of Desiderius, his wives were Hildegarde, Fastrada, and Liutgarda. The
offspring of these various marriages were three sons, Charles, Pippin,
and Louis, the children of Hildegarde; and five daughters, Rothruda,
Bertha, Giselda, Theodrada, and Hiltruda. The girls were carefully
trained in the various arts of domestic economy, and we are told, too,
that in addition to skill in preparing stuffs for wearing apparel, they
showed great interest in collecting for purposes of self-adornment
“gold ornaments and many precious stones.” These unusual maidens proved
such valuable adjuncts to the household that their father refused to
permit them to marry, with the result that three became abbesses, while
two contracted irregular alliances. Rothruda secretly married Count
Rovigo, and Bertha, the poet, Angilbert.
Life at court was anything but austere; even the Emperor himself
could not be accused of being overscrupulous in his morals, for after
the death of Liutgarda, in 800, he contracted several irregular
alliances. Charles was fond of traveling; undoubtedly economic and
political reasons may account for the number of royal residences.
But his favorite seat was at Aix, which attracted him on account
of its mineral springs. Here, in a cluster of buildings, secular
and ecclesiastical, of his own creation, he was able to gratify
his own tastes in amusements, which were swimming and hunting. He
was fond of festivities, and liked to live surrounded by his large
family, who helped him to enjoy the good cheer of his table and
entered sympathetically into the natural atmosphere of a court
which was without stiff convention, and which preserved in its naïve
unconstrainedness the tastes of a great Teutonic tribal chieftain. But,
while the wines, the abundant amount of solid food and numerous dishes
of pastry, were well appreciated, there was serious conversation,
and an opportunity was given to the “littérateurs” of the court to
show their skill in verse or repartee. The Emperor himself reverenced
learning, but his own education was anything but advanced, even for
his own day. His intellectual interests were varied, theological
speculation being especially attractive to him. He was fond of singing,
and he spoke easily, clearly, and with an abundant diction. He knew
Latin, and understood, too, a little Greek. When he was of adult age he
studied rhetoric, logic, and astronomy. He liked to have the ancient
historians read to him when he was at table, but his favorite book
was St. Augustine’s “City of God.” Affable and easily approached, his
guests found him personally interested in their affairs; he had a happy
way of saying the right thing at the right time, but he was fully
conscious that his position as Roman Emperor made him a successor of
the Cæsars, and he never forgot that the religious consecration of the
Church placed him, in a mystic sense, in the sacred line of David and
of Solomon.
VII THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE
Though we speak of an empire founded by Charles the Great, the use
of the word should not be allowed to lead us astray into comparisons
or analogies based on merely verbal resemblances. Charles was not an
emperor of the type known to the Roman Empire of the classic Christian
period, nor as a ruler can he be compared with Russian Czars or
Napoleon the First. Neither as king nor as emperor was Charles an
absolute monarch. Both before and after the assumption of the more
exalted title, the association of personal rule with the leadership of
the armed host of the Frankish nation was so close and intimate that
the ruler was not to be separated from the source of his authority. The
house of the Karlings could not claim the kind of sanction given to the
Merovingian princes, who were the hereditary rulers of the Franks.
When the power of the tribal kingship was broken, the Carolingian
house took first the leadership of the armed Frankish host, and then
the title of King; but they did so through, and with the consent of,
the nation of the Franks. The Karlings were not true successors of the
Merovingians. Their royal dignity had quite a different character; it
did not rest on birth and custom, or the traditional reverence which
comes from ancient and long recognized rights of succession. The army
of the Franks gave the directorship over their nation to the father
and grandfather of Charles, but the source of this authority remained
with and through the army. The leader of the Franks, whether called
king or emperor, ruled his own people, and the territory he gained,
by the consent of the army of the Franks. Charles Martel divided his
territories at his death, but he asked the army’s consent, and when
Pippin was crowned by the Pope, the act was again ratified by the army.
