History Of Latin Christianity : Including That Of The Popes To The Pontificate Of Nicolas V. (Vol-Iii)
Henry Hart Milman
-a 2 & § U-O.S §.5 <3 * gs|sJ|« 8 - 1 I 3 1 J fc< j « * 30 E.S Hi §1 23 S5£ "2 I * 1 -I •5 J 11 <55 I 1 1 111 2- sag 5 8 S^A = s w b, pi So -Ml* BJ'J Book V. CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY. 63 5-5 £ a 5 ~. S If I 0>A ft s • §8 S3 I I 1 1 J8 is KM ill l ill i i gg 1 i ll > 3 > . >~Z ^ ^%=> > ==>> >< - ~t> -a ^ | a J* .a B > ffij, B - jS= = s 5 c r; s g,3 a a-r r s5 c ? S= & k2<; * t-qss -ns ss -=c: * ess ^oUa »? sc « s r. o> c: cj os a c. » -. Ac. cs os as ©©so o © o * mi m i { 54 ) Book V book v. CHAPTEE I. Charlemagne. The empire of Charlemagne was almost commensurate Empire of ^th Latin Christendom ; a England was the cuariemagne. on jy l&Yge territory, which acknowledged the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome, not in subjection to the Empire. Two powers held sway in Latin Christen- dom, the Emperor and the Pope : of these incomparably the greatest at this time was the Emperor. Charlemagne, with the appellation, assumed the full sovereignty of the Caesars, united with the commanding vigour of a great Teutonic conqueror. Beyond the Alps he was a Ger- man sovereign, assembling in his Diet the whole nobility of the Romanised Teutonic nations, and bringing the still barbarous races by force under his yoke. In Italy he was a northern conqueror, though the ally of the Pope and of Rome. But he was likewise an Emperor attempting to organise his vast dominions with the com- prehensive policy of Roman administration, though not without respect for Teutonic freedom. He was the sole legislator in ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs; the Carolinian institutions embrace the Church as well as • Compare limits of the empire of Charles — Eginhard, Vit. Car. xv. He tocludes within it the whole of Italy, from Aosta to Lower Calabria. Chap. I. EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 65 the State ; his Council at Frankfort dictates to the West, in despite of Papal remonstrances, on the great subject of image-worship. For centuries no monarch had stood so high, so alone, so unapproachable as Charlemagne. He ruled — ruled absolutely — by that strongest absolutism, the overawed or spontaneously consentient, cordially obedient, co-operative will of all other powers. He ruled from the Baltic to the Ebro, from the British Channel to the duchy of Benevento, even to the Straits of Messina. In personal dignity, who, it must not be said rivalled, approximated in the least degree, to Charlemagne ? He had added, by his personal prowess in war, and this in a warlike age, by his unwearied activity, and by what success would glorify as military skill, almost all Germany, Spain to the Ebro, the kingdom of the Lombards, to the realm of the Franks and to Christendom. Huns, Avars, Slavians, tribes of unknown name and descent, had been repelled or subdued. His one defeat, that of Roncesvalles, is only great in recent poetry. b Every rebel, the independent German princes, like Tassilo of Bavaria, had been crushed; the obstinate Saxon, pur- sued to the court of the Danish King, at last became a subject and a Christian. On the Byzantine throne had sat an iconoclastic heretic, a boy, and a woman a mur- deress. Hadrian, during his long pontificate, had worn the Papal tiara with majesty. His successor, maimed and maltreated, had failen to implore protection before the throne of Charlemagne; he had been obliged to clear himself of enormous crimes, to purge himself by * See in H. Martin, Histoire de d'Altabi^r, said to have been pre* France, ii. p. 373, the very curious served from the ninth or tenth century and spirited song (from a French his- among the Pyrenean mountaineers, foric periodical), called the Chant VOL. III. F 66 LATIN CHJaiSTTANITT. Book V. oath before, what seemed to all, o the superior tribunal of the Emperor. The gift of the Imperial crown had been the flattering homage of a grateful subject, somewhat loftily and disdainfully received; the donations of Charlemagne to the Pope were the prodigal but spon- taneous alms of a religious King to the Church which he condescended to protect — free grants, or tlje recogni- tion of grants from his pious ancestors. Nor was it on signal occasions only that Charlemagne interfered in the affairs of the Church. His all com- prehending, all pervading, all compelling administration was equally and constantly felt by his ecclesiastical as by his civil subjects. The royal commissioners inspected the conduct, reported on the lives, fixed and defined the duties, settled the tenure of property and its obligations? determined and apportioned the revenues of the religious as well as of the temporal hierarchy. The formularies of the Empire are the legal and authorised rules to bishops and abbots as to nobles and knights. The ecclesiastical unity is but a subordinate branch of the temporal unity. The State, the Empire, not the Church, is during the reign of Charlemagne a supreme unresisted autocracy. Later romance has fallen below, rather than heightened, the full reality of his power and authority. But it was only during his long indeed but transitory His power reign. Eor the power of Charlemagne was personal, altogether personal, and therefore unendur- ing : it belonged to the man, to the conqueror, to the legislator, to the patron of letters and art, to Charles the Great. At his death the Empire inevitably fell to pieces, only to be re-united occasionally and partially by some one great successor like Otho L, or some great house like that of Swabk. It was the first and last successful attempt to consolidate, under one vast empire, Chap. I. THE PAPACY. 