The great events by famous historians ; a comprehensive and readable account of the world's history, emphasizing the more important events, and presenting these as complete narratives in the master-words of the most eminent historians. Supervising editor, Rossiter Johnson; literary editors: Charles F. Horne, John Rudd; directing editor, Walter F. Austin, with a staff of specialists
Johnson, Rossiter, 1840-1931 | Horne, Charles Francis, 1870-1942, ed | Austin, Walter Forward, 1872- ed | Rudd, John, ed
'D ^A . C) \ COLLEGE J0919 y' ERINDALE 31761 02 \ ;\ V. ik^^ / DIE\-A liJROYT^ (iiSi ' <-'/ X '4^^^ ^^^^^if^ /(^ .. '/:^ar^' tO^ ,i) ^ "p-~~— — -* ^3 ..---.-^ N^/^^^-^-*^ ^V i;^^;^ \ i ^V- ; \ > K. ... ft*u(AP aI \ If ^" VC i ^ \ )G:Ci^;t m."^ M-D'VL„. ,v\<-GT^:f)cir'^; isfeS" «: This is Volume V of a complete set of Issued Strictly as a Limited Edition. In Volume I of this Set mil be found the Official Certificate, under the Seal of the National Alumni, as to the Limitation of the Edition, the Registered Number, and the Name of the Owner. BINDING Vol. V The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original in the Old Royal Collection, British Museum. It was executed for Edward VI by Thomas Berthelet, Royal Binder successively to Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Queen Mary. For beauty of design or skill in execution, Berthelet' s bindings have never been equalled in England. He spent much time on them, and the result of his long career as the foremost English binder artist is the small number of his bindings in the Old Royal Collection. rm A HIS \i ENIS uOD, LL.D. riNO EDITOR /\USTIN\ Li- ^ ittiiai auMHii \ ^<) ^nttni*^ THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS. AND PRE- SENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATH- ERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE. INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIAUSTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. AR- RANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOJIOUGH INDICES, BIBUOG- RAPHIES. CHRONOLOGIES. AND COURSES OF READING SUPERVISING EDITOR ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. LITERARY EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. DIRECTING EDITOR WALTER F. AUSTIN, LL.M. With a staff of specialists VOLUME V 9t Ci^e iSational aiumnf COPYRIGHT, 1905 By the national ALUMNI COPYRIGHT, 1 91 9 By the NATIONAL ALUMNI Iwll*— Ml IIH* ERlNDALt COLLEGE LIBRARY CONTENTS VOLUME V PAGE An Outline Narrative of the Great Events ... xi CHARLES F. HORNE Feudalism: Its Prankish Birth and English Develop- ment (gth to 1 2th Century), .... I WILLIAM STUBBS Decay of the Prankish Empire Division into Modern Prance, Germany, and Italy (a.d. 843-911), 22 FRANgOIS p. G. GUIZOT Career of Alfred the Great {a.d. 871-901). . . . 40 THOMAS HUGHES JOHN R. GREEN Henry the Powler Pounds the Saxon Line of German Kings Origin of the German Burghers or Middle Classes (a.d. 911-936), 82 WOLFGANG MENZEL Conquest of Egypt by the Patimites (a.d. 969), . 94 STANLEY LANE-POOLE Growth and Decadence of Chivalry (loth to 15th Century), ....... 109 LfeON GAUTIER Conversion of Vladimir the Great Introduction of Christianity into Russia (a.d. 988- 1015) 128 A. N. MOURAVIEFF vii via CONTENTS PAGE Lnf £rkson Discovers America (a.d. 1000 ), . . . 141 CHARLES C. RAFN SAGA OF ERIC THE RED Mahometans 'n India Bloody Invasions under Mahmud (a.d. iooo), . . 151 ALEXANDER DOW Canute Becomes King of England (a.d. loiyjf . , 104 DAVm HUME Henry III Deposes the Popes (a.d. 1048 The German Empire Controls the Papacy, . , , '^177 FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS JOSEPH DARRAS Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman Churches (a.d. 1054), 189 HENRY F. TOZER JOSEPH DEHARBE Norman Conquest of England Battle of Hastings ( a.d. 1066), ..... 204 SLR EDWARD S. CREASY Triumphs of Hildehrand ''The Turning-point of the Middle Ages" Henry IV Begs for Mercy at Canossa (am. loyy- 10S5), .231 ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON ARTAUD DE MONTOR Completion of the Domesday Book ( A.D. 10B6), . . 242 CHARLES KNIGHT Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain Growth amd Decay of the Almoravide and Almohade Dynasties (a.d. 1086-1214), . . . .256 S. A. DUNHAM The First Crusade (a.d. iog6-iogg), . . ♦ . • 276 SIR GEORGE W. COX Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars (a.d. 1118), 301 CHARLES G. ADDISON CONTENTS ix PAGE Stephen Usurps the English Crown His Conflicts tvith Matilda Decisive Influence of the Church (a.d. II 35"^ ^54)^ • 3^7 CHARLES KNIGHT Antipapal Democratic Movement Arnold of Brescia St. Bernard and the Second Crusade {a.d. II45~ II55) 340 JOHANN A. W. NEANDER Decline of the Byzantine Empire Ravages of Roger of Sicily {a.d. 1 1 46), . . . 353 GEORGE FINLAY Universal Chronology (a.d. 84J-I161), , . . 365 JOHN RUDD ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME V PikOB Beginning of Christianity in Russia {page IJOjt Painting by A. Kampf . Frontispiece Henry IV, Emperor of Germany^ stands barefooted in the snow at Canossa^ begging admission to Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand), .... 239 Painting by O. Friedridi. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CON- NECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (from CHARLEMAGNE TO FREDERICK BARBAROSSA) CHARLES F. HORNE [he three centuries which follow the downfall of the empire of Charlemagne laid the foun- dations of modem Europe, and made of it a world wholly different, politically, socially, and religiously, from that which had pre- ceded it. In the careers of Greece and Rome we saw exemplified the results of two sharply opposing tendencies of the Aryan mind, the one toward individ- ualism and separation, the other toward self-subordination and union. In the time of Charlemagne's splendid successes it appeared settled that the second of these tendencies was to guide the Teu- tonic Aryans, that the Europe of the future was to be a single empire, ever pushing out its borders as Rome had done, ever subduing its weaker neighbors, until the "Teutonic peace" should be substituted for the shatte'^ "Roman peace," soldiers should be needed only for the duties of police, and a whole civil- ized world again obey the rule of a single man. Instead of this, the race has since followed a destiny of sepa- ration. Europe is divided into many countries, each of them a vast camp bristling with armies and arsenals. Civilization has continued hag-ridden by war even to our own day, and, during at least seven hundred of the years that followed Charlemagne,, mankind made no greater progress in the arts and sciences than riT AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF the andents had sometimes achieved in a single century. We do indeed believe that at last we have entered on an age of rapid advance, that individualism has justified itself. The wider per- sonal liberty of to-day is worth all that the race has sufifered for it. Yet the retardation of wellnigh a thousand years has surely been a giant price to pay. DOWNFALL OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE This mighty change in the course of Teutonic destiny, this breakdown of the Prankish empire, was wrought by two destroy- ing forces, one from within, one from without. From within came the insubordination, the still savage love of combat, the natural turbulence of the race. It is conceivable that, had Charlemagne been followed on the throne by a son and then a grandson as mighty as he and his immediate ancestors, the course of the whole broad earth would have been altered. The Franks would have grown accustomed to obey; further con- quest abroad would have insured peace at home; the imperial power would have become strong as in Roman days, when the most feeble emperors could not be shaken. But the descend- ants of Charlemagne sank into a decline. He himself had di- rected the fighting energy of the Franks against foreign enemies. His son and successor had no taste for wai, and so allowed his idle subjects time to quarrel with him and with one another. The next generation, under the grandsons of Charlemagne, de- voted their entire lives to repeated and furious civil wars, in which the empire fell apart, the flower of the Frankish race per- ished, and the strength of its dominion was sapped to nothing- ness.* There were three of these grandsons, and, when their strug- gle had left them thoroughly exhausted, they divided the empire into three. Their treaty of Verdun (843) is often quoted as be- ginning the modem kingdoms of Germany, France, and Italy. The division was in some sense a natural one, emphasized by differences of language and of race. Italy was peopled by descend- ants of the ancient Italians, with a thin intermingling of Goths and Lombards; France held half- Romanized Gauls, with a very considerable percentage of the Frankish blood ; while Germany ' See Dtcay of Frankish Empire page »« THE GREAT EVENTS xv was far more barbaric than the other regions. Its people, whether Frank or Saxon, were all pure Teuton, and still spoke in their Teutonic or German tongue. The Franks themselves, however, did not regard this as a breaking of their empire. They looked on it as merely a family aflfair, an arrangement made for the convenience of government among the descendants of the great Charles. So firm had been that mighty hero's grasp upon the national imagination, that the Franks accepted as matter of course that his family should bear rule, and raUied round the vaiiou w .thles: members of it with rather pathetic loyalty, fightmg for them one against the other, reuniting and redividing the various fragments cf the empire, until the feeble Carlovingian race died out completely. It is thus evident that there was a strong tendency toward union among the Franks. But there was also an outside influ- ence to disrupt their empire. Charlemagne had not carried far enough their career of conquest. He subdued the Teutons within the Hmits of Germany, but he did not reach their weaker Scandinavian brethren to the north, the Danes and Norsemen. He chastised the Avars, a vague non- Aryan people east of Ger- many, but he could not make provision against future Asiatic swarms. He humbled the Arabs in Spain, but he did not break their African dominion. From all these sources, as the Franks grew weaker instead of stronger, their lands became exposed to new invasion. THE LAST INVADERS Let us take a moment to trace the fortunes of these outside races, though the main destiny of the future still lay with Teu- tonic Europe. In speaking of the followers