In the early years of Charles’ own reign, it was the wish of the Franks
that they should be guided by one ruler, not by two, and in all but
one of the conquests of Charles, the principle that some portion at
least of the annexed nation should ask him to be their overlord was
accepted. Even in the case of the Saxons, where the resistance to the
Franks was universal and unanimous, the purpose of Charles was not a
personal conquest of a people to be governed afterwards as dependents
under an absolute ruler. Rather, as Einhard expresses it, “that united
with the Franks they might along with them be made one people.” This
declaration in itself explains the character of the empire founded by
Charles. The closest analogy to it is to be found in the Ostrogothic
kingdom of Theodoric; the difference being that Theodoric sought for
allies among the independent tribal Germanic kingdoms, while the aim of
Charles meant absorption of these kingdoms under the one ruling race of
the Franks.
This principle is perfectly illustrated in the treatment of the Saxons
after their conquest; the moment they accepted the rule of the Franks
they were admitted on an equality with the Franks into the regular
meetings of the armed host of the Frankish nation, and along with their
conquerors took part in its legislative work. These primitive popular
assemblies had originated as the Merovingian dynasty was drawing to
its close, when it was realized that the people must provide for their
own concerns because of the failure of the ruling house to govern
efficiently or successfully. They were held generally in May at a royal
villa or palace in the Rhine Valley, Aix, Worms, or Mainz. In theory
every Frank was supposed to be present. Actually, only the great lords
and the high ecclesiastics were at hand, and their followers stood for
the people.
Only the most important personages were admitted to the deliberations.
The laymen present were separated from the clergy, but sometimes the
two orders sat together and went over in detail the measures prepared
for them beforehand. Sometimes this process lasted several days.
These informal sessions were visited by the Emperor, who passed among
those present, talking familiarly to them, and asking questions as to
the happenings and needs of the neighborhoods from whence they came.
Outside the building were gathered a crowd of followers and retainers.
The Emperor, after taking the advice of his chief subjects, made his
decisions, and the result was communicated to the people for their
consent. This last act had become apparently a simple matter of form.
The question submitted to the assembly had been prepared long in
advance either by the immediate council at the palace, or by the autumn
assembly, a body organized by Charles himself, which, when the matter
was urgent, decided on questions of peace and war.
While nothing is known of the character of the deliberations of this
smaller body, it is clear that measures, already settled by them, were
brought before the May assembly, and so presented that the decisions
taken earlier could be guessed. There were various names given to this
larger body or general assembly, according to the character of the
business that came before it,--conventus, placitum, synodus,--whether
judicial, legislative, or ecclesiastic. It was a council of war and an
executive cabinet; it was also a court of highest instance, a ministry
of foreign affairs and of public worship.
At the assembly the members, great and small, made their fiscal
contributions to the prince. The same vagueness, indicative of a crude
and undeveloped stage of government, is seen in the legislative acts
of the assembly, which appeared in the shape of what are technically
called “capitularies.” Analyzing them from the modern point of view,
Guizot reckoned that there were of criminal or civil legislation, 273
items; of moral and religious, 172, and that of these, one hundred
dealt with matters of canon law. The only distinction made by Charles
himself in the capitularies was that some were new measures and were
to be added to legislation already accepted, while others were to be
used for the guidance of the higher imperial officials. The first class
was valid only for the duration of the reign of the sovereign under
whom they were passed. The last, for a year, but the additions to laws
already existing had no time limitation.
These capitularies were not intended to supersede national or tribal
custom and law. Each man was judged according to the laws of his own
people, and in 802 the Emperor directed that the unwritten laws of the
peoples under his rule should be collected. The capitularies were,
therefore, supplemental and corrective to the national codes. For
example, one of them, which, by the way, met such strong opposition
that the Emperor was obliged to yield the point, was intended to remove
the abuse of private vengeance.
