reduction of
a large Roman population to dependence placed the two classes on a
level, and conduced to the wide extension of the institution.
Commendation, on the other hand, may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin,
and an analogy only with the Roman clientship. The German _comitatus_,
which seems to have ultimately merged its existence in one or other of
these developments, is of course to be carefully distinguished in its
origin from them. The tie of the benefice or of commendation could be
formed between any two persons whatever; none but the king could have
_antrustions_. But the comitatus of Anglo-Saxon history preserved a more
distinct existence, and this perhaps was one of the causes that
distinguished the later Anglo-Saxon system most definitely from the
feudalism of the Frank empire.
The process by which the machinery of government became feudalized,
although rapid, was gradual.
The weakness of the Carlovingian kings and emperors gave room for the
speedy development of disruptive tendencies in a territory so extensive
and so little consolidated. The duchies and counties of the eighth and
ninth centuries were still official magistracies, the holders of which
discharged the functions of imperial judges or generals. Such officers
were of course men whom the kings could trust, in most cases Franks,
courtiers or kinsmen, who at an earlier date would have been _comites_
or antrustions, and who were provided for by feudal benefices. The
official magistracy had in itself the tendency to become hereditary, and
when the benefice was recognized as heritable, the provincial
governorship became so too. But the provincial governor had many
opportunities of improving his position, especially if he could identify
himself with the manners and aspirations of the people he ruled. By
marriage or inheritance he might accumulate in his family not only the
old allodial estates which, especially on German soil, still continued
to subsist, but the traditions and local loyalties which were connected
with the possession of them. So in a few years the Frank magistrate
could unite in his own person the beneficiary endowment, the imperial
deputation, and the headship of the nation over which he presided. And
then it was only necessary for the central power to be a little
weakened, and the independence of duke or count was limited by his
homage and fealty alone, that is, by obligations that depended on
conscience only for their fulfilment.
It is in Germany that the disruptive tendency most distinctly takes the
political form; Saxony and Bavaria assert their national independence
under Swabian and Saxon dukes who have identified the interests of their
subjects with their own. In France, where the ancient tribal divisions
had been long obsolete, and where the existence of the allod involved
little or no feeling of loyalty, the process was simpler still; the
provincial rulers aimed at practical rather than political sovereignty;
the people were too weak to have any aspirations at all. The disruption
was due more to the abeyance of central attraction than to any
centrifugal force existing in the provinces. But the result was the
same; feudal government, a graduated system of jurisdiction based on
land tenure, in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class
next below him, of which abject slavery formed the lowest, and
irresponsible tyranny the highest grade, and private war, private
coinage, private prisons, took the place of the imperial institutions of
government.
This was the social system which William the Conqueror and his barons
had been accustomed to see at work in France. One part of it--the feudal
tenure of land--was perhaps the only kind of tenure which they could
understand; the king was the original lord, and every title issued
mediately or immediately from him. The other part, the governmental
system of feudalism, was the point on which sooner or later the duke and
his barons were sure to differ. Already the incompatibility of the
system with the existence of the strong central power had been
exemplified in Normandy, where the strength of the dukes had been tasked
to maintain their hold on the castles and to enforce their own high
justice. Much more difficult would England be to retain in Norman hands
if the new king allowed himself to be fettered by the French system.
On the other hand the Norman barons would fain rise a step in the social
scale answering to that by which their duke had become a king; and they
aspired to the same independence which they had seen enjoyed by the
counts of Southern and Eastern France. Nor was the aspiration on their
part altogether unreasonable; they had joined in the Conquest rather as
sharers in the great adventure than as mere vassals of the duke, whose
birth they despised as much as they feared his strength. William,
however, was wise and wary as well as strong. While, by the insensible
process of custom, or rather by the mere assumption that feudal tenure
of land was the only lawful and reasonable one, the Frankish system of
tenure was substituted for the Anglo-Saxon, the organization of
government on the same basis was not equally a matter of course.
The Conqueror himself was too strong to suffer that organization to
become formidable in his reign, but neither the brutal force of William
Rufus nor the heavy and equal pressure of the government of Henry I
could extinguish the tendency toward it. It was only after it had, under
Stephen, broken out into anarchy and plunged the whole nation in misery;
when the great houses founded by the barons of the Conquest had suffered
forfeiture or extinction; when the Normans had become Englishmen under
the legal and constitutional reforms of Henry II--that the royal
authority, in close alliance with the nation, was enabled to put an end
to the evil.
William the Conqueror claimed the crown of England as the chosen heir of
Edward the Confessor. It was a claim which the English did not admit,
and of which the Normans saw the fallacy, but which he himself
consistently maintained and did his best to justify. In that claim he
saw not only the justification of the Conquest in the eyes of the
church, but his great safeguard against the jealous and aggressive host
by whose aid he had realized it; therefore, immediately after the battle
of Hastings he proceeded to seek the national recognition of its
validity. He obtained it from the divided and dismayed _witan_ with no
great trouble, and was crowned by the archbishop of York--the most
influential and patriotic among them--binding himself by the
constitutional promises of justice and good laws. Standing before the
altar at Westminster, "in the presence of the clergy and people he
promised with an oath that he would defend God's holy churches and their
rulers; that he would, moreover, rule the whole people subject to him
with righteousness and royal providence; would enact and hold fast right
law and utterly forbid rapine and unrighteous judgments." The form of
election and acceptance was regularly observed and the legal position of
the new King completed before he went forth to finish the Conquest.