65 (return) [ The policy and donations o_The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes)

carefully examined by St. Marc, (Abrege, tom. i. p. 390-408,) who

has well studied the Codex Carolinus. I believe, with him, that

they were only verbal. The most ancient act of donation that

pretends to be extant, is that of the emperor Lewis the Pious,

(Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opera, tom. ii. p. 267-270.)

Its authenticity, or at least its integrity, are much questioned,

(Pagi, A.D. 817, No. 7, &c. Muratori, Annali, tom. vi. p. 432,

&c. Dissertat. Chorographica, p. 33, 34;) but I see no reasonable

objection to these princes so freely disposing of what was not

their own.]

66 (return) [ Charlemagne solicited and obtained from the

proprietor, Hadrian I., the mosaics of the palace of Ravenna, for

the decoration of Aix-la-Chapelle, (Cod. Carolin. epist. 67, p.

223.)]

67 (return) [ The popes often complain of the usurpations of Leo

of Ravenna, (Codex Carolin, epist. 51, 52, 53, p. 200-205.) Sir

corpus St. Andreae fratris germani St. Petri hic humasset,

nequaquam nos Romani pontifices sic subjugassent, (Agnellus,

Liber Pontificalis, in Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. ii. pars. i.

p. 107.)]

Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong,

though ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of

sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and

manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or

concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or

suspicious, acts, as they tended to promote the interest of the

Roman church. Before the end of the eighth century, some

apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious Isidore, composed the

decretals, and the donation of Constantine, the two magic pillars

of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes. This

memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of

Adrian the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the

liberality, and revive the name, of the great Constantine. 68

According to the legend, the first of the Christian emperors was

healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism, by

St. Silvester, the Roman bishop; and never was physician more

gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew from the

seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his resolution of

founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes;

the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the

provinces of the West. 69 This fiction was productive of the most

beneficial effects. The Greek princes were convicted of the guilt

of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of his

lawful inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt of

gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no

more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty

portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no

longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the

successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the

purple and prerogatives of the Caesars. So deep was the ignorance

and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was

received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in France, and is

still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law. 70 The

emperors, and the Romans, were incapable of discerning a forgery,

that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only opposition

proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which, in the beginning of the

twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of the donation

of Constantine. 71 In the revival of letters and liberty, this

fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen of Laurentius Valla,

the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot. 72 His

contemporaries of the fifteenth century were astonished at his

sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and irresistible

progress of reason, that, before the end of the next age, the

fable was rejected by the contempt of historians 73 and poets, 74

and the tacit or modest censure of the advocates of the Roman

church. 75 The popes themselves have indulged a smile at the

credulity of the vulgar; 76 but a false and obsolete title still

sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has

attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has

subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.

68 (return) [ Piissimo Constantino magno, per ejus largitatem S.

R. Ecclesia elevata et exaltata est, et potestatem in his

Hesperiae partibus largiri olignatus est.... Quia ecce novus

Constantinus his temporibus, &c., (Codex Carolin. epist. 49, in

tom. iii. part ii. p. 195.) Pagi (Critica, A.D. 324, No. 16)

ascribes them to an impostor of the viiith century, who borrowed

the name of St. Isidore: his humble title of Peccator was

ignorantly, but aptly, turned into Mercator: his merchandise was

indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold for much

wealth and power.]

69 (return) [ Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 4-7) has

enumerated the several editions of this Act, in Greek and Latin.

The copy which Laurentius Valla recites and refutes, appears to

be taken either from the spurious Acts of St. Silvester or from

Gratian’s Decree, to which, according to him and others, it has

been surreptitiously tacked.]

70 (return) [ In the year 1059, it was believed (was it

believed?) by Pope Leo IX. Cardinal Peter Damianus, &c. Muratori

places (Annali d’Italia, tom. ix. p. 23, 24) the fictitious

donations of Lewis the Pious, the Othos, &c., de Donatione

Constantini. See a Dissertation of Natalis Alexander, seculum iv.

diss. 25, p. 335-350.]

71 (return) [ See a large account of the controversy (A.D. 1105)

which arose from a private lawsuit, in the Chronicon Farsense,

(Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 637, &c.,) a

copious extract from the archives of that Benedictine abbey. They

were formerly accessible to curious foreigners, (Le Blanc and

Mabillon,) and would have enriched the first volume of the

Historia Monastica Italiae of Quirini. But they are now

imprisoned (Muratori, Scriptores R. I. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 269)

by the timid policy of the court of Rome; and the future cardinal

yielded to the voice of authority and the whispers of ambition,

(Quirini, Comment. pars ii. p. 123-136.)]

72 (return) [ I have read in the collection of Schardius (de

Potestate Imperiali Ecclesiastica, p. 734-780) this animated

discourse, which was composed by the author, A.D. 1440, six years

after the flight of Pope Eugenius IV. It is a most vehement party

pamphlet: Valla justifies and animates the revolt of the Romans,

and would even approve the use of a dagger against their

sacerdotal tyrant. Such a critic might expect the persecution of

the clergy; yet he made his peace, and is buried in the Lateran,

(Bayle, Dictionnaire Critique, Valla; Vossius, de Historicis

Latinis, p. 580.)]

73 (return) [ See Guicciardini, a servant of the popes, in that

long and valuable digression, which has resumed its place in the

last edition, correctly published from the author’s Ms. and

printed in four volumes in quarto, under the name of Friburgo,

1775, (Istoria d’Italia, tom. i. p. 385-395.)]

74 (return) [ The Paladin Astolpho found it in the moon, among

the things that were lost upon earth, (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv.

80.) Di vari fiore ad un grand monte passa, Ch’ebbe gia buono

odore, or puzza forte: Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece) Che

Constantino al buon Silvestro fece. Yet this incomparable poem

has been approved by a bull of Leo X.]

75 (return) [ See Baronius, A.D. 324, No. 117-123, A.D. 1191, No.

51, &c. The cardinal wishes to suppose that Rome was offered by

Constantine, and refused by Silvester. The act of donation he

considers strangely enough, as a forgery of the Greeks.]

76 (return) [ Baronius n’en dit guerres contre; encore en a-t’il

trop dit, et l’on vouloit sans moi, (Cardinal du Perron,) qui

l’empechai, censurer cette partie de son histoire. J’en devisai

un jour avec le Pape, et il ne me repondit autre chose “che

volete? i Canonici la tengono,” il le disoit en riant,

(Perroniana, p. 77.)]

While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion,

the images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the

Eastern empire. 77 Under the reign of Constantine the Fifth, the

union of civil and ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree,

without extirpating the root, of superstition. The idols (for

such they were now held) were secretly cherished by the order and

the sex most prone to devotion; and the fond alliance of the

monks and females obtained a final victory over the reason and

authority of man. Leo the Fourth maintained with less rigor the

religion of his father and grandfather; but his wife, the fair

and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the

heirs of the Idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their

ancestors. During the life of her husband, these sentiments were

inflamed by danger and dissimulation, and she could only labor to

protect and promote some favorite monks whom she drew from their

caverns, and seated on the metropolitan thrones of the East. But

as soon as she reigned in her own name and that of her son, Irene

more seriously undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts; and the

first step of her future persecution was a general edict for

liberty of conscience.

In the restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed

to the public veneration; a thousand legends were inverted of

their sufferings and miracles. By the opportunities of death or

removal, the episcopal seats were judiciously filled; the most

eager competitors for earthly or celestial favor anticipated and

flattered the judgment of their sovereign; and the promotion of

her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of

Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church. But the

decrees of a general council could only be repealed by a similar

assembly: 78 the Iconoclasts whom she convened were bold in

possession, and averse to debate; and the feeble voice of the

bishops was reechoed by the more formidable clamor of the

soldiers and people of Constantinople. The delay and intrigues of

a year, the separation of the disaffected troops, and the choice

of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these obstacles; and

the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek fashion, in

the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen days were allowed

for the consummation of this important work: the Iconoclasts

appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents: the scene

was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian and the Eastern

patriarchs, 79 the decrees were framed by the president Taracius,

and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of three

hundred and fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced, that the

worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the

fathers and councils of the church: but they hesitate whether

that worship be relative or direct; whether the Godhead, and the

figure of Christ, be entitled to the same mode of adoration. Of

this second Nicene council the acts are still extant; a curious

monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. I

shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative

merit of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a truce

with the daemon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his

daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples

prompted him to consult the abbot. “Rather than abstain from

adoring Christ and his Mother in their holy images, it would be

better for you,” replied the casuist, “to enter every brothel,

and visit every prostitute, in the city.” 80 For the honor of

orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is

somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who convened the two

councils of Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons.