Local administration was in the hands of the counts, and, as in the
Merovingian period, the administrative unit was the county. Altogether
throughout the whole Empire, there were three hundred counts; the
districts which they administered varied in size, the authority
exercised by them being judicial, military, and financial. Along with
the count and closely associated with him is the bishop. As there was
in the capitularies so much which concerned the sphere of the Church,
the coöperation, in their official publication, of the bishop with the
count was not unnatural. Moreover, in the Empire, in addition to purely
religious duties, the bishop had the function of investigating certain
categories of crime, homicides, incest, etc., and in a general way, he
acted as adviser of the count.
Among the count’s duties was that of defending the Church and, in
trials for ecclesiastical offenses, he had to be present informally as
assessor. The coöperation of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
strongly appealed to the Emperor, with his ideals of a Christian
commonwealth; but in experience, the association of the bishop and
the count, as local administrators, worked far from smoothly. So a
capitulary of 801 mentions the Emperor’s purpose to find out the
reasons why bishops and abbots, on the one hand, and counts, on the
other, are not able to assist one another.
The problem of defining the limits of the secular and religious spheres
gave rise to constant difficulties, and the situation was further
aggravated by the fact that in many cases the counts seemed inefficient
and venal. They had to be warned not to hang offenders without trial,
to be sober when they were sitting in judgment, not to receive
presents, not to oppress freemen, not to usurp the right which belonged
to the state, not to take the goods of the poor. Once a year the counts
were summoned to the royal palace, and they were required to remain
there long enough to lay before the Emperor a detailed record of their
administration.
A special power of review over the counts was given to the “missi,”--a
class of officials existing under the Merovingian Kings, but with
power extended and regularized by Charles, especially after 802.
The whole Empire was divided into “missatica”--the divisions under
a “missus,” which included several counties. For example, Western
France made three of these divisions with centers at Paris, Rouen, and
Orléans. The “missi,” who were generally a count and a cleric, an abbot
or bishop, made a general visitation of their district for a period
lasting over a year, according to a fixed itinerary. They were expected
to see that the royal authority was respected, by exacting a detailed
oath of fidelity from all the inhabitants, and to take care that no one
occupied the royal domain of forest or appropriated the royal revenue.
They looked after the application of the directions contained in the
capitularies, noted the general condition of law and order, saw that
justice was done, and the rules of military service strictly carried
out.
Much stress was laid on their judicial functions; when they arrived in
a town they set up their court in the public place; the local bishop
and count had to be in attendance, while the “missi” heard complaints
and altered whatever judgments of the local officers seemed contrary to
right and equity.
The “missi,” as we have seen, were selected from the higher clergy and
from the great landlords. Their persons were held to be inviolate and
sacred; all the lower officials of the Empire were ordered to receive
them with respect and give them ready help, and to attack them was a
capital offense.
Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, one of the clergy performing the
functions of a “missus,” has left us an account of an official journey
made by him to the South of France. He took boat on the Rhône with
his companion, Leidrade, the archbishop of Lyons, and their work
of inspection began at Avignon. They held their assizes at Nîmes,
Maguelonne, Cette, Agde, Béziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne, le Razès,
Arles, Marseilles, Aix, Cavaillon. The clergy and people hastened to
take advantage of their presence, but Theodulf tells us they did so
with no worthy motive, for they were prepared to buy their favor,
each according to his means. The rich offered good coin, precious
stones, valuable stuffs, and oriental carpets, arms, horses, ancient
vases “of pure metal unbelievably heavy, on which a skilful graver had
represented the fight of Hercules with the giant Cacus.” The poorer
citizens were ready to give red and white skins of Cordova, excellent
fabrics of linen or wool, chests, and wax.