of Mahomet, we might perhaps at this period better drop the term Arabs, and call them Sara- cens. They were thus known to the Christians; and their con- quests had drawn in their train so many other peoples that in truth there was little pure Arab blood left among them. The Saracens, then, had begun to lose somewhat of their intense fanaticism. Feuds broke out among them. Different chiefs es- tablished different kingdoms or "caliphates," whose dominion became political rather than religious. Spain had one ruler, xvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF Egypt* another, Asia a third. In the eleventh century an army of Saracens invaded India' and added that strange and ancient land to their domain. Europe they had failed to conquer; but their fleets commanded the Mediterranean. They held all its islands, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, and Corsica. They plundered the coast towns of France and Italy. There was a Saracenic rav- aging of Rome. On the whole, however, the wave of Mahometan conquest receded. In Spain the remnants of the Christian population, Visigoths, Romans, and still older peoples, pressed their way down from their old-time, secret moimtain retreats and began driving the Saracens southward.* The decaying Roman Empire of the East still resisted the Mahometan attack; Constantinople remained a splendid city, type and picture of what the ancient world had been. While the Saracens were thus laying waste the Frankish em- pire along its Mediterranean coasts, a more dangerous enemy was assailing it from the east. Toward the end of the ninth cen- tury the Magyars, an Asiatic, Turanian people, burst on Europe, as the Huns had done five centuries before. Indeed, the Chris- tians called these later comers Huns also, and told of them the same extravagant tales of terror. The land which the Magyars settled was called Hungary. They dwell there and possess it even to this day, the only instance of a Turanian people having permanently established themselves in an Aryan continent and at the expense of Aryan neighbors. From Hungary the Magyars soon advanced to the German border line, and made fierce plundering inroads upon the more civilized regions beyond. They came on horseback, so that the slower Teutons could never gather quickly enough to resist them. The marauding parties, as they learned the wealth and weak- ness of this new land, grew bigger, until at length they were ar- mies, and defeated the German Franks in pitched battles, and spread desolation through all the country. They returned now every year. Their ravages extended even to the Rhine and to the ancient Gallic land beyond. The Frankish empire seemed • See Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites, page 94. • See Mahometans in India, page 151. • See Decline of the Moorish Power in Sfiain, page 256. THE GREAT EVENTS xvii doomed to reenact, in a smaller, far more savage way, the fate of Rome. Yet more widespread in destruction, more important in re- sult than the raids of either Saracens or Magyars, were those of the Scandinavians or Northmen. These, the latest, and perhaps therefore the finest, flower of the Teutonic stock, are closer to us and hence better known than the early Goths or Franks. Shut off in their cold northern peninsulas and islands, they had grown more slowly, it may be, than their southern brethren. Now they burst suddenly on the world with spectacular dramatic effect, wild, fierce, and splendid conquerors, as keen of intellect and quick of wit as they were strong of arm and daring of advent- ure. We see them first as sea-robbers, pirates, venturing even in Charlemagne's time to plunder the German and French coasts. One tribe of them, the Danes, had already been harrying Eng- land and Ireland. Only Alfred,* by heroic exertions, saved a fragment of his kingdom from them. Later, under Canute,' they become its kings. The Northmen penetrate Russia and appear as rulers of the strange Slavic tribes there; they settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even distant and unknown Amer- ica.^ Meanwhile," after Charlemagne's death they become a main factor in the downfall of his empire. Year after year their Httle ships plunder the undefended French coast, until it is abandoned to them and becomes a desert. They build winter camps at the river mouths, so that in the spring they need lose less time and can hurry inland after their retreating prey. Sudden in attack, strong in defence, they venture hundreds of miles up the wind- ing waterways. Paris is twice attacked by them and must fight for Ufe. They penetrate so far up the Loire as to burn Orleans. It was under stress of all these assaults that the Franks, grown too feeble to defend themselves as Charlemagne would have done, by marching out and pursuing the invaders to their own homes, developed instead a system of defence which made the Middle Ages what they were. All central authority seemed ' Sec Career of Alfred the Great, page 49. • See Canute Becomes King of England, page 164, • See luif Ericson Discovers America^ page \\u xviii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF lost; each little community was left to defend itself as best it might. So the local chieftain built himself a rude fortress, which in time became a towered castle; and