The second of these assemblies was approved and rigorously

executed by the despotism of Irene, and she refused her

adversaries the toleration which at first she had granted to her

friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a period of

thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with unabated

rage and various success, between the worshippers and the

breakers of the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with

minute diligence the repetition of the same events. Nicephorus

allowed a general liberty of speech and practice; and the only

virtue of his reign is accused by the monks as the cause of his

temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition and weakness formed

the character of Michael the First, but the saints and images

were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne. In the

purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an

Armenian; and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were

condemned to a second exile. Their applause would have sanctified

the murder of an impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor,

the second Michael, was tainted from his birth with the Phrygian

heresies: he attempted to mediate between the contending parties;

and the intractable spirit of the Catholics insensibly cast him

into the opposite scale. His moderation was guarded by timidity;

but his son Theophilus, alike ignorant of fear and pity, was the

last and most cruel of the Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the

times ran strongly against them; and the emperors who stemmed the

torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. After

the death of Theophilus, the final victory of the images was

achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he left the

guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive. The

fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of

her deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch

was commuted from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two

hundred lashes: the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the

festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph

of the images. A single question yet remained, whether they are

endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity; it was agitated by

the Greeks of the eleventh century; 81 and as this opinion has

the strongest recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it

was not more explicitly decided in the affirmative. In the West,

Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced the decrees of the

Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the

seventh in rank of the general councils. Rome and Italy were

docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part of the

Latin Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The

churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle

course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which

they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but

as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. An angry

book of controversy was composed and published in the name of

Charlemagne: 82 under his authority a synod of three hundred

bishops was assembled at Frankfort: 83 they blamed the fury of

the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure

against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their

pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of

the West. 84 Among them the worship of images advanced with a

silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for

their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages

which precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in

Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of

superstition.

77 (return) [ The remaining history of images, from Irene to

Theodora, is collected, for the Catholics, by Baronius and Pagi,

(A.D. 780-840.) Natalis Alexander, (Hist. N. T. seculum viii.

Panoplia adversus Haereticos p. 118-178,) and Dupin, (Bibliot.

Eccles. tom. vi. p. 136-154;) for the Protestants, by Spanheim,

(Hist. Imag. p. 305-639.) Basnage, (Hist. de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.

556-572, tom. ii. p. 1362-1385,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.

Eccles. secul. viii. et ix.) The Protestants, except Mosheim, are

soured with controversy; but the Catholics, except Dupin, are

inflamed by the fury and superstition of the monks; and even Le

Beau, (Hist. du Bas Empire,) a gentleman and a scholar, is

infected by the odious contagion.]

78 (return) [ See the Acts, in Greek and Latin, of the second

Council of Nice, with a number of relative pieces, in the viiith

volume of the Councils, p. 645-1600. A faithful version, with

some critical notes, would provoke, in different readers, a sigh

or a smile.]

79 (return) [ The pope’s legates were casual messengers, two

priests without any special commission, and who were disavowed on

their return. Some vagabond monks were persuaded by the Catholics

to represent the Oriental patriarchs. This curious anecdote is

revealed by Theodore Studites, (epist. i. 38, in Sirmond. Opp.

tom. v. p. 1319,) one of the warmest Iconoclasts of the age.]

80 (return) [ These visits could not be innocent since the daemon

of fornication, &c. Actio iv. p. 901, Actio v. p. 1081]

81 (return) [ See an account of this controversy in the Alexius

of Anna Compena, (l. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.

Eccles. p. 371, 372.)]

82 (return) [ The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443-529,)

composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at

Worms, A.D. 790, and sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who

answered them by a grandis et verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom.

vii. p. 1553.) The Carolines propose 120 objections against the

Nicene synod and such words as these are the flowers of their

rhetoric—Dementiam.... priscae Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem

.... argumenta insanissima et absurdissima.... derisione dignas

naenias, &c., &c.]

83 (return) [ The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as

well as ecclesiastical; and the three hundred members, (Nat.

Alexander, sec. viii. p. 53,) who sat and voted at Frankfort,

must include not only the bishops, but the abbots, and even the

principal laymen.]

84 (return) [ Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et

sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes

contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom.

ix. p. 101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be

hard-hearted indeed, who does not pity the efforts of Baronius,

Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c., to elude this unlucky sentence.]

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part IV.

It was after the Nycene synod, and under the reign of the pious

Irene, that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and

Italy, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox

Charlemagne. They were compelled to choose between the rival

nations: religion was not the sole motive of their choice; and

while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld,

with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their

foes. The difference of language and manners had perpetuated the

enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from each

other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism

the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty:

their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a

jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the

impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The

Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored

the Calabrian estates 85 and the Illyrian diocese, 86 which the

Iconociasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter; and

Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication

unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy. 87 The Greeks

were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the

breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious;

but a discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion,

from the use, to the adoration, of images. The name of

Charlemagne was stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes;

but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper of a

statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In his

four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes

in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb,

and consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined,

without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman

liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to

renounce their benefactor? Had they a right to alienate his gift

of the Exarchate? Had they power to abolish his government of

Rome? The title of patrician was below the merit and greatness of

Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the Western empire that

they could pay their obligations or secure their establishment.

By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate the claims

of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the

majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be

united, under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and

the conquerors of the West would receive their crown from the

successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous

and respectable advocate; and, under the shadow of the

Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with honor and

safety, the government of the city. 88

85 (return) [ Theophanes (p. 343) specifies those of Sicily and

Calabria, which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a

half of gold, (perhaps 7000 L. sterling.) Liutprand more

pompously enumerates the patrimonies of the Roman church in

Greece, Judaea, Persia, Mesopotamia Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya,

which were detained by the injustice of the Greek emperor,

(Legat. ad Nicephorum, in Script. Rerum Italica rum, tom. ii.

pars i. p. 481.)]

86 (return) [ The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with

Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, (Thomassin, Discipline de l’Eglise,

tom. i. p. 145: ) by the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch

of Constantinople had detached from Rome the metropolitans of

Thessalonica, Athens Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patrae, (Luc.

Holsten. Geograph. Sacra, p. 22) and his spiritual conquests

extended to Naples and Amalphi (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i.

p. 517-524, Pagi, A. D 780, No. 11.)]

87 (return) [ In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore

reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant

errore.... de diocessi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum

increpantes commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticum

eum pro hujusmodi errore perseverantia decernemus, (Epist.

Hadrian. Papae ad Carolum Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p. 1598;)

to which he adds a reason, most directly opposite to his conduct,

that he preferred the salvation of souls and rule of faith to the

goods of this transitory world.]

88 (return) [ Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than

the advocates of the church, (advocatus et defensor S. R. E. See

Ducange, Gloss Lat. tom. i. p. 297.) His antagonist Muratori

reduces the popes to be no more than the exarchs of the emperor.

In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles.

p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under the empire as the most

honorable species of fief or benefice—premuntur nocte

caliginosa!]

Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a

wealthy bishopric had often been productive of tumult and

bloodshed. The people was less numerous, but the times were more

savage, the prize more important, and the chair of St. Peter was

fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the

rank of sovereign. The reign of Adrian the First 89 surpasses the

measure of past or succeeding ages; 90 the walls of Rome, the

sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the friendship of

Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly edified

the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space the

virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the

next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was

preferred to the nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had

promoted to the first dignities of the church. Their acquiescence

or repentance disguised, above four years, the blackest intention

of revenge, till the day of a procession, when a furious band of

conspirators dispersed the unarmed multitude, and assaulted with

blows and wounds the sacred person of the pope. But their

enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed, perhaps by

their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the

ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of

blood, he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event

was improved to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and

tongue, of which he had been deprived, twice deprived, by the

knife of the assassins. 91 From his prison he escaped to the

Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to his rescue, Charlemagne

sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of Paderborn in

Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman

pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and

bishops, the guards of his safety and the judges of his

innocence; and it was not without reluctance, that the conqueror

of the Saxons delayed till the ensuing year the personal

discharge of this pious office. In his fourth and last

pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king

and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the

crimes imputed to his charge: his enemies were silenced, and the

sacrilegious attempt against his life was punished by the mild

and insufficient penalty of exile. On the festival of Christmas,

the last year of the eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the

church of St. Peter; and, to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had

exchanged the simple dress of his country for the habit of a

patrician. 92 After the celebration of the holy mysteries, Leo

suddenly placed a precious crown on his head, 93 and the dome

resounded with the acclamations of the people, “Long life and

victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the

great and pacific emperor of the Romans!” The head and body of

Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction: after the

example of the Caesars, he was saluted or adored by the pontiff:

his coronation oath represents a promise to maintain the faith

and privileges of the church; and the first-fruits were paid in

his rich offerings to the shrine of his apostle. In his familiar

conversation, the emperor protested the ignorance of the

intentions of Leo, which he would have disappointed by his

absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the

ceremony must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of

Charlemagne reveals his knowledge and expectation: he had

acknowledged that the Imperial title was the object of his

ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced, that it was the only

adequate reward of his merit and services. 94

89 (return) [ His merits and hopes are summed up in an epitaph of

thirty-eight-verses, of which Charlemagne declares himself the

author, (Concil. tom. viii. p. 520.) Post patrem lacrymans

Carolus haec carmina scripsi. Tu mihi dulcis amor, te modo plango

pater... Nomina jungo simul titulis, clarissime, nostra Adrianus,

Carolus, rex ego, tuque pater. The poetry might be supplied by

Alcuin; but the tears, the most glorious tribute, can only belong

to Charlemagne.]