67 the Teutonic and Eoman races, the nations of pure Ger- man origin and those whose languages showed the pre- dominance of the Eoman descent. It had its inherent elements of anarchy and of weakness in the first prin- ciples of the Teutonic character, the independence of the separate races, the vague notions of succession, which fluctuated between elective and hereditary sove- reignty with the evils of both ; the Empire transmitted into feeble hands by inheritance, or elections contested by one-half the Empire ; above all, in the ages imme- diately following Charlemagne, the separation of the Empire into independent kingdoms, which became the appanages of several sons, in general the most deadly enemies to each other. It was no longer, it could not be, a single realm united by one wide-embracing admi- nistration, but a system of hostile and conflicting states, of which the boundaries, the powers, the wealth, the resources, were in incessant change and vicissitude. The Papacy must await its time, a time almost cer- tain to arrive. The Papacy, too, had its own ^ ^ & source of weakness, the want of a settled and e apac ' authoritative elective body. It had its periods of anarchy, of menaced — it might seem, at the close of the tenth century, inevitable — dissolution. But it depended not on the sudden and accidental rise of great men to its throne. It knew no minorities, no divisions or subdivi- sions of its power between heirs of coequal and therefore conflicting rights. It was a succession of mature men; and the interests of the higher ranks of its subjects, of the hierarchy, even of the great ecclesiastical potentates throughout the West, were so bound up with his own, that the Pope had not to strive against sovereigns as powerful as himself. Till the times of the anti-popes the papal power, though often obscured, especially in F 2 LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book V* Kome itself, appeared to the world as one and indivi- sible. Its action was almost uniform; at least it had all the steadiness and inflexibility of a despotism — a despotism, if not of force, of influence, of sympathy, and of cordial concurrence among all its multifarious agencies throughout the world to its aggrandisement. But the empire of Charlemagne, as being Ahe great epoch in the annals of Latin Christendom, demands more full consideration. Out of his universal Empire in the West and out of his Institutes rose, to a great degree, the universal empire of the Church and the whole mediaeval polity; feudalism itself. Western Europe became, as it were, one through his conquests, which gathered within its frontiers all the races of Teutonic origin (except the formidable Northmen, or Normans, who, after endangering its existence, or at least menacing the re-barbarising of many of its king- doms, were to be the founders of kingdoms within its pale), and those conquests even encroached on some tribes of Slavian descent. It became a world within the world ; on more than one side bordered by Moham- medanism, on one by the hardly less foreign Byzantine Empire, The history, therefore, of Latin Christianity must survey the character of the founder of this Empire, the extent of his dominions, his civil as well as his eccle- siastical institutes. As yet we have only traced him in his Italian conquests, as the ally and protector of the Popes. He must be seen as the sovereign and law- giver of Transalpine as well as of Cisalpine Europe. 0 Karl, according to his German appellation, was the model of a Teutonic chieftain, in his gigantic stature, enormous strength, and indefatigable activity ; temperate c Eginhard, Vit. Car. sub fine. Chap, t CHARACTER OF CHARLEMAGNE. 