thither the people fled in time of danger. Each man looked up to and swore faith to this, his own chief, his immediate protector, and took little thought of a distant and feeble king or emperor. Occasionally, of course, a stronger lord or king bestirred himself, and demanded homage of these various petty chieftains. They gave him such service as they wished or as they must. This was the "feudal system." * The incUnation of each lesser lord was obviously to assert as much independence as he could. He naturally objected to pay- ing money or service without benefit received; and he could see no good that this "overlord" did for him or for his district. It seemed Ukely at this time that instead of being divided into three kingdoms, the Prankish empire would split into thousands of little castled states. That is, it seemed so, after the various marauding nations were disposed of. The Northmen were pacified by presenting them outright with the coast lands they had most harried. Their great leader, Rolf, accepted the territory with some vague and ill-kept promise of vassalage to the French King, and with a very firmly held determination that he would let no pirates ravage his land or cross it to reach others. So the French coast became Normandy, and the Northmen learned the tongue and manners of their new home, and softened their harsh name to " Norman," even as they softened their harsh ways, and rapidly became the most able and most cultured of Frenchmen. As for the Saracens, being unprogressive and no longer en- thusiastic, they grew ever feebler, while the ItaUan cities, being Aryan and left to themselves, grew strong. At length their fleets met those of the Saracens on equal terms, and defeated them, and gradually wrested from them the control of the Medi- terranean. Invaders were thus everywhere met as they came, locally. There was no general gathering of the Frankish forces against them. The repulse of the Huns proved the hardest matter of all. Fortunately for the Germans, their line of Carlovingian empcr- ' See Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth and English Development^ page I. THE GREAT EVENTS xix ors dieu out. So the various dukes and counts, practically each an independent sovereign, met and elected a king from among themselves, not really to rule them, but to enable them to unite against the Huns. After their first elected king had been soundly beaten by one of his dukes, he died, and in their next choice they had the luck to light upon a leader really great. Henry the Fowler, more honorably known as Henry the City-builder,^ taught them how to defeat their foe. Much to the disgust of his simple and war-hardened com- rades, he first sent to the Hungarians and purchased peace and paid them tribute. Having thus secured a temporary respite, Henry encouraged and aided his people in building walled cities all along the frontier. He also planned to meet the invaders on equal terms by training his warriors to fight on horseback. He instituted tournaments and created an order of knighthood, and is thus generally regarded as the founder of chivalry, that fairest fruit of mediaeval times, which did so much to preserve honor and tenderness and respect for womankind.* When he felt all prepared, Henry deliberately defied and in- sulted the Hungarians, and so provoked from them a combined national invasion, which he met and completely overthrew in the battle of Merseburg (933). A generation later the Huns felt themselves strong enough to try again; but Henry's son. Otto the Great, repeated the chastisement. He then formed a bound- ary colony or " East-mark" from which sprang Austria;' and this border kingdom was always able to keep the weakened Huns in check. At the same time there was growing up in Russia a Slavic civilization, which received Christianity' from the South as it had received Teutonic dominion from the North, and so devel- oped along very similar Unes to Western Europe. The Russian states served as a barrier against later Asiatic hordes; and this, combined with the civilizing of the last remnants of the Scandi- navians in the North, and the fading of Saracenic power in the South, left the tottering civilization of the West free from further ' See Henry the Fowler Founds the Saxon Line of German Kings ^ page 82. ' See Growth and Decadence of Chivalry, page 109. ' See Conversion of Vladimir the Great, page 128. XX AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF barbarian invasion. We shall find destruction threatened again in later ages by Tartar and by Turk; but the intruders never reach beyond the frontier. The Teutons and the half-Roman- ized ancients with whom they had assimilated were left to work out their own problems. All the ingredients, even to the last, the Northmen, had been poured into the caldron. There re- mains to see what the intermingling has brought forth. FEUDAL EUROPE We have here, then, somewhere about the middle of the tenth century, a date which may be regarded as marking a dis- tinctly new era. The ceaseless work of social organization and improvement, which seems so strong an instinct of the Aryan mind, had been recommenced again and again from under re- peated deluges of barbarism. To-day for nearly a thousand years it has progressed uninterrupted, except by disturbances from within; nor