90 (return) [ Every new pope is admonished—“Sancte Pater, non

videbis annos Petri,” twenty-five years. On the whole series the

average is about eight years—a short hope for an ambitious

cardinal.]

91 (return) [ The assurance of Anastasius (tom. iii. pars i. p.

197, 198) is supported by the credulity of some French annalists;

but Eginhard, and other writers of the same age, are more natural

and sincere. “Unus ei oculus paullulum est laesus,” says John the

deacon of Naples, (Vit. Episcop. Napol. in Scriptores Muratori,

tom. i. pars ii. p. 312.) Theodolphus, a contemporary bishop of

Orleans, observes with prudence (l. iii. carm. 3.) Reddita sunt?

mirum est: mirum est auferre nequtsse. Est tamen in dubio, hinc

mirer an inde magis.]

92 (return) [ Twice, at the request of Hadrian and Leo, he

appeared at Rome,—longa tunica et chlamyde amictus, et

calceamentis quoque Romano more formatis. Eginhard (c. xxiii. p.

109-113) describes, like Suetonius the simplicity of his dress,

so popular in the nation, that when Charles the Bald returned to

France in a foreign habit, the patriotic dogs barked at the

apostate, (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, tom. iv. p. 109.)]

93 (return) [ See Anastasius (p. 199) and Eginhard, (c.xxviii. p.

124-128.) The unction is mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 399,) the

oath by Sigonius, (from the Ordo Romanus,) and the Pope’s

adoration more antiquorum principum, by the Annales Bertiniani,

(Script. Murator. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 505.)]

94 (return) [ This great event of the translation or restoration

of the empire is related and discussed by Natalis Alexander,

(secul. ix. dissert. i. p. 390-397,) Pagi, (tom. iii. p. 418,)

Muratori, (Annali d’Italia, tom. vi. p. 339-352,) Sigonius, (de

Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opp. tom. ii. p. 247-251,) Spanheim, (de

ficta Translatione Imperii,) Giannone, (tom. i. p. 395-405,) St.

Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p. 438-450,) Gaillard,

(Hist. de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 386-446.) Almost all these

moderns have some religious or national bias.]

The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes

deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the

title has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name,

with the addition of saint, is inserted in the Roman calendar;

and the saint, by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of

the historians and philosophers of an enlightened age. 95 His

real merit is doubtless enhanced by the barbarism of the nation

and the times from which he emerged: but the apparent magnitude

of an object is likewise enlarged by an unequal comparison; and

the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendor from the nakedness

of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his fame, I may

discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the

restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity is

not the most conspicuous: 96 but the public happiness could not

be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the

various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the

multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the

long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, 97 whom

the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion. 971 I

shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the ambition of a

conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution, the sons of his

brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the

four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same

spot, would have something to allege against the justice and

humanity of Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons

98 was an abuse of the right of conquest; his laws were not less

sanguinary than his arms, and in the discussion of his motives,

whatever is subtracted from bigotry must be imputed to temper.

The sedentary reader is amazed by his incessant activity of mind

and body; and his subjects and enemies were not less astonished

at his sudden presence, at the moment when they believed him at

the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace nor war,

nor summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy

cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign with the

geography of his expeditions. 981 But this activity was a

national, rather than a personal, virtue; the vagrant life of a

Frank was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in military

adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne were distinguished

only by a more numerous train and a more important purpose. His

military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his troops, his

enemies, and his actions. Alexander conquered with the arms of

Philip, but the two heroes who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed

him their name, their examples, and the companions of their

victories. At the head of his veteran and superior armies, he

oppressed the savage or degenerate nations, who were incapable of

confederating for their common safety: nor did he ever encounter

an equal antagonist in numbers, in discipline, or in arms The

science of war has been lost and revived with the arts of peace;

but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or battle of

singular difficulty and success; and he might behold, with envy,

the Saracen trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish

expedition, his rear-guard was defeated in the Pyrenaean

mountains; and the soldiers, whose situation was irretrievable,

and whose valor was useless, might accuse, with their last

breath, the want of skill or caution of their general. 99 I touch

with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a

respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series, of

occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the

reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his

poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the

laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however

feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate

evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government;

100 but in his institutions I can seldom discover the general

views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives

himself for the benefit of posterity. The union and stability of

his empire depended on the life of a single man: he imitated the

dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and

after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to

fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism. His

esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted him to

intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil

jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and

degraded by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the

imprudence of his father. His laws enforced the imposition of

tithes, because the daemons had proclaimed in the air that the

default of payment had been the cause of the last scarcity. 101

The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the foundation

of schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were

published in his name, and his familiar connection with the

subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate

both the prince and people. His own studies were tardy,

laborious, and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and understood

Greek, he derived the rudiments of knowledge from conversation,

rather than from books; and, in his mature age, the emperor

strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant

now learns in his infancy. 102 The grammar and logic, the music

and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the

handmaids of superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind

must ultimately tend to its improvement, and the encouragement of

learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the

character of Charlemagne. 103 The dignity of his person, 104 the

length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigor of his

government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish him

from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new aera from his

restoration of the Western empire.

95 (return) [ By Mably, (Observations sur l’Histoire de France,)

Voltaire, (Histoire Generale,) Robertson, (History of Charles

V.,) and Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 18.) In the

year 1782, M. Gaillard published his Histoire de Charlemagne, (in

4 vols. in 12mo.,) which I have freely and profitably used. The

author is a man of sense and humanity; and his work is labored

with industry and elegance. But I have likewise examined the

original monuments of the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne, in the

5th volume of the Historians of France.]

96 (return) [ The vision of Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven

years after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory,

with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member,

while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound

and perfect, (see Gaillard tom. ii. p. 317-360.)]

97 (return) [ The marriage of Eginhard with Imma, daughter of

Charlemagne, is, in my opinion, sufficiently refuted by the

probum and suspicio that sullied these fair damsels, without

excepting his own wife, (c. xix. p. 98-100, cum Notis Schmincke.)

The husband must have been too strong for the historian.]

971 (return) [ This charge of incest, as Mr. Hallam justly

observes, “seems to have originated in a misinterpreted passage

of Eginhard.” Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol.i. p. 16.—M.]

98 (return) [ Besides the massacres and transmigrations, the pain

of death was pronounced against the following crimes: 1. The

refusal of baptism. 2. The false pretence of baptism. 3. A

relapse to idolatry. 4. The murder of a priest or bishop. 5.

Human sacrifices. 6. Eating meat in Lent. But every crime might

be expiated by baptism or penance, (Gaillard, tom. ii. p.

241-247;) and the Christian Saxons became the friends and equals

of the Franks, (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p.133.)]

981 (return) [ M. Guizot (Cours d’Histoire Moderne, p. 270, 273)

has compiled the following statement of Charlemagne’s military

campaigns:—

1. Against the Aquitanians.

18. ” the Saxons.

5. ” the Lombards.

7. ” the Arabs in Spain.

1. ” the Thuringians.

4. ” the Avars.

2. ” the Bretons.

1. ” the Bavarians.

4. ” the Slaves beyond the Elbe

5. ” the Saracens in Italy.

3. ” the Danes.

2. ” the Greeks. ___

53 total.—M.]

99 (return) [ In this action the famous Rutland, Rolando,

Orlando, was slain—cum compluribus aliis. See the truth in

Eginhard, (c. 9, p. 51-56,) and the fable in an ingenious

Supplement of M. Gaillard, (tom. iii. p. 474.) The Spaniards are

too proud of a victory, which history ascribes to the Gascons,

and romance to the Saracens. * Note: In fact, it was a sudden

onset of the Gascons, assisted by the Beaure mountaineers, and

possibly a few Navarrese.—M.]

