STUDIES MEDIEVAL HISTORY, BY CHARLES J. STILL£, LL.D., LATE PROVOST OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. PHILADELPHIA : J. B. LIPPmCOTT & CO. LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 1882. Copyright, 1882, by Charles J. Stille. I I I I TO THE HONORABLE J. I. CLARK HARE, LL.D., President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas No. 2, Professor of the Institutes of Law IN the University oi My dear Hare : I was chosen a teacher of Hisl^Ty^flF^fi^TTTniversity chiefly because you and another friend (of whom, alas ! only the precious memory is now left us) expressed confidence in my capacity to perform the duties of that position. During the many years I held the office, I was not unmindful that you had been in some sort my sponsor; and, now that I have laid it down, I am prompted by a grateful remembrance of your unfailing kindness, and our long-unbroken friendship, to dedicate this book to you. It may interest you, for it contains some of the results of the work which you did so much to impose upon me. With the highest regard, Faithfully yours, C. J. STILLE. January, 1882. 1* tb^^<^ PEEFAOE. My object in preparing these "Studies'' has been to ilhistrate the life of the Middle Age by a sketch of some of its characteristic institutions. I have selected those prominent features in that life which it inherited from Roman and Christian society before the extinction of the Western Empire in 476, and which were moulded and shaped after that event by the peculiar ideas and habits of the barbarian invaders. My experience as a teacher has convinced me that to the genuine student the unbroken continuity of history is its most attractive and instructive feature, and that so far as the Middle Age is concerned the niost important lesson which its history teaches us is that, while it w^as mainly the outgrowth of a previous condition, it was also the source of much that is most valuable in our modern life and civilization. These "Studies" are based upon a course of lectures — one of a series — w^hich it became my duty to give in the University. They formed part of a scheme of systematic instruction in history in which my design was to indicate the "general stream of tendency" of historical events in Europe during the Christian era. vi PREFACE. I have been requested by my old pupils to publish these lectures. Before doing so, however, I have thought it best to remodel and, to a certain extent, to rewrite them, so as to give them the form of general "studies'' on the subject, rather than that of the limited kind of instruction suitable to a class of undergraduate students. I may add that some knowledge of historical geog- raphy is very necessary to a full understanding of many of the questions which I have discussed in the following pages. The recent work of Mr. Freeman on this sub- ject, and especially the maps appended to it, or the his- torical atlases of Von Spruner or of Labberton, will be found very useful for that purpose. In the Appendix will be found a list of the principal authorities which I have consulted in preparing this work. COKTENTS. CHAPTER I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MEDIEVAL ERA. PAGE The Importance of Middle Age History .... 13 Roman Elements therein, and their Assimilation " . .16 The Characteristics of the Barbarians . . , . . 20 Their Permanent Occupation of the Roman Territory . . 23 Contrast between Roman and Christian Ideas ... 26 Early Church Organization ■ . .28, Organization of the Imperial Government .... 33 Roman Rule in the Provinces 37 Superscription of Pilate 39 CHAPTER II. THE BARBARIANS AND THEIR INVASIONS. Conflict of Roman and Teutonic Ideas . Characteristics of the Invaders Nature of the Invasions of the Empire The Barbarian Ideas brought into its Life Growing Power of the Church Suppression of Arianism in the West . Conquests of the Franks, and Baptism of Clovis Relations of the Church to the Prankish Kings Conversion of the Northern Tribes 41 42 50 53 55 57 58 63 65 Vll vm CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. THE PRANKISH CONQUESTS AND CHARLEMAGNE. Boundaries of the Frankish Kingdom .... The Merovingians .73 The Family of Charlemagne ....... 75 The Popes and the Franks . . r^ 79 - Coronation of Charlemagne, and th^ Theory of the Holy Roman Empire . . ; . . . . . 82^ Charlemagne's Conquests ....... 85 His Characteristics as a Conqueror, Legislator, and Patron of Learning 8'J^ The Charlemagne of History and of Legend ... 94 Failure of his Schemes * 95/ PAGE 71 CHAPTER IV. MOHAMMED AND HIS SYSTEM. Mohammedanism as a Force in Mediaeval History The Arab Tribes — their Religion and Commerce . Weakness of the Empire in the Time of Mohammed Christian and Heretical Sects Decay of Discipline in the Roman Army Mohammed's Early Life and Doctrines The Conversion of the Arab Tribes The Theory of Armed Propagandism . Conquests of the Saracens 98 103 107 109 111 113 119 121 125 CHAPTER V. MEDIAEVAL FRANCE. The Degeneracy of the Descendants of Charlemagne . .130 The Treaty of Partition at Yerdun 133 CONTENTS. IX The Characteristics of the Feudal System Invasion of the Northmen Services of the Family of Capet . Hugh Capet elected King of France ^ English Kings Feudal Lords in France -^The Freedom of the Towns . ^ Feudalism during the Hundred- Years' War The Work of Jeanne d'Arc .... \^^Absorption of Fiefs, and their Annexation to the Crown FAGB 135 145 146 147 149 151 153 155 157 CHAPTER VI. GERMANY, FEUDAL AND IMPERIAL. Different Eesults of Feudalism in France and Germany Extinction of the Descendants of Charlemagne . The Six Principal Duchies at that Time Henry of Saxony chosen King — his Work . The Influence of Towns on German Life Three Dynasties of Kings and Eoman Emperors Eelations of the Emperors to the Popes Henry IV. and Hildebrand — Investitures Hohenstauffen Emperors and the Lombard League Italian Politics the Kuin of Germany . Eudolph of Hapsburg and his Dynasty The Eesults of Decentralization .... 160 161 161 163 167 164 170 177 179 181 181 187 CHAPTER VII. SAXON AND DANISH ENGLAND. Historical Basis of English Life 189 American Interest in English History 191 Eoman Occupation of the Country 193 The Anglo-Saxons, and their Characteristics in Germany . 199 CONTENTS. The Anglo-Saxon Classes and Organization . Danish Invasions, and Subsequent Fusion of Eaces Christianity and the Church in England Kelations of the Church to the Monarch — Dunstan PAGE 203 207 211 215 CHAPTER VIII. ENGLAND AFTER THE NORMAN CONQUEST. The National Life as affected in Four Different Ways . . 217 The Feudal System as established by the Conqueror . . 219 Eule of the Norman Kings . . . . . . . 221 King John — Magna Charta ....... 223 Simon de Montfort and the House of Commons . . . 227 Policy of the Norman Kings towards the Church . . 229 Discontent in England in the Fourteenth Century . . 233 The Hundred-Years' War in France 23o Anglo-Norman Life in England 237 The Towns and the Glides 239 U Condition of the People, and the Labor Question . . 241 Powers of the House of Commons 245 CHAPTER IX. THE PAPACY TO THE REIGN OF CHARLEMAGNE. The Nature of the Papal Rule " 251 Church Organization and its Growth ..... 253 The Supremacy of Rome 257 The Popes during the Invasions .~ 201 The Theory of the Church's Power ' 204 Greatness of the Early Popes V 207 The Church's Visibility and Unity *" 271 Mediaeval Bishops and the Popes . — 273 Cosmopolitan Spirit of the Papacy ._ 274 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER X. THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE. PAGE Theory, of the World-Monarchy and the World-Religion . 277 Charlemagne's Relations to the Pope 280 Hildebrand and his Theocratic Ideas 283 Simony and the Marriage of the Clergy .... 286 The War of the Investitures 288 RelatlYfi ^Position of Henry IV. and Gregory VII. . . 289 Claims of the Later Mediaeval Popes 294 " The Babylonian Captivity," and the Great Schism . . 299 The Council of Constance 301 The Popes as Italian Princes 303 CHAPTER XL THE STRUGGLE FOR ITALIAN NATIONALITY. The Sentiment of Nationality in the Teutonic Races Italy the Special Prey of the Invaders . The Lombard Invasion and the Popes . The Prankish Conquest and its Effect . The Lombard League — Guelphs and Ghibelines Frederick II. and the Popes .... The City Republics and their Prosperity The Tyrants of the Towns — Condottieri Tyranny and Culture combined in the Italian Prince Italian Dynasties at the Close of the Fifteenth Century 305 309 311 313 315 317 319 323 329 331 CHAPTER XIL MONASTICISM, CHIVALRY, AND THE CRUSADES. Indirect Influences in History Rise and Growth of Monasticism 333 335 xii CONTENTS. PAGE St. Benedict and the Order of Benedictines .... 337 St. Bernard and his Work 340 St. Dominic and the Order of Friar Preachers . . . 342 iSt. Francis and the Order of Minorites or Franciscans . 344 / Chivalry and the Mediaeval Knight 347 ' iSow the Church trained him for her Service . . . 348 ^he Point of Honor . . . . . . . .351 The Crusades 3.5^. The War against the Albigenses 355 The Crusaders in Spain 357 CHAPTER XIII. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY — THE SCHOOLMEN — UNIVERSITIES. -. The Imperial Methods of Education adopted by the Church 361 Cathedral and Monastic Schools 363 Alcuin and the Palace School of Charlemagne . . . 364 Influence of the Palace School 367 The Scholastic Philosophy and the Schoolmen . ■' . . 370 Controversy about Universals — Nominalists and Realists . 374 The University of Paris and its Organization . . . 376 The University of Bologna — Civil and Canon Law . . 380^ The Study of Medicine . . . • 383 , The Effect of Physical Investigations 384 CHAPTER XIV. THE LABORING CLASSE^N THE MIDDLE AGE. The Industrial Classes in Antiquity and in Modern Times The Source of the Contempt for Labor in Antiquity . The Mechanic Arts and Trade in the Roman Empire . Collegia — Conflict between Free and Slave Labor The First Effect of the Invasions on the Laboring Class 385 387 388 390 391 CONTENTS. xiu Causes of the Gradual Abolition of Villenage Effect of Fixed Services ........ The Laboring Class in the Free Towns — Trade Corporations Organization of the Gildes or Congeries . . The Exactions after the Freedom from Feudal Service Contrast between the History of England and France with reference to the Labor Question PAGE 393 395 397 400 408 409 CHAPTER XV. MEDIEVAL COMMERCE. Movement characteristic of Civilization Difference between OrientaLand European Civilization Isolation of the Middle Age — Causes and Eesults . Roman Commerce, and its Influence on Roman Life Commercial History of Italian Towns . —- - . Commerce and the Crusades ..... The Hanseatic League ....... Humanizing Influences of Mediaeval Commerce . Commerce and the Church Rise of International Relations due to Commerce 412 415 417 419 424 427 429^^ 435 436 439 CHAPTER XVL THE ERA OF SECULARIZATION^. Conflict between Authority and Individualism Nature and Extent of the Church Authority The Nation arid the Church .... National Ideas supplant Ecclesiastical . Position of the Popes in the Later Middle Age Increase of Worldliness and Luxurious Living Inventions and Maritime Discoveries . 441 443 445 447 451 453 457 xiv CONTENTS. PAGE Commercial Interests and National Policy .... 459 Popular Discontents 461 Appendix 465 Index . . 469 MEDIEVAL HIS CHAPTE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MEDIJilVAL ERA. That period of the world's history embraced be- tween the date of the downfall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 is commonly known as mediaeval or Middle Age history. It is so called, doubtless^ because it is supposed to occupy the inter- mediate space; at least in Western Europe, between ancient and modern history, and because it marks the period of transition from the one to the other. This period may be studied either as a most curious and in- teresting epoch in the world's history, in itself wholly unlike that of any age which preceded or followed it, or Ave may investigate it as the true groundwork of modern history, regarding a knowledge of its teachings as an essential introduction to a correct understanding of the great principles which underlie our modern civ- ilization. The Middle Age was both a period of transi- tion and of a formative process, when the forces which govern our modern life were slowly crystallizing. Eor 2 13 14 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. students of the general principles of modern history the chief interest in the history of the Middle Age lies in its being what may be called seed-time, or the stage of the early development of those ideas of religion, government, society, laws, and manners the full fruition and bloom of which we witness in our own days. What such students desire chiefly to know about it is not so much what was curious or picturesque and specially oiiaracteristic of life as it was then lived in Western Europe, as what there was permanent in it, and how it was inwoven in the framework of modern life, thus forming an act of that great drama of human history in which retribution is the law, opinion the chief mould- ing agency, and the advancement of the human race the denouelheni and final result. We pro230se here to study the Middle Age, not as antkmarians, but as historians, — in other words, with reference to the influence of its life upon that of succjeedhig ages. If we begin to study mediaeval history with this object, Ave soon discover that we cannot understand the nature and historical character of its peculiar develop- ment until we trace the beginnings of its history back to sources beyond the period which I have assigned to the beginning of mediaeval history proper, — that is, the extinction of the Wcstcpn Roman Empire in 47G. These sources we shall find in the characteristic life of the barbarians in their native forest and in the laws, religion, and government of Imperial Rome, not only while she was mistress of tiie world, but also during GENERAL ASPECT OF THE MIDDLE AGE, 15 that long period of decline and decay in which the op- posing forces of Christianity and barbarism were slowly changing her life and moulding her system for its new destinies, preparing her to rule the world by her laws, as she had once done by her arras. The general view of the Middle Age would be that of a stream fed from distant sources, at first a torrent, bursting from the forests of Germ any, sweeping onward, so violent in its fury and so overwhelming in its force as for a time to destroy all trace of the work of civilized man, and then, long after, reappearing, swollen by its tributaries, as a mighty river, bearing upon its placid and ample bosom blessings of peace and comfort to those w^ho dwell upon its shores. Again, the general aspect of Europe during the Middle Age is that of a violent conflict, a struggle, not merely between the barbarian tribes and the legions of Impe- rial Rome^ and of these tribes with each other, but also a constant struggle of opposing iio[eas for the mastery, of the Teuton against the Roman, of the North of Europe against the South, of Christianity against heathenism, of a savagery w^hich has been compared to that of the North American Indians with the highest form of civili- zation then known to the world. In the midst of such terrible birth-throes modern civilization is brought into the world, and, unlike any other civilization in history, it owes its peculiarities and its characteristic strength to this violent conflict of opposing forces of which it is the resultant. 16 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. All this will appear more fully as we study the special development of the mediaeval history. What we must first do is to consider the forces which thus struggled for the mastery, examine their nature and relative strength, their origin and historical development, and then we can better describe their conflict and final fusion with each other. These forces, for our purpose, may be considered as derived from two sources, Roman and barbarian life. The four most powerful and active elements of me- diaeval society which were derived directly from the Roman civilization are — 1, organized Christianity, or the Church ; 2, the Roman organization and adminis- tration; 3, the Roman civil law as it relates to the rights of pers ons an d property ; 4, the general use of the Latin language. These are some of the seeds which Rome sowed in mediaeval soil, and which have brought forth fruit abundantly ever since, both for good and for evil. To estimate the nature of the seed aright, we must first trace the history of its growth on Roman soil. This process will carry us in our search for the beginnings of mediaeval history much farther back, as I have said, than the period of the downfall of the Western Empire in 476. We must, for instance, if we wish to comprehend the nature of the paramount influence of Christianity in the history of the Middle Age, study the reign of Constantine (306-337), when what had been previously only the proscribed creed of a few obscure fishermen became a powerful organization PECULIAR INFLUENCES OF ROME, 17 in the Empire, the official religion of the Roman world, and its clergy shared in the power and majesty wielded by the Imperial Csesar. In the age of Constantine, too, the theory of Roman civil organization and gov- ernment had reached its fullest development. The long peace which resulted from the adhesion by the Antonines to the policy of Augustus of refusing to ex- tend the boundaries of the Empire, and which had been interrupted only by the successful efforts of his suc- cessors to repel the first invasions of the barbarians, had been favorable to the full development of what was characteristic in the Roman system of government. We must, at the outset of the inquiry, disabuse ourselves of the impression, which is a very natural one, that only what was good**in the Roman system survived and helped the progress of civilization in succeeding ages. That portion of Roman history which fills the space between the reign of the Emperor Constantine and the downfall of the Empire in 476 is, as far as the preservation of the Roman Imperial system itself is concerned, a record of constantly progressive decay, feebleness, and corrup- tion, ending finally in the absolute exhaustion of the Empire ; and yet this very period is the one most fruit- ful in those influences which, in later ages and under different surroundings, have been most potent in shaping the course of history. jRepublican Rome had little to do, either by precept or example, with the modern life of Europe, Imperial Rome everything, i The Middle Age was built on its ruins. What then was there in 2^^ 18 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. this mighty system, from the tiaie of the Emperor Constantine until its organization was destroyed by the permanent occupation of the soil by the barbarians, which has left so ineffaceable a mark upon the history of mediseval and modern Europe ? What were the boundaries of the Empire, what was the character of its population, and what was its governing policy, when its power began to crumble before the fierce assaults of the barbarian tribes ? The limits of the Roman Empire in Europe were bounded, as is well known, by the course of the great rivers the Rhine and the Danube. This frontier had been deliberately settled upon by the far-seeing policy of Augustus and of Trajan. The policy which estab- lished it was only the expression of a sentiment uni- versal among Roman statesmen at all times, — that the only real danger to the perpetuity of the Empire w^as the possibility of the invasion of its territory by the wild tribes on the other side of these rivers. They were regarded, naturally, as the most formidable bar- riers which could be interposed against such invasions. For nearly five hundred years this frontier, guarded by the larger portion of the military force of the Empire, served to preserve its territory, if not always from invasion, at least from j)ermanent occupation, while the provinces on the Roman side of this frontier were carrying out, in entire unconsciousness of danger, to its fullest development, whatever w^as good or evil in the Rojiian Imperial system. The population of the SYMPTOMS OF DECAY. 19 provinces capable of military duty, was diminishing year by year ; slavery had destroyed all development of trade and commerce and the means of recruiting the armies; the soil was cultivated by slaves only, and brought forth little ; latifundia, or sheep pastures, took the place of farms cultivated by free laborers; the exactions of the tax-gatherers for Imperial purposes became each year more severe and oppressive, and the' result was not merely the decay of industry, but a con- stantly decreasing population, while the soil no longer produced enough to nourish it in full vigor. From these and a variety of similar causes it is evi- dent that the canker-worm was at the root of Roman society ; and yet the rulers of the Empire, heedless of the ruin that was threatening them at their own doors, could see no danger for the future, save in the black cloud which hung on the northeastern horizon. The Empire during all this time was never, to a super- ficial observer, more prosperous. The province of Gaul, for instance, separated from those who coveted its terri- tory and envied its civilization only by the river Rhine, was, during the first four centuries of the Christian era, in as flourishing a condition as any portion of the Empire. The highly elaborate administration of the Roman law was everywhere in full vigor in the three Gauls, and its system of organization was so well adapted to its ends that it worked as smoothly among the wild Celts whom Caesar had subdued as if it had governed a province at the gates of Rome. The country was filled with 20 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. flourishing cities (not less than one hundred and sixteen in number from the river Scheldt to the Mediterranean), — not merely military posts on the frontier, like Treves (Augusta Trevirorum), Cologne [Colonia Agrippina), and Coblentz, for instance, but cities such as Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons, Vienne, Aries, Nimes, and many others, in which everything was distinctively Roman, not merely the baths and ampliitheatres, works of art and palaces, with all the appliances of luxury, but those true monuments of Roman civilization which we find wherever the Romans penetrated, — roads and aque- ducts, and schools of rhetoric and eloquence. During all this time the Roman and the Gaul were becoming gradually fused together, and before the invasion of the German tribes Roman religion, Roman law, the Roman language, and Roman oppression and corruption were as characteristic of life in Gaul as they were in Italy. It is impossible to imagine any two conditions of civil life more opposite than that of thei Roman Empire and that of the Teutonic tribes on the other side of the Rhine and the Danube previous to the invasion. Before pointing out these characteristic differences and the points at which the fusion at last took place^ it may be well to give a chronological sketch of the invasions. The barbarians, as they were called by the Romans, and as they proudly called themselves, were moved in their invasions by two impulses. Not only were they tempted to cross the Roman frontier by their covetous desire for the riches of the provincials, whose growing FIRST WA VE OF INVASION. . 21 weakness they despised, but they were, in a sense, forced to do so from motives of self-preservation, for they were pushed onward by tribes in their rear still more warlike and savage than themselves. There were at least three successive waves of emigration moving at the same time toAvards the Roman frontier, — 1st, the Teutonic; 2d, the Slavonian; and 3d, the Huns, or Mongols, — and the Roman Empire was to feel, before its downfall in the West, the shock of each of these successive waves. Before the accession of Constantine, the first ha^l swept over certain portions of the Empire, but Rome had strength yet left to check these irruptions and to drive back the invaders, — the Goths, the Alemanni, the Franks, and the Burgundians, — not, however, before they had marked their path by the destruction of the monuments of Roman civilization in Gaul, and had plundered the unfortunate provincials w^ithout mercy. It is interest- ing to observe how general was the alarm occasioned by these first invasions, which in the end were, as I have said, successfully repelled; how constant was the en- deavor of such rulers as Diocletian, Constantine, Julian, and Theodosius, by various expedients, to keep the bar- barians out of the territory of the Empire. Whatever else failed, the spirit of resistance to barbarian inroads never yielded. Sometimes the rulers resisted and beat back the invaders, sometimes bought them off, some- times took them into the military service of the Empire, sometimes tried to educate them or to incorporate them 22 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. within their territory as recognized allies. But all these expedients, adopted and carried out by rulers of strong and commanding character, failed to avert what seemed to be the irresistible course of destiny. Nothing can prove more clearly how much strength and how much consciousness of the dignity of their position as guar- dians of civilization were left in the Romans, even in those days which we have been taught to regard only as periods of decline and decay, than these mighty and per- sistent efforts to guard the soil of the Empire from the pollution of invasion. And certainly it seems to me that there is nothing in Roman history grander than the spirit which led all the Emperors, from Constantine to Theo- dosius, to concentrate all the resources of the Empire for the accomplishment of this great object. But " the stars in their courses fouo^ht against Sisera." What the result might have been had the Teutonic tribes been kept be- yond the limits of the Empire, and, therefore, out of contact with Roman civilization, we cannot say. ^ But this much is certain, that if these races had never crossed the Rhine and the Danube, and had been left to evolve a civilization from the unmixed elements of their own life, the great characteristics of modern Europe, the sen- timent of nationalities, and Christianity organized as we know it, would not have existed. The permanent occupation of the Roman territory began in a.d. 395, with the Visigoths, on the death of the great Emperor Theodosius, and that division of the Empire between his sons Arcadius and Honorius which INVASION OF THE VISIGOTHS. 23 gave to the first the Eastern and to the other the West- ern provinces. This arrangement was doubtless made by the great Emperor with the hope that the inroads of the barbarians might be thus more effectually checked ; but it seems in the end only to have hastened the catas- trophe. These Visigoths had taken refuge in the Ro- man territory south of the Danube from the power of the Huns. They were permitted to enter the army of the Empire, and upon the death of Theodosius they revolted, and Alaric, their chief, set about carving out a kingdom for himself within the Roman territory. With this object in view, he took possession of Thes- saly and of Greece, and marched through the Illyrian provinces towards Italy. He was at first defeated by Stilicho, the Vandal commander-in-chief of the Roman armies; but he again advanced, and, after three sieges of Rome, he conquered the Imperial City in 410, which then fell, for the first time since the invasion of Brennus, tlie Gallic chieftain, seven hundred years before, into the }K)wer of the barbarians. Meantime, other tribes, — the Burgundians, the Suevi, and the Alani, — stimulated by the example of Alaric, poured down upon the plains of Italy; Their advance was checked by the skill and the courage of this same Vandal, Stilicho, and they were in- duced to leave Italy and occupy the territory of the Em- pire in Gaul and Spain, — the Burgundians the lands bounded by the ^lediterranean, the Rhine, and the Saone, and the Suevi and the Vandals ancient Aqui- taine south of the Loire, and tlie whole of the Spanish 24 MEDIALVAL HISTORY. Peninsula. There they remained until the Visigoths, under the successors of Alaric, tired of Italy, took pos- session, first, of the country between the Loire and the Ebro, and finally, after the departure of the Vandals for Africa, of the remainder of what is now called Spain. About the same time the Imperial authority ceased to exist in Britain, nearly all the legions having been withdrawn by Honorius to aid in the defence of Italy, while those who remained mutinied and set up an Emperor of their own. Thus in about forty-five years (395-440) the fairest portion of that great Empire which had ruled the world for more than four hun- dred years, and which had more than a thousand years of growth, — Italy, the largest portion of Gaul, Britain, Spain, and Africa, — fell, with the Imperial City itself, into the hands of the despoilers. / Surely history has no more impressive lesson of the vanity of human hopes. But the work of the destroying angel was not yet completed. A small portion of Gaul still remained under the Iloman power, and the new conquerors of the remainder were not to be left in quiet possession of their spoil. Attila, the chief of the Huns, or Tartiirs, with his vast hordes, invaded Germany and Gaul iii 450, mainly, doubtless, with the object of plunder; but his defeat by the Romans and the Visigoths at the battle of Chalons, in 451, and his subsequent premature death, no doubt preserved Western Europe from the permanent influence of a very large Tartar element. This, and the battle of Tours, in 732, where Ciiarles Martel defeated OTHER INVADING TRIBES, 25 the Saracens advancing from Spain, must be regarded as among the most decisive battles in history, for they defeated the design of those who were striving to extir- pate or defile Christianity in Western Europe. Even after the defeat of Attila (451) some remnant of the Roman authority was still left in Gaul and Italy. But the most powerful of all the barbarian tribes, the Franks, whose original seat was in modern Holland and Bel- gium, burst with fury into the northern portions of Gaul, and defeated, under their chief Clovis, in 486, the Roman governor, and in a few years after, the Alemanni, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, thus establishing a Prankish kingdom, embracing a territory including all Roman Gaul between the Alps, the Pyr- enees, the Rhine, and the ocean, and destroying the last vestige of Roman power north of the Alps. The Vandals were already in possession of Africa, and had" given several times nominal Emperors to Italy. The weakness and the beauty of that land tempted shortly afterwards another fierce horde of Teuton warriors, called Lombards, to assail it, and the last remnant of the once mighty Empire of Rome was ruled for two hundred years by them, and until they were in turn subdued by the all-conquering Pranks. I have given merely a sketch of the invasion and occupation of the Roman territory by the barbarians, reserving what I have to say of the history, institutions, and manners of these tribes, and their relations with the Roman civilization, for another chapter. What 26 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. concerns us now is to know what tliere was left amidst the general wreck of the Empire which was capable of acting upon the invaders with such a persistent and con- trolling power as to completely change the current of the history of the world, — in short, what were the ideas of the Romans which in the end conquered .those bar- barians w^hom their arras had failed to subdue. I must confine myself to those permanent Roman influences which contributed most directly to this result. This in- quiry will lead us necessarily to say something concerning the history in the Empire of that most potent of all forces in human affairs since it first began to move the world, viz., Christianity. Before the barbarians permanently occu[)ied the Roman territory, this force had, in the Empire, gone through different stages of control over its life, from that of a mere moral power or influence to that of a thoroughly organized and powerful hierarcliy. It was the moral ideas which form the basis of Chris- tianity, as they were preached, before the close of the second century, in every province of the Empire, which won converts. Disbelief and materialism were the char- acteristics of the educated class of Roman society ; help- lessness, hopelessness, and suffering, of the poorer. In Rome, the city, the republic, and afterwards the Em- peroi-, were the real divinities. Religion there was an affair of state, and worship was maintained by a highly aristocratic class as its peculiar and exclusive function. There was no proselytism at I^ome, because, unlike the civil government, its religion never exacted universal ROMAN IDEAS OF RELIGION. 27 obedience. To the Romans, religion was an affair of eacli country, and differing religions were tolerated within their bounds on that principle. While the com- paratively easy means of communication between the more distant parts of the Empire helped the propagation of Christianity, yet there was nothing in the Roman fundamental conception of religious ideas which in any way aided to make Christianity a catholic or cosmopol- itan form of worship ; and yet, strange paradox ! \it was by an adaptation of the Roman system of administration that the Cliurch became in the end the most powerful of all organizations. I To the Roman, thus educated in these traditional ideas of religion, the dogmas of Christianity, which claimed a divine sanction, may not have been very attractive, but the precepts, the practical duties, and especially the promises of the new system won the hearts and excited the enthusiasm at least of the poor and suffering. To such persons the doctrines of the equality of all men in tlie sight of God, of fraternity founded upon a common redemption, the promise of a future life of happiness, the certainty of a day of judgment, and the near ap- proach of the end of the world, — all this was, indeed, the gospel of consolation ; and no wonder, speaking of human means only, that such a gospel was eagerly em- braced by many. Of course, the idea of some plan of government or organization is inseparable from that of any religious system. Like other systems, the organiza- tion of Christianity, when it was a voluntary society, 28 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. seems to have been popular at first, — so far, at least, that it committed, to a considerable extent, the control of the election of the bishops or overseers in each town to the faithful, clerical and lay. Whatever may have been the early organization of the Christian Church, many of those moral duties which we recognize as based upon fundamental Christian ideas had become familiar not merely to Roman practice, but had been introduced into the Roman civil law, long before the reign of Con- stantine. It is not easy to trace clearly to the direct power of Christianity the origin of the more humane and enlightened views of moral rights and duties which became conspicuous in Roman practice, if not in Roman law, during the first three centuries. Still, it is impos- sible to believe that such changes in their moral concep- tions could have taken place without its indirect influence at least. The greater sacredness of marriage, the punish- ment of infanticide, the suppression of the cruel gladi- atorial shows, the mitigation of the evils of slavery by the consecration of the servile virtues, the urgent advocacy of the manumission of slaves, the redemption of captives, the organized plans for succoring the poor and afflicted, — all these things, and many others, which may be comprehended under the general name of char- ity, became conspicuous in the Roman world just in proportion as the warm blood of Christian life was poured into it. In every form of creed or change of doctrine which took place in the history of the Christian Church it is well to remember that the one unchanged CHURCH ORGANIZATION. 