does it appear possible, with our present knowledge of science and of the remoter comers of the globe, that our civil- ization will ever again be even menaced by the other races. Chronologists frequently adopt as a convenient starting-point for this modem development the year 962, in which Otto the Great, conqueror of the Huns, felt himself strong enough to march a German army to Rome and assume there the title of emperor, which had been long in abeyance. To be sure, there was still an Emperor of the East in Constantinople, but nobody thought of him; and, to be sure, the power of Otto and the later emperors was purely German, with scarce a pretence of extend- ing beyond their own country and sometimes Italy. Yet here was at least one restored influence that made toward unity and, by its own devious and erratic ways, toward peace. It must not be supposed, of course, that there was no more war. But, as it became a private afifair between relatives, or at least acquaintances, its ravages were greatly reduced. It was accepted as the "pastime of gentlemen," "the sport of kings"; and though we may quote the phrases to-day with kindling sar- casm, yet they open a very different vision from that of the older inroads by unknown hordes, frenzied with the passion and the purpose of the brute. The usefulness of the common people was recognized, and they were allowed to continue to live and THE GREAT EVENTS xxi cultivate the ground; while all the great dukes and even the lesser nobles, having secured as many castles as possible, in- trenched themselves in their strongholds and defied all comers. They asserted their right of "private war" and attacked each other upon every conceivable provocation, whether it were the disputed succession to some vast estate or the ravage spread by a reckless cow in a foreign field. Indeed, it is not always easy to distinguish these private wars from mere robberies or plunder- ing expeditions; and it is not probable that the wild barons ex- ercised any very delicate discrimination. Even Otto the Great had little real influence or authority over such lords as these. His immediate successors found themselves with even less. In short, it was the golden age of feudahsm, of the individual feudal lords. In Italy there was no central authority whatever, nor among the Httle Christian states gradually arising in Spain. In France and England the title of king was but a name. France was really composed of a dozen or more independent counties and dukedoms. For a while its lords elected a king as the Ger- mans did; and gradually the title became hereditary in the Capet family, the counts of Paris, who had fought most val- iantly against the Northmen. But the entire power of these so- called kings lay in their own estates, in the fact that they were counts of Paris, and by marriage or by force were slowly adding new possessions to their old. Any other noble might have been equally fortunate in his investments, and wrested from them their purely honorary title. In fact, there was more than once a king of Aquitaine. Yet, in 1066, WiUiam the Conqueror was able to form for a moment a strong and centralized monarchy in England.* With him we reach the period of the second Northmen, or now Nor- man, outbreak. The marauders had grown pohshed, but not peaceful, in their French home. They had become more nu- merous and more restless, until we find them again taking to their ships and seeking newer lands to master. Only they go now as a civilizing as well as a devastating influence. Most famed of their undertakings, of course, was William's Conquest of England. But we find them also sailing along the Spanish coast, entering the Mediterranean, seizing the Balearic ' See Norman Conquest of England, page 204. xxii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF Isles, making out of Sicily and most of Southern Italy a kingdom which lasted untU i860, and finally ravaging the Eastern Em- pire, and entering Constantinople itseK.^ Last and mightiest of the wandering races, they accomplished what all their predeces- sors had failed to do. In England, WiUiam, with the shrewdness of his race, recog- nized the tendencies of the age, and erected a state so planned that there could be no question as to who was master. He gave fiefs Hberally to his followers; but he took care that the gifts should be in small and scattered parcels. No one man con- trolled any region sufficiently extensive to give him the faintest chance of defying the King. WiUiam had the famous Domesday Book ' compiled, that he might know just what every freeman in his dominions owned and for what he could be held accountable. The England of the later days of the Conqueror seemed far ad- vanced upon our modem ways. But what can one man, however able and advanced, do against the current of his age ? History shows us constantly that the great reformers have been those who felt and followed the general feeling of their times, who became mouthpieces for the great mass of thought and effort behind them, not those who struggled against the tide. WiUiam's successors failed to com- prehend what he had done, or why. By the time of Stephen (ii35)"we find the barons of England wellnigh as powerful as those of other lands. A civil war arises in which Stephen and his rival Matilda are scarce