100 (return) [ Yet Schmidt, from the best authorities, represents

the interior disorders and oppression of his reign, (Hist. des

Allemands, tom. ii. p. 45-49.)]

101 (return) [ Omnis homo ex sua proprietate legitimam decimam ad

ecclesiam conferat. Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo illa

valida fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a daemonibus

devoratas, et voces exprobationis auditas. Such is the decree and

assertion of the great Council of Frankfort, (canon xxv. tom. ix.

p. 105.) Both Selden (Hist. of Tithes; Works, vol. iii. part ii.

p. 1146) and Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 12)

represent Charlemagne as the first legal author of tithes. Such

obligations have country gentlemen to his memory!]

102 (return) [ Eginhard (c. 25, p. 119) clearly affirms, tentabat

et scribere... sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus et

sero inchoatus. The moderns have perverted and corrected this

obvious meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard’s dissertation

(tom. iii. p. 247-260) betrays his partiality. * Note: This point

has been contested; but Mr. Hallam and Monsieur Sismondl concur

with Gibbon. See Middle Ages, iii. 330, Histoire de Francais,

tom. ii. p. 318. The sensible observations of the latter are

quoted in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii. p. 451. Fleury, I

may add, quotes from Mabillon a remarkable evidence that

Charlemagne “had a mark to himself like an honest, plain-dealing

man.” Ibid.—M.]

103 (return) [ See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138-176, and Schmidt,

tom. ii. p. 121-129.]

104 (return) [ M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372) fixes the true

stature of Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad

calcem Eginhart, p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French,

about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure. The

romance writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant

was endowed with matchless strength and appetite: at a single

stroke of his good sword Joyeuse, he cut asunder a horseman and

his horse; at a single repast, he devoured a goose, two fowls, a

quarter of mutton, &c.]

That empire was not unworthy of its title; 105 and some of the

fairest kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a

prince, who reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy,

Germany, and Hungary. 106 I. The Roman province of Gaul had been

transformed into the name and monarchy of France; but, in the

decay of the Merovingian line, its limits were contracted by the

independence of the Britons and the revolt of Aquitain.

Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the shores of

the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language

are so different from the French, was chastised by the imposition

of tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive

contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by

the forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives.

Harsh and rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious

governors, who had too faithfully copied the mayors of the

palace. But a recent discovery 107 has proved that these unhappy

princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and sceptre

of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of

the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the

duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at

the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the

beginning of the sixteenth century; and after surviving their

Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved to feel the injustice,

or the favors, of a third dynasty. By the reunion of Aquitain,

France was enlarged to its present boundaries, with the additions

of the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine. II.

The Saracens had been expelled from France by the grandfather and

father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the greatest part

of Spain, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. Amidst

their civil divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored his

protection in the diet of Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the

expedition, restored the emir, and, without distinction of faith,

impartially crushed the resistance of the Christians, and

rewarded the obedience and services of the Mahometans. In his

absence he instituted the Spanish march, 108 which extended from

the Pyrenees to the River Ebro: Barcelona was the residence of

the French governor: he possessed the counties of Rousillon and

Catalonia; and the infant kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon were

subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king of the Lombards, and

patrician of Rome, he reigned over the greatest part of Italy,

109 a tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders of

Calabria. The duchy of Beneventum, a Lombard fief, had spread, at

the expense of the Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples. But

Arrechis, the reigning duke, refused to be included in the

slavery of his country; assumed the independent title of prince;

and opposed his sword to the Carlovingian monarchy. His defence

was firm, his submission was not inglorious, and the emperor was

content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his fortresses,

and the acknowledgement, on his coins, of a supreme lord. The

artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of

father, but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and Benventum

insensibly escaped from the French yoke. 110 IV. Charlemagne was

the first who united Germany under the same sceptre. The name of

Oriental France is preserved in the circle of Franconia; and the

people of Hesse and Thuringia were recently incorporated with the

victors, by the conformity of religion and government. The

Alemanni, so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful vassals

and confederates of the Franks; and their country was inscribed

within the modern limits of Alsace, Swabia, and Switzerland. The

Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their laws and manners,

were less patient of a master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo

justified the abolition of their hereditary dukes; and their

power was shared among the counts, who judged and guarded that

important frontier. But the north of Germany, from the Rhine and

beyond the Elbe, was still hostile and Pagan; nor was it till

after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons bowed under the

yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and their votaries

were extirpated: the foundation of eight bishoprics, of Munster,

Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim,

and Halberstadt, define, on either side of the Weser, the bounds

of ancient Saxony these episcopal seats were the first schools

and cities of that savage land; and the religion and humanity of

the children atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the

parents. Beyond the Elbe, the Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar

manners and various denominations, overspread the modern

dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient

marks of obedience have tempted the French historian to extend

the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The conquest or

conversion of those countries is of a more recent age; but the

first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be justly

ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the

Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had

inflicted on the nations. Their rings, the wooden fortifications

which encircled their districts and villages, were broken down by

the triple effort of a French army, that was poured into their

country by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains and

along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight

years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by the

slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation

submitted the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and

unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty

years, enriched the victorious troops, or decorated the churches

of Italy and Gaul. 111 After the reduction of Pannonia, the

empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by the conflux of the

Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces of Istria,

Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable,

accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left

the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the

Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the

reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he

risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the Barbarians

from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of

communication between the rivers, the Saone and the Meuse, the

Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. 112 Their execution

would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were

often wasted in the structure of a cathedral. 1121

105 (return) [ See the concise, but correct and original, work of

D’Anville, (Etats Formes en Europe apres la Chute de l’Empire

Romain en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.,) whose map includes the

empire of Charlemagne; the different parts are illustrated, by

Valesius (Notitia Galliacum) for France, Beretti (Dissertatio

Chorographica) for Italy, De Marca (Marca Hispanica) for Spain.

For the middle geography of Germany, I confess myself poor and

destitute.]

106 (return) [ After a brief relation of his wars and conquests,

(Vit. Carol. c. 5-14,) Eginhard recapitulates, in a few words,

(c. 15,) the countries subject to his empire. Struvius, (Corpus

Hist. German. p. 118-149) was inserted in his Notes the texts of

the old Chronicles.]

107 (return) [ On a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon

(A.D. 845) by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal

pedigree. I doubt whether some subsequent links of the ixth and

xth centuries are equally firm; yet the whole is approved and

defended by M. Gaillard, (tom. ii. p.60-81, 203-206,) who affirms

that the family of Montesquiou (not of the President de

Montesquieu) is descended, in the female line, from Clotaire and

Clovis—an innocent pretension!]

108 (return) [ The governors or counts of the Spanish march

revolted from Charles the Simple about the year 900; and a poor

pittance, the Rousillon, has been recovered in 1642 by the kings

of France, (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom i. p.

220-222.) Yet the Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and

annually pays 2,600,000 livres, (Necker, Administration des

Finances, tom. i. p. 278, 279;) more people, perhaps, and

doubtless more money than the march of Charlemagne.]

109 (return) [ Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 200,

&c.]

110 (return) [ See Giannone, tom. i. p 374, 375, and the Annals

of Muratori.]

111 (return) [ Quot praelia in eo gesta! quantum sanguinis

effusum sit! Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus

in quo regia Cagani fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem

humanae habitationis appareat. Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum

nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis pecunia et congesti

ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt. Eginhard, cxiii.]

112 (return) [ The junction of the Rhine and Danube was

undertaken only for the service of the Pannonian war, (Gaillard,

Vie de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 312-315.) The canal, which would

have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces

are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains,

military avocations, and superstitious fears, (Schaepflin, Hist.

de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 256. Molimina

fluviorum, &c., jungendorum, p. 59-62.)]

1121 (return) [ I should doubt this in the time of Charlemagne,

even if the term “expended” were substituted for “wasted.”—M.]

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part V.

If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will

be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and

west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and

south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the

perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal and

political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress

and division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain

and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or

Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian and

Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow

range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered

the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the

honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common

parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. 113 He

maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al

Rashid, 114 whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and

accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant,

and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive

the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers

to each other’s person, and language, and religion: but their

public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote

situation left no room for a competition of interest. Two thirds

of the Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and

the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the

inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the choice

of his enemies, 1141 we may be reasonably surprised that he so

often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the

south. The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the

woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the

amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy

and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would

have insured an easy victory; and the holy crusade against the

Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and

loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his

expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his

monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies

of civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future

emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of

precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be

universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a

larger sphere of hostility. 115 The subjugation of Germany

withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or

islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened

the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of

the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their

brethren of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered

with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh

the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than

seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.