69 in diet, and superior to the barbarous vice of drunk- enness. Hunting and war were bis chief occu- Thecharacter pations; and his wars were carried on with all 2*gn!L re " the ferocity of encountering savage tribes. But he was likewise a Eoman Emperor, not only in his vast and organising policy, he had that one vice of the old Roman civilisation which the Merovingian kings had indulged, though not perhaps with more unbounded lawlessness. The religious Emperor, in one respect, troubled not himself with the restraints of religion. The humble or grateful Church beheld meekly, and almost without remonstrance, the irregularity of domestic life, which not merely indulged in free licence, but treated the sacred rite of marriage as a covenant dissoluble at his pleasure. Once we have heard, and but once, the Church raise its authoritative, its comminatory voice, and that not to forbid the King of the Franks from wedding a second wife while his first was alive, but from marrying a Lombard princess. One pious eccle- siastic alone in his dominions, he a relative, ventured to protest aloud. Charles repudiated his first wife to marry the daughter of Desiderius; and after a year repudiated her to marry Hildegard, a Swabian lady. By Hildegard he had six children. On her death he married Fastrada, who bore him two ; a nameless con- cubine another. On Fastrada's death he married Liut- gardis, a German, who died without issue. On her decease he was content with four concubines. 1 A darker suspicion, arising out of the loose character of ids daughters, none of whom he allowed to marry, but carried them about with him to the camp as well as the * The reading is doubtful. Which gives three. Bouquet has quatuor. Pertz has followed a MS. 70 LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book 7 court, has been insinuated, but without the least war- rant from history. Under the same double character of the Teutonic and the Eoman Emperor, Charlemagne introduced Eoman arts and civilisation into the remoter parts of his dominions. Aix-la-Chapelle, his capital, became, in buildings and in the marble and mosaic decorations of his palace, a Koman city, in wnich Karl sat in the midst of his Teutonic Diet. The patron of Latin letters, the friend of Alcuin, encouraged the com- pilation of a grammar in the language of his Teutonic subjects. The hero of the Saxon poet's Latin hexameter panegyric collected the old bardic lays of Germany. Even Charlemagne's fierce wars bore Christianity and civilisation in their train. The Saxon wars of Charlemagne, which added almost the whole of Germany to his dominions, were avowedly religious wars. If Boniface was the Christian, Charlemagne was the Mohammedan, Apostle of the Gospel. The declared object of his invasions, according to his biographer, was the extinction of hea- thenism ; e subjection to the Christian faith or extermi- nation/ Baptism was the sign of subjugation and fealty : the Saxons accepted or threw it off according as they were in a state of submission or of revolt. These wars were inevitable ; they were but the con- tinuance of the great strife waged for centuries from the barbarous North and East, against the civilised South and West ; only that the Eoman and Christian popula- « Some of the heathen Frisian tem- ples appear to have contained much wealth. St. Luidger was sent out to destroy some. His followers brought back a considerable treasure, which they found in the temples. Charle- saagne took two-thirds, and gave oru to the Church. — Vit. S. Luidg. apud Pertz, ii. p. 408. f " Eo usque perseveravit, dum aut victi Christianse religioni subjicerentur aut omnino tollerentur. ,, — Eginhard, sub ann. 775. Chap. I, THE SAXOKS. 71 tion, now invigorated by the large infusion of Teutonic blood, instead of awaiting aggression, had become the aggressor. The tide of conquest was rolling back ; the subjects of the Western kingdoms, of the Western Empire, instead of waiting to see their homes overrun by hordes of fierce invaders, now boldly marched into the heart of their enemies' country, penetrated the forests, crossed the morasses, and planted their feudal courts of justice, their churches, and their monasteries in the most remote and savage regions, up to the Elbe and the shores of the Baltic. The Saxon race now occupied the whole North of Germany, from the Baltic alon^ the whole _ „ J ° The Saxons. Eastern frontier of the Erankish kingdom. The interior of the land was yet an unknown world, both as to extent and population. Vast forests, in which it was said that squirrels might range for leagues with- out dropping to the ground, 5 broken only by wide heaths, sanely moors, and swamps, were peopled by swarms which still were thought inexhaustible. These countless hosts, which seemed but the first wave of a yet undiminished flood, might still precipitate them- selves or be precipitated by the impulse of nations from the further North or East, on the old Boman empire and the advanced settlements beyond the Ehine. The Saxons were divided into three leading tribes, the Ost- phalians, the Westphalians, and the Angarians ; but each clan or village maintained its independence, waged war, or made peace. Each clan, according to old Teu- tonic usage, consisted of nobles, freemen, and slaves; but at times the whole nation met in a great armed convention. A deadly hatred had grown up between f Vit. S. Lebuini. 1% LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book V. the Franks and Saxons, inevitable between two warlike and restless races, separated by a doubtful and unmarked border, on vast level plains, with no natural boundary, neither dense forests, nor a chain of mountains, nor any large river or lake. h The Saxons were not likely, when an opportunity of plunder or even of daring adventure might offer itself, to respect the frontier of their more civilised neighbours; or the Franks to abstain from advancing their own limits wherever the land offered any advantage for a military, commercial, or even reli- gious outpost. But it was not merely this casual hosti- lity of two adventurous and unquiet people, encountering on a long and doubtful border — the Saxons scorned and detested the Eomanised Franks, the Franks held the Saxons to be barbarians and heathens. The Saxons no doubt saw in the earlier and peaceful Christian mis- sionaries the agents of Frankish as well as of Christian conquest. Even where their own religion hung so loosely on their minds, they could not but be suspicious of foreigners who began by undermining their national faith, and might end in endangering the national inde- pendence. They beheld with impatience and jealousy the churches and monasteries, which gradually rose neai to, upon, and within their frontier ; though probably the connexion of the missionaries with the Eomanised Franks, rather than the religion itself, which otherwise they might have admitted with the usual indifference of barbarians, principally excited their animosity. The first expedition of Charlemagne against the h "Suberant et causae, qua? quo- lidie pacem conturbare poterant, ter- mini videlicet nostri et illorum paene ubique in piano contigui, prseter pauca loca in qui bus, vel silva* majores, vel I montium juga interjecta utrorumqu* agros certo limite disterminant, et rapinse et incendia vicissim fieri noit cessabant." — Eginhard, Vit. Carol. I cvii. Chap. I FIRST INVASION. Saxons before Lis Lombard conquest arose out of re- ligion. Among the English missionaries who, First Saxon no doubt from speaking a kindred language, Zl^m! were so successful among the Teutonic tribes, was St. Lebuin, a man of the most intrepid zeal. Though the oratory which he had built on the Saxon bank of the Ysell had been burned by the Saxons, he determined to confront the whole assembled nation in their great diet on the Weser. Charles was holding at the same time his Field of May at Worms : this Saxon diet might be a great national council to watch or obtain intelligence of his proceedings. 1 The Saxons were in the act of solemn worship and sacrifice, when Lebuin stood up in the midst, proclaimed himself the messenger of the one true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and denounced the folly and impiety of their idolatries. k He urged them to repentance, to belief, to baptism, and promised as their reward temporal and eternal peace. So far the Saxons seemed to have listened witk decent or awe-struck reverence; but when Lebuin ceased to speak in this more peaceful tone, and de- clared that, if they refused to obey, God would send against them a mighty and unconquerable King who would punish their contumacy, lay waste their land with fire and sword, and make slaves of their wives and children, the proud barbarians broke out into the utmost fury; they threatened the dauntless missionary with stakes and stones : his life was saved only by the inter- vention of an aged chieftain. The old man insisted on the sanctity which belonged to all ambassadors, above all the ambassadors of a great God. 5 May, however, was probably the usual month for the German nation* assemblies. k Vit. Lebuini, apud Pertx. 74 LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Boon V The acts and language of Charles showed that he warred at once against the religion and the freedom ol ancient Germany. Assembling his army at e Worms, he crossed the Bhine, and marched upon the Eresburg, a strong fortress near the Drimel. 111 Having taken this, he advanced to a kind of religious capital, either of the whole Saxon nation o^ at least of the more considerable tribes. It was situated near the source of the Lippe, n and contained the celebrated idol, the Irmin-Saule. 0 This may have been simply the great pillar, the trunk of a gigantic tree, consecrated by immemorial reverence, or the name may imply the war-god, or the parental-god, or demi-god of the race. This notion suits better with the simpler description of the idol in the older writers. This rude and perhaps, therefore, not less imposing idol, has been exalted into a great symbolic image, either of the national deity or of the nation, arrayed in fanciful attributes, which seem to belong to a later mythology ; p and German patriotism has delighted to recognise in this image consecrated by the Teutonic worship, that of the great Teutonic hero, Herman, the conqueror of Varus. Throughout the neighbourhood the names and places are said to bear m Supposed Stadbergen, in the bishopric of Paderborn. n Eckhart (Pertz, p. 151) says dis- tinctly that it was some way beyond the Eresburg. ° Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 81 et seq. t 208 et seq„ " Irmansaul, colossus, altissima columna." He quotes Rudolf of Fulda : " Truncum quoque ligai non parvse magnitudinis in altum erectum sub divo colebant, patri& eum lingua Irminsul appei- lantes, quod Latine dicitur universalis columna, quasi sustinens omnia." Yet Irmin seems to have been the name of a national god or demi-god. p He was clothed in armour ; his feet rested on a field of flowers; iu his right hand he held a banner with a rose in ihe centre, in his left i balance; on his buckler was a lioa commanding other animals. — Spebaan, in Irminsul. (JHAr. 1. THE IRM1N-SATJLE. 