more than pawns upon the board. The lords shift sides at will, retreat to safety in their strong cas- tles, plunder the common folk, and make private war quite as they please. If any sage before the reign of the Emperor Barbarossa, that is, before the middle of the twelfth century, had studied to pre- dict the course of society, he would probably have said that the empire was wholly destroyed, and that the principle of separa- tion was becoming ever more insistent, that even kings were mere fading relics of the past, and that the future world would soon see every lordship an independent state. ' See Decline of the Byzantine Empire, page 353. • See Completion of the Domesday Book, page 342. • See Stephen Usurps the English Crown ^ page 317. I THE GREAT EVENTS xxiii THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY UNDER FEUDALISM Amid all this turmoil of the upper classes, one would like much to know what was the condition, what the lives, of the common people. Unfortunately, the data are very slight. We see dimly the peasant staring from his field as the armed knights ride by; we see him fleeing to the shelter of the forests before more savage bandits. We see the people of the cities drawing together, building walls around their towns, and defying in their turn their so-called "overlords." We see Henry the City- builder thus become champion of the lower classes, despite the strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly disinter- ested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants drift along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of all, we see one Arnold of Brescia,* an ItaUan monk, advocating a democracy, actually urging a return to what he supposed early Rome to have been, a government by the masses. Arnold, too, you see, was in advance of his time. He was executed by the advice of even so good and wise a man as St. Bernard. But the principle of modem hfe was there, the germ seems to have been planted. These humble people of the cities, "citizens," grow to be rulers of the world. There was a revival, too, of learning in this quieter age. Schools and universities become clearly visible. Abelard teaches at the great University of Paris, lectures to "forty thousand students," if one chooses to beheve in such carrying power of his voice, or such radiating power of his influence at second hand through those who heard. The arts spring up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries, queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation is improved. Manuscripts are gor- geously illumined. Paintings and mosaics, though of the crud- est, reappear on long-barren walls. Civilization begins to ad- vance with increasing stride. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Of all the influences that through these wandering and deso- late ages had sustained humanity and helped it onward, the ' See Antipapal Democratic Movement, page 340. xxiv AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF mightiest has been left to speak of last. It was Christianity, a Christianity which had by now taken definite form as the Roman Catholic Church. Strongest of all the institutions bequeathed by the ancient empire to her conquerors was this Church. In- deed, it has been said that Rome had influenced Christianity quite as much as Christianity did Rome. The legal-minded Romans insisted on the laying out of exact doctrines and creeds, on the building of a definite organization, a priesthood, a hierarchy. They lent the weight of law to what had been but individual belief and impulse. Thus the Church grew hard and strong. In the same manner that the early emperors had ordered the persecution of Christianity, so the later ones ordered the perse- cution of heathendom, nor had the Church grown civilized or Christian enough to oppose this method of conversion. Luckily for all parties, however, the heathen were scarce sufiiciently en- thusiastic to insist on martyrdom, and so the persecuting spirit which man ultimately imparted to even the purest of religions remained latent. With the downfall of Rome there came another interval in which the Church was weak, and was trampled on by barba- rians, and was heroic. Then the bishops of Rome joined forces with P^pin and Charlemagne. Christianity became physically powerful again. The Saxons were converted by the sword. So, also, in Henry the Fowler's time, were the Slavic Wends. These Roman bishops, or "popes," were accepted unquestioned throughout Western Europe as the leaders of a militant Chris- tianity, a position never after denied them until the sixteenth century. In the East, however, the bishops of Constantinople insisted on an equal, if not higher, authority, and so the two churches broke apart.