29 thing was the place occupied by these virtues in the Christian system. Nothing is more remarkable than that even among the rude barbarians, who looked with contempt upon weakness of any kind, and therefore despised qualities such as these, their gentle power won at last its way, and formed, under the fostering care of the Church, one of the most characteristic features of mediaeval Christianity. Let us consider now the manner in which the whole Christian system, both the practical duties it enforced and the doctrines which it taught, were propagated, or rather were made ready for infusion into the life of the barbarian tribes when they should come into contact with that Roman civilization of which organized Chris- tianity formed so prominent a part. Apparently there was in it little likely to combine with anything then known of the peculiarities of these tribes. I have already spoken of the primitive organization of the Church, and of the bishops, in one sense, as popular magistrates, as they were elected by the faithful. There were frequent meetings of councils of presbyters, j)resided over by the bishop, without whose advice and consent no changes of importance, even in matters of discipline, were undertaken. Out of this soon grew a hierarchy, in which the episcopal office was greatly mag- nified and the popular element lessened, metropolitans assuming authority over the bishops of a province, until at last the patriarchate of Rome, as the most important See, if not in the whole world, certainly in the Western 3* 30 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. Empire, became recognized as entitled to the primacy, and afterwards to what is called the papacy. Long be- fore the legal establishment of Christianity as the State religion, this organization, excepting, of course, the power of the patriarchate and the papacy, existed in the whole Western Empire, more or less perfectly carried out as the cities were more or less distant from Rome. Before Constantine, not only had Christianity been preached in every province and in every large city of the Empire, but bishops throughout its whole extent, even when the Christians were a proscribed and persecuted sect, were collecting from the faithful large sums of money as alms for the necessities of the Church and of tlie poorer brethren, and were enforcing discipline among their disciples by means of the Church censures, pen- ance, and excommunication. So entirely had the sys- tem, even when it was a voluntary one, taken root in the Roman heart and life. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, in 313, the eighteen hundred bishops who then ruled the Chris- tian world, as Avell as their clergy, were granted some extraordinary exemptions and privileges. They were freed from the obligation of service to the State, civil or military, and from the payment of all taxes; they were permitted to receive the donations and legacies of the faithful, which their zeal, stimulated by the example of the Emperor, made very abundant; and the cogni- zance of offences committed by the clergy was withdrawn from the ordinary tribunals and transferred to that of LEGISLATION OF CONSTANTINE. 31 the bishops. The lay judges were ordered to execute forthwith the decrees of the bishops, and tlie churches were made places of refuge for crimiuals, where the pro- cess of the civil law could not reach them. In this legislation of Constantine regarding the Church, everything in the way of privilege seems in- consistent with the ancient Roman policy, to which nothing was more abhorrent than an im'permm in im- perlo; but we cannot advance a step in mediaeval history without discovering that this legislation is the soil out of which grew logically and naturally that Church or- ganization which in so great a degree shaped the life of that age. \ The important inference to be drawn from this state of the relations of the early Church to the Em- pire is, that the power of the Church as an organization was the most active principle of life in the Roman world, from Constantine to the fall of the Empire, — that it had, so to speak, absorbed that life, and therefore became the most powerful agency in moulding the char- acter of the barbarians when they came into contact with it. It is not too much to say that as the Empire lost unity and organization these grand characteristics of the Roman system of administration were transfused into the life of the Church, that body snatching the power from the hands of the dying Empire, and in its turn ruling the world by the same methods. Abundant illustration might be given of the truth of the state- ment that the Church had, within its sphere, become the inheritor of the traditions of the Imperial power. 32 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. Perhaps there is no more striking proof of it than in what is called the penance of Theodosius. This hap- pened in 390, not a century after Christianity had re- ceived official recognition. The Emperor Theodosius, although one of the most orthodox of Emperors, was one of the most passionate of men. Incensed because the mob at Thessalonica had murdered one of his generals and a number of Roman soldiers, he took indiscrimi- nate vengeance on the town by a massacre of many thousands of its unarmed inhabitants. But, while the Emperor was absolute despot, it appears that there was a power within the Empire stronger than he. That power was then represented by one of the most illustrious men the Church ever produced, St. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan. When Theodosius, residing in that city, desired to present himself in the church, to participate as a good Christian in the service and the sacraments, he was for- bidden by the archbishop to enter even its precincts until he had performed the penance imposed by the Church upon a man guilty of such a crime as the massacre at Thessalonica. In this transaction it is hard to say which excites our greatest wonder, the boldness and the courage of the priest who could thus defy the Emperor, or the assured position of the Church at that time, which made it necessary for the ruler of the world to obey its decrees without hesitation. So, take the famous scene of Leo the Great, Pope in 452, threatening the savage Attila — *^ the Scourge of God,'' as he was called — with tlie ven- geance of the Apostles Peter and Paul in case he should POWER OF THE CHURCH. 33 dare to assail Rome, or the same Pope successfully plead- ing with that other savage, Genseric the. Vaudal, that he should spare in Rome those objects at least which were under the protection of the successor of the Prince of the Apostles. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Empire during the period in which the barbarian tribes were gradually becoming settled in the provinces than that, when the civil power decayed, and the armies of the Empire failed, another power, wdelded by different hands and exercised under totally different sanctions, but based in a certain measure upon the Im- perial organization, not only became a substitute for it, but proved the only means of preserving order amidst the confusion produced by the irruption of these wild tribes. Another element of Roman life which produced most important results in medijBval and modern history was the peculiar organization of the Empire as a system of government. Here, as in the organization of the Church, is the perpetual triumph of Rome. We can only refer to those portions of this complicated system which were in full vigor for nearly two hundred years before the fall of the Western Empire, and with the force of which, therefore, the invaders were brought more immediately into contact. The Roman govern- ment, at least from the time of Diocletian and Con- stantine, w'as a pure and absolute despotism. What- ever may have been the theory as to the proper methods of election, the Emperor really owed his office to the 34 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. acclamation of tlie legions on his accession. He was addressed as " the Lord of the Universe/' even if he was a Christian ; the principle of his rule was " quod principi placuit vigorem legis habet,'^ and his real strength lay in the loyal devotion of the army. He was at the head of a vast and thoroughly organized system of centrali- zation, and all the functionaries of tlie Empire were in the last resort responsible to him alone for their acts. His administration was based upon an elaborate system of law, which in many respects was so conformable to universal reason that it has formed the basis of the codes of some of the most enlightened nations of mod- ern times, — of France, for instance, and, indeed, of all Latinized Europe and its colonies in the New World. The Roman code was supposed to embody the historical policy of the Roman people in their legal relations with each other; but they had taken no direct part in its formation, and could in no way alter or amend it. This power was wholly in the hands of the Emperor, who made and unmade the laws to suit his Imperial policy. Nothing is more striking, when we remember the jeal- ousy with which in the days of the republic the Roman citizens, in their comitia, or general assemblies, watched the proposal to enact new laws, than to find two such fundamental changes as the removal of the seat of gov- ernment from Rome to Constantinople and the substitu- tion of Christianity for paganism as the official religion of the Empire, effected, apparently, without open opposi- tion and by a simple decree of Constantine. The power ROMAN ORGANIZATION, 35 of taxation, too, was wholly in the hands of the Em- peror; and when we add to this his complete control over the popuhition for the purpose of recruiting his armies, we find combined what have always been throughout history the most potent instruments of gov- ernment, the purse and the sword, and we may thus gain some true idea of the power of the military despot- ism of the Empire. With our modern views, such a system seems destructive of all the true ends of govern- ment. Not so thought the ancient world. To its con- temporaries the excellence of the system consisted in the perfection of its administrative organization. It worked well as a governing machine in this sense, that it had given to the Roman people greater peace and security, and for a longer time, than any government then known in history. The Roman system had not only crushed out nationalities, but in its conception of universal sway the theory of separate nationalities was inconceivable. No one was ever willing to believe that Rome could die. To her own subjects the removal of the capital to Con- stantinople was a mere matter of convenience, which did not affect the principle of her life ; even the Christians, when Alaric had sacked the city whose limits had not been polluted by the presence of armed enemies for more than seven hundred years, could speak of this catastrophe, through the words of St. Augustine, as the vengeance of God on the crimes and corruptions and cruelties of pagan Rome ; but her organization, her method of administra- tion, from which the Church was soon to borrow so 36 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. much, were constant themes of wonder and admiration and imitation. The barbarian tribes, even while they were destroying the monuments of ancient civilization, were, in one sense, conquered by them ; and they be- lieved as sincerely as did the Imperialists and the Chris- tians that the perpetuity of Roman law and Roman administration formed part of the eternal order of human affairs. Tliis profound belief we shall see ex- hibited all through the mediaeval times. There was always a longing for the past, a dream of the restora- tion of Roman Imperial order as a cure for the con- fusion of the times, sometimes taking a more definite ^ shape, as in the effort of Charlemagne, in the ninth : century, to restore the Western Empire. Surely if , any historical fact is well settled it is the universal supremacy of Rome. The force of her example was not spent in the rude mediaeval age, when the only ])reoccupation of thoughtful men was to find a refuge i from the evils of barbarism, but it has been all^ })Owerful in modern times. No one can study the liistory of France in the age of Louis XIY., or in ' that of the First Napoleon when he was ruler of the ^ Continent of Europe, — the new Charlemagne, as he j called himself, — without being satisfied that the sys- \ tems of both these masters of state-craft were formed ' on the Roman model. And indeed we might say the same of all other systems which now govern the world which are called Imperial. The genius of Rome inspires them all. RULE OF THE PROVINCES. 37 Some details of the forms of the provincial admin- istration under the later Emperors are essential here. Western Europe was divided into two prefectures, — that of Italy, including the Tllyrian districts east of tlie Adriatic, and Africa, and that of Gaul, embracing the three dioceses (then a purely civil and not an ec- clesiastical division) Gaul, Spain, and Britain. These dioceses were divided into provinces, of which in Gaul proper there w^ere seventeen, with a governor at the head of each. These governors were the Emperor's immediate representatives, vested with his powers for the collection of taxes, the management of the public domain, the levy and regulation of troops for the army, and with the whole civil and criminal jurisdiction within the province. This system of government was somewhat modified or supplemented by the exercise of certain functions intrusted to the towns, or municipiay in the provinces. The original Roman system was that of a government by cities, known to its law as municipiaj each municipium being entitled to certain privileges and exercising certain powers of local self- government. The Imperial policy was a policy of cen- tralization, and in a great measure diminished the im- portance and privileges of these municipia. Still, in the decline of the Empire they were important adjuncts in the administration of the government, not of their local affairs only, but of the general and Imperial sys- tem. Each municipium was administered by a body called the curia J and its members, chosen from the wealthier r 38 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. inhabitants and possessing a hereditary right to office, were called Guv'iales. These towns in all the provinces of the Empire had grown numerous and rich during the long peace. The principal business of the town councils, in the latter days of the Empire, was to col- lect the public taxes. Their members were personally responsible for the amount of the tax imposed if they failed to collect it from those by whom it was due, even for that levied upon lands which had been abandoned by their proprietors. Their position was simply that of agents of the Imperial treasury, and the office, as may readily be supposed, was rather in the nature of a bur- den than a place of profit. The compensation granted by the government to the curiales for thus making them imiversal tax-gatherers, or rather universal tax-payers, was exemption from torture and corporal punishment, which might be employed in the case of the other inhabitants. Such were some of the prominent characteristics of the Roman organization when the Western Roman world was overrun by the Teutonic tribes. I have referred only to those which history shows us affected most powerfully the ideas and at last transformed the life of these barbarians. Christianity, organized after the Roman pattern, the Imperial administration, and the recollections of the greatness of Rome under this system were among the most powerful influences in pro- ducing such a result. Is it not strange that in this mass of moral putrefaction, as it lias been called, should lie PILATE S SUPERSCRIPTION. 39 hidden tlie germ of our modern life? We must watch carefully its development and its surroundings through a long course of ages before we can understand how Divine Providence brought light out of such darkness. There is but one other Roman influence aiding in the propagation of Roman and especially of Christian ideas to which we can refer here, and that is the substitution of the use of the Latin for the native languages in the provinces of the Empire during the latter days. One illustration must suffice. Let us recall the superscription which was placed by Pilate on the cross, notwithstanding the earnest protest of the Jewish rulers : " This is Jesus the King of the Jews : and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.'' Li this inscription of Pilate there seems to be an unconscious prophecy of the future destiny of the world. F-rom that cross, and through the channel of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages, have radiated all the influences which have made modern civilization the precious inheritance it is. That cross was set up at the point of confluence of those three great civiliza- tions of antiquity which have ever since profoundly affected the life, public and private, of the people of Western Europe. The Hebraic monotheistic concep- tion of the Deity, the Greek universal reason, and the Roman power, and especially its language, have been the great secondary means of the propagation in that portion of the world of Christian civilization. In the West, Roman law, Roman Christianity, and Roman power 40 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. went together into the most remote regions, and won their triumphs on the same fields and by the use of the same Latin language. By means of this Latin language Roman civilization was presented to the minds of the barbarians as including many things outside the domain of force, and conquered them, when force failed, by ap- peals to their reason and their hearts. It was the Latin language in the service of the Church, and in the administration of the law of the Empire, which taught the barbarians in what the true power and glory of Home and the perpetuity of her system consisted, and thus was made an important step in their preparation for the reception of that civilization of which the Roman language was the vehicle, as the Roman organi- zation was the motive force. CHAPTER II. THE BARBARIANS AND THE INVASIONS. We are now to consider the hostile forces with which this proud Roman civilization came in contact during the invasion and conquest of the territory of the Empire by the German tribes. We are concerned here rather with the nature of those forces than with the liistory of the military occupation of the soil, and especially with the long struggle between the habits, manners, and moral sentiments of the barbarians and the totally opposite characteristics of Roman life and its result. When we reach this result, by studying the development of these forces and the gradual process by which they were brought into something like harmonious co-operation for the practical purposes of government, we shall know something of the groundwork of the true life of the Middle Age. We shall thus gain, too, some insight into the sources of modern civilization, which we can trace to this strange combination of the Roman and Teutonic elements. Such a combination is very rare in history. We find very few instances in the long list of conquests where the peculiar civilization of the con- querors and the conquered flourished side by side, and where that which was fittest in each survived and gradually coalesced. 4* 41 w 42 MEDJJEIVAL HISTORY. All the tribes which successively invaded and perma- nently occupied Western Europe were of the Teutonic race. They were many in number and in name, — Goths, Burgundians, Suevi, Alemanni, Vandals, Lom- bards, Franks, and Saxons, — but they were all of the same great race, and had the same origin in the great Aryan migration from Asia. Although, of course, they diifered in many respects, yet in their fundamental ideas concerning government, religion, and manners, so far as they were guided by these ideas in their relations with the Romans, there was among them all a strong family likeness. At the time of the invasion, all these tribes, save the Franks and the Saxons, were nominally Chris- tian, — that is to say, they were Arians, — holding a form of belief from which most important results were to follow, as we shall see in their subsequent history. But, relatively to the Romans, all the tribes were equally bar- barous, and their barbarous peculiarities had the same root, and, as we shall see, were developed in each in pretty nearly the same manner after the invasion and conquest of the Empire. The country from which these tribes came may be roughly described as that portion of modern Europe lying north of \\\^ Danube and between the Rhine and the Vistula, the Scandi- navian Peninsula, and certain portions of Russia. Their f normal condition was that of wanderers, as the Ger- I mans call them, and the chief occupation of all the ( active and able-bodied among them was either hunting ' or war. 1 The warriors, like the braves of the North MODES OF BARBARIAN LIFE. 43 American Indians, despised industry and loved fighting. From the earliest period of Roman history the people in Italy lived in a perpetual apprehension (which sub- sequent events only too well justified) lest their country should be overrun by these ferocious savages. The greatest danger, indeed, which, up to. the time of its occurrence, had threatened the republic? was the invasion of its territory by the Cimbri and the Teutones^ who were driven back by Marius ; and Caesar's conquest of Gaul, like Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons, was prompted, no doubt, quite as much by. a determination to extirpate the source of the danger by subjugating the fierce tribes in that region as by a wish to extend the ^ limits of the republic. These tribes for the most part lived originally in Germany, in what are called " village commmuti.es," the primitive Teutonic system, in which, while each homestead was the private property of the head of the family, and was ruled solely by him as jpaterfamiliaSy the cultivable land was the common property of all the families of the village or township, and was tilled by them. They were not crowded together in large towns, as the Romans were, — a peculiarity, as we shall see, of immense importance in subsequent European history. The villages were combined into districts, which were governed by a chief called gvafj or count ; but in each district assemblies of representatives of the village were held frequently, and decided the most important ques- tions, both as to their home government and the warlike 44 MEDI^ VAL . HISTOR Y. expeditions of the tribe. Larger confederations, made up of a greater number of tribes, were also formed on the same principle and with the same object. The people of these tribes consisted of nobles, lesser and greater, freemen, as they were called, all of whom took part in war and in the tribal assemblies, and slaves, concerning whom the distinction must be made that one portion of these so-called slaves were the peasants or serfs, adscripti glehije, and the other the true domestic slaves, most of them prisoners of war, between which classes the difference became gradually greater and more marked after the tribes had occupied for some time the Roman soil. We must confine ourselves, in our account of them, to those special characteristics which became afterwards prominent in their relations with the Romans. Their religious belief, of which some mention has been made, founded upon the Scandinavian mythology, was perhaps the best expression of the spirit which from the beginning animated these warlike races. Chris- tianity had at the period of the invasions, under the form of Arianism, supplanted, at least among the more Southern Gothic tribes, the worship of Odin and his fellow-divinities, and perhaps the difference in the out- ward forms of Christian worship, observable all through history, between the nations of Northern and Southern Europe, may be traced with some confidence to the in- fluence of this Scandinavian mythology^ But the tribes who made the first serious assaults were Goths, and were Christians, even if they were called heretics. The earliest ARIANISM AMONG THE GOTHS. 45 of all the missionaries among them was the celebrated Ulpkilas (348-374), commonly called the '^Apostle of the Goths/^ who spent a large portion of his life among that })ortion of the great Gothic race which inhabited what is now Southern Russia, engaged in the praise- worthy and successful endeavor to teach these barbarians literally their letters, translating the Bible into the written language he had formed, and striving to civilize them after the Roman pattern by imparting to them a knowledge of that form of Christianity which had been fashionable in Constantinople when he was educated there. From the Goths the belief in Arian Christianity spread to the Suevi, to tlie Alani, and to the Burgun- dians, before they invaded the Empire. This seems a marvellous result of the labors and zeal of the apostle Ulphilas, this conversion, nominal, if we may so regard it, of vast bodies of these fierce barbarians, who despised the weakness of the Romans and were preparing to in- vade the country whose national religion they had just adopted. How all this came about is an historical ques- tion of considerable obscurity. One thing seems very clear, however. Their conversion, as well as the extraor- dinary forbearance and even respect shown both by Alaric and Theodoric, Gothic kings, who were both Arians, towards the Catholic hierarchy in their invasion of Italy, are well-attested historical facts. Moreover, the toleration of the Catholic worship and belief in Gaul by the Arian chieftains after they had subdued that province, is conclusive that under the Arian system 46 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. tlie barbarians had been successfully taught something of that charity and good will which, according to our ideas, but not to those of mediaeval times, are inseparable from true Christianity. But, whatever may have been the influence of Chris- tianity upon the Teutonic tribes up to the time of the invasion, it is certain that they continued to be war- riors, and warriors after the ancient manner of their own race. Now, with that race, while force was the means, courage, which taught them that the brave war- rior never died, but only changed his abode, was the inspirer of their life. With this object in view, death on the field of battle became the great end of life. The Romans always looked upon them with astonishment, as they observed that they had overcome the most ter- rible of all fears, the fear of death. The young Roman when he reached what w^as called the virile age was in- vested with a toga, as a sign of his readiness to undertake the duties of a citizen ; the young German, on the con- trary, at the same age was armed, in the midst of the tribe, with a buckler and a javelin, and he had not per- fected his title to manhood or to rank as a warrior until he had killed at least one man in battle. Their Scandi- navian religion taught them the existence of a future state, and by some it has been thought that this belief paved the Avay to the reception of the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul ; but when we remember that all persons not dying on the field of battle were excluded from the Valhalla, — the Scandinavian heaven. TEUTONIC TRAITS. 47 — the inference seems somewhat strained. Accompany- ing this warlike temper, of which Christianity as taught them only changed the direction and the motive, the sentiments of a love of equality and of personal inde- pendence were among the most conspicuous peculiarities. These are the qualities which are supposed by some historians to be the chief gifts of these tribes to our modern life ; and, however that may be, it is certain that in no respect was the Teutonic condition more entirely in contrast with that of the life of antiquity than in this. Throughout tlie ancient world the State was everything, the individual nothing. The practice was reversed in the case of the barbarians, and in their mode of life it was impossible that thej[)rincip]e of indiyi,(]._u|ilism should not be greatly developed. Equality with them, of course, did not mean a claim founded upon what are sometimes called natural rights, still less was it that kind of equality which prevailed in the lioman Empire, where all were equal, it is true, before the law, but the equality was an equality of slaves. But the boast of the barbarian freemen was that a true equality, founded on the supposed common possession of honor, courage, devotion, had always been recognized among them as their most precious inheritance. And they pointed for proof of this claim to what has been sometimes deemed a feature of the existence of an aris- tocratic system prevailing among them, — the practice which was common among the young warriors of de- voting themselves absolutely to the service of some 48 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. renowned cliief, with no other hope of reward, at least in the earlier times, than a share in the glory he achieved. In this relation, individualism w^as stimulated to the utmost, while it was inseparably linked with loyal and devoted service to a superior. This is the true ideal of the highest human service, never perhaps fully realized except in our relations towards Him ^' whose service is perfect freedom.'^ No doubt, too, we find here the germ of all that was best in the feudal sys- tem as a form of human government, although at no time can it hardly be fairly described, at least when that system was fully developed, as having been in practice (to use the fervid rhetoric of Burke) " the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," or as " main- taining that subordination of the heart which kept alive in servitude itself the spirit of an exalted freedom." There can be no doubt that this sentiment of lovalty to a qhief, combined with pride in their pers onal inde- pendence, had a permanent effect upon the history of the races which conquered the Empire, even forming a distinguishing mark at the present day between those nations purely Teutonic and races more or less Latin in their origin. ^ Another contribution made by the barbarians to the peculiar characteristics both of mediaeval and of modern times was their earnest conviction of \}i\^ sacredness of the life of a freeman as distinguished from that of a slave. Slaves, as we all know, held their lives, as well as their liberty, very much at the arbitrary ca])rioe of PUNISHMENT OF.'CAMES. , 4^. iurinar the / their masters, both among the Rm"6ans^ and. during 1 inediseval age; but while crimes agai^|fe -ffi^ Pe^dn^j&r^ property were always i)unished in Rome^^^^they are Avith us, as offences against the majesty of the State, no crimes among the barbarians committed by freemen, except perhaps treason, were made capital offences, but were rather regarded as injuries to the individual or to his family, for which atonement could be and was made by the pa^nnent of money, proportioned not so nluch to the gravity of the offence as to the rank of the offender or his victim. The sum to be paid was called by the Germans the weregeld, and the principle upon which this kind of satisfaction for crime was made is not unknown to our modern criminal law. With this, another peculiarity has left at least a trace in modern law, and that is the practice by which the denial of the party accused, supported by the oaths of certain compurgators^ as they were called, declaring that they believed that such a denial was true, was considered as judicially equivalent to its truth when established by evidence from other sources. When no other testimony was accessible, a resort was had to trial by battle, as it was called,^ — in other words, to a fight between the parties or their champions, — which was su})posed to be an appeal to God's judgment to settle the dispute according to right. The barbarian codes, especially those of the two great families of the Frankish tribes, the Salian " and the Ripuarian, are filled with minute regulations in re- gard to these subjects, showing not merely the permanent 50 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. characteristic traits of the peoj)le, but how utterly un- Roman they were, and how difficult and tedious must liave been the process by which they were combined and assimilated with the manners and ideas of the countries which they invaded. As to this word " invasion/' there is some liability to misapprehension from its use. The invasion of the barbarians w^as not like the torrent which overwhelms, but rather like a slow, persistent force which under- mines, disintegrates, and crumbles. The Germans were not strangers to the Roman Empire when they began their conquests. As far back as the battle of Pharsalia, the victory over Pompey was decided by the Gallic aux- iliaries enlisted by Csesar in the service of the republic. It is well known that many of the Koman Emperors were barbarians who had been successful soldiers in the Imperial army; that military colonies were established on the frontiers composed of men of various races under the control of Roman discipline; that the Goths, before they revolted against the authority of the Em- peror, were his chosen troops ; that the great Alaric was a Roman general ; that the shores of the Danube and the Rhine, which marked the limits of the Empire, were lined with cities which were at the same time Roman colonies and peopled with men of the Teutonic races. When the barbarians did actually occupy the territory their movement seems at first to have been characterized by a strange mixture of force with a sentiment of awe and reverence for the Roman name. In Italy and in NATURE OF THE INVASION. 51 Gaul they appropriated to themselves two-thirds of the lands, but they sought to govern their conquests by means of the Roman law and administration, a ma- chine which proved in their hands, by the way, a rather clumsy means of government. They robbed the pro- vincials of all the movable property they possessed, but the suffering they inflicted is said not to have been as great as that caused by the exactions of the Roman tax- gatherer. The number of armed invaders has doubt- less been exaggerated. The whole force of the Burgun- dian tribe, whose territory, in the southeast of modern France, extended to the Rhone at Avignon, did not, it is said, exceed sixty thousand in all, while the armed bands of Clovis, who changed the destinies not only of Gaul but of Europe, were not greater than one-tenth of that number. The great change in their life was, as I have said, that they ceased to be wanderers ; they became, in a measure at least, fixed to the soil; and, in contrast with the Romans, they preferred to live in the country and not jn^ ;yie towns. In this they fol- lowed their Teutonic habits, little knowing what a mighty change this new distribution of population was to cause in the social condition of Europe. The^^_re:i. tained, too, their old military organization, and, after attempts more" or iess~successfiir~to use the Roman administration for the ordinary purposes of govern- ment, they abandoned it, and ruled the countries they conquered by simple military force, under their Dukes and Counts, the Romans generally being allowed in 52 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. their private relations to govern themselves by the forms of the Roman law. I have spoken of the peculiarities of the Teutonic tribes as if they were common to the whole race. But it is to be remembered that there were diifering degrees of civilization among them an all times. The Goths, both Eastern and Western, wpe certainly far more ad- vanced in this respect than the Franks or Saxons. The object of their great king, Theodoric (Ostrogoth, as op- posed to Visigoth), as declared by him in his conquest of Italy, was to restore the Roman name with Gothic strength, while the codes of the Visigoths in Spain, the united work of the nobility and bishops of that country, are strongly marked by the, influence of Roman law. Even the fierce and untamed Franks shared the sentiment of awe and veneration with which the Roman name was still regarded in the most remote regions. Certainly no picture in history is more curious than the triumphal display made by Clovis of the title and purple robe of the Roman patrician and consul which had been sent to him by Anastasius, the Emperor at Constantinople, after the Franks had conquered the last remnant of Roman Gaul. It would seem that a Roman title was needed by popular sentiment in this case, as in that of Pepin afterwards, to transform a king de facto into one dejure. There was, too, of course, a great difference in the char- acter of the permanent influence of the barbarians in those countries, such as Britain and Northern Germany, which, owing to their remoteness, had never been fully PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED. 53 1 civilized after the Roiiian pattern, and in those, such as Gaul and Spain, where the civilization had long been identical with that of Italy. Making allowances for these differences, we may say that the invaders in the fourth and fifth centuries brought into the Western Koman Empire by their invasions four distinct, per- manent influences or tendencies, viz. : 1. The principle of representative government, as shown in the assemblies of freemen, where the common interests and military enterprises of the tribe were dis- cussed and settled. 