“Such was the engine of war with which they hoped to make a breach in
the wall of my soul,” the bishop says, intimating that they had learned
the way by past experience. The custom of giving presents to officials
was so firmly established that even the reforming bishop hesitated to
interfere with it. Accordingly, in order not to offend the suitors,
he felt constrained to accept articles of small value, such as eggs,
bread, wine, tender chickens, and birds, “whose body is small but good
to eat.”
Little change was made in the ordinary forms of the Frankish judicial
system by Charles; the count still continued to hold his tribunal as
in Merovingian times, the freedmen of the county were expected to
be present as assessors, but owing to the difficulty of securing an
intelligent tribunal in this haphazard way, Charles instituted a chosen
class of assessors called “scabini,” who were to be taken from the
class of “well-born, prudent, and God-fearing men.” This body was both
the judge and jury, as the count only acted as their presiding officer
and pronounced the sentence formulated by them. From the verdict of
this tribunal there was an appeal either to the King or to the judgment
of God, the favorite form of which at this time was the test by the
cross. In this test, the defendant, holding his arms in the form of a
cross, had to stand upright without changing his position, while the
clergy recited certain prayers. If any movement was made, it was taken
as a sign of guilt.
In the palace the King himself often acted in the capacity of judge in
the first instance, and he also heard appeals either in person or by
proxy through the count of the palace. Considerable care was taken that
the right of appeal should not be used indiscriminately. The palace
officials had important governmental as well as personal functions;
their general collective title was the “palatins.” There was no Mayor
of the Palace, the first place being held by the count, who, as has
just been noted, had judicial duties. The administration of the palace
was also in his hands. The religious services of the household were
directed by the arch-chaplain; then came the chamberlains, treasurers,
seneschals, butlers, constables, and the master of domestic functions.
Counts of the palace are found in the command of armies; one of them
being killed by the side of Roland at Roncesvalles, another in Saxony.
Seneschals had charge of the kitchens, but they are also mentioned
as valiant warriors. Butlers were also diplomatists, and we find a
constable fighting the Slavs on the Elbe.
A real effort at division of labor is to be found solely in what might
be called, with some elasticity of phrase, the Record Office, where
notaries prepared the King’s letters, charters, and acts of immunity.
At their head was an ecclesiastic, the protonotary, or chancellor. He
was a dependent of the arch-chaplain, and did not have charge of the
seal, yet his position was especially confidential, as he kept the
archives.
The King consulted the court officials, who, according to his pleasure,
were gathered about him in an informal way whenever he saw fit to call
them. But, besides this, we are told that Charles had always with him
three of his counselors, chosen among the wisest and most eminent about
him; without their advice he did nothing. To the royal household there
were regularly attached a number of young men, the “discipuli,” sent
there to be educated, and the “comites,” or personal retainers of the
King, a continuation of a custom mentioned by Tacitus.
VIII CAROLINGIAN CULTURE
The Emperor’s solicitude in promoting learning has caused his reign to
be spoken of as the Carolingian Renaissance. But Charles’ intellectual
interests were not those of a fifteenth century humanist. He desired
the revival of letters because he saw in learning a means by which
the Church, which, to his mind, was the organization of the state
Christianized, might overcome pagan survivals, and take the lead in
civilizing the various nationalities in his realm. The clergy and the
monks were ignorant--they could neither preach nor teach. The Emperor
planned a kind of Christian Athens, a new community of scholars, in
which learning was to be the handmaid of religion. After he had assumed
the title of Emperor, he recalled how closely the glory of letters was
associated with the renown of the Roman world, and he desired his own
reign to be signalized by the same elements of culture.
The point of view of this intellectual revival is indicated in the
following letter addressed by Charles to Baugulf, Abbot of Fulda.