113 (return) [ See Eginhard, c. 16, and Gaillard, tom. ii. p.

361-385, who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of

Charlemagne and Egbert, the emperor’s gift of his own sword, and

the modest answer of his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if

genuine, would have adorned our English histories.]

114 (return) [ The correspondence is mentioned only in the French

annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph’s friendship

for the Christian dog—a polite appellation, which Harun bestows

on the emperor of the Greeks.]

1141 (return) [ Had he the choice? M. Guizot has eloquently

described the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons. Il y

fit face par le conquete; la guerre defensive prit la forme

offensive: il transporta la lutte sur le territoire des peuples

qui voulaient envahir le sien: il travailla a asservir les races

etrangeres, et extirper les croyances ennemies. De la son mode de

gouvernement et la fondation de son empire: la guerre offensive

et la conquete voulaient cette vaste et redoutable unite. Compare

observations in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii., and James’s

Life of Charlemagne.—M.]

115 (return) [ Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-365, 471-476, 492. I

have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne’s plan of

conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the

first and the second enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.)]

Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution,

the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne

for the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy,

must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But

the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the

independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor seems

on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims

of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded to take the crown

from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head,

as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation. 116

The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the

subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the

Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a

lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes

was reduced to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these

hereditary princes, who were already invested with their power

and dominions. The pious Lewis survived his brothers, and

embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the nations and the

nobles, his bishops and his children, quickly discerned that this

mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the

foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external

surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which

consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was divided by

treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and

fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever

separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps,

the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the

Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of his share,

Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory kingdoms, were

bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis the Second, his

eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the proper and

sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his death without any

male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and

cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of

judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing

on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of

advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race

no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the

ridiculous epithets of the bard, the stammerer, the fat, and the

simple, distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of

kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the

collateral branches, the whole inheritance devolved to Charles

the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his insanity authorized

the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed in a

diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by whose

contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the

measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the

lords, usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some

preference was shown to the female or illegitimate blood of

Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and possession were

alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the contracted

scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at

the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their

modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of

kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be

deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the

establishment of Otho the First.

116 (return) [ Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this

coronation: and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 813,

No. 13, &c. See Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508,) howsoever

adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the

Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany;

Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose

pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]

Otho 117 was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he

truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of

Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to

reign over their conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was

elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the

kingdom of Germany. Its limits 118 were enlarged on every side by

his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul,

to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the

Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language

it has been tinged since the time of Caesar and Tacitus.

Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of

Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of

Burgundy and Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by

the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic

nations of the Elbe and Oder: the marches of Brandenburgh and

Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of

Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves

his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he

passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the

pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation

of Germany. From that memorable aera, two maxims of public

jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. I.

That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired,

from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II.

But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and

Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the

Roman pontiff. 119

117 (return) [ He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in

whose favor the Duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858.

Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianae

Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p. 679,) gives a splendid character

of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes

nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener

facile reperitur, (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216.)

Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent

from Witikind.]

118 (return) [ See the treatise of Conringius, (de Finibus

Imperii Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to.: ) he rejects the

extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian

empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her

vassals, and her neighbors.]

119 (return) [ The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I.

and Henry I., the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which

was never assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians,

Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only

reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome.]

The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by

the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers,

the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and

familiar appellation of brother. 120 Perhaps in his connection

with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his embassy to

Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and

might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious princess,

who had renounced the most sacred duties of a mother. The nature,

the duration, the probable consequences of such a union between

two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to

conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us

to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene,

to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to

the strangers of the West. 121 The French ambassadors were the

spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of

Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was

exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: a

proverb, “That the Franks were good friends and bad neighbors,”

was in every one’s mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a

neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St.

Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious

journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found

him in his camp, on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne

affected to confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian

village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the Byzantine

palace. 122 The Greeks were successively led through four halls

of audience: in the first they were ready to fall prostrate

before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he informed

them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of the

horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer,

were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the

steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually

heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber were thrown

open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne,

enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled

with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of

peace and alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the

limits of the East and West were defined by the right of present

possession. But the Greeks 123 soon forgot this humiliating

equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it

was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they

respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne, with the

acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as

these qualities were separated in the person of his pious son,

the Byzantine letters were inscribed, “To the king, or, as he

styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and Lombards.” When

both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the

Second of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous

appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin

princes. His reply 124 is expressive of his weakness: he proves,

with some learning, that, both in sacred and profane history, the

name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus: if, at

Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial

sense, he claims from his ancestors, and from the popes, a just

participation of the honors of the Roman purple. The same

controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their

ambassador describes, in lively colors, the insolence of the

Byzantine court. 125 The Greeks affected to despise the poverty

and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline

refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman

emperors.

120 (return) [ Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P.

imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus) magna tulit patientia,

vicitque eorum contumaciam... mittendo ad eos crebras legationes,

et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28, p. 128.

Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus, he affected

some reluctance to receive the empire.]

121 (return) [ Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of

Charles (Chronograph. p. 399,) and of his treaty of marriage with

Irene, (p. 402,) which is unknown to the Latins. Gaillard relates

his transactions with the Greek empire, (tom. ii. p. 446-468.)]

122 (return) [ Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant

was a farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed

represented in the presence, and for the benefit, of children of

a larger growth.]

123 (return) [ Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi,

(tom. iii. A.D. 812, No. 7, A.D. 824, No. 10, &c.,) the contrast

of Charlemagne and his son; to the former the ambassadors of

Michael (who were indeed disavowed) more suo, id est lingua

Graeca laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et appellantes; to the

latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c.]

124 (return) [ See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous

writer of Salerno, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 243-254,

c. 93-107,) whom Baronius (A.D. 871, No. 51-71) mistook for

Erchempert, when he transcribed it in his Annals.]

125 (return) [ Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est sua lingua,

sed ob indignationem, id est regem nostra vocabat, Liutprand, in

Legat. in Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 479. The pope had

exhorted Nicephorus, emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with

Otho, the august emperor of the Romans—quae inscriptio secundum

Graecos peccatoria et temeraria... imperatorem inquiunt,

universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum, Nicephorum, (p.

486.)]

These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to

exercise the powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and

Grecian princes; and the importance of this prerogative increased

with the temporal estate and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman

church. In the Christian aristocracy, the principal members of

the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration,

and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop. Rome was divided into

twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was governed by a cardinal

priest, or presbyter, a title which, however common or modest in

its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of kings. Their

number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of

the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the

Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical

senate was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman

province, who were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia,

Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines,

than by their weekly service in the Lateran, and their superior

share in the honors and authority of the apostolic see. On the

death of the pope, these bishops recommended a successor to the

suffrage of the college of cardinals, 126 and their choice was

ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman

people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be

legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church,

had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The royal

commissioner examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the

proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the

qualifications of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of

fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively

enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms, the

rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor; and

in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to

punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a

treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the

candidate most acceptable to his majesty: 127 his successors

anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed the Roman

benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their

chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a

Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition

of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most speciously

excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor who

had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or

avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were

stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises

of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in

a long and disgraceful servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the

ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and

murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence, after

the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that

they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise

the charity of a priest. 128 The influence of two sister

prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth

and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most

strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and

their reign 129 may have suggested to the darker ages 130 the

fable 131 of a female pope. 132 The bastard son, the grandson,

and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated

in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen

years that the second of these became the head of the Latin

church. 1321 His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion;

and the nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges

that were urged against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence

of Otho the Great. As John XII. had renounced the dress and

decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be

dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt,

the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming

and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of

distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if

it be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some

surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public

adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was

turned into a school for prostitution, and that his rapes of

virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting

the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be

violated by his successor. 133 The Protestants have dwelt with

malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a

philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous

than their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic

see was reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory

VII. That ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two

projects. I. To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and

independence of election, and forever to abolish the right or

usurpation of the emperors and the Roman people. II. To bestow

and resume the Western empire as a fief or benefice 134 of the

church, and to extend his temporal dominion over the kings and

kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years, the first

of these designs was accomplished by the firm support of the

ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of

their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with

some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted

by the secular power, and finally extinguished by the improvement

of human reason.

126 (return) [ The origin and progress of the title of cardinal

may be found in Themassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.

1261-1298,) Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. vi.