2. The principle of royalty in a new form. The king must be of a divine descent, but his election, also, by his fellow-warriors was essential. 3. The sentiment of devotion or loyalty to a chieftain, constituting the relation of military patronage. 4. A strong feeling of personal independence. <^ We come now to speak of the influence of Christianity upon the barbarian tribes after they had occupied the Roman territory, and of the conversion of those wlio remained outside its limits. This influence, organized by the Church in both cases, was the great agency which made possible a real fusion of the opposing Latin and Teutonic ideas when they came in contact, and thus has much to do with the growth of the life of the Middle Age. We must always bear in mind that the Christian system was the only exponent of the grand princij^le^of the visible unity of government then recognized in the world, as the Roman Imperial system had been, and that 54 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. t. it claimed, as Rome liad done, to bring under the same allegiance not only the Greek and the Roman, but all men, whether barbarian or Scythian, bond or free. It had faith in its mission, which it never lost, even in its darkest days. Indeed, the power of the Church imme- diately after the downfall of the Empire, in the midst of the confusion which then prevailed, may be compared to what the metallurgists call a flux, reducing to a state of fusion and homogeneity the rebellious elements of Avhich European life was then composed. In the time of Constantine, Christianity, under the organization of bishops more or less controlled by the action of both clergy and laity, was established not only -in Italy, but in all the provinces of the West, — in Illyria, in Africa, in Gaul, and in certain portions of Britain. Nominally under the general supervision of the Emperor, the Church formed a veritable impernum in im- perlo, with its own laws, officers, revenues, and powers of administration. While the Imperial power was being undermined by corruption and weakness within and by fierce assault-s from without, the Church grew stronger and stronger every day. It was like the ark of God in the desert: no profane hand was bold enough to touch it, and where it rested there alone was safety. While all else that was Roman was crumbling or Jbeijig submerged, the Church alone, in its power_ovcr the wills and passions of naen, stood er^ct and undaunted. We must not think of it, then, as a mere teacher of morals, or even as an exemplar of Christian virtue only. In all POSITION OF THE CLERGY. 55 the provinces and in the larger towns the clergy filled all the important offices, and they assumed those municipal functions exercised by the curiales which had been given up by laymen because their performance entailed ruin- ous sacrifices on those who held them. Wherever in these calamitous times there remained in any of the cities an official defensor populiy whose chief business it was to protect the people against arbitrary taxation, the holder of this office, who inherited some of the authority of the old tribunes, was sure to be a bishop. It is not going, indeed, too far to say that when the Emperor Justinian gave to the bishops by decree a sort of general surveillance over all the public functionaries of the Empire he was merely confirming by law a practice which had long existed. The intercession of the Bishop of Rome with Alaric, with Attila, and with Genseric, appealing to those victorious chieftains to spare the city of Rome from the horrors of a siege, must be regarded not merely as the courageous performance of a Christian duty on the one side, by which superstitious terrors were aroused on the other, but also as an assertion of an official authority, the claims of which were gener- ally recognized. The Arian Goths, as has been said, while they appropriated to their own use two-thirds of the lands in Italy, did not touch the churches of the Catholic faith. For -various reasons, then, when thejloman authority was withdrawn from the Gallic provinces the Church was not only the only organized ele ment of gove rnment 56 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. left there, but in one sense it was neve r more powerful or prosperous than ^fter tlie occupation of th e cou ntry by thej)arbarians. It had, through the devotion of the faithful, increased in riches as well as in power, and in this way, it is said, it had lost something of its early zeal and purity. However that may be, it is certain that before the fifth century closed there was not only in Gaul, but generally throughout the West, that prac- tical recognition of the authority of the Church, and the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome as its head, which, however unlike it may have been to the doctrine of the papal supremacy of later days, still bound all Western Christendom in bonds more or less close to the See of St. Peter. This is not the place to discuss in what way this supremacy was established. The fact remains, that by this thoroughly organized system Christianity was spread and the Church governed for more than a thousand years. The changes produced in the world's opinions and destiny by these events must be regarded as second in importance in their far-reaching results only to those caused by the introduction of Christianity itself. Whatever else was involved in them, they sub- stituted the unity of the Roman Catholic faitli, worslnp, and government for the unity of Rom an power, law, and adjninistration. The city of God, as St. Augustine says, was to be built upon the ruins of the Imperial mistress of the world. Let us study some of the steps in this process as liis- tory shows them to us. Beginning with a recognition WORK OF THE CHURCH. 57 of the fact that in the fifth century the Popes were regarded practically as head of the Church in Western Europe, the question is, how they reduced the bar- barian conquerors to the obedience of the Catholic faith. We must, of course, confine ourselves to the consideration of a very limited part of their work ; and yet its results were of the most far-reaching kind. We must remember that at that time there was really n o line dra wn, as there is now, between laws regulating civlLand religious^ life. The relations of each to the other were inextricably blended. It seems a small thing to say that for more than two centuries the Church bent all its energies to the extirpation of Arianism and to the conversion_of the Northern barbarians, and that the master-statesmen of that day^ Popes Leo I. and Gregory the Great, directed its policy ; and yet it means that through these agencies the destiny of the whole world was changed. As has been said, the tribes which occupied the Empire at its downfall — the Goths, the Alani, the Suevi, the Burgundians — were Arians. Among the Roman popu- lation of Wi^stern Europe they were no doubt quite as much hatal as heretics as they were feared as invaders. The orthodox Church in the provinces, except perhaps in Africa, seems, notwithstanding their presence, to have preserved its organization unimpaired. If any efforts were made for the conversion of the Arians by pacific means, they were unsuccessful. The Church, too, in its efforts to reduce the barbarians to obedience, resorted to 58 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. \ that singular combination of force and persuasion, and I tliat extraordinary power of improving the opportunities I which presented themselves to her, which, speaking now \ only of merely human means, has made the organization (of the Roman Church the most powerful and effective (for its purpose of any wdiich the world has ever seen. It has already been said that the Frankish tribes in their original strongholds along the course of the middle and lower Rhine were, with the exception of the Saxons, the only invaders of the Roman territory not nominally Christian. They, too, were the last of the invaders, at least while a shadow of the Roman authority remained. They were always regarded as the most untamed and ferocious of all the Teutonic tribes, and, as the event proved, were able not only to extinguish all Roman authority in the West, but to acquire and retain a su- premacy over the other barbarians who had previously occupied that portion of the Empire. The history, then, of the Prankish domination in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Germany, and especially its conflict with whatever was distinctly Roman, — its religion, its language, its manners, and the faint traces of life stiU left in its municipia, — that history, from Clovis to Charlemagne, is the history of the beginnings of modern Europe. The Franks, or, as they were afterwards called, the Merovingians (sea-warriors), occupied, in the middle of the fifth century, the territory forming a part of modern Holland and Belgium and a considerable portion of what are now known as the Prussian Rhine provinces, PRANKISH CONQUESTS. 59 on each side of the river. The tribe was composed of two branches, — the one the Salian (the northern), and the other the Ripuarian. They became united for the purpose of conquering Gaul, and did not differ much, except that the E,ipuarians, owing to their nearer contact with the Romans, had become somewhat more tractable tlian the Salians. In the year 481 Clovis was chief of the Salian Franks, and began his conquests. In 486 he defeated the Roman patrician Syagrius, who maintained a power supported by scarcely anything but the Impe- rial name. Ten years later the Alemanni, one of the most warlike of the Teutonic tribes, who were disposed to dispute with the Franks the great prize of Roman Gaul, were entirely crushed ; and still later the Burgun- dians, on the upper Rhine and in the southeastern por- tion of France, were overcome, and their kingdom, in a few years afterwards, destroyed; and last, and most important of all, the great Visigothic kingdom, south of the Loire and extending to the Pyrenees, was attacked, and only that portion of it which now forms the larger part of the Spanish Peninsula remained in the hands of the descendants of Alaric. There is. only one way, it seems to me, to account for this rapid and complete subjugation by the Franl^s of^ tribes of the same race whose numbers were far greater J than those by whom they were attacked. These con-T. quests were no doubt due in a large measure to the I ])ower of the Church, and the baptism of Clovis in 496 » marks the beginning of a most important era in the \ 60 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. history of Europe, in which priestly power was, if not absolutely substituted for armed force as a means of supreme rule, at any rate so inseparably blended with it for many centuries as to shape the policy of European governments. Clovis, it is true, when he began his conquests was a heathen, but, as he was at least not an Arian, he was regarded by the bishops in Gaul as a fit- ting instrument in the hands of Divine Providence for extirpating that hated heresy. Personally he seems to have been, both before and after his conversion, one of the most bloodthirsty and ferocious savages of whom history makes mention ; but these were qualities by no means inconsistent in those days with a reputation for orthodoxy, and at any rate all this was forgotten Ly the bishops in their zeal to suppress the open profession of heresy. We are told by gratefid contemporaneous churchmen that at the baptism of Clovis the angels in heaven rejoiced. Those who truly loved God on earth were made glad, it is said, on this memorable occasion as the bishop, St. R^my, gave him this short summary of Christian doctrine : " Learn, Sicamber, to burn what thou hast adored, and to adore what thou hast burned.^' The reasons given by the bishops (who repaid the toleration extended to them by the Visigothic monarch by encouraging the invasion of his country) for the suc- cess of Clovis are very significant in deciding as to whose benefit the invasion enured. '^Clovis," they say, "confessed the Trinity. He destroyed the heretics, and thus extended his conquests in Gaul. Alaric (th(^ CONVERSION OF CLOVIS. 61 Visigotliic king) denied the Trinity. He was deprived of his kingdom, of his people, and of what was more important, eternal life." It was evident that Clovis himself knew what was expected of him, and upon whose power he could rely. With new-born zeal he exclaimed, " I am grieved because these Goths, who are Arians, in- habit the best part of Gaul. Let us assail them, with the aid of God, and drive them out and possess their lands !" There is a strange mixture of religion with an inborn love of plunder in these proceedings, characteristic of the time. We cannot, of course, defend such an alliance by any reasons which would be regarded as satisfac- tory now, but there is no doubt that it was thought per- fectly natural and legitimate at the time; and as little, in my opinion, that it was one of those cases which we meet with so frequently in history in which God, in his own way, has brought good out of w4mt seems at the time to have been unmixed evil. Strange as it may seem, a vast deal of what is most characteristic of our modern system is due to the suppression of Arianism, or rather to the substitution of the organized Catho- lic Church for it in the regions in which it had been the dominant system. For the conquests of Clovis in Gaul gave the death-blow to Arianism, or rather to its political power every w^here. The Visigoths were driven into S[)ain, and ^vere there, some time afterwards, induced by the orthodox bishops to adopt the creed of Nicffia, and thus to perfect the religious unity of \\\Qi 62 MED LEVA L HISTORY. Christian population. The Vandals in Africa, who had been the most obstinate of the Arians, yielded to the Catholic Church, while Belisarius, in the last display ever made of the ancient Roman energy, broke up the kingdom of the Ostrogothic Arians in Italy. The Frankish kings of the Merovingian race, on the whole, kept good faith with the Church, to whose influence they were so much indebted for their exten- sive dominion in Gaul. These rulers, unlike those who reigned at Constantinople, had neither the inclination nor the capacity to meddle with mere theological ques- tions. The Church was not only undisturbed in the ])rofession of its dogmas, but the rude warriors of the Franks embraced the faith wdth a zeal that was not less enthusiastic because it was on some points blind and undiscerning, and savoring somewhat of the sentiment with which they had formerly regarded Odin and his fellow-divinities. Butjthe Franks djxl not interfere with the internal organization of the Church. The bishops, indeed, became more powerful than ever. On the one hand, the popular element which in the beginning in- fluenced so much their election and administration was gradually eliminated, and on the other the principle of that aristocratic organization which gradually destroyed the control of their chiefs by the assemblies of freemen — the fundamental basis, as we have seen, of the Teu- tonic organization — was transferred into the Church also. The bishops became j)owerf ul, not merely as ecclesias- tics, but as great lords with large possessions and great POWERS OF THE CLERGY. 63 powers. Their wealth increased enormously, both from donations and legacies ; they had the right not merely of trying the clergy for criminal offences in their own courts, but also of settling there questions concerning property which might arise in which any officer of the Church should be a party. They had not merely the right to receive donations and inheritances, but also to administer as they thought best, and for such objects as they might designate, their revenues. The Qhurcli estates jwere free from taxation, and in this age rose the pretension, which was never given up by the clergy until the French Revolution, that the Church should pay no taxes, because it served the king by its prayers. But with these pretensions came the civilizing and re- freshing influence, in that wild time, of true charity. The right of asylum, or refuge from the avenger of blood, hospitals for lepers, provisions for the sick and poor, cathedral schools, religious houses, in which the inmates, by precept and example, sought to reclaim the earth from the spoliation of fierce and cruel men and make it yield its fruits for the use of God's poor, — all these we must never lose sight of, even if our object be merely to ascertain how the Church conquered the barbarians. We shall find that the Church's _power was jiq^ really founded on the Church's pride, button its charity. It is true that many very unfit men among the higher Prankish nobles, no doubt attracted by the splendor of the position of the bishops, thrust themselves at times 64 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. into the hierarchy ; but, whatever may have been the scandal to the Chiircli from this source, it is by no means certain that by this practice, for a time at least, its in- fluence over the rude kings of the Franks was lessened. After a time the two systems, that of the Church and of the State, mutually supported each other, and noth- ing of general interest was undertaken without the aid of each. We begin to see the direct influence of the Church upon the system of these rude Franks when we find the Pope calling on Charles Martel for aid against the schismatic Lombards ; when we find Pepin begging the Pope to make him by divine authority a king dejure^ as he already was one de facto, and when, on that famous Christmas day in the year 800, Charle^ jnagne was crowned, at Rome, Emperor of the restored Western Empire, in token that a new world-monardiy had been formed, of which the King of the Franks was to be Ccesar Imperator Semper Augustus, and the Pope Pontifex Maximus. The next step in the advance of the Prankish power, thus made up of the elements of civil and ecclesiastical authority firmly welded together, was logically, if not quite chronologically, the convers ion of the Northern nations. The Frankish kings had established the Church on a firm basis within their own dominions. It was now the turn o£ the Church to lead the way, or at least to march to the spiritual conquest of Germany in company with the armies which sought to annex its territory to the dominion of the Merovingians. In CONVERSION OF THE NORTHERN TRIBES. 65 expeditions where both motives operated so powerfully, it is not easy no\v to test their comparative force. That the Church was sincere in its desire for the conversion of these heathen, and that from the highest motives, we may infer from the character of the missionaries she sent among them, and from that natural desire to propagate what she believed to be the truth, which was conspicu- ous even in her most degenerate days. But, with that wisdom and sagacity in applying means appropriate to gain her ends at a particular time which have always characterized her, she saw clearly that her object was not to be accomplished by moral force alone. As St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany and martyr of the faith, avows, " Without the authority of the King of the Franks, and without the respect which that authority inspired, nothing could have been done either to teach the people, or to protect the priests and monks wdio were engaged in this hazardous service, or to break up the pagan superstitions or the worship of idols.'^ In this way the Church became the natural and neces- sary ally of the Franks in the conquest of Germany, and, while she must bear her share of the responsi- bility for the horrible cruelties attendant upon it, and especially for the wholesale conversions that were made when the alternative was extermination or baptism, still we may find some excuse, not merely in the permanent good results which followed the destruction of the heathen religions, but also in the reflection that, in the opinion then prevalent, conquest and Christianity stood 6* MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. in relation to each other as cause and effect. There is something revolting to us in the notion of men being made . Christians by the power of the sword, but cir- cumstances forbade either statesmen or churchmen to entertain such opinions in the sixth and seventh cen- turies. For it was not only the spread of Christianity which was involved in these wars of Charlemagne and his predecessors with the fierce tribes of Germany, but the future of Western Europe as well. The heathen surrounded the empire of the Franks, scarcely per- manently settled in Gaul, as the Franks had threatened the Roman, and a new and fiercer invasion was feared unless its power was broken in its native strongholds. It is refreshing to turn from these doubtful methods of propagating Christianity to the evangelic labors of those true defenders of the faith, whose record of devo- tion, self-sacrifice, and successful endeavor to plant a permanent civilization in the wilds of Germany forms one of the brightest chapters in history. We must understand that the inhabitants of certain portions of Germany, such as Frisia on the north. Saxony and Thuringia in the middle, and Bavaria and a part of the country of the Alemanni on the south, had little to do with the invasion of the Empire. They had remained untamed heathen and German, with little or no infusion of the Roman element. Towards these countries the zeal of the early missionaries was directed. St. Colum- ban, an Irish monk, established himself, with tw^elve of his countrymen, in the midst of the heathen in THE PAPAL MISSIONARIES. 67 589, near tlie Yosges Mountains, and spread the Chris- tian doctrine, witli wonderful success, among the popu- lation of Avhat is now Alsace, Baden, and Switzerland, and his disciple, St. Gall, established among the Grisons one of the most famous monasteries of the Middle Age. From these points rays of light reached Southwest Ger- many, the missionary stations being advanced far into Bavaria, The w^ork was not at first as thoroughly done as it would have been had it been better organized. It needed unity of plan, and, above all, some one control- ling and directing authority. This was found when the Pope became the acknowledged head of the Western Church. We all remember the story of the English boys found by Pope Gregory the Great in the slave-market at Pome, and how this incident is supposed to have induced him to send Augustine and his monks to convert the heathen Anglo-Saxons, then occupying the south of England. This enterprise proved so successful that it led him to take similar methods to assure the triumph of the Church in Germany. His agents for this holy purpose were converted Anglo-Saxons, and Frisia, the country which stretches along the North Sea from the Elbe to the Weser, then perhaps the rudest of all the German districts, was the scene of their first labors. Here little success at first attended them, for a reason which prevailed apparently nowhere else in Germany, and that was that Prankish conquest and Cliristianity were both presented to them at the same time, and both were equally regarded as the badge of slavery. But the 68 medialVal history. heroism of Willibrod and Winfred, who were persistent in their eiForts, ahd the martyrdom of the last, whose name had been changed by the Pope to Boniface, at last completed the triumph of Christianity in these remote regions. Time would fail me to tell of the laboi*s of many others, men of whom the world was not worthy, the true pioneers of civilization among these tribes, of St. Anskar, for instance, the "Apostle of the North,'' as he was called, to whom the Scandinavian countries were indebted for their first knowledge of Christianity. But a few words must be said about Winfred, St. Boniface, the " Apostle of Germany f for certainly no man before Charlemagne did as much for the civilization of that country. An Englishman of noble birth, lie placed himself under the direction of the Pope as a missionary to the heathen tribes of Central Germany. He was a statesman as well as a sincere zealot, and he allied himself in carrying out his plans closely, as we have seen, with the Merovingian kings, whose wars in Thu- ringia and Saxony were guided much by his advice. He was as brave as he was politic. He could cut down a sacred oak supposed to be under the protection of the god Donar, the Scandinavian god of thunder, and die a martyr's death, as he did, with the same cheerful courage, for the propagation of the faith. He could live like a hermit in a monastery, and yet, when duty to the Church and obedience to the Pope called him to the spiritual administration of Germany, he could give the divine sanction to the usurpation of Pepin SAINT BONIFACE. 69 of the Merovingian crown. He could rule with almost unchecked power from his Arch i episcopal see of Mentz the whole Church of Germany, and yet, in the midst of it all, seek to renew the arduous labors of the humble missionary and to meet a martyr's death. He established those great centres of civilization of those times, — monasteries and bishops' sees. Such a man is worthily called the " Apostle of Germany," and the work that he did, unlike that of Charlemagne, has never been undone, but, ever fresh and vigorous, bears fruit more and more abundantly. // CHAPTER III. THE FRANKISPI CONQUESTS AND CHARLEMAGNE. The occupation of Central Europe by the Franks under Clovis and his descendants (known in history as Merovingians) is an important historical fact, because it signifies the permanent transfer of the power which had controlled these regions from the Latin to the Germap raceg. The record of the Merovingian rule in Gaul for two hundred and seventy years is a most dreary one, made up of constant struggles among the descendants of Clovis for the chieftainship of the tribe, during which tiie kingdom of the Franks w^as divided among them no less than eight times. We look in vain during a larger part of this period for the lasting growth of any one of those ideas upon which our modern civilization rests, and which we had reason to expect after the appar- ent combination of the Teutonic and Roman character- istics which had been begun under the guiding influence of the Christian Church. In Gaul, the fierce warrior chiefs seem to have dragged the Church itself almost into the abyss of barbarism. In Spain and in Eng- land, during the same era, the conflict among the difler- ent races forming the population ceasedj«ttnd progress was made not only towards something like unity in the form of government, but also in the abandonment of 70 BOUNDARIES OF THE FRANKISH KINGDOM. 71 those habits of restless wandering for the sake of plun- der, which cannot coexist with even the lowest form of civilization. In Gaul, in these respects, the Franks were almost as lawless as when they roamed in the forests of Germany. It is not necessary to recount these obscure quarrels of the successors of Clovis. What is more important is to know what were the boundaries of their kingdom towards the close of the Merovingian dynasty. I ought per- haps to qualify my statement that we find none of the characteristics of the policy of a civilized government among the Franks in the later days of the Merovin- gians, by saying that they at least never, even in the most disordered times, neglected measures to secure their eastern frontier from invasion by the tribes, more bar- barous than they, who bordered upon it. Over the tribes outside their limits — the Frisians, the Saxons, and others — the Franks claimed persistently a supremacy which was maintained both then and in the time of Charlemagne by constant wars, the object being rather to insure the safety of their own lands than to acquire^ new territory. Towards the close of the Merovingian period, then, the frontier of the kingdom of the Franks on the east and north was the river Khine, in Ger- many, and on the south and west the river Garonne, in France, — from Amsterdam to Bordeaux, and from the Mediterranean to the German Ocean. This territory was divided into four great districts, or kingdoms as they were called : Austrasia, or the eastern kingdom. 72 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. from the river Rhine to the Meuse, with Metz as its principal city ; Neustria, or the western kingdom, extend- ing from Austrasia to the ocean on the west, and to tlie Loire on the south ; Aquitaine, south of that river to the foot of the Pyrenees ; and Burgundy, from the Rhone to the Alps, including Switzerland. These four kingdoms became, before the extinction of the Mero- vingian race, consolidated into two, — viz., Austrasia and Neustria, Eastern and Western Francia, — modern Germany and modern France, roughly speaking, — of which the first was to gain the pre-eminence, as it was the seat of the power of that race of Charlemagne which seized upon the kingdoms of the Merovingians. But in these kingdoms, while the family of Clovis occupied them, the royal power became more and more feeble as time went on, a condition which is illustrated by the title given in history to these kings, — that of rois faineants. The truth seems to be that, owing to the degradation into which the power of the Merovingians had gradually sunk under the strong will of the Mayors of the Palace, there was for these kings rien d faire. The military organization of the Franks was kept up with great care. It will be remembered that the mili- tary service of the chiefs was paid for by them in grants of land, sometimes hereditary and sometimes not; and that these grantees, usually the companions of the King, under the name of Antrustions, Leudes, etc., became possessed of vast domains and correspond- ing power. We call these rude barbarian chiefs kings; HABITS OF THE PRANKISH KINGS. 73 but there was nothing characteristic of the modern monarch about them. They may have been larger pro- prietors of lauds than their Antrustions, and a nominal allegiance was due to them. The Franks had almost a superstitious reverence for the rights of their kings, as they were supposed to be of divine lineage ; but practically the aristocratic element, and not the kingly/ element, was the true basis of the power of government* as it existed among them as soon as their wanderings had ceased. Thierry gives us an interesting picture of the domestic life of one of these so-called kings, from which it would appear that he resembled as little a feudal lord with his government organized by a graded hierarchy as he did a modern monarch with the forces which centralization has placed at his disposal. "The Frankish kings," he says, "did not inhabit cities. They moved about from one of their domains to another, remaining in each as long as the provisions which had there been accumulated for themselves and their companions lasted. One of these immense farms where the Frankish kings held their court, and which they much preferred to the finest cities of Roman Gaul, was Braine. The royal palace there was not like the castles of the feudal times. The large house was built of wood ; and it was surrounded by lodgings for the officers of the palace. There were in the neighborhood other houses, of less imposing appearance, occupied by a large num- ber of persons, brought together by the necessities of the king and his retainers, who were engaged in various 74 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. handicrafts, — silversmiths, weavers, tanners, etc. The materials for their work, and their implements, had generally been stolen from the neighboring Gallic town." The houses of the farmers and the huts of the slaves of the domain made up the royal encampment, the general appearance being that of an ancient German village community upon a large scale. It is evident that a chief living in this way would have little chance of resistino; a combination of turbulent nobles whose ob- ject might be to extend their own power and domains. And so it happened. The most powerful officer of a Frankish king was his steward, or, as he was called, the mayor of his pal- ace. He was generally his most trusted companion or Antrustion, and of the highest rank and of the largest possessions among the nobles. In each of the four Frankish kingdoms^ he was the alter ego of the king. Austrasia, Eastern Francia, — that is, Germany, — towards the close of the Merovingian dynasty had become greatly superior in power and influence to Neustria. The great nobles in Austrasia profited by the dissensions of the descendants of Clovis to increase their own power, and these mayors of the palace were their leaders in this movement. . In Austrasia the office had become heredi- tary in the family of Pepin of Landen (a small village near Liege), and under its guidance the degenerate chil- dren of Clovis in that kingdom fought for the suprem- acy with those equally degenerate in Neustria, at that time also under the real' control of another mayor of THE FAMILY OF CHARLEMAGNE. 75 tlie palace, called Ebroin. The result of this struggle, after much bloodshed and misery, was reached in the year 687 at the battle of Testry, in which the Aiistra- sians completely defeated the Neustrians. The date of the event is important, as marking, practically, not merely the extinction of the first royal race of the Franks, — the Merovingians, — but also the preponder- ance in the government of Gaul of the German ele- ment, as well as the consequent decline of the Roman and Gallic influence north of the Alps, and the rise of that power which in later years, and under Charle- magne, overshadowed all Europe. \/ We must remember that the Merovingian princes were still nominally kings, while all the real power was in the hands of the descendants of Pepin of Landen, mayors of the palace, and the policy of government was as fully settled by them as if they had been kings dejure as well as de facto. This family produced in its earlier days some persons who have become among the most conspicuous figures in history: — Pepin, the founder; Pepin le Gros, of H^ristal ; Charles, his son, commonly called Martel, or the Hammerer; Pepin le Bref, under whom the Carlovingian dynasty was, by aid of the Pope, recognized as the lawful successor of the Merovingians, even before the extinction of that race; and, lastly, Charles, surnamed the Great, or Charlemagne, one of the few men of the human race who, by common consent, have occupied the foremost rank in history. These Car- lovingians, or Carolingians, from the beginning claimed 76 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. support for their dynasty on the ground that they should be regarded as true sovereigns, because they had done something for the advantage of the peoi)le over whom they ruled, in striking contrast, in this respect, with the do-nothing policy of their predecessors ; and we can have no better standard for judging their pretensions now. The history of this family claims our special attention and interest, for during its rule, and as a result of its policy, there was a rapid growth of some of the more active elements of our modern life. The object of Pepin of Heristal was twofold, — to repress the disposition of the turbulent nobles to en- croach upon the royal authority, and to bring again under the yoke of the Franks those tribes in Germany who had revolted against the Frankish rule owing to the weakness of the Merovingian government. He measu- rably accomplished both objects, and a failure in either would undoubtedly have precipitated a new and de- structive wave of invasion upon unhappy Gaul. He seems to have had what perhaps is the best test at all times of the claims of a man to be a real statesman ; some consciousness of the true nature of his mission, — the establishment of order. With a view of strength- ening his position, he revived some of the ancient and cherished customs of the Franks which had been aban- doned by his predecessors. He convoked those assem- blies of the people, the Chamj^s de Mars or de 3Iai, which had been one of the original institutions of the Franks, where, as we have seen, every public measure SERVICES TO CIVILIZATION. 