* In the West, Christianity undoubtedly did great good. Its teachings, though applied by often fallible instruments and in blundering ways, yet never completely lost sight of their own higher meanings of mercy and peace. From the Abbey of Cluny originated that quaint mediaeval idea of the "truce of God," by which nobles were very widely persuaded to restrict their private ' See Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman Churches, page 189. THE GREAT EVENTS xxv wars to the middle of the week, and reserve at least Friday, Sat- urday, and Sunday as days of brotherly love and religious devo- tion. The Church also, from very early days, founded monas- teries, wherein learning and the knowledge of the past were kept alive, where pity continued to exist, where the oppressed found refuge. It is from these monasteries that all the arts and schol- arship of the eleventh century begin dimly to emerge. Moreover, the fact that the Teutons were all of a common religion undoubtedly held them much closer together, made them more merciful among themselves, more nearly a unit against the outside world. Perhaps in this respect more impor- tant even than the religion was the Church; that is, the hierar- chy, the vast army of monks and priests, abbots and bishops, spread over all kingdoms, yet looking always toward Rome. Here at least was one common centre for Western civilization, one mighty influence that all men acknowledged, that all to some faint extent obeyed. THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY The power thus concentrating in the Roman papacy made the office one to attract eager ambition. It has a poUtical history of its own. At first the Christian populace that continued to dwell in Rome despite the repeated spoliations, elected, from among themselves, their own pope or bishop, regarding him not only as their spiritual guide, but as their earthly leader and protector also. Naturally, in their distress, they chose the very ablest man they could, their wisest and their noblest. It was no pleasant task being pope in those dark days ; and sometimes the bravest shrank from the position. But centuries of war and self-defence developed a Roman populace more fierce and savage and degenerate, while the growing importance of their pope beyond the city's walls brought wealth and splendor to his office. The result was that some very unsaintly popes were elected amid unseemly squabbles. The conditions surrounding the high office became so bad that they were felt as a disgrace throughout all Christendom; and in 1046 the German emperor Henry III took upon himself to depose three fiercely contending Romans, each claiming to be pope. He appointed in their stead a candidate of his own, not a dweller xxvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF in the city at all, but a German. Henry, therefore, must have considered the duties of the pope as bishop of the Romans to be far less important than his duties as head of the Church outside of Rome/ So necessary had this interference by the Emperor become that it was everywhere approved. Yet as he continued to appoint pope after pope, churchmen reaHzed that in the hands of an evil emperor this method of securing their head might prove quite as dangerous and unsatisfactory as the former one. So the Church took the matter in hand and declared that a conclave of its own highest officials should thereafter choose the man who was to lead them. Under this surely more suitable arrangement, the papal office rose at once in dignity. It was held for a time by true leaders, earnest prelates of the highest worth and abihty. We have said that the rank of the bishop of Rome as head of the Church had never been seriously questioned among the Teutons; but now the popes asserted a political authority as well. They regarded themselves, theoretically, as supreme heads of the entire Chris- tian world. They claimed and even partly exercised the right to create and depose kings and emperors. To such a supremacy as this, however, the Teutons were still too rude and warlike to submit. Much is made of the fact that the Emperor Henry IV was compelled to come as a suppHant to Pope Gregory at Canossa, 1077.' But this submission was only forced on him by quar- rels with his barons, who welcomed the Pope as a chance ally. It proved the power of feudalism rather than that of reUgion. Still we may trace here the beginnings of a later day when spirit was really to dominate bodily force, when ideas should prove stronger than swords. THE FIRST CRUSADE Under these aroused and able popes, the Western world was stirred to the first widespread religious enthusiasm since the an- cient days of persecution. Jerusalem, long in the hands of a tol- erant sect of Saracens who welcomed the coming of Christian worshippers as a source of revenue, was captured in 1075 ^y ^^" • See Henry III Deposes the Popes, page 177. • See Triumphs of Hildebrand, page 231. THE GREAT EVENTS cxvii other more fanatic Mahometan sect, and word came back to Eu- rope that pilgrimage was stopped. The crusades followed. A great mass of warriors from every nation of the West, men who certainly had never intended to go on pilgrimage themselves, were roused to what seems a some- what perverse anger of reUgious devotion. Under the lead of Godfrey of Bouillon they marched eastward, saw the wonders of Constantinople, marvellous indeed to their ruder eyes, de- feated the sultans of Asia Minor and of Antioch, and ended by storming Jerusalem, and erecting there a Christian kingdom where Mahometanism had ruled for nearly five hundred years.