Dissert. lxi. p. 159-182,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles.

p. 345-347,) who accurately remarks the form and changes of the

election. The cardinal-bishops so highly exalted by Peter

Damianus, are sunk to a level with the rest of the sacred

college.]

127 (return) [ Firmiter jurantes, nunquam se papam electuros aut

audinaturos, praeter consensum et electionem Othonis et filii

sui. (Liutprand, l. vi. c. 6, p. 472.) This important concession

may either supply or confirm the decree of the clergy and people

of Rome, so fiercely rejected by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori,

(A.D. 964,) and so well defended and explained by St. Marc,

(Abrege, tom. ii. p. 808-816, tom. iv. p. 1167-1185.) Consult the

historical critic, and the Annals of Muratori, for for the

election and confirmation of each pope.]

128 (return) [ The oppression and vices of the Roman church, in

the xth century, are strongly painted in the history and legation

of Liutprand, (see p. 440, 450, 471-476, 479, &c.;) and it is

whimsical enough to observe Muratori tempering the invectives of

Baronius against the popes. But these popes had been chosen, not

by the cardinals, but by lay-patrons.]

129 (return) [ The time of Pope Joan (papissa Joanna) is placed

somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of

her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and

Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links

the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict, (illico, mox, p.

247;) and the accurate chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and

Leibnitz, fixes both events to the year 857.]

130 (return) [ The advocates for Pope Joan produce one hundred

and fifty witnesses, or rather echoes, of the xivth, xvth, and

xvith centuries. They bear testimony against themselves and the

legend, by multiplying the proof that so curious a story must

have been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was

known. On those of the ixth and xth centuries, the recent event

would have flashed with a double force. Would Photius have spared

such a reproach? Could Liutprand have missed such scandal? It is

scarcely worth while to discuss the various readings of Martinus

Polonus, Sigeber of Gamblours, or even Marianus Scotus; but a

most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan, which has been

foisted into some Mss. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.]

131 (return) [ As false, it deserves that name; but I would not

pronounce it incredible. Suppose a famous French chevalier of our

own times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the church,

instead of the army: her merit or fortune might have raised her

to St. Peter’s chair; her amours would have been natural: her

delivery in the streets unlucky, but not improbable.]

132 (return) [ Till the reformation the tale was repeated and

believed without offence: and Joan’s female statue long occupied

her place among the popes in the cathedral of Sienna, (Pagi,

Critica, tom. iii. p. 624-626.) She has been annihilated by two

learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique,

Papesse, Polonus, Blondel;) but their brethren were scandalized

by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and Lenfant

attempt to save this poor engine of controversy, and even Mosheim

condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion, (p. 289.)]

1321 (return) [ John XI. was the son of her husband Alberic, not

of her lover, Pope Sergius III., as Muratori has distinctly

proved, Ann. ad ann. 911, tom. p. 268. Her grandson Octavian,

otherwise called John XII., was pope; but a great-grandson cannot

be discovered in any of the succeeding popes; nor does our

historian himself, in his subsequent narration, (p. 202,) seem to

know of one. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold, p.

309.—M.]

133 (return) [ Lateranense palatium... prostibulum meretricum ...

Testis omnium gentium, praeterquam Romanorum, absentia mulierum,

quae sanctorum apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent visere,

cum nonnullas ante dies paucos, hunc audierint conjugatas,

viduas, virgines vi oppressisse, (Liutprand, Hist. l. vi. c. 6,

p. 471. See the whole affair of John XII., p. 471-476.)]

134 (return) [ A new example of the mischief of equivocation is

the beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope

conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may

signify either a legal fief, or a simple favor, an obligation,

(we want the word bienfait.) (See Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands,

tom. iii. p. 393-408. Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p.

229, 296, 317, 324, 420, 430, 500, 505, 509, &c.)]

In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the

bishop nor the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the

provinces which were lost, as they had been won, by the chance of

arms. But the Romans were free to choose a master for themselves;

and the powers which had been delegated to the patrician, were

irrevocably granted to the French and Saxon emperors of the West.

The broken records of the times 135 preserve some remembrance of

their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their edicts, and the

sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth century, was

derived from Caesar to the praefect of the city. 136 Between the

arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy

was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor

and Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert

this local jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their

ambition was diverted by more alluring objects; and in the decay

and division of the empire, they were oppressed by the defence of

their hereditary provinces. Amidst the ruins of Italy, the famous

Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume the character of

her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was introduced by

her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St. Angelo,

which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Her son

by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the

nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was

chastised with a blow by his new father. The blow was productive

of a revolution. “Romans,” exclaimed the youth, “once you were

the masters of the world, and these Burgundians the most abject

of your slaves. They now reign, these voracious and brutal

savages, and my injury is the commencement of your servitude.”

137 The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of the city:

the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was

imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI.,

was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the

title of prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the

government of Rome; and he is said to have gratified the popular

prejudice, by restoring the office, or at least the title, of

consuls and tribunes. His son and heir Octavian assumed, with the

pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his predecessor, he was

provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer for the

church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded with

the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans

were impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by

the secret conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho

commanded his sword-bearer not to stir from his person, lest he

should be assaulted and murdered at the foot of the altar. 138

Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor chastised the revolt of

the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The pope was degraded

in a synod; the praefect was mounted on an ass, whipped through

the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty

were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe

process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and

Justinian. The voice of fame has accused the second Otho of a

perfidious and bloody act, the massacre of the senators, whom he

had invited to his table under the fair semblance of hospitality

and friendship. 139 In the minority of his son Otho the Third,

Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the

consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the

condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command

of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and

formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek

emperors. 1391 In the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an

obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a

promise of safety: his body was suspended on a gibbet, and his

head was exposed on the battlements of the castle. By a reverse

of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops, was besieged three

days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful escape saved

him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator Ptolemy

was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius

enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a

poison which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the

design of Otho the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the

North, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the

institutions of the Roman monarchy. But his successors only once

in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tyber, to receive

their crown in the Vatican. 140 Their absence was contemptible,

their presence odious and formidable. They descended from the

Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and

enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of

tumult and bloodshed. 141 A faint remembrance of their ancestors

still tormented the Romans; and they beheld with pious

indignation the succession of Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and

Bohemians, who usurped the purple and prerogatives of the

Caesars.

135 (return) [ For the history of the emperors in Rome and Italy,

see Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, Opp. tom. ii., with the Notes of

Saxius, and the Annals of Muratori, who might refer more

distinctly to the authors of his great collection.]

136 (return) [ See the Dissertations of Le Blanc at the end of

his treatise des Monnoyes de France, in which he produces some

Roman coins of the French emperors.]

137 (return) [ Romanorum aliquando servi, scilicet Burgundiones,

Romanis imperent?.... Romanae urbis dignitas ad tantam est

stultitiam ducta, ut meretricum etiam imperio pareat? (Liutprand,

l. iii. c. 12, p. 450.) Sigonius (l. vi. p. 400) positively

affirms the renovation of the consulship; but in the old writers

Albericus is more frequently styled princeps Romanorum.]

138 (return) [ Ditmar, p. 354, apud Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 439.]

139 (return) [ This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse in

the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p.

436, 437,) who flourished towards the end of the xiith century,

(Fabricius Bibliot. Latin. Med. et Infimi Aevi, tom. iii. p. 69,

edit. Mansi;) but his evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is

reasonably suspected by Muratori (Annali, tom. viii. p. 177.)]

1391 (return) [ The Marquis Maffei’s gallery contained a medal

with Imp. Caes August. P. P. Crescentius. Hence Hobhouse infers

that he affected the empire. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe

Harold, p. 252.—M.]

140 (return) [ The coronation of the emperor, and some original

ceremonies of the xth century are preserved in the Panegyric on

Berengarius, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 405-414,)

illustrated by the Notes of Hadrian Valesius and Leibnitz.

Sigonius has related the whole process of the Roman expedition,

in good Latin, but with some errors of time and fact, (l. vii. p.

441-446.)]

141 (return) [ In a quarrel at the coronation of Conrad II.

Muratori takes leave to observe—doveano ben essere allora,

indisciplinati, Barbari, e bestials Tedeschi. Annal. tom. viii.

p. 368.]

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part VI.