“Know,” he says, “that in recent years, since many monasteries were
in the habit of writing us to let us know that their members were
offering prayers for us, we noticed that in most of these writings
the sentiments were good, and the composition bad. For what a pious
devotion within was faithfully inspiring, an untrained tongue was
incapable of explaining outwardly because of the inadequacy of
scholarship. So we commenced to fear that, as the knowledge of style
was weak, the understanding of the Holy Scriptures was less than it
should be; we all know that if verbal errors are dangerous, mistakes
in sense are much worse. For this reason we exhort you not only not to
neglect the study of letters, but to cultivate them with a humility
agreeable to God, in order that you may the more easily or the more
justly fathom the mysteries of the divine writings. As there are in
the sacred books figures, tropes, and other like things, there is no
doubt that in reading them each one attains to the spiritual sense
of them the more quickly, in proportion as he has received before
a complete literary training.... Do not forget to send copies of
this letter to all of those with you who are bishops, and to all the
monasteries, if you wish to enjoy our favors.”
It was not enough to rely on those already set in authority--they
had to be placed under supervision themselves. Charles saw, as he
expressed it, that he had to find men who had the will and the ability
to learn, and the desire to teach others. Such leaders were selected
from all nationalities, Anglo-Saxons, Irishmen, Scots, Lombards, Goths,
Bavarians. The first to be attracted by the King’s inducements of good
pay and an honorable position were the grammarians, Peter of Pisa, and
Paulinus, and Paul the Deacon, the poet and historian. But in influence
all these were second to Alcuin, a native of England. Born in 735, he
entered the School of York when Egbert, one of the disciples of Bede,
was archbishop. Alcuin under his master Albert acquired the kind of
encyclopedic knowledge that is handed down to us in the volumes of
Isidore and Bede, the chief stress being laid on the Holy Scriptures,
helped out by jejune rhetorical exercises, and scraps of physical
science. He had read Latin literature, knew Greek, and was familiar
with the great writers of Christian antiquity. The King was glad to
secure such a prize, and the two became close friends. Alcuin acted as
confidential adviser to the King, and was one of those who arranged for
the coronation in 800.
There is a considerable body of literary work from Alcuin’s pen, but
nothing he wrote shows any originality. He was little more than a
faithful transmitter of the learning he received. He set the seal on
the traditional division of knowledge in its seven stages, or, as it
was technically known, the seven arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic,
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. His literary interests may
be judged from the following dialogue: “What is writing?” said Pippin,
one of the Emperor’s sons. “The guardian of history,” replied Alcuin.
“What is speech?” “The treason of thought.” “What engenders speech?”
“The tongue.” “What is the tongue?” “The flail of the air.” “What is
the air?” “The guardian of life.” “What is life?” “The joy of the
happy, the pain of the wretched, the expectation of death.” “What is
man?” “The slave of death, the guest of a place, a passing traveler.”
These preciosities give one a depressing idea of Alcuin’s ability. Yet
it must be remembered that they were marvels to the obtuse and crudely
trained minds of men whose chief occupation was war and the chase, and
as an intellectual stimulus they were just as effective as are to-day
the eagerly scanned columns of modern journalism.
Alcuin was made royal director of studies; he was schoolmaster of the
palace, and from this circle of the King’s friends originated the
Palatine Academy, the members of which, in order to mark their efforts
at imitating classic culture, adopted fancifully the names of ancient
worthies. So Charles was called David, Alcuin was called Horatius
Flaccus, and Angilbert, Homer. In order to extend their influence
Charles promoted several of the members of the Academy to important
positions in the Church, making them bishops or abbots.
The royal plans for promoting learning are indicated in a capitulary
of March 23, 789. “Let,” he says, “the ministers of God draw about
them not only young people of servile condition, but the sons of
freemen. Let there be reading schools for the children. Let the psalms,
musical notation, singing, arithmetic, and grammar be taught in all
the monasteries and all the bishoprics.” These directions led to the
creation of numerous monastic and episcopal schools, all ordered
“according to the customs of the palace.” Alcuin, in 796, withdrew to
Tours, becoming the abbot of St. Martin’s there, and planned to found a
replica of the Saxon school at York, where he had himself been trained.