77 was discussed and settled by the nobles before its adop- tion, but which had become since their occupation of Gaul councils of war only. His son and successor, Charles Martel, was even more conspicuous for the possession of this genius of statesmanship, but he exhibited it in a somewhat different direction. He, too, strove to hold the nobles in check, and to break the power of the Frisian and the Saxon tribes ; and he fought besides, fortunately for his fame, one of the fifteen decisive battles in the his- _^ tory of the world, that of Poitiers in 732, by which the V v: Saracens, who^ had conquered Spain, and who had strong hopes of gaining possession of the whole of Western Europe, were driven back from Northern France, never to return. We can only estimate the importance of such a victory as this by reflecting what would have been the civilization of Europe had the Saracens succeeded in this battle, and had that civilization been drawn from Oriental and Mohammedan sources instead of from those that were Roman and Christian. Charles Martel, there- fore, saved Central Europe from the ruin threatening it from the Moslem hordes, while his father, Pepin, had forced back the tide of the barbarian invasion, ready to overwhelm it as it advanced from the East. His son, Pepin le Bref, is equally conspicuous with the rest in history, but in a somewhat different way^^Ie continued the never-ending wars in Germany and in Gaul with the object of securing peace by the sword, and with more or less success. But his career is noteworthy principally ^ because he completed the actual deposition of the last of 78 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. the Merovingian race, whose nominal servants but real masters he and his predecessors, mayors of the palace, had been, and because lie sdught and obtained the sanc- tion of the Church for this usurpation. In the year 751 Pepin thought that the anomalous position of the mayor of the palace, who had all the power and responsibility of the king, but without the title, a state of things which had lasted from the time of the battle of Testry (687), should be brought to an end. It is important to observe here not merely the very natural and proper feeling on his part that he who wields the power should possess the title, — t)ecause this had been more or less the practice of the Franks at all times, — but the evident belief -Nvhich existed in the mind of this great ruler of the necessity of superadding to his own title and the choice of his nation the sanction of the Church. This indicates, it seems 'to me, a very different kind of recog- nition of the authority of the Church from that seen in the baptism of Clovis ; and it would appear from the anxiety.of Pepin to obtain the decision of the Pope in favor of his title to the crown, as well as from his stren- uous support of the, Anglo-Saxon missionaries in Frisia and Saxony, that during the- confusion and trouble of the later days of the Merovingians, however the civil power under the old system may have crumbled, that of the Church had gone on silently increasing. These rude warriors, barbarous and untamed in everything else, were forced at least to abandon as their king a descendant of Odin and to seek for one who would be THE POPES AND THE FRANKS. 79 recognized as a true ruler by the God of the Christians. Surely this tenacity of life in the Christian organization while everything around it was falling into ruin is very remarkable. Pepin's system was undoubtedly ^at of | an alliance with the Church ; but this, of course, he would not have sought had he not seen in it a means of the advancement of his own power and dynasty. So on the Pope's side the advantage of the alliance was very clear. Ever since the occupation of the larger portion of Italy by the Lombards, and the rest of the country by the representatives of the Greek Emperor at Constan- tinople, neither the civil nor the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope in Italy had been treated with much respect. The Franks were not only the most powerful of all the tribes, but they alone of all the others were Catholic, the rest being Arians. It was natural that the Popes, in their distress caused by the encroachments of the Lom- bards and the want of protection by the Greeks, should desire to call these redoubtable orthodox warriors to their aid. An appeal for this purpose was made to Charles Martel, who, notwithstanding his services to Christen- dom by driving back the Saracenic invasion, had fallen under the censure of the Church because he had distrib- uted the bishoprics in the countries he conquered among his own followers without its sanction. He was about to cross the Alps to aid the Pope, when he was over- taken by death. His astute son Pepin saw at once how he could gain advantage by ministering to the Pope's 80 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. necessities. No doubt he valued far more higlily the Pope's declaration to him that he who held the royal power might well hold the royal title, while the depo- sition of Childeric, the first consecration of Pepin by St. Boniface by order of the. Pope, the journey of Stephen II. across the Alps for the purpose of im- ploring the aid of the great King of the Franks, the bestowal of the Roman diadem, and the Hebrew anointing of the chief who had been raised upon a buckler and saluted by his trusty companions after the manner of the Franks as their king, formed the price paid by the Pope for the alliance with the Franks, and was the beginning of a system, more thoroughly organ- ized under Charlemagne, by which the Pope's supremacy was assured beyond perad venture. The Pope's position at this time was one of very great embarrassment. Harassed by the Lombards, who were not only robbers, but who were also Arians, and who admitted none of the Catholic clergy to their councils^ — with no succor from the Emperors at Constantinople (whose subject he nominally was) against the Lombards, and, indeed, in open revolt against them because as bishop and patriarch of the West he had forbidden the execution of the decree against the placing of images in the churches, — for these and many such reasons he sorely needed succor, and naturally in his necessity he turned to the powerful King of the Franks. The coro- nation of Pepin le Bref, first by St. Boniface, and then by the Pope himself, was the first step in the fulfilment PEPIN PATRICIAN OF ROME. 81 of the alliance on his part. Pe})in was soon called upon to do his share of the work. Twice at the bidding of the Pope he descended from the Alps, and, defeating the Lombards, was rewarded by him and the people of Rome with the title of Patrician. This title, which had been considered in the latter days of the Empire little inferior in dignity to that of Emperor or Consul, had sunk with other things in the general decline so low that it seems to have meant in the time of Pepin little more than that of the defender or protector of the city of Rome, where the ancient municipal spirit and power were not wholly extinct. This succor of Pepin was the first substantial material aid given by the Frankish monarchs to the Popes. But more was to follow. On the death of Pepin, the Lom- bards again took up arms and harassed the Church's territory .l/Charlemagne, his successor, was called upon to come to the rescue, and he swept the Lombard power in Italy out .of existence, annexing its territory to the Prankish kingdom, and confirming the grant of the Exarchatfe and of 'the Pentapolis which his father had made to the Popes. This was in the year 774. Such was the first act in that mighty drama, the outcome of which was to be that alliance of Church and State in Western Europe which was to color all subsequent his- tory. For twenty-five years Charlemagne ruled Rome nominally as Patrician, under the supremacy, equally nominal, of the Emperor at Constantinople. The true sovereign, recognized as such, was the Pope or Bishop 82 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. of E,()me, but the actual power was in the liands of the mob, who at one time towards the close of the century, in the absence of both Emperor and Patrician, assaulted the Pope while conducting a procession, and forced him to abandon the city. This Pope, Leo, with a fine in- stinct as to the quarter from which succor could alone come, hurried to seek Charlemagne, who was then in Germany engaged in one of his never-ending wars against the Saxons. The appeal for aid was not made in vain, and Charles descended once more from the Alps in the summer of 799, with his Frankish hosts. On Christmas day, a.d. 800, in the Church of St. Peter (not the modern temple, due to the genius of Michael Angelo, but one then more truly recalling Rome's proudest days, in the form of the ancient Greek basilica or court-house). Pope Leo, during the mass, and after the reading of the gospel, placed upon the brow of Charlemagne, who had abandoned his Northern furs for the dress of a Roman patrician, the diadem of the Caesars, and hailed him Imperator Semper Augustus^ while the multitude shouted, " Corolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et paeifico Imperatori Vita et Victoria^ In that shout and from that moment one of the most fruitful epochs of history begins. We shall trace its ever-present influence along the whole course of the history which we are to follow.* * I am indebted to Prof. Bryce's admirable work, "The Holy Roman Empire," for this account of Ihe coronation of Charle- magne and its significance in mediaeval history. THEORY OF THE EMPIRE. 83 Perhaps there never was a grander and more compre- hensive scheme of government propounded by statesmen for the ruling of the world, and one which, on the whole, responded so fully to the design of its founders. It had its basis in the profound convictions of the ijreatest thinkers of the mediaeval time that there were two principles, and two only, upon which the rightful government of mankind could be settled, — law and re- ligion ; and they believed they had found the only true exponents of these principles in the I^maii law^ucHl^ Christian Churc h. The belief in the first was not a mere attachment to a tradition of Roman greatness, any more than faith in the other depended upon their ardent desire for the universal rule of the Church in the future. But it w^as rather that this combination formed their highest ideal of human life and human society. To them law and religion were the pillars upon which all true life is built, and they formed the only cohesive power of human society when force, which is the nega- tion of law as it is of reason, is discarded, In Imperial Home the functions of the head of the law and the head of religion had been inseparably united in one person. The Emperor was always both Imperator Semper Augustus and Pontifex Maximus. But when Leo and Charlemagne designed, as they said, to revive the Western Roman Empire, three hundred and twenty- four years after the last Caesar of the West had left to his Eastern brother at Constantinople the sole head- ship of the world, it was impossible so to restore that 84 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. organization that the unity of law and reh'gion shouhl be represented by the same person. The principle, how- ever, of absolute unity was maintained, although the Avorld-monarchy and the world-religion were hereafter to be governed by two different persons, the one called the Emperor and the other the Pope. They were to be in the closest possible relations, supporting each other mutually in all their designs. According to this, theory, tl^e Emperor could not lawfully exist unless crowned by the Pope, any more than the Pope could become such without the consent of the Emperor. He was to be the champion, advocate, and defender of the Church, and his business was to extend its limits, to protect it in its privileges, and to support it in the exer- cise of its powers. The Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire, according to the mediaeval theory, were the same thing in two aspects: as divine and eter- nal the Pope is the head of the Church, as human and temporal the Emperor was commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts so as to conform them to the divine law as established by the Church. Of course, vulgar motives of aggrandizement, and even prudential motives of safety, both on the part of the Pope and the Em- peror, had their place when this extraordinary scheme for the government of Europe was instituted. And yet undoubtedly a love of law and order and peace, founded on religion, as essential to the prosperity and safety of the race, was the governing motive of those who knew by personal ex})crience, when they advocated the revival CHARLEMAGNE'S CONQUESTS. 85 of this Roman system of law, what anarchy was. That system, with all its faults, had at any rate assured peace and reasonable safety to the human race for a longer time than any other. The theory on which the scheme was based seems to us rather like the dreams of Plato than the work of the Churchmen and rude barbarians of a most calamitous period in history. If the Holy Roman Empire was not destined to check fully, as it Avas designed, the flood of barbarism which constantly poured over Europe, it is none the less true that the scheme of a universal monarchy and a universal religion is one of the most persistent in history. We shall meet it again and again, not merely in the mediaeval era, but in modern times, and we shall find that there is-seareely any event from which more momentous consequences have flowed than the coronation of Charlemagne by the Pope. In treating of the^causes of that great historical event, the alliance of the family of Charlemagne with the Pope and the Church, in their logical order, I have antici- pated much of the history of the life of Charlemagne^ that made that alliance so fruitful of results. Charle- magne became the Emperor of the new Holy Roman Empire not merely because he was orthodox and be- cause it was essential to his own interests that he should maintain the orthodox faith with its fullest organiza- tion in his dominions, but also because, in the year 800, he ruled over a larger portion of the territory of Europe than any Roman Emperor had ever done. His 86 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. dominion extended from the river Elbe to the river Ebro, in Spain, and from the southern point of Italy to the German Ocean. It would be wearisome to give a detailed account of the wars by which the territory which did not come to him from his father was ac- quired. He conquered during his reign of forty-four years (769-813) not merely the stubborn tribes in Ger- many, the Frisians, the Saxons, the Thuringians, and the Bavarians, who had so long threatened with invasion the Frankish dominions (and it required thirty-three succes- sive campaigns to accomplish this object), but also the Slavonians beyond the Elbe, the Avars in Hungary, the Lombards in Italy, and the Saracens in Spain. In all, he made fifty-three warlike expeditions ; and yet, strange to say, he appears to his modern admirers not as a mere conqueror for ambition's sake, as Hannibal and Alex- ander the Great in the ancient w^orld, and Frederick the Great and Napoleon in the modern, but as guided on the whole by a truly defensive policy, his real object being in his rude way to restore permanently that peace and order of which the world stood so much in need, and by which it was the fond dream of the time it had once been governed. He knew but one way to bring about this result : first, by seeking these wild tribes in their own forests in Germany, and crippling there their power of invading and plundering his dominions, and, secondly, by converting them to Christianity ; and the sword was regarded as an equally efficient weapon in both cases. The wars in w^hich Charlemagne was engaged seem to RESEMBLANCE TO OTHER CONQUERORS. 87 have been, as I have said, carried on as national acts, and not merely from a desire to gratify personal am- bition. It seems strano;e to us to find Charlemao;ne propagating Christianity by giving the German tribes the alternative of belief or death by drowning, and yet even we may understand that it was a statesman- like way of protecting his own frontiers from invasion. To achieve what he did, he must have possessed almost superhuQian activity and inflexible perseverance. It is said that a truly great man is one who has the truest and loftiest conceptions of policy with the most pains- taking attention to details in carrying it out. This loftiness of the ideal and the attention to details must exist in comhinaiion to produce the proper result. Such a peculiarity was eminently characteristic of Charle- magne, as it was of Julius Caesar before, and of Napo- leon (who always claimed the power and prerogatives of Charlemagne) after him. There are other resemblances between Napoleon and Charlemagne which are very striking, and some account of them may help us to understand better the great Em- peror. They both, for instance, made war support itself; that is, they took the resources of the conquered coun- tries to feed their armies. Charlemagne never paid his troops, nor provided for their needs; war was their busi- ness, their passion, and Iheir means of living. So, in their campaigns, each of these conquerors strove to rouse the feeling of the population of the countries they in- vaded against their rulers, so that they might gain their 88 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. ends by keeping alive such enmities. Divide and con- quer, was their motto. In urging the Poles and Italians to aid him in his wars in their countries, Napoleon was only strictly following the example of Charlemagne, who appealed to the down-trodden old races of Italy and Spain to rise against the Lombards and the Sara- cens. The parallel between these mighty men might be extended to other things, both to those in which they failed and to those in which they succeeded. It cer- tainly is not to be wondered at that a man who was the master of the larger portion of the territory of Europe, and who had conquered it from the motives and by the policy w^hich w^e have described, should desire to consoli- date this rule in such a way as to mould the destiny of Europe for all time by that policy, and that he should I have regarded the Eoman Imperial system, modified by Ithe papacy, as the best means of accomplishing his pur- pose. Certainly nothing is greater about Charlemagne or his age than this grand scheme of securing peace with order to the troubled world. If there was any hope at that time for the world, discoverable by the most penetrating foresight or the most ardent philanthropy, it lay in the revival of the Roman Empire. V What means did Charlemagne adopt for ruling his vast possessions ? and upon what grounds does his fame as a great legislator and administrator rest ? We must remember always that he ruled in a double capacity, not merely as King of the Franks, but also, at least after the year 800, ns head of the Holy Roman Empire. Much CHARLEMAGNE AS EMPEROR AND KING, 89 of the machinery of his legislation can only be properly understood by keeping in mind its double purpose. It is not easy to draw the line and say where his work as King of the Franks ended and that as Emperor began. The three great interests which he guarded especially seem to have been those of race, territory, and religion.'! To insure the stability of his policy in the FrankishX kingdom was, no doubt, the chief end of the super- f human activity he displayed. But his work in striving to introduce among the wild savages east of the Elbe the beginnings at least of an orderly government and some notions of Christianity, the substitution of his own rule for that of the Lombards and the Greeks in Italy, his maintenance of tlie frontier in Spain against the assaults of the Saracens, and, above all, his hearty co-operation with the Church in its efforts to follow up his conquests by extending its influence, — all these things, perhaps, fall strictly within what he considered as the proper sphere of his functions as Roman Emperor. But hist work as the German King was quite as remarkable, asJ is proved by the complicated machinery of his legisla-* tion. His capital and principal residence was at Aix-la- Chapelle, near Cologne. We must disabuse our minds of the idea that Charlemagne, because his people were called Franks, was in any sense, or rather in the modern sense, French. He had nothing to do with the French, except as their conqueror. He was a German of the Germans. He was, moreover, in his own estimation, the world-monarch, from wdiom all earthly power was 90 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. derived. His local government — that is, in his Ger- man domains — was administered by officers called, indif- ferently, dukes, counts, vicars, scabini (echevins) ; and their business was, in thorough subordination to the master, to raise troops, to dispense justice, to maintain order, to gather the tribute, each within an allotted dis- trict. Besides these, there were certain beneficiaries to W'hom lands had been granted in various portions of the territory with the stipulation that they should aid the king in his government and his wars, and who, unlike the feudal lords, as most of their descendants became in due time, were not only legally but actually under the absolute control of the king. The marks or frontiers of the kingdom were governed by counts specially appointed. To these officers was added another class with peculiar functions. They were called missi domimciy or inspec- tors, appointed by the king, whose business it was to travel into the diffiirent portions of his empire with authority to ascertain whether his orders had been ob- served, and generally to correct abuses in the adminis- tration. There were also national assemblies held every year after the manner of the ancient Kj|i^s, called Champs de 3Iars, or later de Mai. ThqjjHw^ere gener- ally held at some central point in the kingdom, near the Rhine, and were attended by the freemen, who deliber- ated in two bodies, one composed of the higher nobility and clergy, and the other of those of lower rank. Ex- actly how far these assemblies controlled the legislation HIS LEGISLATION. 91 of the kingdom is uncertain. It would appear that they were regarded by Charlemagne merely as an ad- visory body, from wliom, especially, information was to be gained by which his own action was to be guided. In the legislation of that time, as in its wars, however, Charlemagne is always the central figure. That legisla- tion is known to us as preserved in the Capitularies of Charlemagne, the word capitula being applied to the laws, decrees, or edicts, which were issued under his authority. During his reign of forty-four years no less than eleven hundred and twenty-six such capitula or distinct laws — six hundred and twenty-one relating to civil and four hundred and fifteen to religious legis- lation, and nearly one hundred to other subjects of public interest — were issued, more or less founded on the advice and consent of the representatives of the nation in their yearly assemblies. These capitula form a living picture of the society, civil, military, ecclesiastical, and moral, which gave them birth. It is impossible here to give any detailed or satisfactory account (and no account would be satisfactory unless it were in detail) of the spirit of this legislation. Many of these capitularies have been preserved, and those who desire more par- ticularly to examine their character I must refer to M. Guizot's third volume of his History of Civilization in France. The impression made by such an exami- nation must be, I think, that, considering the circum- stances of the time, both before and after this era, the capacity for such enlightened legislation as is found 92 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. in these capitularies, relating both to the civil and ecclesiastical aifairs of the Empire, is little less than mar- vellous. Certainly they show that Charlemagne was not only one of the greatest conquerors but also one of the greatest law-givers the world has ever known. It may be interesting to remember that Napoleon, in this re- spect, resembles his great prototype, for he is said to have been prouder of his share in preparing the French /civil code than of all his victories. Charlemagne's title to greatness — a title inseparably affixed by his contemporaries and by posterity to his very name — does not rest merely upon- his having been a great warrior and a great statesman, but also upon his having been the most powerful advocate of the promotion of human learning the world has ever known. We hear it said that Charlemagne could not write his own name; yet he composed Latin verses well, and the epitaph (in Latin) upon his friend Pope Adrian is one of the best of its kind so far as the Latin ity is concerned. It is commonly said, too, that ^ Charlemagne founded the university system of modern Europe; however that may be, it is certafh that he established the schools attached to his own palace and to the cathedrals and monasteries, from which the modern university sprang. His friends and compan- ions were among the most learned and enlightened men of the time, and their affectionate remembrance has preserved for us a more living and real portrait of this wonderful man than we have of any one else who lived PATRON OF LEARNING. 93 a thousand years ago. His principal agent in his plans for the encouragement of learning, his intellectual prime minister, so to speak, was Alcuin, an Englishman, bred in the cathedral school in York, and for long years a celebrated teacher there. It is to be remembered that in those days of the decay of the old civilization on the continent, caused by wars and invasions, Ireland, Scot- land, and the North of England seem to have been the only places of refuge in Europe for learned men. All the more distinguished early missionaries came, as is known, from these islands, principally from the monastic schools of Ireland and Scotland, and Alcuin, who was a scholar of the very highest order, w'as induced by Charlemagne to enter his service as early as 769. We may, I suppose, look upon the work of this great man at the court of Charlemagne as showing what was considered the highest form of human learning at that era, as well as the class of persons to whom it was taught. It seems that Alcuin established his school in the Em- ])eror's palace, by his request, where he gave instruction in grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence, poetry, astronomy, natural history, mathematics, and the explanation of the Holy Scriptures ; and that among his scholars were not only the Emperor himself, but his children also, — boys and girls, — some of his privy councillors, and at least two bishops. Besides this, he corrected and restored the text of ancient manuscripts, which had been much defaced by ignorant transcribers. He gave particular attention to the revision of the text of the 94 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. Holy Scriptures, a revision adopted by Charlemagne and ordered by him to be made the standard text throughout his dominions. It is difficult to say whether Charlemagne delighted most in warlike deeds or in his intercourse with learned men, in restoring manuscripts, and thus providing proper materials for study, in re- establishing schools, which had everywhere gone to decay, or in converting the heathen Saxons. There is a Charlemagne of history, a Charlemagne of legendary and popular fame, above all a Charlemagne of poetry, the type of the perfect Christian knight who, with the famous Roland and his twelve Paladins, fought against the Moslem in Roncesvalles. Through- out the Middle Age we hear constantly " the blast of that wild horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, The dying hero's call. That told imperial Charlemagne How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain Had wrought his champion's fall." He was thus the ideal hero of his age, and he was looked upon during the Middle Age as the great restorer of whatever was true and valuable in Roman civilization. Even in this critical day his figure seems to those who carefully consider it as so imposing that no man, per- haps, who ever lived has been regarded by so many historians, ever since his time, as exhibiting the highest type of greatness in so many different departments of human activity.. He shines out, too, perhaps, all the CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS RULE. 95 more brilliantly as he was the one bright star of a very dark night. Both theologians and the writers of history, whether they consider modern European society founded upon an aristocratic or a popular basis, regard him as the incarnation of wisdom and of equity. Mon- tesquieu says of him, "He was great as a prince, but still greater as a man. JSTo one who ever lived better understood the art of doing great things with ease, or difficult things with promptitude." Says another writer, " Charlemagne w^as a civilizing hero like Alex- ander the Great. Alexander made the East Greek, and Charlemagne the West Latin. They both worked for future ages, and the fire they lighted will never be extinguished." But, brilliant as was the civilization which this great man tried to establish in Europe, and profound as has been the recognition of his merits by posterity, we must not forget that there is another side of the picture, which we should study if we desire to gain an accurate idea of the practical value of the work of Charlemagne. We must see not only what he did, but also what he did not, or, rather, how far success attended his world- embracing schemes. In the first place, then, his central or Imperial system failed. It scarcely lasted longer than his own life. There were many reasons now very ap- parent for this, but it must suffice to name one which, in fact, includes them all, and that is, that the Teutonic tribes were wholly unfitted for a system of administra- tion which had, even among the comparatively civilized 96 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. Romans, ended by eating out, like a cancer, the sources of their national life. In his attempt to introduce such a system among rude tribes just emerged from barbarism, Charlemagne en- tered into a conflict with the nature of man itself. He was not satisfied to bring his own hereditary dominions under the rule of peace and order, but he exhibited, in a marked degree, that characteristic which has been domi- nant in all the great rulers of mankind, whether they be called Alexander, Mohammed, or Napoleon, — viz., a rage for uniformity y which has been always inseparable from their ideal conception of public order and good government. All such attempts have failed, and, from the very nature of man, must fail. Ideal reconstruc- tions of society on such a basis have never succeeded. Hence, when his mighty hand was removed, the central authority, the "national assemblies, the missi dominici, all the complicated machinery of the Imperial system, having no other support, fell also, while the dukes, the counts, the vicars, the centenniers, remained, with totally different functions, under the decentralized rule which followed. But, it will be asked, did Charlemagne do nothing which remained for posterity and which was productive of permanent results in the history of Europe ? Not to repeat here what I have already insisted upon at length, — that he finally rascued Europe from barbarism and helped forward the fusion of the Teutonic type of civ- j ilization with that of the Koman, — his Empire, broken CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS RULE. 97 into separate states shortly after his death, was resolved into a multitude of local sovereignties. Yet even in these, far on in the Middle Age, while his policy of. centralization was abandoned as impossible, the civil- ^ izing influences of his rule and his example were never forgotten. Before his time, the frontiers of Germany, Spain, and Italy were constantly fluctuating, in itself a symptom of the restlessness of barbarism, while after his reign states more or less organized, and with fron- tiers more or less recognized, such as the kingdoms of Lorraine, of Germany, of Italy, and the two Burgun- dies, fulfilled the conditions of communities measurably well governed and civilized. Charlemagne is more especially the founder of mod-.| ern Germany* His influence, not only as the King of \ the Franks, but as Roman Emperor, is the source of * much that is characteristic in the history of that coun- try ; and as we go on with our studies in that history we shall find that the influence and example of a truly great man are among the few things which never die. CHAPTER ly. MOHAMMED AND HIS SYSTEM IN THE MIDDLE AGE. No view of mediaeval history can be satisfactory which does not embrace a sketch, at least, of the life and doctrines of Mohammed and of the rapid and extensive conquests of his successors. The great social forces are mainly de- pendent, as history shows us, upon peculiarities of race and religion. The history of the mediaeval age, as has been explained, is essentially one of the conflict of dif- ferent races and of opposite religious ideas and systems. It seems at first a strange paradox to assert that mod- ern history and modern civilization grew out of this very conflict. The result of the struggle was not the ex- haustion, as so often happens, of the opposing forces, nor even the presence of different races on the same territory, each maintaining a distinct and separate life, with a mu- tual toleration of different religious beliefs, but rather an assimilation, gradual, but complete. We have studied the nature of this process in Central Europe after the fall of the Western Empire in 476, — the fusion, as we have called it, of the Roman with tlie barbarian, of the Christian with the heathen; and from tliis fusion we have endeavored to deduce the characteristic features of the typical modern European, and to recognize in this slow process the true source of all modern history. 98 BARBARIAN AND SARACENIC IDEAS. 99 But, while our inquiries have led us hitherto to ob- serve almost exclusively the successive steps in this work of assimilation and fusion in Europe, we have now reached a period where a conflict of races and creeds pro- duced a totally opposite result. In our study of the history of the Saracens we shall find these same elements of conflict race and religion, but always repelling, never attracting each other. The Semitic and the Aryan, the Christian and the Moslem, have been from the beginning, as they are now, irreconcilable enemies. Our study of the conquests of the Saracens, unlike that of the con- quests of the Northern barbarians, will not show us, as in Central Europe, Christianity strengtliened and purified and the true principles of civilization consolidated by the struggle for mastery, but rather Christendom despoiled by violence of lands around the basin of the Mediter- ranean, where the gospel was first planted. There it achieved its earliest and most signal triumphs, and in the eastern portion of that region Greek and Roman civilization have long been replaced by some of the most characteristic forms of Oriental despotism. The Saracenic invasions of Christendom differed from those of other formidable non-Christian people — such as those of the Huns and Mongols, for instance — in this, that the Saracens settled down and remained per- manently for ages in the conquered lands and established in them their peculiar civilization and religion. So far as I know, they have never lost that sort of control given by their religion and their special Orientalism in any 100 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. country they ever conquered, save Spain ; and it required eight hundred years to drive them out of that land, Catholic 'par excellence. Conquests in history like those of Alexander, or of Charlemagne, or of Napoleon, or even of Rome itself, are usually so exhausting to the conquering nation that the rule they establish soon falls to pieces after the mighty hand of the conqueror has been removed. But the successors of Mohammed conquered a larger territory in fourscore years than Rome did in four hundred, and utterly supplanted and eifaced, wherever they went, that form of civilization founded upon Christianity and Roman law. Their race and their religion always proved insurmountable barriers to any fusion with the Christian people of the lands they subdued. The long duration and the extensive sway of the Moslems are, therefore, among the marvels of history. There is no romance equal in interest to the simple story of the early Saracenic conquests, for nowhere do the results seem so out of all proportion with the means used to achieve them, and those results changed perma- nently the face of the whole world. " Within the life- time of many an aged Arab," says Irving, " the Sara- cens extended their empire and their faith over the wide regions of Asia and Africa, subverting the empire of Chosroes, King of Persia, subjugating great territories in India, establishing a splendid seat of power in Syria, dic- tating to the conquered kingdom of the Pharaohs, over- running the whole northern coast of Africa, scouring AMBITION OF THE MOHAMMEDANS. 