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than

to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in

opposition to their inclination and interest. A torrent of

Barbarians may pass over the earth, but an extensive empire must

be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the

centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in

resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts;

fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular

administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army

to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far

different was the situation of the German Caesars, who were

ambitious to enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial

estates were stretched along the Rhine, or scattered in the

provinces; but this ample domain was alienated by the imprudence

or distress of successive princes; and their revenue, from minute

and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely sufficient for the

maintenance of their household. Their troops were formed by the

legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who passed

the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and

disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the

campaign. Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential

influence of the climate: the survivors brought back the bones of

their princes and nobles, 142 and the effects of their own

intemperance were often imputed to the treachery and malice of

the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the calamities of the

Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might contend on equal terms

with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or the

reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel. But in

the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the

flame of industry and freedom; and the generous example was at

length imitated by the republics of Tuscany. 1421 In the Italian

cities a municipal government had never been totally abolished;

and their first privileges were granted by the favor and policy

of the emperors, who were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier

against the independence of the nobles. But their rapid progress,

the daily extension of their power and pretensions, were founded

on the numbers and spirit of these rising communities. 143 Each

city filled the measure of her diocese or district: the

jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises and

counts, was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were

persuaded or compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to

embrace the more honorable character of freemen and magistrates.

The legislative authority was inherent in the general assembly;

but the executive powers were intrusted to three consuls,

annually chosen from the three orders of captains, valvassors,

144 and commons, into which the republic was divided. Under the

protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture and commerce

were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the Lombards

was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the bell

was rung, or the standard 145 erected, the gates of the city

poured forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their

own cause was soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At

the foot of these popular ramparts, the pride of the Caesars was

overthrown; and the invincible genius of liberty prevailed over

the two Frederics, the greatest princes of the middle age; the

first, superior perhaps in military prowess; the second, who

undoubtedly excelled in the softer accomplishments of peace and

learning.

142 (return) [ After boiling away the flesh. The caldrons for

that purpose were a necessary piece of travelling furniture; and

a German who was using it for his brother, promised it to a

friend, after it should have been employed for himself, (Schmidt,

tom. iii. p. 423, 424.) The same author observes that the whole

Saxon line was extinguished in Italy, (tom. ii. p. 440.)]

1421 (return) [ Compare Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques

Italiannes. Hallam Middle Ages. Raumer, Geschichte der

Hohenstauffen. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, vol.

iii. p. 19 with the authors quoted.—M.]

143 (return) [ Otho, bishop of Frisingen, has left an important

passage on the Italian cities, (l. ii. c. 13, in Script. Ital.

tom. vi. p. 707-710: ) and the rise, progress, and government of

these republics are perfectly illustrated by Muratori,

(Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. iv. dissert xlv.—lii. p.

1-675. Annal. tom. viii. ix. x.)]

144 (return) [ For these titles, see Selden, (Titles of Honor,

vol. iii. part 1 p. 488.) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p.

140, tom. vi. p. 776,) and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom.

ii. p. 719.)]

145 (return) [ The Lombards invented and used the carocium, a

standard planted on a car or wagon, drawn by a team of oxen,

(Ducange, tom. ii. p. 194, 195. Muratori Antiquitat tom. ii. dis.

xxvi. p. 489-493.)]

Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the

First invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a

statesman, the valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant.

The recent discovery of the Pandects had renewed a science most

favorable to despotism; and his venal advocates proclaimed the

emperor the absolute master of the lives and properties of his

subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious sense, were

acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of Italy

was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, 146 which were

multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal

officers. The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the

force of his arms: his captives were delivered to the

executioner, or shot from his military engines; and. after the

siege and surrender of Milan, the buildings of that stately

capital were razed to the ground, three hundred hostages were

sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were dispersed in four

villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror. 147 But

Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was

cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope

Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of

oppression was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of

Constance, Frederic subscribed, with some reservations, the

freedom of four-and-twenty cities. His grandson contended with

their vigor and maturity; but Frederic the Second 148 was endowed

with some personal and peculiar advantages. His birth and

education recommended him to the Italians; and in the implacable

discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were attached to the

emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of liberty and the

church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father Henry

the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of

Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son

derived an ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet

Frederic the Second was finally oppressed by the arms of the

Lombards and the thunders of the Vatican: his kingdom was given

to a stranger, and the last of his family was beheaded at Naples

on a public scaffold. During sixty years, no emperor appeared in

Italy, and the name was remembered only by the ignominious sale

of the last relics of sovereignty.

146 (return) [ Gunther Ligurinus, l. viii. 584, et seq., apud

Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 399.]

147 (return) [ Solus imperator faciem suam firmavit ut petram,

(Burcard. de Excidio Mediolani, Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 917.)

This volume of Muratori contains the originals of the history of

Frederic the First, which must be compared with due regard to the

circumstances and prejudices of each German or Lombard writer. *

Note: Von Raumer has traced the fortunes of the Swabian house in

one of the ablest historical works of modern times. He may be

compared with the spirited and independent Sismondi.—M.]

148 (return) [ For the history of Frederic II. and the house of

Swabia at Naples, see Giannone, Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xiv.

-xix.]

The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate

their chief with the title of emperor; but it was not their

design to invest him with the despotism of Constantine and

Justinian. The persons of the Germans were free, their conquests

were their own, and their national character was animated by a

spirit which scorned the servile jurisprudence of the new or the

ancient Rome. It would have been a vain and dangerous attempt to

impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who were impatient of a

magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the powerful,

who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was

distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the

counts of the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches

or frontiers, who all united the civil and military authority as

it had been delegated to the lieutenants of the first Caesars.

The Roman governors, who, for the most part, were soldiers of

fortune, seduced their mercenary legions, assumed the Imperial

purple, and either failed or succeeded in their revolt, without

wounding the power and unity of government. If the dukes,

margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in their

claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and

pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank,

they silently labored to establish and appropriate their

provincial independence. Their ambition was seconded by the

weight of their estates and vassals, their mutual example and

support, the common interest of the subordinate nobility, the

change of princes and families, the minorities of Otho the Third

and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the popes, and the vain

pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome. All the

attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually

usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace

and war, of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign

alliance and domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by

violence, was ratified by favor or distress, was granted as the

price of a doubtful vote or a voluntary service; whatever had

been granted to one could not, without injury, be denied to his

successor or equal; and every act of local or temporary

possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the

Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the

duke or count was interposed between the throne and the nobles;

the subjects of the law became the vassals of a private chief;

and the standard which he received from his sovereign, was often

raised against him in the field. The temporal power of the clergy

was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of the

Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who blindly depended on their

moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of Germany were made

equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population,

to the most ample states of the military order. As long as the

emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy

these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was

maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and

favorites. But in the quarrel of the investitures, they were

deprived of their influence over the episcopal chapters; the

freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign was reduced,

by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the recommendation,

once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church. The

secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a

superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers.

In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to

the duchy or county of his father, was solicited as a favor; it

was gradually obtained as a custom, and extorted as a right: the

lineal succession was often extended to the collateral or female

branches; the states of the empire (their popular, and at length

their legal, appellation) were divided and alienated by testament

and sale; and all idea of a public trust was lost in that of a

private and perpetual inheritance. The emperor could not even be

enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and extinction: within

the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the vacant fief;

and, in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to consult

either the general or the provincial diet.

After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a

monster with a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates

disputed the ruins of the empire: the lords of innumerable

castles were less prone to obey, than to imitate, their

superiors; and, according to the measure of their strength, their

incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery.

Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and

manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were

shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But

the Italian cities and the French vassals were divided and

destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the

name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic. In

the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a

national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common

legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges

of the electors, the princes, and the free and Imperial cities of

Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were permitted

to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the exclusive

privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors were

the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of

Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three

archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college

of princes and prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous

multitude: they reduced to four representative votes the long

series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles or

equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets,

had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The

pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely

adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and,

in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same

aera into the national assemblies of France England, and Germany.

The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the

north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and

intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities

has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative

still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of

electors and princes. 149

149 (return) [ In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of

Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had

rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a

multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the

author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know

of any country, (Nouvel Abrege Chronologique de l’Histoire et du

Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His

learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts;

his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space. His

chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and

an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To

this work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was gratefully

indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern

changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae Germanicae of

Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that

huge compilation is fortified in every page with the original

texts. * Note: For the rise and progress of the Hanseatic League,

consult the authoritative history by Sartorius; Geschichte des

Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen, 1802. New and improved

edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830. The original Hanseatic

League comprehended Cologne and many of the great cities in the

Netherlands and on the Rhine.—M.]