75 frequent and manifest allusion to this great victory over Kome, — the field of victory, the stream of blood, the stream of the bones. Not far off is the field of Kome, the mountain of Arminius, the forest of Varus.* But whether rude and shapeless trunk, or symbolic image of the Saxon god, or the statue of the Teutonic hero, the Ifmin-Saule fell by the remorseless hands of the Christian Frank. r The war of the Franks and the Saxons lasted for thirty-three years ; s it had all the horrors of an inter- necine strife between two hordes of barbarians. The armies of Charles were almost always masters of the field; but no sooner were they withdrawn than the indefatigable Saxons rose again, burst through the en- croaching limits of the Empire, and often reached its more peaceful settlements. Hardly more than two years after the capture of Eresburg, and of their more sacred place, the site of the Irmin-Saule, they revenged the destruction of their great idol by burning, or at- tempting to burn, the church in Fritzlar, ^ i ^ founded by St. Boniface. It was said to have been saved by the miraculous appearance of two angels in white garments ; possibly two of the younger eccle- siastics^ In their inroads they respected neither age, * The neighbourhood of Dethmold abounds with these sacred reminis- cences. At the foot of the Teutberg is Wintfield, the field of victory ; the Rodenbach, the stream of blood ; and the Knochenbach, where the bones of the followers of Varus were found, Feldrom, the field of the Romans, is at no great distance. Rather farther off, near Pyrmont, Hermansberg, the mountain of Arminius and on the banks of the Weser, Varenholz, the wood of Varus. — Stepfer., art. Armi- nius, in Biograph. Universelle. * Luden is indignant at the destruc- tion of this monument of German freedom by the renegade Charlemagne. — Geschichte, iv. p. 234. * From 772 to 805. * Ann. Franc, A.D. 774, Bouquet^ p. 19. 76 LATIK CHRISTIANITY. Book V, nor sex, nor order, nor sacred edifice ; all was wrapped in one blaze of fire, in one deluge of blood. But their especial fury was directed against the monasteries and churches. Widekind, the hero of these earlier exploits, was no less deadly an enemy of Christianity than of the Franks. He began his career by destroying all the Christian settlements in Friesland, and restoring the ^ehole land to heathenism. 11 The historians of Charlemagne denounce the perfidy of the Saxons to the most solemn engagements ; but in fact there was no supreme government which had the power or could be answerable for the fulfilment of treaties. Each village had its chieftain and its freemen, independent of the rest ; the tribes whose land Charles occupied, or whose forests he menaced, submitted to the yoke, but those beyond them held themselves in no way bound by such treaties/ After a few years, at a great Diet at Paderborn, the wet at whole nation seemed to obey the summons of A*.™" 1 ' Charles to acknowledge him as their liege lord. Multitudes were baptized ; and all the more consider* able tribes gave hostages for their peaceful conduct. aj> 718 "^ et two y ears after, on the news of Charle- magne's defeat at Eoi.cesvalles, they appeared again in arms, with the indefatigable Widekind at n The Saxon Campaigns, according to Boehmer, Regesta : 1. Taking of Eresburg, a.d. 772. 2. Charlemagne crosses the Weser, Aug. 776. 3. To the Lippe, 776. 4. Diet of Paderborn, 777. 5. Revolt of Saxons, who waste as far as the Moselle, 778. 6. Advance to the Weser, 779. 7. To the Elbe, 780. 8. Diet at Lippe Brunnen. 9. Capitulation of the Saxons, 782. 10. Great victory at Thietmar, 783. 11. Readvance to the Elbe. 12. Fur- ther campaign, 784. 13. Widekind surrenders, and is baptised, 785. There were, however, later insurrections, and later progresses of Charlemagne through the subjugated land. x " Quae nec rege fait saltern sodata ai* uno Ut se militia pariter defenderet usu, Sed variis divisa modis plebs omnii babebat Quot pagos tot paene duces." foeta Sazo* ad ann. 772, v. 24. Chap. I. ADVANCE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 77 their head : he alone had kept aloof from the Diet at Paderborn, having taken refuge, it was said, with the King of Denmark, no doubt beyond the Elbe. Notwithstanding their baptism and the hostages, they reached the Ehine, ravaging as they went, threatened Cologne from Deutz, and were only prevented from invading France by the difficulty of crossing the river; along its right bank they burned and slaughtered from Cologne to Coblentz. This sudden outburst was