101 the Mediterranean with their ships, carrying their con- quests in one direction to the very walls of Constantino- ple, and in another to the extreme limits of Mauritania, the modern Morocco and the ancient country of Jugur- tha and Micipsa, — in a word, trampling down all the old dynasties which once held haughty and magnificent sway in the East." And this was the beginning only of their career. In a few years afterwards they had con- quered all Spain, save the northern mountainous districts, and had overrun that portion of modern France south of the Loire and west of the Rhone. Their ambition and their religious enthusiasm were not satisfied even by these extensive conquests. They aspired to rule the whole of Western Europe, and to proclaim the religion of the Prophet from the sacred tomb of St. Peter at Rome itself; and we may speculate with curious interest upon what would have been the fate of Europe had not their career of conquest in that portion of the world been stopped and their invasion driven back by the illustrious Charles Martel and his Franks at the great battle of Poitiers, in 732. And even now, when the relativ^e power of Christendom and Islam has so greatly changed, and Mohammedan rule has long been iden- tified with everything which we regard as weak and evil and debasing in government, nothing is more sur- prising and inexplicable than the tenacity of life which is shown by the principal Mohammedan nation, Turkey, although the race which rules there is not Semitic, but Turanian in its origin, and although its progenitors were 102 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. among the later and least willing of the converts to the Moslem faith. Certainly, if there are any questions in history worth considering, they are such as these. What can have been the causes of these extraordinary results ? Who, then, was Mohammed? What was his system of re- ligion and government? Under what circumstances did such a system take root in Arabia ? and what were the causes which made his disciples the leaders of a success- ful armed propagandism ? What, in short, was Arabia, the country of the Prophet, at the time of Mohammed's appearance? Geographically, it forms a triangular pen- insula, of which the base, nearly a thousarid miles long, rests on the Indian Ocean, its apex reaching the confines of Syria. Of its two sides, the eastern is bounded by the Persian Gulf, and the western by the Ked Sea. Its inhabitants have always been isolated from the rest of the world. It contained nothing to excite the cupidity of robber tribes, and its territory did not form a pathway to lands where the prey was more tempting. A large portion of the country was a stony desert, uninhabited except by wild, wandering tribes ; and even that district in the south, called by the ancients Arabia Felix, was poor in resources compared with Per- sia and Syria upon its borders, or indeed with the other Eastern lands that were afterwards subjugated by the Saracens. The Arabs claim to have been descended from the outcast Ishmael ; and, however that may be, their country appears in the remotest history as a land ARABIAN COMMERCE. 103 of refuge to those of the surrounding countries who had been driven from their own by cruelty, persecution, or Avar. At the time of Mohammed a large number of refugees and their descendants, of various nationali- ties, were found there, each retaining in a certain measure its ancient manners, and especially its religious belief and ceremonies. Thus, to say nothing of others, there were at Mohammed's appearance large settlements of Jews, at Medina, of Persians, who were disciples of Zoroaster, Magians, or fire-worshippers, and of Chris- tians who had been driven from Syria and perhaps from Egypt as heretics. The government of the Arab tribes was in the main patriarchal ; but families who had long been rich, and whose members held important positions in the public service, were regarded as entitled to high considera- tion. The principal business of those tribes who were not shepherds was that of commerce, for wdiich purpose (as commerce was carried on in those ages) the position of the peninsula of Arabia presented some peculiar ad- vantages. Their country was the best highway for the trade which has immemorially existed between the East and the West. Ships laden with spices, precious stones, and other coveted luxuries from Africa, India, and the farther East came to Aden, on the Red Sea, whence their cargoes were carried by the Arabs on camels across the desert to the cities of Mesopotamia, or to Damascus, where they were exchanged for the grain of Syria or the silks woven in that country, which in turn were 104 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. brought back across the desert and shipped to India. This trade had been carried on for ages before the time of Mohammed, — perhaps even in the time of Solomon. Its route through the Arabian desert, as I have said, was the great highway between the East and the West; and tlie business seems to have enriched all concerned in conducting it. Tlie merchants in those days and in this region were evidently the most important inhab- itants ; and I know no more curious illustration of this fact than that the future Prophet of Islam should first appear in history as a travelling salesman, a sort of agent for Cadijah, the woman whom he afterwards married, who had intrusted him with certain of her goods to be conveyed by caravan to Damascus and there to be sold on her account. We must not fail to remark here a more important result of this constant intercourse between Arabia and Persia and Syria, as affecting the mind of Mohammed, as well as that of his countrymen engaged in this trade ; and that was the education they received by the acquaintance thus formed with foreign countries, and especially with foreign religions. When we come to consider the religious ideas prevail- ing among the Arabs at the time of the advent of Mo- hammed, it is not possible to regard them as forming a uniform, national, and recognized creed. It has been said that the original Arabians, like all the Semitic tribes, were monotheists ; that they from the beginning had entertiiined that opinion concerning the infinite dis- tance existing between the power of the Creator and the ARABIAN RELIGIONS. 105 nothingness of the creature, — absolute power on the) one side and absolute submission on the other, — which forms the basis of Mohammed's doctrine. It is said, indeed, that Mohammed is only entitled to credit for having, by his teaching, revived the primal faith of his race. How'ever that may be, it is certain, from causes which it would take too much time to discuss here, that Arabia (if such a collection of tribes can be called a nation) at the time of Mohammed's birth w^as a nation of idolaters. Their form of idolatry was a very curious one. They had in the city of Mecca, which all the tribes agreed in recognizing as the Holy City, a temple called the Caaba, which they looked upon as sacred, as the seat of their national worship. Within this Caaba or temple, with a hospitality and toleration of which I know no parallel in the history of religious forms of worship, except perhaps in that of the Pan- theon at Rome, each tribe performed its own domestic and peculiar rites of worship in its own way, each of them being under the special protection of a different idol, the image either of a man or an eagle or a lion, until the whole number of these idols amounted to three hundred and sixty. This worship, in all the tribes, was accom- panied, on solemn occasions, by human sacrifices. This extraordinary diversity of belief and practice in religious worship among the people is very noticeable, for, when they became Mussulmans, with the abolition of idolatry they became absolutely fanatical in their monotheistic belief, and they never changed their horror of anything 106 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. approaching idolatry. This is only one indication, among many, of the great revolution in religious ideas wrought by Mohammed. With the forms of idolatry these tribes had all the vices which have invariably accompanied its practice in the East. When we hear the sensual paradise, the material hell, and the blind fatalism taught to his followers by the Prophet spoken of with horror, w^e must never forget the depth of degradation and superstition from which he succeeded in raising not merely his own countrymen, but vast numbers in other lands, with whose religious systems his own may be said to be, in contrast, purity itself. Be- sides the national form of worship, those of the Magians, the Jews, and the Christians were permitted. Our busi- ness now, however, is rather with the extraordinary power of propagandism which was developed by Mo- hammedanism, than with the interesting question of the nature of the religious beliefs which previously existed in the country of its birth. How such a system as that of Mohammed could in so short a time become the triumphant creed it did, not merely in Arabia, but throughout Asia, overturning the ascendency of the long- established systems of Christianity, Magianism, Brah- manism, and Judaism throughout the East, can only be fully accounted for by taking into consideration the con- dition, political, social, and religious, of Arabia, and of the countries which were first invaded by the Saracens. In the year 630, which was the date of their first assault on the Roman, or, to speak more intelligibly, the WEAKNESS OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 1()7 Byzantine, power in Syria, the Roman Empire was in name and theory, at least, the same universal Empire it had been in the days of Augustus and Trajan. Prac- tically and in fact, however, the power of the Emperor at Constantinople w^as only really obeyed in the eastern portion of the Empire, composed of the provinces of Egypt and Syria and of that portion of Asia west of the Euphrates, all, at that time, most rich, populous, and fertile districts. The government of the West imposed a great burden and added nothing to the strength or re- sources of the Imperial government at Constantinople. In Spain, the Gothic raonarchs had taken advantage of the weakness of the Byzantine government to annex to their kingdom those portions of that country bordering on the Mediterranean which still recognized the govern- ment of the Eastern Emperor. In Gaul, the dynasty of Clovis, under Roman authority de jure and Frank- ish authority de facto., maintained its independent posi- tion. Northern Europe was still chiefly Pagan, the first step towards its conversion to the obedience of the Roman Church having been taken by sending Augustine and his monks to England about fifteen years before the first preaching of Mohammed. In Italy, the Exarch of Ravenna (representing the Imperial authority at Con- stantinople) and the Lombards divided the dominion of the country. The real Roman power existed only in the East : Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria were its strongest supporters, and the resources of these provinces were employed, about the time of the coming of Mohammed, 108 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. in defending, under Heraclius, what was left of the Roman authority in that quarter against the Persians. These provinces, especially Syria and Egypt, were not only the most fertile in resources yet left to the Empire, but their population was the most restless and most dis- contented of any with the policy pursued by the central government at Constantinople, especially with reference to the great question of the time in the East, — the re- ligious question. The dominant party in both these provinces, which included the lands in which Chris- tianity had been earliest planted, were in the eyes of the authorities at Constantinople heretics, — that is to say, they dissented from the declarations of the creed of Nicsea in regard to the Trinity. This creed was consid- ered by the Emperor and by his clergy as the foundation of the true faith, and it was ordered to be observed by all his subjects as such. These provinces, as we need not say, were among the most ancient seats of the highest civilization in the world. Six hundred years before Christ they had formed part of that great Macedonian Empire under Alexander the Great and his successors, which had scattered broadcast the seeds of Greek cul- ture, the growth of which changed the whole current of Oriental ideas and history. In the palmiest days of the Empire they were its most flourishing provinces. In them were to be found some of the most famous cities of antiquity : Alexandria, the entrepdt of the world's commerce, the seat for so many ages of tiie Greek philosophy, and the home of so many Hellenized CHRISTIAN HERETICAL SECTS. 109 Jews and of Christian heretical sects ; Antioch, the rich and proud capital of Syria on the coast, where the " dis- ciples were first called Cliristians ;^^ Jerusalem, the holy . Damascus, the beautiful; Ephesus, the city of Diana; to say nothing of many less noted cities, the long-settled centres of wealth and luxury, outgrowths for the most part of Greek colonization, forming a district whose population was more highly cultured in the Greek sense than any other on the earth's surface. These cities early embraced Christianity ; but with them it was not, as among the sober and practical people of the AYest of Europe, adopted simply as a rule of life, but rather, with that disputatious temper so characteristic of the Greeks, and still more so of Hellenized Orientals, it became a pretext for perpetual abstract metaphysical speculation. These cultured people were among the most zealous professors of Christianity and the worst illustrations of its practical lessons. With that free temper which was the peculiarity of minds trained in the Greek schools of thought, they eagerly discussed all its peculiarities, and soon moulded it into forms adapted to Greek philosoph- ical systems, regardless of the charge of heresy con- stantly made by the orthodox at Rome and at Constan- tinople. AVith the nice shades of distinction in regard to the nature of Christ, and other speculative opinions concerning Christian dogmas, which are involved in this controversy, we have here nothing to do, except to say tliat the controversy itself served as a pretext for the Christians in Syria and Egypt, under the 10 110 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. name of Nestorians and Jacobites, not merely to de- clare their independence of the Church authority at Constantinople, but also to breed disloyalty to the gov- ernment which supported that authority and which in their minds was inseparably associated with it. The business of government, in the opinion of these sectaries, was to preserve the faith. Thus the heart of both Syria and Egypt was thoroughly disloyal to the Imperial gov- ernment long before Mohammed proclaimed his faith, and their inhabitants were doubtless ripe for revolt at that time and waited only for a suitable pretext. As to the military resources and power of the Empire, which seems to have melted away at the first shock of the onslaught of the Saracens, it may be proper to say a few words. The country was still part of the Roman Empire, and its troops formed a Roman army, but they were as unlike the formidable legions which ages before, under Pompey and Caesar, had reduced Syria and Egypt to the obedience of Rome, as the power they represented was shorn of that prestige of victory which had so long attended the standard which marked the proud authority of the Senatus populusque Bomanus. The Roman army at the time of Heraclius and Mohammed was a motley assem- blage, made up of men from all tribes, both within and without the Empire, slaves and strangers cliiefly, and without any of that deep-seated instinct of nationality which in former ages had rendered Rome invincible. Discipline and numbers, so long as the pay was regularly made, were still there, and the art of war, but faith and WEAKNESS OF THE ROMAN ARMY, \\\ enthusiasm Avere not. These men served only as merce- naries, and tlie luxurious habits of the cities of the East where the legions were stationed, and the practice of conciliating them by large donatives, had greatly weak- ened their highest military qualities. They had, just before the appearance of Mohammed, been engaged in constant wars with Persia, and in mutinies for increased privileges, but until Heraclius took the bold step of at- tacking the capital of that country and forced its armies to retreat from Syria, the Roman troops in Asia had been constantly defeated by those of the great king. They had lost Aleppo, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and were forced back across the Hellespont, the Persians being able to establish themselves on the plains of Chalcedon, almost within sight of the walls of Constantinople. Egypt, the only Koman province which had been exempt from foreign war since the time of Diocletian, fell, too, before the power of the Persian king, Chosroes, or IS^ushirvan. From the danger which by these con- quests threatened the existence of the Empire it was delivered by the genius and valor of Pleraclius, one of the greatest and least known names in Poman history ; but, although his exploits recall her proudest days, from them came no sustained military power capable of re- sisting the progress of the Saracens. These wars, waged to determine the ascendency of the Romans or Persians in the East, lasted more than twenty years, and are of interest to us now only as showing the absolute ex- haustion of the resources of those enemies from whom 112 medijeval history. Mohammed had most to fear; for doubtless at that very time lie was meditating the extension of his religion by an armed propagandism. The only eifectual barrier against the invasion of Eastern Europe by the Saracens, which remained as such unconquered for more than eight hundred years, was the Imperial city of Constantine, which resisted until the year 1453 the repeated and determined eiforts of both the Saracens and their succes- sors the Ottoman Turks to reach the heart of Europe over its ruins. Such, then, being briefly the condition of the country of Mohammed and of the Byzantine and Persian mon- archies at the time of his coming, we are ready to ask who and what this man was by whom a new era was to be opened, and by whose teachings the condition of this part of the world was to be so suddenly and sp com- pletely changed. Mohammed was born in the year 569, of the noblest race in Arabia, — that of the Koreish, to whom belonged the hereditary guardianship of the Caaba, the principal temple, as I have exj)lained, of the national worship, in which, at the time of his birth, no less than three hundred and sixty idols were objects of worship by as many tribes and were regarded by them as their tutelary deities. Mohammed was forty-one years old before he publicly claimed to be a prophet of God. There is nothing mysterious about his early life. He was first a shepherd, and then a tradesman, and by his virtues and by his capacity as a business-man succeeded in marrying the rich woman, Cadijah, in whose employ MOHAMMED'S EARLY LIFE. Il3 he was, and she repaid his devotion by becoming his first convert. He seemed at first a very commonplace person. He was in the habit, like many other earnest men, of retiring to secret places to pray ; and he was overcome with sadness as he meditated upon the evils of this world, and es})ecially when he saw how his countrymen were wliolly given to idolatry. But his soul was deeper and his spirit was more earnest than those of other men : hence lie felt that soul stirred from its lowest depths by a voice which he recognized as unmistakably the voice of God. Mohammed's early life was filled with visions, — revelations as he called them, the delusions of hysteria and catalepsy as his enemies claim. It is impossible liere to give all the reasons for the belief that to Moham- med these visions were in very truth realities ; that he was entirely sincere and earnest in his belief that he had heard the voice of God ; that he was indeed inspired in the same sense as some of the most illustrious characters in history have been, — Socrates, for instance, or Joan of Arc, or Swedenborg, or even the great Cromwell. This voice proclaimed to him the great dogma, "That there was but one God, and that Mohammed was the Prophet of God.'' Like all men who are in earnest about the truth that is in them, he set about making converts. Long years passed before he could gather more than a mere handful. They consisted of his wife and of some of his near relatives. But during all this time he was fiercely persecuted and his life threatened by members of tiie Koreish tribe. Such was his position for more than 10* 114 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. twelve years ; and as, of course, he could not have fore- seen the brilliant success which awaited his plans in the future, as indeed there is nothing to show that he ever dreamed of such success, he must have been supported by an earnest belief in the reality of his mission, when he felt strong enough to carry it on in the loneliness and contempt to which he seemed doomed. AVe must not forget that in this early part of his career he professed that his object was to restore the universal religion which had been taught men from the beginning, the absolute unity of God, the religion of all true patri- archs and prophets. Its one duty was Islam, or submis- sion to the Divine will. Its worship was prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage. Among a people steeped in superstition, the source of the darkest vices, he taught, as the basis of his system for practical life, charity, justice, and chastity, and the duty to do and bear everything for the truth. He preached the essential unity and equality of the human race, and the folly of setting up distinc- tions among men, as if they could be recognized in the sight of God. It is said that a sort of leaven of mono- theism has always pervaded the Arabian race from the time of Abraham and of Ishmael, and that Mohammed's system has on that account no claim to originality. But he made no such claim ; he knew, as all great founders of religion have known, that the true prophet is he who proclaims a doctrine which best meets the spiritual needs of a race at a particular time, or at least the one who can see clearly in what direction they tend. Mohammed HIS DOCTRINES. 115 taught that there had been in the history of tlie world successive revelations of God to the human race, and that each was higher and fuller than the one which pre- ceded it. Abraham, Moses, and Christ were to him, as they are to his followers to this day, true prophets, but he was last and best of all. He never claimed to be infallible; he was conscious that he might make, and even that he often did make, mistakes, but he never lost faith in his mission, and he always believed that the w^ords he spoke came from God. He never claimed him- self, although his followers have done so for him, the power of working miracles, although he insisted that he was so filled with the inspiration of the Almighty during his visions that strength was given him to proclaim and execute the will of God. He, like the Fathers of the Christian Church, believed that miracles might be wrought by others, but, like them, he never laid claim to any other miraculous power save that inspiration which enabled him to teach true doctrine. Mohammed's career may be divided into three epochs. 1. That of his conversion, his proclamation of his doc- trine, and his consequent persecution. To this epoch doubtless belong the highest and truest enthusiasm of his nature, and the corresponding purity and blameless- ness of his life. 2. When his religion had gained many adherents, and there was a prospect of its becoming the religion of all the Arabian tribes, Mohammed seems to have been in a certain sense intoxicated with his tri- umph. Changes for the worse appear in some of his 116 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. moral teachings, as shown especially in the revelation which he claimed to have received dispensing him from the observance of the law in regard to the limited num- ber of wives permitted to his disciples, and in that still greater change, which has seemed to so many the fatal objection to the sincerity of his belief, the advocacy of the use of the sword in extending his doctrine, not only as an act lawful in itself, but as the imperative duty of all his true followers. 3. The epoch in which Arabia was converted to Islam. It was then taught by Mo- hammed that his religion was a universal one, and that it should be spread throughout the world by means of an armed propagandism, and that with this object in view other nations. Christian and Pagan, should be offered the alternatives of conversion, tribute, or de- struction by the sword. There was a manifest deterio- ration both in the character of the Prophet and o£ his religion during these successive epochs. His system was degraded and defiled, as all religious systems are by a resort to force to secure their ascendency. The Mo- hammedanism of history, especially when it became the faith of a race so alien to all the characteristics of the Semitic as that of the Ottoman Turks, is a very differ- ent and very much less pure system than that pro- claimed by the Prophet himself. Yet, bad as many features of Islam are in history, still no one can doubt that it is a much better and more rational system in many respects than many of the religions it supplanted in the course of its conquests. It is certainly to be MOHAMMED NOT AN IMPOSTOR. 117 preferred to the Arabian idolatry, to tlie feticliism of Africa, to the weakness and fruitlessness of Byzantine speculations about Christianity, and to the decayed beliefs of Persia and India. It seems to me that we should be cautious in follow- ing the example of the old writers by calling Moham- med an impostor, and in speaking of his religion as a success simply because it gratified sensual appetites. We must remember that there is no mystery nor legend blinding us about Mohammed's early life and teach- ings, as there is about Boudha, for instance, and the Brahmanic cosmogony. We know almost as much of him as we do of Luther or of Milton. He, of all others, stands in "the fierce white light which shines upon a throne," and by that light his greatness and his weakness are equally conspicuous. And as to the attract- iveness of his religion, made so by its giving a sanc- tion to the gratification of self-indulgent or sensual ap- petite, let the indignant comment of Voltaire (no friend of Mohammed) be a sufficient answei-: "Oh, canons, monks, parish priests even," he exclaims, " if any one forced you to submit to a law that you should eat and drink nothing from four o'clock in the morning till ten at night during Lent, supposing it to occur in the month of July, if you were forbidden to play at any game of chance under penalty of eternal damnation, if the use of wine was interdicted to you under the same penalty, if you were obliged to make pilgrimages across burning deserts, if you were required to give one-tenth 118 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. of your income to tlie poor, if, having been accustomed to eighteen wives, fourteen were suddenly taken from you, — if, I say, such a religion was presented to you, I do not think you would dare to call it a sensual religion." The Koran is the sacred book of the Mussulmans, and its text, ipsissima verba, the infallible guide of their lives. Mohammed claimed that the law as revealed in this book was the actual word of God, and that he was the mere channel by which that word was conveyed to the world, or, at most, the mere editor of the book. The fragments of the Koran, which are in a somewhat disconnected and incoherent form, were produced by Mohammed at his discretion, and as occa- sion seemed to 'require, in his sermons and discourses. They were recorded by his adherents on such strangely perishable materials as the shoulder-bones of sheep, oyster-shells, and the like, and were, two years after the death of Mohammed, collected and published by his suc- cessor, Abubeker. This book is made up of what are regarded by the Moslems as absolute verities; but its teachings are supplemented, as in all religions, by the life and example of the founder. The sayings of Mohammed to them are so many lessons of wisdom, his acts so many examples of virtue. The propagation of Mohammed's religion on a large scale began at the epoch known among the Arabians as the " Hegira," which marks the period of the flight of Mohammed and his companions from Mecca and THE CONVERSION OF THE ARABS. 119 their taking refuge at Medina. This was in July, a.d. 622. A considerable number of the people at Medina, including many Jews resident there, were ready to receive as their prophet and leader the outcast from Mecca, with his followers, and to aid him in spreading his rule and doctrine over the whole of Arabia, and especially over the members of his own tribe, the Ko- reish, who had driven him from Mecca. From this time forth the tone of Mohammed^s action became wholly changed. Force was substituted for persuasion, and a new revelation from God was invoked to give it sanc- tion. It is true that the choice of friendship or of sub- mission was proposed to the enemies of Mohammed; but there was no backwardness in the application of military force to secure his object when any hesitation was ap- parent. " The sword," said the Prophet, " is the key of heaven and hell ; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting and prayer : whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven ; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be as resplendent as vermilion and odoriferous as musk." In this way his functions as king and as prophet became inseparable, and after a few years of fighting with his old tribe and with the Jews of Arabia they became not only his subjects, but his converts also. This is a very striking feature not only of Mohammed's wars, but of those of all the Caliphs. At first sight nothing is more extraordinary in history than that a few wandering and obscure tribes in such a distant, 120 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. sparsely-peopled land as that of Arabia should in a few years march through the most civilized portion of three continents as conquerors; but when we remember that Mohammed's appeal was to the united force of two of the most powerful motives which swayed human action in those days, — superstition and a love of war, — we gain a glimpse at least of the causes of the military successes of the Saracens, although it must be confessed that there are few events in history more difficult of a full and satisfactory explanation than this. His own country subdued to his faith and rule, Mohammed, just before his death, prepared for the future destiny of Islam. His first step towards securing the permanent extension of his rule, both as prophet and as king, had been, as we have seen, to gain the union and co-operation of the wild tribes of his own country. Exactly in what proportions his military success over those whom he called rebels, and the fanatical devotion to his creed with which he inspired them, effected this object, it is not easy to say. In the year 632 — the year of his death — he felt himself strong enough at home to defy the power of tlie Greek and Persian monarchs and to send to each of them a message inviting both to profess the truths of Islam. If we did not know i\\Q result, we should be inclined to regard such a proceeding as tlie act of a madinan : as such, indeed, the King of Persia, the great King of Kings, the successor of Cyrus, seems to have con- sidered it, for he tore up the paper which contained the ARMED PROPAGANDISM. 121 summons, whereupon he was told by the indignant and undaunted messenger that in such a manner his own kingdom would be destroyed by the followers of the Prophet. The Greek Emperor, Heraclius, seems to have treated a similar message w^ith more courtesy, for he is said to have listened to it with great, and probably amused, curiosity. But of course there could be no agreement between Islam and Christianity or the creed of Zoroaster, and a divided rule, much less the fusion of such elements, was impossible. Foreign conquest was evidently the settled policy of Mohammed before his death, for thus only could his system be propagated. It became, by reason of the triumplis of his successors,^ as much a characteristic of his religion, as long as it maintained its vitality, as the belief in the unity of God and the apostleship of the Prophet. It was the combined force of fanaticism and disci- pline which produced the wonderful results of those campaigns which made the Moslems victorious over the old systems. It was not alone intense and intolerant fanaticism for the spread of their religious ideas. They gave from the beginning to all their enemies of different religions the clioice of embracing Islam or of paying a tribute and retaining their own faith. Fancy the Cru- saders, or, in later times, the Puritans, makilig such a compromise of what they believed to be the truth ! If the Saracens had been zealots such as these, they would have sought to exterminate Christianity in the lands they conquered. And yet doubtless their brilliant 11 122 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. exploits, especially in the beginning, were due in a great measure to their blind faith in that reli^-ion of which absolute fatalism was the basis. They hesitated at first, some of them, to undertake the campaigns in Syria and Persia : the odds were too great, the danger appalling, the weather too hot. " Hot !" exclaimed the undaunted Prophet; ^Hiell is hotter; and as to danger, it is ap- pointed unto all men once to die, and for those who die in battle fighting for the faith the unspeakable joys of Paradise are ready and prepared." Whatever may have been the cause, it is clear that in all the early cam- paigns of the Saracens there was a conspicuous union of the blindest fanaticism with the sternest discipline, and to this their unchecked career of victory is chiefly due.. Whenever we see such a combination in history (which is very seldom), as, for instance, in the case of Cromwell's regiments and the Covenanters in Scotland, it seems the condition of assured success. In this way only can we account for the fact that during ten years of the reign of Omar (the second in succession to the Prophet) the Saracens conquered thirty- six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches or temples of unbelievers, and built fourteen hundred mosques for their worship. One hundred years after his flight from Mecca, the rule of the successors of the Prophet extended from the mouth of the river Indus to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the frontier of China to the Red Sea, embracing a very considerable portion- of two continents, and the oldest and most CAMPAIGNS OF THE ARABS. 123 civilized portions of the earth's surface, — Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain. The Romans, with prudent caution, never undertook more than one war of conquest at a time ; the Saracens, in their impetuous eagerness, did not hesitate to attack in one campaign the strongest military powers then exist- ing, — the Greek Empire and Persia. In the very year of Mohammed's death (632) the Saracens, under the command of Khaled, the " sword of God," as he was called, advanced to the Euphrates, and, after various minor victories, they defeated the Persians in the desperate battle of Cadesia in 636, and thus de- cided the fate of the empire of Cyrus. The immediate result was the permanent occupation of the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris, knov/n to the ancients as Assyria and Mesopotamia, and even then one of the most fertile and populous districts in Asia. With that extraordinary keenness of the commercial instinct so strong among the Arabs, they did not forget in their religious zeal to take time to establish there a seaport, Bassorah, which has been ever since, in all the vicissitudes of history, and even now is, a most important entrepot of commerce in that part of the world. What a com- mentary upon human motives and human ambition ! Nineveh the proud, Babylon the great, Ctesiphon the advanced post of Greek culture in those regions, Bagdad the gorgeous city of the Caliphs, are all gone, while Ramescs, and Cyrus, and Alexander, and Haroun-al- Raschid are known to us now chiefly as examples of the 124 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. vanity of human greatness; and yet this little trading- post of Bassorah has been kept alive while all around has fallen, and that by a motive more potent with man- kind in the long run than the love of glory or of power, — the love of making money. But the Saracens soon pushed on beyond the Tigris, northward and eastward, until they reached the Caspian Sea, conquering many famous cities on their route. Not satisfied with this, they advanced yet farther, occupying Khorassan, the country between the Caspian and the river Oxus; and in twelve years from the time when the holy war was begun, the rule of the Caliph was extended far beyond the Oxus to the frontier of China, and to those regions towards the north then inhabited by a race Avhose children centuries afterwards, under the name of Ottoman Turks, were to be the successors of the Arabs and the Saracens and to represent in Europe the armed force and power of Islam. Contemporaneously with the war in Persia came the war in Syria against the Greek Emperor, the ruler of what was left of the Roman Empire in the East. In six years, ending in 638, that famous country was wholly conquered by the Saracens. Bozrah, Damascus, Baal bee, fell in the same year; the next year witnessed the fall of Jerusalem ; in 638 Aleppo and Antioch became tributary cities; and for more than three hundred years the Roman province in which Christ was born rested as completely under the rule of the infidel as Arabia itself. Egypt was the next country which yielded to the irresistible ARAB CONQUESTS. 