It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest

light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany,

which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine and

Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their

unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of

Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor Henry the Seventh

procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson

Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and barbarous

in the estimation of the Germans themselves. 150 After the

excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or

promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the

exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the

earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral college,

and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and

future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was prostituted

to the Caesars of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no

more than the elective and impotent magistrate of an aristocracy

of princes, who had not left him a village that he might call his

own. His best prerogative was the right of presiding and

proposing in the national senate, which was convened at his

summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the

adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and

the richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed

the Alps consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of

St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which

tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted

only with a peaceful train; the gates of the city were shut upon

him; and the king of Italy was held a captive by the arms of the

Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of Milan. In the

Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown of the empire;

but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman emperor

immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night within the

walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, 151 whose fancy revived the

visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the

ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries

could observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the

lucrative sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy

secured the election of his son; but such was the shameful

poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was arrested by a

butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained in the public

inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his expenses.

150 (return) [ Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be

considered as a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he

recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the

emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin,

Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always

represents him as a polite and learned prince.]

151 (return) [ Besides the German and Italian historians, the

expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original

colors in the curious Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii.

p. 376-430, by the Abbe de Sade, whose prolixity has never been

blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.]

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty

of the same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull,

which fixes the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the

style of a sovereign and legislator. A hundred princes bowed

before his throne, and exalted their own dignity by the voluntary

honors which they yielded to their chief or minister. At the

royal banquet, the hereditary great officers, the seven electors,

who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed their solemn

and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple

kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne,

and Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and

Arles. The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function

with a silver measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground,

and immediately dismounted to regulate the order of the guests.

The great steward, the count palatine of the Rhine, place the

dishes on the table. The great chamberlain, the margrave of

Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast, the golden ewer and

basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was

represented by the emperor’s brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and

Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great huntsmen, who

introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns and

hounds. 152 Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to

Germany alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the

preeminence of his rank and dignity: he was the first of the

Christian princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the

West: 153 to his person the title of majesty was long

appropriated; and he disputed with the pope the sublime

prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle

of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of

Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the doctrine,

that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth,

from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was

condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the

gospel had pronounced, “And there went forth a decree from Caesar

Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” 154

152 (return) [ See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]

153 (return) [ The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor

at its head, was never represented with more dignity than in the

council of Constance. See Lenfant’s History of that assembly.]

154 (return) [ Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]

If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus

and Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the

two Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the

mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength

under the semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious

legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and

Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, Augustus professed himself the

servant of the state and the equal of his fellow-citizens. The

conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed a popular and legal

form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will was the law

of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed the

voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their

master accepted and renewed his temporary commission to

administer the republic. In his dress, his domestics, 155 his

titles, in all the offices of social life, Augustus maintained

the character of a private Roman; and his most artful flatterers

respected the secret of his absolute and perpetual monarchy.

155 (return) [ Six thousand urns have been discovered of the

slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the

division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the

wool which was spun by the empress’s maids, another for the care

of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract

of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His

Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were

of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of

Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of the

city.]

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part I.

Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Birth, Character, And

Doctrine Of Mahomet.—He Preaches At Mecca.— Flies To

Medina.—Propagates His Religion By The Sword.— Voluntary Or

Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.—His Death And Successors.—The

Claims And Fortunes Of Ali And His Descendants.

After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars of

Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of

Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While

the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was

distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with

the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his

throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of

the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of

his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the

Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the

most memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and

lasting character on the nations of the globe. 1

1 (return) [ As in this and the following chapter I shall display

much Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the

Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters,

who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and

English languages. Their collections, versions, and histories, I

shall occasionally notice.]

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia,

the Arabian peninsula 2 may be conceived as a triangle of

spacious but irregular dimensions. From the northern point of

Beles 3 on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is

terminated by the Straits of Bebelmandel and the land of

frankincense. About half this length may be allowed for the

middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the

Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. 4 The sides of the triangle are

gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a

thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the

peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or

France; but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with

the epithets of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of

Tartary are decked, by the hand of nature, with lofty trees and

luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of

comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in

the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is

intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the

desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and

intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes,

the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious

and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they

alternately raise and scatter, are compared to the billows of the

ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and

buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an

object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood,

that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element

of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize

the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the

torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty

earth: the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia,

that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are

nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is

collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are

the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca, 5

after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of

the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt. Such

is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia. The

experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial

enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh

water, are sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to

the fortunate spots which can afford food and refreshment to

themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry

in the cultivation of the palmtree and the vine. The high lands

that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by their

superior plenty of wood and water; the air is more temperate, the

fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human race more

numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the toil

of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense 6 and

coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the

world. If it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this

sequestered region may truly deserve the appellation of the

happy; and the splendid coloring of fancy and fiction has been

suggested by contrast, and countenanced by distance. It was for

this earthly paradise that Nature had reserved her choicest

favors and her most curious workmanship: the incompatible

blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the natives:

the soil was impregnated with gold 7 and gems, and both the land

and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This

division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to

the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and

it is singular enough, that a country, whose language and

inhabitants have ever been the same, should scarcely retain a

vestige of its ancient geography. The maritime districts of

Bahrein and Oman are opposite to the realm of Persia. The kingdom

of Yemen displays the limits, or at least the situation, of

Arabia Felix: the name of Neged is extended over the inland

space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of

Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea. 8

2 (return) [ The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three

classes: 1. The Greeks and Latins, whose progressive knowledge

may be traced in Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, in Hudson,

Geograph. Minor. tom. i.,) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. ii. p.

159-167, l. iii. p. 211-216, edit. Wesseling,) Strabo, (l. xvi.

p. 1112-1114, from Eratosthenes, p. 1122-1132, from Artemidorus,)

Dionysius, (Periegesis, 927-969,) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. v. 12, vi.

32,) and Ptolemy, (Descript. et Tabulae Urbium, in Hudson, tom.

iii.) 2. The Arabic writers, who have treated the subject with

the zeal of patriotism or devotion: the extracts of Pocock

(Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 125-128) from the Geography of the

Sherif al Edrissi, render us still more dissatisfied with the

version or abridgment (p. 24-27, 44-56, 108, &c., 119, &c.) which

the Maronites have published under the absurd title of Geographia

Nubiensis, (Paris, 1619;) but the Latin and French translators,

Greaves (in Hudson, tom. iii.) and Galland, (Voyage de la

Palestine par La Roque, p. 265-346,) have opened to us the Arabia

of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of the

peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the Bibliotheque

Orientale of D’Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim. 3. The European

travellers; among whom Shaw (p. 438-455) and Niebuhr

(Description, 1773; Voyages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an honorable

distinction: Busching (Geographie par Berenger, tom. viii. p.

416-510) has compiled with judgment, and D’Anville’s Maps (Orbis

Veteribus Notus, and 1re Partie de l’Asie) should lie before the

reader, with his Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208-231. *

Note: Of modern travellers may be mentioned the adventurer who

called himself Ali Bey; but above all, the intelligent, the

enterprising the accurate Burckhardt.—M.]

3 (return) [ Abulfed. Descript. Arabiae, p. 1. D’Anville,

l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 19, 20. It was in this place, the

paradise or garden of a satrap, that Xenophon and the Greeks

first passed the Euphrates, (Anabasis, l. i. c. 10, p. 29, edit.

Wells.)]

4 (return) [ Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning,

1. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a part of

the Mare Rubrum, which was extended to the indefinite space of

the Indian Ocean.

2. That the synonymous words, allude to the color of the blacks

or negroes, (Dissert Miscell. tom. i. p. 59-117.)]

5 (return) [ In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and

Mecca, there are fifteen destitute of good water. See the route

of the Hadjees, in Shaw’s Travels, p. 477.]

6 (return) [ The aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense,

of Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny. Our great poet

(Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors

that are blown by the north-east wind from the Sabaean

coast:——Many a league, Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean

smiles. (Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 42.)]

7 (return) [ Agatharcides affirms, that lumps of pure gold were

found, from the size of an olive to that of a nut; that iron was

twice, and silver ten times, the value of gold, (de Mari Rubro,

p. 60.) These real or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no

gold mines are at present known in Arabia, (Niebuhr, Description,

p. 124.) * Note: A brilliant passage in the geographical poem of

Dionysius Periegetes embodies the notions of the ancients on the

wealth and fertility of Yemen. Greek mythology, and the

traditions of the “gorgeous east,” of India as well as Arabia,

are mingled together in indiscriminate splendor. Compare on the

southern coast of Arabia, the recent travels of Lieut.

Wellsted—M.]

8 (return) [ Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Hostoriae

Arabum of Pocock, (Oxon. 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text

and version are extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory

Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards translated, (Oxon. 1663,

in 4to.;) the three hundred and fifty-eight notes form a classic

and original work on the Arabian antiquities.]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 56 / 79 章

65 (return) [ The policy and donations of Charlemagne are