followed by the most formidable revolt, put down by Charles's victories at Dethmold and near the river Hase. Throughout the war Charlemagne endeavoured to subdue the tribes as he went on by the terror of his arms ; and terrible indeed were those arms ! On one occasion, at Verden-on-the-Aller, he massacred 4000 brave warriors who had surrendered, in cold blood. Nor did he trust to the humanising influence of Christi- anity alone, but to the diffusion of Eoman manners, and what might appear Eoman luxury. The more sub- missive chieftains he tried to attach to his person by honours and by presents. The poor Saxons first became acquainted with the produce of wealthy Gaul. To some he gave farms, whence they were tempted and enabled to purchase splendid dresses, learned the use of money, the pleasures of wine. 7 His frontier gradually advanced. In his first expe- dition he had crossed the Drimel and the Lippe, and reached the Weser ; but twelve years of alternate victory and revolt had passed before he arrived at the Elbe. In four years more, during which Widekind himself Bubmitted to baptism, although the unquiet people still 7 "Praedlapraestiteratcumrex complurnros illls Ex quibus acciperent pretiosae tegmina vestis, Argent! cumulos, dulcisque fiuentu JLyaei.' Fceta Saxo., iv. 13ft 7B LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book V. renewed their revolt, lie reac'ned the sea, the limit of the Saxon territory. 2 The policy of Charlemagne in the establishment of Establish- Christianity in the remote parts of Germany Christianity, was perhaps wisely incongruous. Though wars of religion, they were waged entirely by the secular arm. He encouraged no martial prelate \p appear at the head of his vassals, or to join in the work of blood- shed. On no point are his edicts more strong, more frequent, or more precise, than in prohibiting the clergy from bearing arms, or joining any military expedition.* They followed in the wake of war, but did not mingle in it. A few priests only remained with the camp to perform divine service, and to offer ministrations to the soldiers. The religion, though forced upon the con- quered, though baptism was the only security (a pre- carious security, as it often proved) which the conqueror would accept for the submission of the vanquished, yet this was part of the treaty of peace, and as a pledge of peace was fitly performed by the ministers of peace. The conquest was complete, the carnage over, before the priests were summoned to their office to baptise the multitudes, who submitted to it as the chance of war, as they would to the surrender of property or of personal freedom. For this baptism no preparation was deemed % tl Usque ad oceanum trans omnes paludes et in via loca transitum est." — Ann. Tiliac. sub ann. * " Hortatu omnium fidelium nos- trorum et maxime episcoporum et reliquorum sacerdotum consultu, servis Dei per omnia omnibus armaturam portare vel pugnare, aut in exercitum et in hostem pergere, omnino prohi- bemus, nisi illi tantummodo qui propter divinum ministerium." — Caroli M. Capit. General. A.D. 769. Carloman, A.D. 742, Pepin, 744, had made similar enactments ; but it appears that the restraint was unwel- come to some of the more warlike of the order. Charlemagne was sup- posed to detract from their dignity by prohibiting them from bearing arms. Chap. I. BISHOPRICS AND MONASTERIES. 79 necessary ; the barbarians assented by thousands to the creed, and were immediately immersed or sprinkled with the regenerating waters. The clergy on the other hand were exposed to the fury of the insurgent people on every revolt : to hew down the crosses was the first sign that the Saxons renounced allegiance, and baptism was, according to their notion, cancelled by the renuncia- tion of allegiance. The subjugation of the land appeared complete before Charlemagne founded successively his great Foundations religious colonies, the eight bishoprics of ^daSS. Minden^Seligenstadt, Verden, Bremen, b Mun- ries - ster, Hildesheim, Osnaburg, and Paderborn. These, with many richly-endowed monasteries, like Herzfeld, became the separate centres from which Christianity and civilisation spread in expanding circles. But though these were military as well as religious settle- ments, the ecclesiastics were the only foreigners. The more faithful and trustworthy Saxon chieftains, who gave the security of seemingly sincere conversion to Christianity, were raised into Counts ; thus the profes- sion of Christianity was the sole test of fealty. The Saxon remained a conquered, but in some respects an independent nation ; it was ruled by a feudal nobility and a feudal hierarchy. The Saxons paid no tribute to the empire : Charlemagne was content with their pay- ment of tithes to the clergy, — a part of his ecclesiastical system, which was extended throughout his Transalpine dominions. Yet even after this period another great general insurrection broke out while Charles was en- gaged in a war with the Avars; the churches were destroyed, dreadful ravages committed. The revolt b Bremen, founded July 14, 787. 