125 force of the Saracens, and, as they were aided by the good will at least of the native Christians, who held the au- thorities at Constantinople in abhorrence, there was little resistance offered except by the garrison at Alexandria. The burning of the famous library of that most illus- trious city by order of the Caliph is a story which rests upon a somewhat doubtful authority ; but if it be au- thentic the act was one of blind fanaticism, and imitated, it is sad to say, later by the Christians themselves, for the Spaniards after the capture of Granada in 1492 brought from every corner of Spain Arabic books and burned them all, so as to make of their destruction a magnificent auto-da-fe. It is said that more than a million and a half of volumes were consumed by fire on this occasion. Egypt conquered, the Saracens pursued their course westward along the Mediterranean, subduing the Roman })rovince of Africa, more Roman in the days of the de- cline of the Empire than Italy itself, adding, after a long struggle, ancient Carthage and Mauritania as far as the shores of the Atlantic to their dominions. In the year 710, the same year in which their co-re- ligionists conquered that portion of India called Scinde, the great basin of the river Indus, the Saracens crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain, and in one battle completely destroyed the Visigothic power in at least three- fourths of that country. They remained there nearly eight hundred years. Of their history in that country, especially of the character of their civilization in contrast with that of Christendom, we shall speak 11* 126 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, hereafter. But for the present we must leave the won- derful story of the Saracenic conquests, merely observ- ing, as a clue to guide us to the secret of their persistent influence in history, that amidst the varied fortunes of the Caliphate, divided and distracted as it became by revolutions in the course of time, the Moslems, amidst all their dissensions, agreed at least in this grand pro- fession of faith with which they began : " There is but one God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God." CHAPTER y. MEDIEVAL FRANCE. We turn now from the East to the West, — from what seems the permanent triumph of Islam in Asia and Africa to the slow and hesitating advance of the Chris- tian Church in taming the wild tribes of Western Europe, — from the story of the wonderful conquests upon which the assured strength of the Saracens was founded, to a study of the causes of that weakness, dis- solution, and decay which we meet everywhere in the Empire founded by Charlemagne, and which were rap- idly developed under the rule of his descendants. No contrast in history is more striking than that thus pre- sented between a decaying Empire built up with Chris- tianity as its recognized basis, and the strength and pride of conquest of the Saracens, who, stimulated by their intense religious faith, had been able, after a struggle of a few years, not only to uproot Christianity in the lands where it was first planted and where its growth had been from the beginning most vigorous, but also utterly to arrest the development of the peculiar ideas of that portion of mankind in w^hom rested, as we can now see, the hope of the future of the human race. If we could transport ourselves for a moment to those days of unlooked-for weakness and misery, and 127 128 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, knowing nothing of the future, save that there existed a universal belief that the year 1000 was to witness the end of the world, we should probably be forced to agree w^ith the many sad, thoughtful, and puzzled Christian men of that time, who, looking round them and recognizing the triumph of the false Prophet on every hand, were sorely tried to explain how, in accordance with God's promise, the failure of Christianity and of Christian civilization and the triumph of Mohammedanism could coincide with the consummation of all things. Never, it seems to me, did the actual condition of the race in Western Europe seem one of greater degradation and misrule, or one more hopeless for the future, than it was between the date of the death of Charlemagne and that of the election of Hugh Capet as King of France (814-987). Yet the lesson which this era (which we propose to study in this chapter) teaches is that out of the confu- sion, chaos, and anarchy of those days grew, in a very important sense, modern Europe, with all its character- istic civilization, and this other lesson, that the only things that are never permanently obscured in history, although our eyes may be darkened to them for genera- tions, are the providence of God and human progress. Illustrating this principle in a remarkable degree, we shall find that the triumphs of the Saracens, rapid, brilliant, and remarkable in many respects as they were, withered away because they had no depth of root, while the civilization of the West, founded on Christianity and the Roman law leavened by barbarian ideas, grew THE DREAM OF CHARLEMAGNE. 129 all the more vigorously and sturdily because it grew slowly, and was made tougher and more enduring by the very storms which beat against it. The dream of Charlemagne in establishing his Em- pire was, as will be remembered, twofold. He wished to bring under a subjection similar to that of the Koman Empire all the various races inhabiting the wide territories which he had inherited or which he had conquered, and for that purpose he strove to es- tablish a system of centralization in the administration of his government like that which had been adopted by the Roman Emperors in the government of their various provinces. This grand scheme proved, as I have said, a dream only, partly fulfilled, perhaps, while the iron hand of the great master held together the heterogeneous mass of which his dominions were com- posed; but no sooner was he dead than the Impe- rial system, with its principle of centralization, fell to pieces. We cannot explain here all the causes of this catastrophe. It will readily be understood that they are to be looked for in the totally dissimilar condi- tion of the population of the Roman and of the Prank- ish Empires. The only thing in which they resembled each other, as it appears to our eyes, was the extent of territory over which the chiefs of these two Empires ruled respectively. Charlemagne's Empire extended from the Elbe to the Ebro, and from the German Ocean to nearly the southern limit of Italy. The only unity of organization which the wild tribes and the subject 130 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. populations which inhabited this vast territory were then fitted for was that brought about by enforced submission to the conqueror. It was not, as in the Koman Empire even when it had reached its widest limits, an outgrowth of willing subjection to Roman law and a reverence for the Redman name and authority on the part of the con- quered. We find rather among them the persistent love of independence so characteristic of all the German tribes, the habit of appealing to force alone to accom- plish their ends, an incapacity to conceive of that sub- mission to law as the supreme rule which formed the real strength of the Roman government in its conquered territories, — barbarism, in short, which, too ignorant to comprehend, despised all the refinements of that cen- tralized administration which Charlemagne, in his blind admiration of the Roman system, hoped to restore. The only surviving son and successor of Charlemagne is known in French history as Louis le Debonnaire, and in German as Louis the Pious. He seems to have exhibited the instincts and character of a monk, rather than those of a King or of an Emperor. His life w^as passed in acts of devotion to the Church and in quarrels with his sons, who desired during his lifetime that their future patrimony should be divided among them. Each of these sons seems to have been characterized by jeal- ousy of the others, sliowing itself as much by struggles to secure the largest share of his dominions as by a common contempt for their unfortunate father. Twice was that father deposed by these sons because he could DEGENERACY OF HIS DESCENDANTS. 131 not or would not yield his authority to them; and he was harassed to that degree that he Avas only too glad to look forward to the cloister as a refuge from th^ir cruelty. Nothing could show more completely the depth of the degradation to which the son of Charlemagne had fallen, and his unlikeness to his father, as well as the "rapid degeneracy of the government of the great Emperor in his hands, than the willingness of Louis to retire to a monastery and take the vows of a monk; for by so doing he gave up that which had been in all former times the great source of pride to the true Trankish chief, — the right to be a leader of his countrymen in battle. The burden which his great father had borne so easily crushed him utterly. He was the submissive servant of the Church; but the preservation of the Imperial power in the family of Charlemagne was too important to her interests to allow us to suppose that she encouraged his extraordinary pusillanimity and un- Franklike conduct. The outlying and subject popula- tions in Germany and Spain were not long in discover- ing that the mighty hand of Charlemagne no longer governed them, and the Slaves, the Avars, the Arabs, and the Northmen broke out in revolt against the authority of the new Emperor. Louis made various unsuccessful attempts to arrange such a partition of his territories among his sons as would prove satisfactory to them. They had no other effect except to bring the Imperial power into contempt. Owing to the weakness of the central authority, the bonds which had kept the 132 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. Empire together became rapidly loosened. Many of the greater nobles took the opportunity, in defiance of the Emperor, to enlarge tiie boundaries of those bene- fices which had been confided to them by Charlemagne. The result of all these movements, due, perhaps, quite as much to the feeble character of the monarch himself as to the unfitness of the system of Charlemagne for such a rude age, was that the Empire of 840, the date of the death of Louis, was as unlike that of 814, the date of Charlemagne's death, as a man who is mori- bund is unlike the same man in full health and vigor. History hardly shows so rapid a decay of a great po- litical system. The partition made by Louis le Debonnaire, or the Pious, of his Empire among his three sons not having, as I have said, proved satisfactory to any of them, the settlement was left to the arbitrament of war. And it is curious to remark that the Church, in its anxiety to terminate the manifold sufferings endured by the populations throughout his dominions from the per- petual quarrels of those who were striving in arms for the mastery, solemnly absolved all those on both sides who should take part in what was supposed would prove the decisive battle. The bishops in council, after the battle, declared that the parties had fought to secure justice only, that the judgment of God had so mani- festly attested it, and that therefore whoever had taken part in the battle, either by advice or by actual fighting, should be absolved from all the penalties prescribed by THE TREATY OF VERDUN. 133 the Church for such acts. This seems a survival of tlie old Frankish and heathen method of ascertaining the will of God; but what a picture of the civilization of the time is presented, when even the Church, power- ful as it was in so many respects in those days, could find no more Christian method of settling a disputed succession than the adoption of the lesser evil of dis- covering the will of God by means of a single battle rather than by a series of prolonged and bloody wars ! The battle, — that of Fontanet, 841, — if it did not in itself settle the question of the supremacy of one of the brothers, at all events opened the way to a negotiation among them. This resulted in a treaty between the sons of Louis and grandsons of Charlemagne, in 843, dividing the Empire among them. This treaty, called the treaty of Verdun, forms an important historical epoch, as we shall see. By it Louis, afterwards called the German, was assigned Franola Orientalis, east of the Rhine, — speaking generally, mod- ern Germany ; Charles, afterwards called the Bald, that portion of modern France west of the rivers Meuse and Saone to the ocean and the Pyrenees ; Lothair, who Avas the eldest son, a long strip of territory between those portions assigned to his brothers, extending from the North Sea to the Alps, and embracing modern Bel- gium, Lorraine, Burgundy, and Dauphiny. Lothair was given besides, as the eldest son, the Emperorship, with the nominal sovereignty of Italy. The territory assigned to him was one of a long and narrow shape, 12 134 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. and hence constantly exposed to tlie incursions of liis neiglibors, his own brothers, but it embraced within it his three capital cities, — that of Aix-la-Chapelle as King of the Franks, that of Monza as King of the Lom- bards, and that of Home as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. I have said that this treaty of Ver- dun, in 843, forms an important historical epoch ; and it does so, not merely because it settled which of Charle- magne's grandsons should rule certain portions of his Empire, but also because of the underlying principle upon which the partition was effected, and the results which followed from it. By it (1) Europe was perma- nently divided into the three great nationalities, Ger- many, France, and Italy. (2) This division was made on the principle of a difference of race and language in the inhabitants of the different districts. Teutons, Celts, and Latins were henceforth to be governed by different rulers, whose first notion of rule was prompted by the instinct of race, and who, as ages went on, drifted wider apart and had less and less in common. (3) Modern Germany, modern France, modern Italy, begin their life in 843, the date of the treaty of Verdun. From that date too, consequently, the Empire of Charlemagne, although nominally and for certain important purposes still surviving, as we shall see, yet for the object for which it had been established ceased to exist. What concerns us now is not so much the breaking up of the- system by which the Empire had been ruled, as that which was substituted for it. Within a few SKETCH OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 135 years after the death of Louis le Debonnaire, the Im- perial system was replaced, more or less, in all parts of the former dominions of Charlema<^ne, by what is known in history as the feudal system. This was the characteristic system of government in Europe during the larger portion of \\\q Middle Age. We shall have occasion to speak hereafter of the development of this system in Germany, in England, and in Italy, and we shall confine ourselves now to some account of it in that portion of the Empire which fell in the partition at Verdun, 843, to the share of Charles the Bald, — that is, as near as may be, modem France. ^ — - Some preliminary sketch of the origin and character- istic features of the feudal system may be appropriate here. When the Prankish chiefs and those of the other Teutonic tribes invaded Western Europe, they were in the habit of rewarding the fidelity and courage of their, companions, or principal followers, — comites, as they were called, — who had aided them in their conquests. These rewards consisted sometimes of horses or of arms, but oftener of lands in the conquered countries, and they were made probably at that time without any formal obligation on the part of the person on whom they were bestowed of service to the chief in considera- tion of the gifts. According to the ancient Teutonic custom, however, as will be remembered, it was con- sidered not only a duty, but an honor, for any young warrior, no matter how high his lineage, to serve under a renowned chief. Such service was performed without 136 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. any thought of other reward than the a})proval and companionship of the chief, this relation constituting military patronage in the old sense. The lands thus presented to these warriors were called allodial; that is, their tenure involv^ed no obligation of service whatever. But in the course of time, from various causes, such as the diminution of the number of warriors in conse- quence of the losses suffered during the perpetual wars of Charlemagne, and the necessity of guarding the more extensive frontiers of the countries he conquered, the following expedient was adopted to secure a more per- manent and efficient army; and this forms the germ or basis of the feudal system proper. Lands were no longer bestowed by the sovereign (chief, or king, or Emperor, as he happened to be) as free gifts. They were granted in the form of beneficeSjpr^ fiefs, as they were called ; that is, they were to be liolden upon the con- dition that the grantee should, by virtue of the grant, perform ce rtain s ervices to the lord, generally of a mili- tary kind. When these services so agreed upon ceased to be rendered, the lands were forfeited to the original owner, or lord of the fief, as he was called. There was a peculiar ceremony in the early days in the investiture of these fiefs, or lands held in fief, which is very signifi- cant, as showing the new relations created thereby be- tween the giver and the receiver. He upon whom the grant was to be bestowed knelt before the lord who was to give him the land, and promised to l)ecome hi s m an, and to keep faith and loyalty towards him against all FORM OF CONFERRING FIEFS. 137 Avlio might assail bis right, by every means in his power. Tbe lord then made a reciprocal promise of protection and defence of bis vassal, as the grantee was called, and then tbe investiture was completed by a symbolical delivery to the new vassal of a handful of earth or the twig of a tree. Thus the ownership of land and the rights and duties of its possessors were supposed to be firmly bound together. It may be observed, too, that WQ here find the ^erm of the doctrine of reciprocal allegiance and protection which forms so important a chapter in our modern law, and also that of the rela- tion of landlord and tenant, wdiich to-day even in this country is based upon the old feudal conception of lord and vassal. The process I have described \vas that observed by the sovereign in conferring large benefices upon his j)rincipal officers or comites; but these officers sub- divided the benefices or fiefs so conferred among their own followers and companions, with the agreement on their part to hold each of these divided portions of the original fief of the person by whom they were imme- diately conferred, on conditions similar to those by Avhich that person held of the sovereign or overlord. These smaller fiefs were called subinfeudations, and were, in fact, mere miniatures of the larger fiefs. In a short time nearly all the land in France, from reasons which will presently appear, was held in fief, either directly and immediately of the king, or indirectly, by the freemen of lesser wealth or inferior nobility, of 12* 138 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the grantees of the king, so that a thoroughly graded hierarchy, beginning with tlie king and ending with the smallest landholder, prevailed, which was intended to assure protection and safety on the one side, and loyalty, allegiance, and stipulated service on the other. This system, it must be remembered, was no inge- nious and speculative device, as it has often been repre- sented, to reduce the population of those countries living under it to slavery, but it was eagerly adopted by those who had an interest in the preservation of order, not merely as a method of counteracting that anarchy which then threatened the overthrow of all settled society, but also, and especially, as the only effectual method of repelling the armed invasions of the barbarians, and especially of the Northmen, which b^gan again shortly after the death of Charlemagne. \ In one sense tlie feudal_sys_tem was an endeavor to^ combine military efficiency with that spirit of independence on the part of the chiefs which was so characteristic of the Ger- man warriors in their native lands. \ The object^ajv, however, of the rulers — the immediate object — was de- fence of their homes, not to send out expeditions such as those undertaken in the campaigns under Charle- magne. We shall see that, as a system, the feudal form of government, arbitrary and oppressive as we may think it, was in the beginning a necessity of the time. One of the best proofs that it was such is found in its universal adoption throughout Europe. Not only land, but other kinds of property, even offices FEUDAL '' COMMENDATJONr J39 in Church and State, were held in fief with a view to protection. We must remember that after the death of Charlemagne there existed for a long time no public authority in Europe strpng enough to maintain order throughout a large territory, and that each chief, who had formerly been, perhaps, under the rule of the great Emperor, a firm supporter of his system and authority, now, freed from his control, sought only to increase his own lands and power. The result was a perpetual reign of force, if not of terror, a constant struggle for those objects, where might made right, the end of which was the survival of the strongest, and during which the successful pursuit of the arts of peace became im- possible, — a condition of things which, if continued, clearly foreshadowed a rela})se into barbarism. There is a curious feature in the early history of feu- dalism which shows how it was adopted as a means of security and safety from the utter lawlessness of the times. We read of many free proprietors holding lands by allodial right, — that is to say, without any obligation of service to any one by virtue of such possession, — de- spairing of any security and protection of their property, since they had no claim to invoke the aid of a powerful chieftain in their defence, re commending th emselves, as it was technically called, to some renow^ned warrior or lord ; that is, abandoning their free proprietorship, and placing themselves in the feudal relation to such a chief, conveying to him their lands and receiving them back from him in fief, thus assuming towards him the 140 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. position of a vassal, and receiving from him in return tlie feudal obligation of defence and protection. This prac- tice began in France shortly after the death of Charle- magne, anJ was"Iormal ly recog«ized and sanctioned by Charles the Bald by what is called the Edict of Mersen, in 847. It was there provided that every freeman (that is, every one possessed of allodial lands) mi^ht choose a lord, who should be either the king or one of his vassals as he might deem best, and that no direct or immediate vassal of the king should be obliged to serve under him in war, unless against a foreign enemy./ This edict, while it shows the disintegration of the royal power and proves how the nobility profited from it by transferring the armed force of the nation to itself, also makes it clear that at that time the landholders could find safety only by uniting their interests, and establishing among themselves the reciprocal obligation of service on the one side and j^rotection on the other. The practice of conveying the royal domain — that is, the lands belonging to the crown — in fief to the great lords, and thus dividing the territory into a number of comparatively small sovereignties, was carried on, either as a matter of policy or of necessity, by all the degen- erate descendants of Charlemagne in France, until no land was left to the ownership or under the immediate rule of the king of the vast inheritance of the great Emperor save the city of Laon, which became the capi- tal of his nominal kingdom. France, indeed, ceased to be a kingdom in any proper sense of the word. Its FEUDAL CHARACTERISTICS. 141 territory became totally dismembered or disintegrated, and was divided at the close of the ninth century into twenty-nine great fiefs, which had increased in number a hundred years later to ,fifty-five. Duchies, counties, viscounties, and lordships, in which sovereigns succeeded sovereigns by hereditary right, and distinct laws and customs, all of course at the expense of the central or royal authority, were regularly established therein. .Thus France under this system became a mere congeries of distinct governments, the will of the chief in each being practically the only law, and this will was enforced by the power of the sword. The populations within them (except, of course, the serfs, who were regarded as mere chattels) were bound together in the relation of lord and vassal, the principal object being protection. The ^e&vdo not seem at first to have been hjy;:edija£^ but they became so as soon as the system was in full vigor. If the lands only had descended from father to son, the mischief, as the system became firmly rooted, would not have been as serious as history proves it to have been. But not only were the lands hereditary with the services due for them, but the title, and the powers of government also, descended to the possessors with the lands. This absolute and almost arbitrary jurisdiction within their fiefs, thus transmissible to their children by the pos- sessors of the great fiefs, might remain uncontrolled in incapable families for generations, or such charges^ as tiiey were called, might be, and were often, sold when these haughty barons required money. This method of 142 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. governing and of administering the law under the claim of hereditary right by each feudal chieftain was always regarded as one of the greatest practical grievances in France down to the time of the Revolution ; and, indeed, the abuses which were inseparable from the working of the feudal machinery, and especially this part of it, even reduced as they were under Kichelieu and Louis XIV., were among the principal causes which produced that catastrophe. There is said to be but one form of gov- ernment in history which meets the universal condemna- tion of all ruled by it; and that is the feudal system. It must not be supposed that in the partition of France into feudatories the king was ignored. He, from the very nature of the system, was its head, from whom all authority theoretically descended. He was the fountain of honor, justice, and authority. He was called the 8UzerwLi^ or overlord, and those who did homage to him directly and personally for their fiefs were called grand vassals^ and bound by virtue of that homage to obey and support him; but such grand vassals as the Dukes of Burgundy and of Aquitaine and the Counts of Cham- pagne and of Flanders, having within their territories all^ the royal rights, such as that of making war, of coining money, of making general laws and enforcing them by means of their own tribunals, and who were exempt from the payment of public taxes, were not likely to pay much heed to the orders of a nominal superior, whose claim to rule them rested upon little else than the title of king and the possession of some CHARACTERISTICS OF FIEFS. 143 small remnant of the former vast royal domain. Po- litically, the feudal system made the owner of a piece of land, large or small, the absolute sovereign of those who dwelt thereon. The difference between the later Garlovingians and Hugh Capet in their power over their turbulent nobles was this, that the first, although descendants of Charle- magne, possessed only, as has been said, the insignif- icant towai of Laon, while the other was the feudal lord of the duchy of France, the largest fief in the kingdom. We must conceive of the wdiole territory of France as feudalized, — that is, divided and subdivided into larger and smaller fiefs, nominally constituting a complete hierarchy, with a gradation of powers and responsibilities, in which each landholder obeyed some one above him, and he in turn was obeyed by others beneath him, but where in point of fact the law of force in their relations with their co-feudatories and all save their own vassals prevailed, the right which they most jealously guarded being that of private war Avith each other. Of life within these fiefs, especially that of the villeins and the serfs on the domain, I shall speak more particularly wlien I come to discuss the peculiar condition of mediaeval agriculture and industry; and I shall have occasion also to show hereafter how^ the Church, with its ministries, was the light of ages made dark by the rule of the feudal chiefs. It is only neces- sary to say here that the practical working of such a 144 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. system could only tend to develop and strengthen some of the worst traits of the barbarous Teutonic invaders when they were transformed into feudal lords. I do not forget all that has been said of the love of domestic life, of the reverence for woman, of the much-vaunted influence of chivalry and knighthood in this age, all of which, it is claimed, became firmly rooted in European life and society by the peculiarities of the feudal system ; but, after all, the shadow of barbarism which was cast by the terrible realities of life in those days of inse- curity and lawlessness makes the picture a very dark one. Civilization in its true sense — that is, the highest type of social life possible under the conditions of an- cient or mediaeval days — must generally be looked for in the cities and not in the country. There is hardly a greater diiference between the agora of the Greek cities, or the Roman forum, and the feudal castle than is to be seen between the free and public life of the Greeks or Romans and that led by the knights of the Middle Age in their gloomy fortresses. \r I have endeavored to show how little real or perma- nent union there was among the holders of the different fiefs for any common object, although the very theory of this system required a gradation of raidi among free warriors, the object of which was to secure a common protection of their possessions, each contributing to make the military system of defence efficient for all. The military power of the feudal system to resist a formidable invasion was put to a very severe test in INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 145 France just as it was beginning to supplant the Imperial system of Charlemagne. The occasion was found in the long-continued and most destructive incursions of the Northmen, who, as soon as Charlemagne had died, attacked with constantly-increasing force, nearly every year, for many years, the coasts of France and Germany, ascending the rivers in their light boats, penetrating far inland in search of plunder, devastating large towns, and burning monasteries and churches. There seems to have been little effectual resistance made by those in power in France to these assaults. The invaders held the whole course of the Seine as far as Paris, which they besieged three times; they destroyed Bordeaux; they established themselves on the banks of the Loire ; and finally they took permanent possession of the finest province in France, — that of l^ormandy, whose very name, which they gave it, is a perpetual memorial of their victorious prowess. When we remember that these Northmen must have been comparatively few in number, since they came in ships, — that, after all, they were only the rear-guard of that vast army of barbarian invaders which for centuries had assailed the Roman Empire, the last remnant of which it had been hoped that Charle- magne had destroyed on the banks of the Elbe, — that the races they attacked in France and Germany were of the same blood and habits as themselves, and were in point of fact only the advanced portion of that same army of invasion to which these Northmen belonged, — when one reflects upon all these things, he is at a loss 13 146 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. to understand why the plundering incursions of these piratical rovers were not checked, especially in France. The truth is, that the resistance was not more effective simply because its organization was not intelligent and vigorous. While the descendants of Charlemagne were quarrelling with each other over the partition of his Empire, the great lords were seizing the opportunity to enlarge their domains at the expense of the royal rights and territory, and each of the leaders was en- gaged in an ignoble scramble for more land and more power. No one was willing or strong enough to pro- vide for the safety of all when it was threatened by these fierce invaders with a common havoc. The utter inefficiency of the later Carlovingians in their attempts to repel these invasions, which threatened soon to make France a desert of desolation, and the skill, bravery, and success of several members of one family among their greatest feudatories — that of Eobert le Fort, or Ca'pei — in rescuing the country from the danger of ruin, were the principal causes of the transfer of the royal authority in France from the second to the third race, as it is called, that is, from the descendants of Charlemagne to those of Robert and Hugh Capet, and of retaining the crown in that family for nearly a thousand years, or until Louis XYI. perished on the scaffold, in 1793. The first Capet in history was the one appointed by Charles the Bald to defend the Marh^ as the territory watered by the river Seine was then called, from the SERVICES OF THE FAMILY OF CAPET. 