* Of course, a great flow of pilgrims followed them. Religious orders of knighthood were formed ^ to help defend the shrine of Christ and to extend Christian conquest farther through the sur- rounding regions. Travel began again. Europe, after having forgotten Asia for seven centuries, was introduced once more to its languor, its splendor, and its vices. The Aryan peoples had at last filled full their little world of Western Europe. They had reached among themselves a state of law and union, confused and weak, perhaps, yet secure enough to enable them once more to overflow their boundaries and become again the aggressivcj intrusive race we have seen them in earlier days. ' See TTie First Crusade^ page 276. • See Foundation of the Order of Kmght% Templars^ paije 301. IFOR THE KEXT SECTION OP THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME fH FEUDALISM : ITS PRANKISH BIRTH AND ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT NINTH TO TWELFTH CENTURY WILLIAM STUBBS That social system— however varying in different times and places— in which ownership of land is the basis of authority is known in history as feudalism. From the time of Clovis, the Frankish King, who died in a.d. 511, the progress of the Franks in civilization was slow, and for more than two centuries they spent their energies mainly in useless wars. But Charles Martel and his son, Pdpin the Short— the latter dying in 768— built up a kingdom which Charlemagne erected into a powerful empire. Under the predecessors of Charlemagne the beginnings of feudalism, which are very obscure, may be said vaguely to appear. Charles Martel had to buy the services of his nobles by granting them lands, and al- though he and Pdpin strengthened the royal power, which Charlemagne still further increased, under the weak rulers who followed them the forces of the incipient feudalism again became active, and the State was divided into petty countships and dukedoms almost independent of the king. The gift of land by the king in return for feudal services was called a feudal grant, and the land so given was termed a " feud " or " fief." In the course of time fiefs became hereditary. Lands were also sometimes usurped or otherwise obtained by subjects, who thereby became feudal lords. By a process called " subinfeudation," lands were granted in par- cels to other men by those who received them from the king or otherwise, and by these lower landholders to others again ; and as the first recipient became the vassal of the king and the suzerain of the man who held next below him, there was created a regular descending scale of such vassalage and suzerainty, in which each man's allegiance was directly due to his feudal lord, and not to the king himself. From the king down to the low- est landholder all were bound together by obligation of service and de- fence ; the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord. These are the essential features of the social system which, from its early growth under the later Carlovingians in the ninth century, spread over Europe and reached its highest development in the twelfth century. At a time midway between these periods it was carried by the Norman Conquest into England. The history of this system of distinctly Frank- ish origin— a knowledge of which is absolutely essential to a proper under E., VOL. v.— I. 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM standing of history and the evolution of our present social system — is totk by Stubbs with that discernment and thoroughness of analysis which have given him his rank as one of the few masterly writers in this field. pEUDALISM had grown up from two great sources — the beneficium, and the practice of commendation — and had been specially fostered on Gallic soil by the existence of a sub- ject population which admitted of any amount of extension in the methods of dependence. The beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land made by the kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and servants, with a special undertaking to be faithful; partly in the surrender by land-owners of their estates to churches or powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he who felt himself insecure placed his title imder the defence of the church. By the practice of commendation, on the other hand, the inferior put himself under the personal care of a lord, but with- out altering his title or divesting himself of his right to his estate; he became a vassal and did homage. The placing of his hands between those of his lord was the typical act by which the con- nection was formed; and the oath of fealty was taken at the same time. The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation — the twofold engagement: that of the lord, to defend; and that of the vassal, to be faithful. A third ingredient was supplied by the grants of immunity by which in the Frank empire, as in England, the possession of land was united with the right of judicature; the dwellers on a feudal property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the rights which had belonged to the nation or to its chosen head were devolved upon the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of the system thus originated, and the assimilation of all other tenures to it, may be regarded as the work of the tenth century; but as early as a.d. 877 Charles the Bald recognized the hereditary character of all benefices; and from that year the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence may be held to date. The system testifies to the countiy and causes of its birth. 