80 TiATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book V, arose partly from the severe avarice with which the clergy exacted their tithes, and the impatience of the rude Germans at this unusual taxation. It was not till ten thousand men had been transplanted from the banks of the Elbe into France that the contest came to an end. The gratitude of the Saxon poet, who wrote under the Emperor Arnulf, for the conversion of his ancestors to Christianity, dwells but slightly on the sanguinary means used for their conversion, and their obstinate resistance to his persuasive sword. On the day of judgement, when the Apostles render an account of the nations which they have converted, when Charle- magne is followed into heaven by the hosts of his Saxon proselytes, the poet expresses his humble hope that he may be admitted in the train. c Charlemagne, in Christian history, commands a more charie- important station even than for his subiuga- magne's legislation, tion of Germany to the Gospel, on account of his complete organisation, if not foundation, of the high feudal hierarchy in great part of Europe. Throughout the Western Empire was, it may be said, constitutionally established this double aristocracy, ecclesiastical and civil. Everywhere the higher clergy and the nobles, and so downwards through the different gradations of society, were of the same rank, liable to many of the same duties, of equal, in some cases of co-ordinate, authority. Each district had its Bishop and its Count ; the dioceses and counties were mostly of the same extent. They held for some purposes common courts, for others had separate jurisdiction, but of co-equal power. At the summit of each social pyramid, which rose by c " Turn Carolum gaudens Saxonum turba sequatur, illi perpetuas gloria lajtitiae ; 0 utinam vel cunctorum sequar ultimus horum ' — v 685 Chap. I. CHARLEMAGNE'S LEGISLATION. 81 the same steps from the common base, the vast servile class, which each ruled with the right of master and possessor, or that of serfs attached to the soil, which were gradually succeeding to the baser and more wretched slavery of the Eoman Empire, d stood the Sovrans, the Emperor, and the Pope. So at least it was in later tiuaes. At present Charlemagne stood alone on his unapproachable height. As monarch of the Franks, as King of Italy, still more as Emperor of the West, he was supreme, the Pope his humble grateful subject. Charlemagne, with the title, assumed the imperial power of a Theodosius or a Justinian. His legislation em- braces ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs. In the general assembly, of which, with the nobles, they were constituent parts, the assent of the bishops may be expressed or implied ; but the laws which fix the obli- gations, the revenues, even the duties of the clergy, are issued in the name of the Emperor; they are mon- archical and imperial, not papal or synodical canons. Already, indeed, the principles on which the loftier pretensions of the Church were hereafter to be grounded, had crept imperceptibly in under the specious form of religious ceremonies. The very title to the Frankish monarchy, the Empire itself, had to the popular view something of a papal gift. The anointing of the Kings of France had become almost necessary for the full popular recognition of the royal title. e The part taken by the Pope in the offer of the Empire to Charlemagne, d On the slow and gradual transi- tion from slavery to serfdom and villeinage, see Mr. Hallam's supple- mental note 79, and the remarkable quotation from M. Guerard. • TLe Old Testament, which had suggested and sanctioned this ceremony, VOL. TIT. had become of equal authority with the New. The head of the Church was not merely the successor of the chief apostle. He was the high priest of the old Law, Samuel or Joas as well as St. Peter. Q 82 LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book V. his coronation oy the hands of the Pope in the same manner, gave a vague notion, a notion to be matured by time, that it was a Papal grant. He who could bestow could withhold; and, as it was afterwards main- tained, he who could elevate could degrade; he who could crown could discrown the Emperor. But over the Transalpine clergy, Charlemagne had Authority of not only the general authority of a Teutonic Charlemagne. j^n^h and a Koman Emperor, he had like- wise the same feudal sovereignty, founded on the same principles, which he had over the secular nobility. Transalpine Their estates were held on the same tenure ; hierarchy, ] m( j k een i nves ted in them, especially in ^Germany, according to the old Teutonic law of conquest. Every conquered territory, or a portion of it, became the possession of the conquerors ; it was a vast farm, granted out in lots, on certain conditions; the king reserved certain portions as the royal domain, others were granted to the warriors (the leudes), under the title first of allodes, which gradually became benefices. 