147 incursions of the Northmen. It was given to him in fief and called the Duchy of France. It was in the defence of this frontier that he acquired fame for himself and power for his family. In his arduous service against these wild and hitherto unsubdued pirates he became the true savior of France. Robert Capet was a statesman as well as a great warrior. The Northmen having been defeated, at his suggestion Rollo, their chief, was made the feudal Duke of Normandy, a measure which soon brought to a close the piratical expeditions and made .in a few generations the Normans the most French of Frenchmen. The victories of the family of Capet, Dukes of France, pointed out its chiefs as the natural succes- sors of the feeble and unfortunate Carlovinorians. The tenth century is filled with the quarrels between them and the house of Capet, whose power and consideration increased with every step, and in 987 Hugh Capet was elected by the great vassals King of France, and the house of Charlemagne became extinct, the last heir being confined in a monastery, a convenient way adopted in those days of getting rid of a troublesome pretender. It will be understood that the title of king added little to the real power of Hugh Capet. That rested, as has been said, upon his possession of the duchy of France, the largest and most important and most central of all the fiefs, and upon a recognition of his services and those of his family by the other great vassals. The annals of the kingdom of France as it 148 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. existed under the first four Capetiens are singularly bare of events of historical importance, either at home or abroad. It is true that during this period England was conquered by the Norman-French, and that many Frenchmen, some of them great vassals, were engaged in the early Crusades ; but the expedition against Eng- land was undertaken by the Duke of Normandy without either the aid or the control of the King of France, and it was not until the days of Philip Augustus (1180), of Louis yill. (1223), and of St. Louis (1236) that the French kings led a national army to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. How little the kingdom of France in the modern sense existed during the feudal regime may be illustrated by a statement of the geographical position of the gre^t fiefs by which Hugh Capet and his successors found themselves surrounded for more than a hundred years in their duchy of France. That duchy extended from the English Channel to some distance below the present city of Orleans, sixty or seventy miles south of Paris. It was hemmed in on the northeast by the county of Flanders, on the east by that of Cham- pagne, and on the west by the great dukedom of Nor- mandy. To the southeast was the duchy of Burgundy. Farther south, on the west, below the river Loire, were the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, and the coun- ties of Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiny, under the Counts of Toulouse. Another curious feature of the denationalizing char- acter of the feudal system in France is found in this, ENGLISH KINGS, FEUDAL LORDS IN FRANCE. 149 that the King of England was the real governor or feudal sovereign of nearly half of the present territory of France during almost a century. For the English Plantaganet kings were legally Dukes of Normandy as descendants of William the Conqueror, Counts of Anjou as heirs of the Empress Matilda, who had married Guy, commonly called Plantaganet, the lord of that county, and Dukes of Guienne or Aquitaine because Henry II. of England had married Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII., who was the heiress of that duchy. The King of England never hesitated to recognize the King of France as his suzerain in that country, just as any other of the grand vassals of his crown would have done ; and when at last Philip Augustus, in 1204, deter- mined to annex Normandy to the crown, his object was accomplished by the regular process of the feudal law. John, King of England, was summoned, as Duke of Normandy and lord of other fiefs in France, to appear before a court composed of the twelve highest nobles in the kingdom, and was accused of having with his own hand killed the lawful heir, his nephew. Prince Arthur, and thus having forfeited his fiefs to the crown. He did not appear, and the fiefs were accordingly confiscated to the crown and taken possession of by the royal authority, and thus became wholly French. It will be seen hereafter that modern France, as to its territory, has been made up hy^ a process of absorption of quasi-independent fiefs and their annexation to the crown, and that this process was going on slowly from 13* 150 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the time of Hugh Capet until that of Louis XII., — 987- 1500, — a period of five hundred years. It is impossible here to enumerate all the causes which produced this great change, a change which makes the contrast in political opinion and ideas between mediaeval and modern France quite as striking as the changes in her territorial jurisdiction. I can only indicate the direction of the stream of tendency, and that may be said, generally, to have been towards an aggrandizement of the power of the king and of a centralized administration at the expense of the authority of the great feudatories and the gradu- ally increasing power of the tiers-etat. The abuses were so great in the system, the king^s authority was so en- tirely nominal, the obligations of justice and right were so entirely disregarded in the arbitrary exercise of the lord's power, the evils of all kinds threatening anarchy were of such a galling and practical kind, that we are surprised that resistance was not offered sooner than it was. The king, as suzerain or overlord, was, as we have seen, powerless. Apparently, resistance came first from the towns, or communes, as they were called, all being then under feudal subjection, and presenting, of course, wherever there was any trade or industry in the town, great temptation to plunder. It is instructive to know that the very first town that resisted (about the year 1109) because the tyranny of its feudal superior was no longer endurable was qjie that had a bishop for sei- gneur or lord, the old city of Laon, the last stronghold and refuge of the Carlovingian kings, and then a place THE FREEDOM OF THE TOWNS. 151 of considerable importance. The subject of the rise of free cities is a very large one, especially with reference to its far-reaching result on the general progress of civilization. We can only speak now of that aspect of it which has to do with the resistance of these cities to feudal oppression, and the evidence it affords of their strength. The revolt of the city of Laon against its feudal lord, the bishop, will illustrate what was done, and done successfully, during the twelfth century by one-third of all the towns in France with the same object and generally with the same result. The inhab- itants, weary of their misrule, taking advantage of the absence of their lord, met and established a representa- tive municipal government of their own, and then pur- chased the feudal right of lordship from the seigneur and transferred it to the government which they them- selves had substituted for it, in trust for their benefit. They then paid to the king, Louis YII. (about A.D. 1137), as suzerain, or overlord, a certain sum of money for a patent or charter confirming the legality of the new government which they had established. There were many and long struggles in this town and in the others which had adopted similar measures before the affranchisement des communes was fully settled as against the lords ; but this was one of those revolutions which do not go backward, and in its results one of the most fruitful in the history of the age. It ended not merely in taking away from the feudal nobles the most important source of their revenues, derived from the 152 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. arbitrary taxation of the wealth of the towns, but it transferred also the power over the inhabitants for cer- tain purposes to the king, while the franchises of the inhabitants were secured by a representative system of government. The bourgeoisie of the towns had evi- dently found the joints in the heavy armor of their oppressors, and the king and the bourgeoisie, bound by a common interest, lost no opportunity of assailing, as occasion presented, the overgrown pretensions of these petty local despots. The Crusades, like the rise of the free cities, had much to do with lessening the power and independence of the higher feudal nobility. The Crusades were a popular movement, and vast multitudes of serfs no doubt gained their freedom by becoming Crusaders, the universal military code in all ages, I believe, providing that none but a freeman can be a warrior. Besides, the feudal chiefs, as the Crusades went on, took part in them, and they needed money to appear with befitting dignity as leaders and to provide for the equipment of their re- tainers. But the money was in the hands of the bour- geoisie of the great towns, not in those of the lords. A principle of feudal law prohibited the conferring of a fief upon any person not noble {roturiey^s^ as they were called). How, then, was the money to be secured by the seigneur, who, of course, had nothing but his lands to offer in order to obtain it? Philip Augustus, one of the most treacherous but one of the ablest kings France ever had, solved the difficulty by decreeing that ROTURIERS BECOME NOBLES. 153 the royal investiture of any man with a fief should raise him at once from the rank of a roturier to that of a noble. This policy was carried out on a large scale soon after, and of course was a fatal blow to feudalism, as the hereditary right to certain powers and dignities was no longer exclusively possessed by those of noble birth. As a result, these powers and jurisdictions, or rather the lands which conferred them, were not con- fined to a particular caste, but could be bought and sold like other things, and the question became, not who had the longest pedigree, but who had the best-filled purse. It was soon found out, too, that roturiers could fight in a cause which they had at heart quite as well on foot as the knights did on horseback ; and the weavers of Flan- ders at the battle of Courtray (1302), and the English yeomen at Cr^cy and at Poitiers (1346), proved clearly that the true military strength of a country did not lie in its armed knights and their feudal array, but in the efficient military organization of its people. The preponderance of the feudal system, as represent- ing a power in France which was exercised by numerous petty sovereigns, each practically supreme within his own sphere, exercising authority for his own purposes, and setting at defiance both the power of the king and disregarding any claim to })olitical rights on the part of the tiers-etatj or non-noble class, ceased during the hundred -years' war between England and France (in 1328), undertaken to maintain the claim of Edward III. to the French crown. The direct evidence of 154 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. this great change is found in the ennobling of voinriers and their investiture with fiefs, as well as in the growing powder of the crown, due chiefly to the annex- ation of the fiefs of some of the greater nobles to it. It is to be seen also in the frequent convocations of the States-General or Parliament of France, in which the representatives of the towns, or the tiers-etat, occu- pied a position of as great influence theoretically in the ^ttlement of the affairs of the kingdom as the nobles and clergy, as well as in the growth and greater relative importance of the towns themselves, and in the revolt of the peasants, — La Jacquerie, as it was called. All this goes to show that, while the feudal power in France still remained strong, the exclusive feudal privilege of governing the country with no other object than the aggrandizement of the power of the local feudal chief- tains was beginning to give way. During the hundred-years' war the kings, and es- pecially Charles V. (called le Sage), thought to add to the means of defending the kingdom by curtailing as far as possible the privileges of the nobles and by in- creasing those of the bourgeois. Perhaps the utter inca- pacity and feebleness of the nobility shown during the wars with the English, their division into parties for and against foreign invasion, and the ruin and distress they brought upon the country which it was their duty to defend, deprived them at last of the only pretext — that of their services as defenders of the realm — upon which they could base the claim to the maintenance of THE WORK OF JEANNE UARC. 155 the extravagant privileges which their order had so long enjoyed. It is a curious fact that the instinct of nation- ality and the destruction of the claim of this exclusive and privileged class to be regarded as the true defenders of the country were born in the French mind at the same time. More curious still is it that, when France was torn to pieces by the quarrels of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs and by the frightful excesses of the English invaders, a young peasant-girl should have revived the hopes of the country, then brought to the verge of ruin by the criminal ambition of the haugh- tiest of her nobles. When these nobles had long failed to rescue France, she raised the fortunes of the king and inspired her countrymen with such enthusiasm that they were able to make a united eifort to drive out the stranger, so that the lost provinces were recovered and the English reigned no longer in France. There are many aspects of the story of Jeanne d'Arc which remind us, as we recall them, almost of the enthusiasm aroused by the message of an inspired prophet ; yet cer- tainly on no surer basis can her fame rest in history than that she was the first apostle in France of that sentiment of national unity binding all her children together, in o])position to the separatism of the feudal policy, which modern Frenchmen at least believe to be not merely the nurse of all patriotism, but the inspiring motive of that ardent desire so characteristic of their countrymen at all times to be the leaders of civilization in Europe. The political importance of the feudal nobles did not, 156 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. of course, cease with the loss of many of the important powers of government which they possessed during the Middle Age. They retained, indeed, many of their seignorial rights and jurisdictions until they came into conflict with Richelieu and his system of centralization. Under his powerful rule every claim which interfered with the full exercise of the royal centralized author- ity was disallowed and the castles were razed to the ground. The French nobles had for more than four hundred years to fight hard to maintain their recognition as a class, — the leading class in the government of the country, — and for the preservation of such of their privileges as were not regarded as inconsistent with the supremacy of the crown. At last the Revolution de- stroyed them as a distinct order or class in the nation, because it was felt that whatever services their ancestors might have rendered to France, — and none were greater, as we have seen, than those of the founder of the family of the unfortunate king (Louis Capet, as his judges de- risively called him), — still all that remained at the close of the eighteenth century was privilege without service, than which nothing can be more odious. We sometimes hear it said that the natural limits, as they are called, of modern France, should be those of ancient Gaul, — viz., the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, and the ocean. But if I have succeeded in showing how modern France, as distinct from the country of the ancient Franks, was formed, it will be inferred that the process by which this result was reached was one NATURAL BOUNDARIES, 157 # of simple absorption, and that there is no such thing as natural boundaries. Beginning with the fief of Hugh Capet or his ancestor Robert in 987 (the Duchy of France), we find all the provinces in turn absorbed and annexed to the crown : Normandy, Champagne, Tou- raine, and Languedoc during the thirteenth century; Poitou, Saintonge, the Lyonnese, and Dauphiny in the fourteenth ; Maine, Anjou, Guienne, Gascony, and Pro- vence in the fifteenth ; and the remaining great fiefs or provinces at still later periods. 14 CHAPTER yi. The partition of the Empire of Charlemagne among his grandsons was made by the treaty of Verdun in 843. By the agreement then entered into, the founda- tions of modern France, Germany, and Italy respec- tively were laid. Some account has been given of the immediate results of the partition, and especially of the development of the feudal system in France. It is now proposed to speak of some of the characteristic features of the history of Germany during the Middle Age, beginning with the division of Cliarlemagne's Empire in 843. We are so accustomed to look upon France and Ger- many not merely as distinct countries, but as differing from each other so completely in all those characteristic features which go to make up a nationality, that it is not easy to conceive a state of things in Europe at any period of history when they had much in common. It is nevertheless true that they had both lived under the same kings — the kings of the Franks — for nearly five centuries, that the same forms of government pre- vailed among them, that they had both been ruled by the great Charlemagne, that the greater part of the population in both belonged to the same race, and that 158 GERMAN AND FRENCH FEUDALISM. 159 each branch of the family into which the Prankish tribes were divided by the treaty of 843 claims even to this day Charlemagne as its special type and represen- tative, and his glory as that of its founder. Besides, after their separation, that feudal system which was the outgrowth of the confusion arising from the weakness and decay of the Imperial system was characterized by the same forms, institutions, and peculiarities in both those two great divisions of the Empire afterwards known as France and Germany. So true is this in regard to the constitution of the feudal form of gov- ernment that a description of its peculiar organization and the sphere of its operation in one of these countries will serve generally to explain its course and develop- ment in the other. What I have said, therefore, in regard to the feudal system in France may be applied, with little qualification, to the beginnings at least of that system in Germany. These two countries have drifted apart very widely since the days of Charle- magne's grandsons; but we must, if we wish to study history aright, remember that they had, if not a com- mon origin in race, at least for many generations a common rule and common ideas of government, and that the process which has now for a long time made their relations to each other those of hate and rivalry was a slow one. The reasons which led to the adoption by two great branches of the Frankish family — East Franks, West Franks, — Germany and France — of the feudal form of IGO MEDIEVAL HISTORY. government were common to both. The history of the beginnings of this system is the same in both, but the final outcome was very different, and the contrast in the methods of its development in the two countries forms one of the most instructive and interesting chapters in history. The results, from causes which we shall have to investigate, were in some respects wholly opposite. In France, as I have explained, the force during the Middle Age was centripetal, or tending towards the centre, at least in the latter period ; in Germany, that force was always centrifugal, and all power of cohesion between the several parts became gradually destroyed. In France, as the feudal life ran its course, everything gradually tended to unity, monarchy, centralization ; in Germany, the spirit of locality, separatism, decentralization, pre- vailed. France comes out of the Middle Age into mod- ern history, after a struggle of seven centuries, strong, united, intensely national; Germany, on the contrary, split up into hundreds of little principalities, with hardly closer relations to their Emperor than those of the great vassals of France to Hugh Capet when they elected him their king. Our main object in this chapter is to try and discover some explanation of this extraordinary difference; in other words, to ascertain why the same system of government should have produced such differ- ent results in the two countries. Lewis the German (grandson of Charlemagne), to whom, by the treaty of Verdun, East Francia — that is, Germany east of the Rhine — had been assigned, dying THE SIX GERMAN TRIBES. 161 in 876, was succeeded by his surviving son, Charles the Fat. He, proving himself utterly incapable of defend- ing the country against the incursions of the Northmen, and therefore unfit to perform the essential duties of King of the Franks in those days of violence, was deposed in 888 by his nobles. He was the last legiti- mate male descendant of Charlemagne; and such was the superstitious reverence at that time for the race of which the great Emperor was the founder, notwith- standing the extraordinary and well-proved incapacity of each one of its members save the chief, that the nobles decided to choose as their king, on the death of Charles, an illegitimate descendant of the Emperor, — Arnulf, — simply because the blood of Charlemagne ran in his veins. Arnulf proved not an unworthy scion of his illustrious ancestor. The principal tribes in Germany at the time of the death of Arnulf were six in number, inhabiting the fol- lowing districts: 1st, Saxony ^ the largest territory, and the most renowned for its warriors, between the Lower Rhine and the Oder, the North Sea and the Hartz Moun- tains, including modern Hanover, Westphalia, Bruns- wick, and Northern Prussia. The Saxons were the last barbarians subdued by Charlemagne, and they still re- tained their fierceness and strength. 2d, Thuringia, south of the Saxon lands, a district not specially remarkable in mediaeval history. It formed, later, part of the duchy of Saxony. 3d, Ft-anconia, or country of the East Franks, — Central Germany, from the Middle Rhine eastward to 14* 162 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the Elbe, or nearly so. 4th, Bavaria, the central south- ern portion of Germany, extending to the eastern frontier, or Ostmark, afterwards known as the Archduchy of Austria. 5th, Swabia, Southern Germany and German Switzerland, from the Alps to the Danube and beyond. 6th, Lorraine, the border-land between France and Ger- many, from the Alps to the North Sea. At the head of each of the tribes occupying these districts was a chief, called a Duke, who, during the whole Middle Age, was the hereditary sovereign of the lands occupied by it. From one or other of these families was chosen the German king, or Emperor as he was called, until the end of the thirteenth century, and the struggle between these dukes and the king whom they elected from their own number forms one of the most important chapters of mediaeval history in Germany. But previous to this rivalry for supremacy among these families it was necessary that Germany should be made secure from invasion. It is satisfactory to find that the real title of those princely houses who strug- gled for the headship or the kingship of the country in early times was in almost all cases the real service they had rendered in resisting the barbarian invaders. Their claims rested upon the public gratitude for such services, and if their rule was one of force we must remember that its most conspicuous display was made for the public good. Resistance to invasion was the great preoccupation of the time, and the worthiest was he who was not merely the strongest, but the bravest HENRY THE FOWLER. 163 in averting the ruin which threatened Germany from these invasions. The male posterity of Charlemagne in Germany be- came extinct on the death of the son of Arnulf, Lewis the Child. The nobles of the different tribes, anxious, after the customs of the primitive Germans, to retain the kingship in the family of Charlemagne, elected Conrad, who was descended from him in the female line, as their king. But he proved unable to drive out the barbarians, who, during his reign, penetrated far into Germany, or to subdue the pretensions to independence of the powerful Duke of the Saxons, Henry. On the death of Conrad, who had been mortally wounded in a battle against the invaders, and at his own suggestion just before his death, the nobles chose as his successor, in 919, his rival and enemy, Henry, Duke of the Saxons, known in history as Henry the Fowler. The Saxons, of whom he was the chief, it will be remembered, had proved the most obsti- nate and powerful of all Charlemagne^s enemies. They were nominally subdued by him and made Christians, if the act of baptism forced upon them as an alternative for drowning could make them such. Since his death their strength (and they were the most powerful of all the German tribes) had been used to secure their own inde- pendence, and therefore to destroy whatever German unity existed under Charlemagne's policy. Their atti- tude changed when their chief was chosen king by his fellow-chieftains. Henry is said to be the true founder of modern Germany, and his pretensions are based upon 164 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. this, that he really first gave Germany to herself free from the perpetual torrent of invasion which up to his time had constantly threatened to overwhelm it. He conquered the Wends to the east of the Elbe, he defeated the Northern Slavonic tribes on the frontiers of Saxony, and he drove back the Hungarians at Merseburg (933) with such frightful slaughter that they ceased thereafter to molest Germany. He did more, for he filled the fron- tier country with German colonists, who soon proved an effectual barrier against further invasion. These districts were called marhs, and their governors margraves, men selected by the king for their approved valor and capacity to guard and rule these outlying portions of Germany. Many of these marks became in the course of time, under the rule of a succession of able chiefs, kingdoms and duchies, with preponderant political influence in Germany. The present house of Prussia is descended from the first ruler of the mark of Brandenburg, and that of Austria from the chief of the Ostmark or Eastern mark, and of Styria or Steiermark. The German kings for the first three centuries and a half, and until the direct line in each became extinct, were taken from three great families or dynasties. These kings of Germany or of the Franks were chosen by the great vassals, and did not become such by hereditary right. Thus, the first dynasty was the Saxon, of which I have just spoken, and of which Henry the Fowler was chief. Its princes reigned from 919 to 1024; the second, that of Franconia, 1024-1125; and the third. FEUDAL INDEPENDENCE, 165 that of Swabia or Hohenstaiiffen, 1138-1254. It is impossible, of course, to give even a sketch of the events which distinguished tliese reigns, or even the dynasties, in Germany. There are many illustrious names' on the roll of these German kings, the Othos, the Henrys, and the Fredericks of history, but there is a weary sameness in the record of their reigns, which, so far as Germany was concerned, were taken up in perpetual and vain efforts made by the kings to subdue the independent spirit of the various princes and to bring them into subjection to the central royal authority. We see here, as I have said, that process of centralization and tendency to unity which marked the history of France reversed. The great vassals succumbed at last in that country to the king, and their fiefs were united to the crown ; in Ger- many the feudal principle of separatism triumphed, and the fiefs became hereditary with sovereign authority remaining in the families of their original possessors. The principal parties to this struggle for more than two centuries w^ere the houses of Saxony and those of Fran- conia, and afterwards of Hohenstauffen, and their conflict gave rise to the historic names of AYelf and Weiblingen, or, as they Avere afterwards called in Italy, Guelph and Ghibeline, the former representing in Germany oppo- sition to the kingly, as it did in Italy opposition to the Imperial power. The chief interest to the general student in the history of many of the illustrious men who were German kings of the first three dynasties is due to their having been 166 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. at the same time Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, and to their relations in this double capacity with Italy and the Pope. Of these we shall speak presently. As German kings merely, these men had little real authority. They, or at least the earliest among them, had no fixed home, but kept moving about from one place to another throughout Germany, administering justice among their vassals, and preparing for war when not actually engaged in it. They had no settled revenue derived from taxation, and their private domain, which consisted principally of immense forests, w^as scattered throughout the Empire. The Germans still continued to regard every public tax, as they had done in their primitive days, as a badge of servitude. All services were rendered in person by their vassals. There was no regular armed force raised and maintained by the king as such : the army consisted wholly of the feudal vassals and their followers, forming a sort of cavalry militia with the barons at its head. This array, which, by the conditions attached to the fiefs, served for a short period only, had been substituted for the ancient levy of freemen. The knights (Ritters) became not merely the leaders in battle, but were bound by the peculiar feudal ties to the immediate lord whom they served, and thus devotion to their liege lord became the characteristic type of the warriors in that age, instead of that passion for independence and freedom by which the ancient Germans had become so greatly distinguished. There was no longer any Mallum or Champ de Mai, except, J^ISE OF FREE CITIES. 167 perhaps, for the election of a king. All the conspic- uous marks of the feudal system, as I have described them in France, existed in Germany also. The gloomy castle, and the still gloomier life within it, the right of private war, the truce of God, the ceremonial of chiv- alry, the arbitrary rule, the miserable condition of the serfs, and the depressed state of the free rural laborers, — all these were to be found equally in both countries. Cities seem to have grown more rapidly in Germany than they did in France. Henry the Fowler, with true political sagacity, was the first, it is said, to induce the Saxons to dwell in towns. These rose round mili- tary stations, or under the shadow of those great cathe- drals the building of which lasted many years and drew near them necessarily large bodies of workmen. These cities were true places of refuge to the oppressed vassals of the neighborhood, who fled to them to escape their master's arbitrary cruelty, and they soon became large communities. From germs like these grew up the famous cities of the Rhine country, Mentz, Worms, Speyer, Strasburg, Cologne, and, indeed, most of the great cities in every part of Germany conspicuous in mediaeval history. These cities were usually self-gov- erned ; that is, they were free from anyfeudal servitude except to the Emperor as overlord ; but the laboring class in them was much oppressed by the burghers. These cities are known in history as the Free Cities of the Empire. I shall have something to say in another chapter concerning the trade and commerce of these 168 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. cities as elements in the progress of civilization. There can be no doubt that they were the great centres of what was most vigorous in the national life of the mediaeval era. They were usually fortified as a means of protec- tion, and the principal buildings which they contained were the churches, especially the cathedrals, and the town halls. The two hundred years which succeeded the year 1000, which period had been looked forward to as that which had been appointed by the Almighty for the end of the world and for the final judgment, was the era of the glory of the Gothic architecture in Ger- many. Cathedrals were begun in almost every consid- erable city whose architecture to this day excites the wonder and the admiration of the beholder. The his- tory of the Gothic architecture does not throw much light upon the question how the striking contrast be- tween the qualities which could produce these marvels of art and the characteristic rudeness of the age is to be accounted for. The glorious cathedrals which the traveller finds in all the old towns in Europe, as well as the grand town halls in the wealthy manufacturing cities of the Netherlands, have well been called books in stone, and are ahiong the most wonderful monuments of the true life of the Middle Age, ecclesiastical and municipal, little as we can comprehend the spirit which produced them. These cities Avere connected by those trufi^-a ggncies of civil isation, public road§. and^ highways. *^ These roads, even in those rude days, extended along the valley of TRADE IN THE FREE CITIES. 