1 ' But bishoprics and abbacies were originally, or became, in the strictest sense benefices. The great ecclesiastics took the same oath with other vassals on a change of sovereign. They were bound, bishops, abbots and abbesses, to appear at the Herr-bann of the sovereign. Charlemagne submits them without distinction to the f French learning, especially that of M. Guizot, of M. Lehuerou, and of the authors of the prefaces to the valuable volumes of the 'Documents Ine'dits,' has exhausted every subject relating to the national and social institutions of the prefeudal and feudal times ; the ranks and orders of men ; the growth of the cities ; their guilds and privileges; the particular tenure and obligations of land. Mr. Hall am has diligently watched, and in his supplemental notes summed up with his characteristic strong English sense and fairness, the results of all these vast and voluminous inquiries; not only those of France, but those oi Belgium, England, Italy, Germany. Chap. I, THAffSALPINE HIERARCHY. 83 visitation of his officers, who are to make inquest as to their due performance of their duties as beneficiaries,, the maintenance not merely of the secular buildings, but also of the churches, and the due solemnisation of the divine offices. 2 The men of the church were bound to obey the summons to military service, as duly as any other liegemen, only that they marched under a lay captain. The same number were allowed to stay at home to cultivate the land. The great prelates, even in the days of Charlemagne, resisted the laws which prohibited their appearing in war at the head of their own troops, as lowering their dignity, and depriving the Church of some of its honours. 11 Bishops and abbots, in return for the oath of protection from the sovereign, took an oath of fealty as counsellors and as aids to the sovereign ; but the great proof of this ecclesiastical vas- salage is that they were amenable to the law of treason, were deposed as guilty of violating their allegiance. 1 s " Volumus atque jubemus ut missi nostri per singulos pagos praevi- dere studeant omnia beneficia quae nostri et aliorum homines habere videntur, quomodo restaurata sint post annuntiationem nostram sire de- structa. Primum de ecclesiis, quo- modo structa? aut destructa? sint in tectis, in maceriis, sive parietibus, sive in pavimentis, necnon in pictura, etiam in luminariis, sive ofticiis. Similiter et alia beneficia, casas cum omnibus appendiciis eorum." — K. Magn. Cap. Aquense, a.d. 807 ; Lehuerou, p. 517. h "Quia instigante antiquo hoste audivimus quosdam nos suspectos habere propterea quod concessimus episcopis et sacerdotibus ac reliquis Dei servis ut in hostes . . . non irent . . . nec agitatores sanguinum fierent .... quod honores sacerdotum et res ecclesiarum auferre vel minuere voluissemus." — Cap. Incert. Ann.; Lehuerou, 520. 1 " Promitto et perdono vobis .. defensionem, quantum potero, adju- vante Domino, exhibebo . . ut vos mihi secundum Deum et secundum sseculum sic fideles adjutores et con- silio et auxilio sitis sicut vestri ante- cessores bom meis melioribus pra> decessoribus extiterunt." — Pro-miss. Dom. Karlomanni regis, a.d. 882; Lehuerou, p. 519. Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims, was deposed as traitor to Louis the Debonnaire ; Tertoldus, Bishop of Bayeux, was accused of treason against Charles the Bald.— « Bouquet, a 2 84 LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Book V, Charlemagne himself was no less prodigal than weaker Estates of kings of immunities and grants of property to the church, cinches an d monasteries. With his queen Hildegard he endows the church of St. Martin, in Tours, with lands in Italy. His grants to St Denys, to Lorch, to Fulda, to Prum 3 more particularly to Herzfeld, and many Italian abbeys, appear among the acts df his reign. k Nor were these estates always obtained from the pious generosity of the king or the nobles. The stewards of the poor were sometimes the spoilers of the poor. Even under Charlemagne there are complaints against the usurpation of property by bishops and abbots, as against counts and laymen. They compelled the poor free man to sell his property, or forced him to serve in the army, and that on permanent or continual duty, and so to leave his land either without owner, with all the chances that he might not return, or to commit it to the custody of those who remained at home in quiet and seized every opportunity of entering into possession. 111 No Naboth's vineyard escaped their watchful avarice. k See the Regesta in Boehmer, passim. Lehuerou (p. 539) gives an instance of the enormous possessions of some of the monasteries: they were larger in tha north th? a in the south of France (compare Thierry, Temps Merovingiens). The abbey of S. Wandrille, or Fontenelle, according to its chartuLoy, owned, less than 150 years after its foundation (a.i>. 650- 788), 3974 manses (the manse con- tained 12 jugera, acres), besides mills and other property. Compare the lands heaped on churches and monas- teries hy the Merovingians, p. 221. 