169 the Rhine from Basle to the ocean, and along the course of the Danube from Constantinople to Ratisbon, whence other roads branched' off until they reached the great trading cities in Northern and Eastern Germany. Italy, too, was connected with Germany by roads over the va- rious passes of the Tyrolean Alps, on which was main- tained a constant traffic with the Italian cities, Germany receiving thus the coveted spices, silks, and precious stones of the East in exchange for the products of her mines, forests, and fisheries. It is not to be wondered at, then, that these cities were the true centres of civili- zation, according to our modern standard, in the Middle Age. The warlike deeds, the raids, and the plunder- ings of the haughty, fierce, and ignorant nobles who surrounded them have received, perhaps, an undue prominence in the history of the times. iNothing, in- deed, could well be" more marked than the line which then divided the country from the city, or than the contempt with which the nobles regarded the inhabitants of towns who showed skill and gained money by the practice of the mechanic arts. While the citizens scorned their attempts to coerce the municipalities, and banded themselves together for common protection, the nobles often became mere plunderers of their merchandise in transit, and were well called robber-knights. But, as I have said, the position which the German kings, or kings of tlie Franks, held during the Middle Age at the head of the monarchs of Christendom, was especially due to this, that, while they were powerful 15 170 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. kings, they were, at the same time, Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. They were, in theory at least, world-monarchs. The title of king during the Middle Age had a certain technical limited meaning. It was appropriate only as designating a ruler over a definite territory or country. That of Emperor was applied to one who, after the manner of the ancient Roman Em- peror, was the universal ruler, or master of the world. There were many kings, but there could be but one Emperor. So Charlemagne was King of the Franks, that is, ruler of the dominions of that nation. As such he was a mighty potentate, governing all Western Europe. But when he was crowned by the Pope (800) Emperor, Imjierator Semper Augustus, although he did not thereby gain a foot of territory, he became the suc- cessor and representative, according to the universal opinion of that age, of the most majestic power the world had ever seen, that of the Roman Empire; and when the popular imagination, as well as the gratitude of the Church, recognized him as Csesar, that one word symbolized a man invested with the highest earthly dignity. I have already explained the theory of Charlemagne's relation to the Pope, and the grand scheme that was arranged for dividing the government of the world between them. The Emperorship was to have been hereditary in his family, but by the year 900 his pos- terity, to whom the government of Italy had been assigned at Verdun, was extinct, and those of his THE EMPEROR'S WEAKNESS IN ROME. 173 resources of Germany in controlling foreign Italian poli- tics instead of directing them to advance home interests. As I have said, Otho the Great regarded Italy as a conquered territory, and made its princes and cities feudal vassals; but in regard to the papacy he appears as a reformer, striving to place persons of at least decent life and habits in St. Peter's chair. Although he had been sent for by the Pope to aid him in maintaining his pretensions, he was so shocked by the bad character and morals of those high in office in the Church, and the general corruption which prevailed at Rome under the papal authority, that, with the aid of a synod of ec- clesiastics which he convened, he deposed the reigning Pope, and put in his place his own secretary, a lay- man named Leo. It is a curious fact, however, that the Romans themselves, although often ruled by bad Popes, had so fierce a jealousy of the interference of foreigners in their affairs that on the many occasions upon which the Emperors were forced to occupy Rome during the Middle Ages for the purpose of restoring order by de- posing the Popes, no sooner had the work been done and the Emperor had left the city with his army, than the populace broke out in rebellion against the rule he established and restored that of the Pope. Nothing is clearer in mediaeval history than that the place where the great Emperor of the world always had least power and influence was in his own capital, the city of Rome. Still, the power to which that illustrious city gave the name and the 'prestige, shadowy as it was, retained for 15* 174 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. ages a strange fascination for these children of the North. Otho's grandson, third Emperor of the name, was not a mere rude and strong warrior, a typical chief of the Franks. He was a dreamer of great dreams, as Charlemagne had been, but he lacked the force, the vigor, and the practical sagacity of that great man, by Avhich his dreams might become realities. But his con- ception of his relations to the Church and his duties as Emperor were even more lofty. Nothing less would satisfy his imagination than a scheme for the abandon- ment of the kingship of Germany and a substitution of the Emperorship of the world for it, thus identifying himself wholly with the Roman Caesars by transferring the seat of empire to the city of Rome, and governing Germany and the far-distant East, as the Caesars had done, as provinces. Fortunately for Germany at least, the proper government of which he would have aban- doned had this scheme been carried out, he died at an early age. He lived long enough, however, to continue the reforming work of the German Emperors at Rome by nominating two Popes, both Germans, — one his cousin, and the other his preceptor (the celebrated Ger- bert, afterwards Sylvester IL), — in place of the profli- gate Italian priests who aspired to the papacy. It is to be observed that the opinion of Charlemagne that it was the duty of the world^s Emperor so to use his power that the Pope, as God's vicegerent on earth, should be at least free from vices which were inconsistent with his lofty pretensions, and that his life should be such as not REFORMS WITHIN THE CHURCH 175 to be a matter of scandal to Christian people, — this duty, in an age of horrible corruption, iniquity, and barbarism, was not neglected by Charlemagne's succes- sors. It really seems that without some syfili-po«'^c£ijl champions for the right as these Empepj^proved"^ th€kiS^ ft ■ { /'^ ^ selves to be, the papacy in those dayw^^^ayk-fieaa must ^ have perished from its own rottenness^ /y , ^^i i This reforming tendency is to be folst^ ai8J^|9^eyeM ^' in the Emperors of the Saxon dynasty, biKTn-4£Jefle-o#=^^^ the Franconian and Swabian line also. Henry III. deposed, without hesitation, three rival Popes, each of whom claimed to be the rightful one, and appointed their successors. All the kings of Germany of these dynasties made it almost the first business of their reigns to go to Italy to secure their possessions, to assert the authority in Church affairs which they claimed to have derived from Charlemagne, and to be crowned Emperor by the Pope at Rome. These Italian expe- ditions after a while produced abundant fruit, but not such as the Emperors had anticipated. The High Churchmen, if they may be so called, with the Popes at their head, began at last to learn the lessons taught by the German Emperors; but they felt that reform should begin within the Church and be carried out by its own authority, and not by that of laymen, not even the Emperor himself. In other words, what was needed, in their opinion, was discipline over the clergy, exer- cised only by the authority of the Church itself. At that time the crying abuses in the Church were 176 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. simony, or the sale of ecclesiastical preferments for money, and a married clergy. The one placed the priests, it was supposed, too much in the power of wealthy and unscrupulous noblemen who shared with them the revenues of the Church lands, and the other withdrew them too much from their proper priestly duties, besides conflicting with the Church's ideal notion of priestly purity. In short, it was felt that the lay power, from the Emperor down to the proprietor of the I smallest benefice, had too much control in the admin- \ istration of Church affairs ; and the device which was / resorted to to get rid of this lay interference, even when I put forth as a rem€nder the government of the family dynasties founded by these tyrants. The first care of each usurper was to disarm the citizens, who, long accustomed to the pursuits of trade, were in truth not usually inclined to serious re- sistance, and to supply their places with a force of heavy cavalry, chiefly composed of Germans, who it was sup- posed, being ignorant of the language of the towns in which they were stationed, besides being mere profes- sional soldiers, would be faithful to their chiefs. But these rude warriors soon found out that it would be easier for them to plunder for themselves than to divide the spoil with a master. They formed themselves into companies under the command of condottleri, or hired captains, and offered their services to those who would pay the highest price for them, with perfect indifference 28 326 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. as to the party or the cause for which they were fight- ing. Thus, in 1343, a roving troop of these adventu- rers, calling themselves '^Tlie Great Company," under the command of a German, Count Werner, was organ- ized in Lombardy, with the following significant motto graven on their corselets : ^' Enemy of God, of Pity, and of Mercy." These banditti, instead of being extirpated by those whom they threatened to plunder, became the most useful auxiliaries employed by the allied princes of Lombardy against the Visconti of Milan. Their trade proved so profitable that companies of eondottieri made up exclusively of Italians were afterwards formed, thus niaking their own countrymen their prey. For more than twenty years all the wars in Italy were carried on by these robbers, who divided themselves into distinct bauds w^ith the purpose of giving employment to all members of tlie profession in the various quarrels which arose among the different princes. To this practice of enlisting mercenary troops, which was continued on a large scale for a hundred and fifty years, the great Machiavelli attributes the conquest of Italy by foreigners during the sixteenth century. A native military force and organization based on the national principles which gave strength to the invading armies was until recent times unknown in Italy. As the time approached when the control of that country was to be fought for by the great powers, — France, Germany, and Spain, — the Italian princes were becoming gradually Aveaker, owing to their expending THE IDEAL ITALIAN PRINCE. 327 their force in constant quarrels among themselves. Many of tliem were men of distinguished character and ability, who, had they pursued any other course than that of maintaining themselves and their families in power by destroying the life of their own country, would have left a great name in history. The ideal Italian prince, the legitimate successor of the condottieri, seems such a monster, as he is portrayed in the pages of Machiavelli, that his book II Principe was long looked upon as a romance, and the typical prince he describes as an impossible being. Further and modern researches have shown, however, that his pictures w^ere genuine portraits of men he had known and served. It is true that the particular model who sat for the portrait of the Italian prince was Caesar Borgia, a man steeped in every vice which can deform or corrupt the human heart. History, unfortunately, teaches us the sad truth that a man may have been as depraved as Machiavelli has described Borgia and yet have been an accomplished Italian prince in the fourteenth century. He needed, for instance, no principle of morality, al- though he must be i-eUgiouSy with the understanding that religion then meant mere conformity to the order of the Church, and that it was entirely divorced from the re- straint of morality. A country, large or small, in the possession of a prince, was merely so much capital in his hands, and his business was with that capital to make the most out of it he could for his own personal advantage. Machiavelli's views as to the best method of subjugating 328 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. free cities — the practical business question of his day — seem only a faithful reproduction of the course pursued by these tyrants in the destruction of the Italian re- publics. He sums up his views of government with this wise apothegm, the fruit of his long and bitter experience : It is safer for a ruler to he feared than to he loved. " Put no faith in the pretended love of men," he says. " When it is their interest they will serve you, and when you count on their gratitude they will desert you. If you wish to succeed, keep no faith when it is harmful to do so: it is not necessary that a prince should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, just ; on the contrary, an exhibition of these qualities will usually be harmful, but (and here is that homage which, happily, by the very constitution of the human heart. Virtue always forces Vice to pay her) the prince must always seem to have them." The value of these opinions of Machiavelli for us consists in this, that they give us the true explanation of the motives which produced those acts of cruelty, tyranny, and force, and that life of utter self-indulgence, depravity, and corruption, which characterize the era of the rule of the Italian princes in the fourteenth century. We must keep our eyes steadily fixed on this condition as the source of all the evils that overwhelmed the Italian people during this epoch. We are sometimes, I think, in danger of misconceiving the true character of this time. Italy, in the age of these tyrants, was a country of strange contrasts. With all the frightful TYRANNY AND CULTURE COMBINED. 329 horrors of a despotism carried out on the principles which I have just described are found in close juxta- position so many traces of a brilliant culture, and one so much in advance of any other in Europe at that time, that we naturally incline to dwell rather on the bright than on the dark side of the picture. These tyrants were nearly all munificent patrons of learning and of the fine arts ; and it is this, I doubt not, which has saved them from being ranked in history with such monsters as Tiberius and Nero and Caligula. When we think of the Visconti of Milan, the building of the famous cathedral in that city, of the Certosa at Pavia, and the restoration of the university, works which were all due to that family, make us forget for the moment that its members were a brood of ferocious tyrants, who, not content with usurping the government of the free towns of Lombardy, aspired to bring all Italy under their cruel sway. When we speak of another of these tyrants, Malatesta of Rimini, we remember rather that he encouraged literature and delighted in the society of artists; that he was an amiable enthusiast as a student of Greek literature, going so far as to dig up the body of a celebrated scholar from his native Greek soil and causing it to be transported to Rimini, where it was preserved in the cathedral as a relic. We remember these things, I say; but, strange to say, we forget that this was the same man who was impeached at Rome for heresy, parricide, incest, adultery, rape, and sacrilege. So in regard to the Medici. > We love to think of them as the 28* 330 MEDIALVAL HISTORY, true fathers of the Renaissance in Italy. We recall with a glow of pleasure that famous description of Lorenzo the Magnificent at his villa near Fiesole. "In that villa/' says Hallam, " overhanging the towers of Flor- ence^ in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of the Platonic philosophy for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompani- ment." While we do this, we forget the stern but unheeded voice of Savonarola, as he whispered in the dying tyrant's ear, " Restore liberty to Florence." And so with the Popes of the fifteenth century : we are blinded by the brilliancy of the scholarship and the love of pro- fane learning exhibited by such men as Nicholas V., the founder in modern times of public libraries, or Pius II., who, as ^neas Sylvius, was the most distinguished Greek scholar of his day, and we do not think of their nepotism, or of the efforts which they and their imme- diate successors made to establish, like the princes around them, ruling dynasties in their own families. Nothing is clearer, unfortunately, in history than that the encour- agement of the arts and of learning may coexist with the most thorough despotism in a go\;ernment and with flagrant corruption in morals. The age of Augustus in the ancient world, and that of Louis XI Y. in the modern, teach us the same truth on this, subject as the history of Italy under its princes and Popes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. MEDIEVAL ITALIAN DYNASTIES, 331 But the day of vengeance was fast approaching, and the Italian governments, such as I have described them, were soon to be at the mercy of the power of the North- ern nations. Towards the close of the fifteenth century the prin- cipal powers of Italy were those of the Sforza, ruling over Lombardy and Genoa; the republic of Venice; Florence, under the house of the Medici ; the Ro- magna, under the Orsini and Colonna and John Borgia; the Pope ; and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, under the house of Aragon. Each was striving for the mas- tery, and, as if to illustrate the truth of the proverb. Quern Deus vult perdere prius dementaty Charles VIII., King of France, was called in not only by the Sforza at Milan alone, but by Savonarola himself at Florence, to restore order. His own pretext was a claim to the throne of Naples as the heir of the house of Anjou; and such was the weakness of the various governments that he marched from one end of Italy to the other without meeting any serious opposition, and took possession of the Neapolitan kingdom. Wars then began, not between him and the Italian princes, but between France and the rival kings of Spain and Germany. This struggle continued until Italy became, in the language of di- plomacy, " a mere geographical expression,'^ a field for the exercise of the power of nations all of whom were equally strangers to her soil and hostile to the develop- ment of her national life. CHAPTER XII. If we seek to understand fully the characteristics of any historical epoch, we must not confine ourselves to a study merely of the outward form of the organization of its government and institutions. Two very impor- tant things at least in the history of an age we shall be unable to discover in this way, — one its stream of tendency, and the other its capacity for growth. Very often in history we find that the spirit and the true life long remain, while the outward form by which that life was manifested at a particular epoch has become wholly decayed. What, of course, we seek to learn in history is the substance, and not the form, of a particular de- velopment; what survives and expands, and not what perishes in the using. With this object in view, we must extend somewhat the survey we have been taking of the Middle Age. A simple account of that formal organi- zation of the Church and the State which grew up in Europe from the mingling of the Roman and Christian society with the barbarian element does not suffice to explain fully the nature of that peculiar form of social life which yas adopted by the whole of Western Europe fi'om the fall of the Empire to the close of the Crusades. There was an inner life, not always manifested in the 33/ THREE INDIRECT INFLUENCES. 333 external forms, a life resting on definite principles, on certain dogmas, and on common habits, the whole form- ing a perfectly homogeneous and unique type, controlled by a sentiment resembling what is now called public opinion as distinct from formal law. There are three peculiarities of that life, or rather three influences acting on and moulding it in its various phases, of which I propose to speak in this chapter. These three influences are Monasticism, Chivalry, and the Crusades. Without the constant presence and power of these indirect foTces I do not see how the feudal system, as I have described its relations to Church and State, could have so long continued as a form of govern- ment. These institutions, it seems to me, had much to do with what was fundamental and real in the life of the Middle Age. Their special and controlling in- fluence is manifest in every part of its history. A por- tion of it at least has survived, and has come down to us as a legacy ; and perhaps when we speak with con- tempt of the outward features of the feudal system we sometimes forget how much we are controlled by the spirit which gave that system life. Monasticism then, in the Middle Age, may be consid- ered in one sense as the strong and earnest expression of the feeling of the time concerning the best method by which tlie clergy could perform their duties to their fellow-men ; chivalry, ^s embodying the Middle-Age conception of the ideal life of the only class outside the clergy who had any real power, the knights ; while the 334 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. Crusades were the outcome of a combination between mo- J nasticism and knighthood, — the object proposed by this ' combination, the glory and supremacy of the Church, being, in the opinion of the times, the grandest and worthiest to which either priest or layman could aspire. These three streams of influence are not only those which gave its true and best life to the feudal system and to the Middle Age while it lasted, but the spirit which informed that life characterizes whatever remains to us of that system which has been incorporated in our modern society. The practice of monasticism arose in the first instance from an earnest desire of devotees to lead a religious life of ideal purity and excellence. This practice has not been confined to those who held the Christian faith. In all ages of the world, in all countries, and in nearly all religions, there has been one form of the religious life for the few, and another for the many, although the same religious creed or belief was common to both classes. In most of the religions of the world the line which separated these two classes was that upon one side of wiiich was found asceticism in its highest sense as the rule and practice of religious life, and on the other side a thoroughly orthodox belief combined with a practice by which the ordinary duties of life could be performed and its pleasures enjoyed without a consciousness of vio- lating the obligations of duty. There seems to be a universal natural instinct which has led men to believe, at all times, that in the loftiest conception of the religious GROWTH OF MONASTICISM. 335 life there was an irreconcilable hostility between the flesh and the spirit, — a form of Manicheism which we meet all through history, and which indeed formed the basis of most of the heresies of the Middle Age. The sacred books of Brahma and of Boudha recognize this distinction as fundamental, and they enjoin seclusion from the world and a great variety of acts of penance and self-mortification as highly meritorious, prescribing their observance as the sure method by which the devotee shall be absorbed at last into the Divine fountain of all being. So among the Jews, as is well known, there were ascetic sects, the Essenes and the Therapeutse, particu- larly in Egypt, who sought by seclusion from the world and by keeping under the fleshly appetites to secure the Divine favor. The same principle, the aim of which was Divine perfection, is found in many Oriental religions, and even among the warlike Saracens, who had their cloistered monks and their dervishes. Christian monasticism had its rise in Egypt, a land, above all others, where, from the days of the Ptolemies, religious sects and opinions have met in perpetual con- flict. The first Christian monks (who were laymen) adopted the solitary life of hermits about the beginning of the fourth century. Their earnest and Avell-meant but mistaken effort was to preserve the original purity of the Christian Church by transplanting it into the wilderness. The moral corruption of the Roman Empire, which was nominally Christian but was essentially heathen in the whole framework of its society, the oppressiveness of 336 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. tlie Imperial taxes, the extremes of despotism and slavery, of extravagant luxury and hopeless poverty, the decay of all productive energy in science and the arts, the threatening incursions of the barbarians on the frontiers, and, above all, the profound belief that the end of the world and the judgment-day were at hand, combined to produce in the most earnest minds a desire to seek relief in seclusion from the world. The second stage of monasticism was cenobitic or ^/Cloister life, a substitution of the social for the solitary form of devotion. Under this form many monasteries, both for men and for women, grew up in Egypt, each with a complete organization and each governed by the strictest discipline, the time of the inmates being divided between acts of devotion and such labor as would sup- port the members of the community. The Eastern mon- asteries, however, never became great working establish- ments, such as we find later in the West. Like all Oriental people, those who fled to the desert to worship led a solitary life by preference, exclusively absorbed in the contemplation of the Divine life, hoping thereby, and by constant self-denial and the mortification of the flesh, to reach the ideal condition of Christian per- fection. . When, however, the zeal for the monastic life ex- tended to Western Europe, its organization and methods were much modified by the practical minds of men like St. Jerome and St. Augustine, trained by Roman law and in Roman traditions. There were many monasteries in ST. BENEDICT OF NURSIA, 337 the West before the thne of St. Benedict of Nursia (a.d. 480); but he has been rightly considered the father of Western monasticism, for he not only founded an order io which many religious houses became attached, but he established a rule for their government which, in its main features, was adopted as the rule of monastic life by all the orders for more than five centuries, or until the time of St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. Benedict was first a hermit, living in the mountains of Southern Italy, and in that region he afterwards established in succession twelve monasteries, each with twelve monks and a superior. In the year 520 he founded tlie great monastery of Monte Casino as the mother-house of his order, a house which became the most celebrated and powerful monastery, according to Montalembert, in the Catholic universe, celebrated es- pecially because there Benedict prepared his rule and formed the type which was to serve as a model to the innumerable communities submitting to that sovereign code. By that rule each monastery was to be governed absolutely, or at least in the sense in which a bishop governs his clergy, by an abbot elected by the monks, who were to be admitted as such only after a long no- vitiate and upon pronouncing a solemn vow. By this vow the candidate promised, among other things, to maintain poverty, chastity, and obedience to the abbot. These were always the conditions of monastic life ; their observance, and the obligation of the monks to lead a life of self-denial and labor both of body and mind, 29 338 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. were enforced by very strict discipline under the Bene- dictine rule. Neither in the East nor in the West were the monks originally ecclesiastics; and it was not until the eighth century that they became priests, called regu- lars, in contrast with the ordinary parish clergy, who were called seculars. As missionaries, they proved the most powerful instruments in extending the authority and the boundaries of the Church. The monk had no individual property : even his dress belonged to the monastery. He^wasrequired to work, on the principle that an i dle monk J iasJ:en devils to contend with, while a hard-working one has but a single one. To enable him to workefficfently, it was necessary" to feed him well; and such was the injunction of Benedict, as opposed to the former practice of strict asceticism. In less than a century after the death of Benedict the conquests of the barbarians in Italy, Gaul, and Spain were reconquered for civilization, and the vast territories of England, Germany, and Scandinavia were incorpo- rated into Christendom or opened as fields for mission- ary labor. In this bright chapter of the history of the Dark Ages the monks of the rule of St. Benedict were the most conspicuous actors, and to them is due much of the progress which was made. The most illustrious Popes of those days, Leo and Gregory, had been monks ; and when they became the heads of the Church, they made use to its fullest extent of the capacity of their brethren for labor among the heathen. I need not go over again the story of the conversion WORK OF THE BENEDICTINE MONKS. 339 of the Anglo-Saxons by St. Augustine, or that of the Germans by St. Boniface, but we must remember that both of these men were monks, sent on their mission by a Pope who had been a monk, and that to their zeal and practical statesmanship is due not merely the form but the stability of the organization of Christianity in those countries. The Benedictine monk was in the truest sense the pioneer of civilization and Christianity in those regions where it was dangerous even for armed men to go. Moveover, it was he who, in his cloister, with the inces- sant din of arms around him, preserved and transcribed ancient manuscripts, both Christian and pagan, and who recorded his observations of current events, thus giving us the best materials we now possess for the history of remote times. The first musicians, farmers, painters, and statesmen in Europe, after the downfall of Imperial Rome and during the invasions of the barbarians, were monks. Whatever of earnestness, 'zeal, activity, and true statesmanship, combined with the self-denying spirit of Christianity, we observe for nearly five centuries of European history, we may regard, if not as the actual work of monks, yet as done under their influence and direction. The monastic system^ like all others, had its period of prosperous activity, to be followed by that of decline. The monasteries became very rich, and although, of course, individual monks still possessed no property, yet after the death of Charlemagne and until the close of 340 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the eleventh century they suffered from the inevitable corruption of pride and laziness. Their zeal thus be- came cooled, and their energies diverted from the work which the Church had assigned them. Their real power and influence were gone with their poverty. And yet so persistent was the general belief in the value, both to the Church and the world, of a true type of monkhood, that good men in the darkest days prayed for its restoration. Just then appeared the greatest reformer of the abuses of the monastic life, if not the greatest monk in history, St. Bernard (1091-1153). He revived the practice in the monastery of Citeaux, which he first entered, and in that of Clairvaux, which he afterwards founded, of the sternest discipline which had been enjoined by St. Bene- dict. He became the ideal type of the perfect monk, enthusiastic, ardent, austere, intolerant, forgetting him- self, and wholly filled with a burning zeal for the tri- umph of the Church. His theory and practice were that society, the family, all human interests, were nothing ; the Church everything. The power which a true monk, according to the standard of those days, might wield over the minds of the people is shown by the variety of offices St. Bernard was asked to fill. He was not a Pope, but he was greater than any Pope of his day, and for nearly half a century the history of the Christian Church is the history of the influence of one monk, the Abbot of Clairvaux. He was appointed by the King of France to decide which of the candidates for the papacy. Inno- cent II. or Anacletus, had been canonically elected. At ST. BERNARD. 341 the request of the Knights Templar, he drew up the original statutes for that semi-monastic, semi-military order; and with the greatest difficulty he withdrew from Milan, where such was his fame that the citizens insisted that he should become their archbishop. He presided at the Council of Sens, which condemned the doctrines of the illustrious but unfortunate Abelard ; and so extraor- dinary were his power and influence that he was appointed by the Pope to preach the second Crusade, a duty which he performed with such success that he even induced the King of France himself, contrary to the advice of the best statesmen of the country, to go to the Holy Land as a Crusader. No single figure is as conspicuous in mediaeval history as that of St. Bernard, if we except Charlemagne. But the great Emperor was the world- monarch, ruling by what was really, no matter how dis- guised, physical force. St. Bernard has also proved a world-monarch, whose empire did not cease with his death, for his weapons were spiritual. They were "pov- erty, chastity, and obedience;" and these, in the hands of those who know how to use them, history, if it tells us any lesson worth remembering, tells us are irresistible. The monks have been called the rigMl arm of the papacy; and it would seem that when any emergency arose in which it became necessary for the Church to employ a distinct agency for a particular purpose, the object was accomplished by the establishment of a new order of monks. Tliis appears to me to have been the case when the orders of the Preachers or Dominicans 29* 342 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. and of tlie Minorites or Franciscans were founded. Both of these orders were established about the same time (1215), and each to supply a need which was then specially felt. Preaching was not only not an essential but it was not an ordinary part of the Church service in the Middle Age. Christianity was sacerdotal ; it com- manded ; it did not aim to persuade. It was the exclu- sive privilege of the bishops to preach ; but the larger portion of them were feudal barons, wliose education fitted them as little for this office as their inclination })rompted them to assume it. The education of the faithful w^as by means of a splendid ritual. But by the beginning of the thirteenth century the vast crowds which flocked to the universities and frequented the lec- tures of even so heretical a teacher as Abelard, as well as the use of the vernacular or common language in the place of the Latin, made it very clear that it was the duty of the Church to instruct the faithful in doctrine as well as to arouse devotional feeling. Just at this juncture St. Dominic, founder of the order of the Friar Preachers, appears. He was a Spaniard (born in 1170), and he first becomes conspicuous in Languedoc during the crusade against the Albigenses, preaching there with the utmost vehemence against the heresy of which they were accused. The order of Friar Preachers was authorized by the Pope in 1213, and shortly afterwards Dominican convents were estab- lished throughout Europe, and the voices of Dominican preachers penetrated into every land. Within a hundred ST. FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 343 years after the death of St. Dominic the reh'gious houses of his order numbered four hundred and seventy-two ; and when we remember that to this order was specially given by the Pope the defence of the dogmas of the Church, and that the Inquisition was established and placed in charge of the Dominican friars for the en- forcement of the observance of those dogmas, we can form some conception of the power and influence of < these monks in carrying out a general scheme of Church policy. St. Dominic had supplied one great need of the Church in the thirteenth century, — that of preaching and in- struction ; and it was reserved for another great saint, Francis of Assisi, about the same time, to reorganize the <^ ministration of that Divine charity which is the most characteristic feature of practical Christianity, and which has in all ages been regarded by the Church as the very bond of peace and of all virtues. In the Middle Age, and especially in its later days, the revolt of the popular mind was against the wealth of the clergy, which, it was claimed, removed them from sympathy with the poor and suffering. The watchwords of that revolt which we hear among such heretics as the Cathari, the Wal- denses, or poor men of Lyons, the Lollards, and the fol- lowers of Wyclif, were poverty and self-sacrifice. St. Francis made himself the echo of the popular complaint, and sought to bring about a reform within the Church^^ — ' by means of a monastic order which should carry the principle of the renunciation of riches and a love for 344 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the poor to a point undreamed of by the sectaries around him. St. Francis had some peculiar advantages for the task which he undertook. He was emphatically, in our modern phrase, the right man in the right place at the right time. His followers compared him to our Lord ; and it is easier to find fault with the sort of idolatrous devotion which they exhibited towards him, than to wonder that such was their attitude, for of all human beings who ever made the life of the Son of Man a model, St. Francis seems to have possessed in the high- est degree that Divine charity preached by the life and the words of the Master. It is easy to say that St. Francis must have been a little crazy, when he spoke of the sun as his brother, the moon and the stars as his sisters, and the earth as his mother, and when he called even upon the birds of the air to praise the Lord. Yet it is a curious fact that most of the great reformers in history have been accounted by the men of their time crazy, and perhaps even more curious that their very craziness seems to have given them their great force. The Pope himself. Innocent III., one of the most illustrious men who ever sat in the chair of St. Peter, was disposed to regard Francis as crazy when he asked for authority to establish an order in which the members were to be bound by vows which it would be, in his opinion, impossible to fulfil. To him one of the Cardinals made an answer which should be burned into the heart of every man who is in earnest in his desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. *'To suppose," THE LIFE OF THE FRANCISCANS, 345 lie said, "that anything is difficult or impossible with God is to blaspheme Clirist and His gospel." So the order of the Minor Brethren, or Gray Friars, was established. Their life was to diifer from ordinary monastic life in this, that they were not to be secluded, as were the older orders, from the world. In this re- spect the rule of St. Dominic was the same. Those who entered the order of St. Francis were required to sell all their goods and distribute its price to the poor. They were forbidden to receive money or house or field; strangers and pilgrims in this world, they must live in poverty and humility. They must always be poor, for Christ made Himself poor for us. Even their houses and their churches should be small, mean in appearance, and without ornament. St. Francis himself was the living exemplar of all these precepts. In those days the fetid suburbs of the great towns had engendered a virulent form of that most loathsome disease, the Eastern leprosy. St. Francis was the first who did anything in a properly organized way for the relief of these miserable outcasts, and his life is full of instances of his heroic, nay, better, his Christian devotion to this repulsive duty. His fol- lowers were to visit the towns, two and two, in just so much clothing as the commonest beggar could procure. They were to sleep at night under arches or in the porches of deserted churches, among idiots, lepers, and outcasts, to beg their bread from door to door, and to set an example of piety and submission. Francis, as it has been well said, was the saint of the people, and of a 346 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. poetic people especially, like the Italians. His system Avas the democracy of Christianity, but as long as he lived it was a humble, meek, quiescent democracy. It was, too, a sort of pacific mysticism, which consoled the poor for the inequalities of this life by the hopes of heaven. It spread with the rapidity of a contagion through Europe. To the lower orders everywhere his teachings seemed almost a second gospel, and he himself like a second Redeemer. It is not pleasant to remember that the grand concep- tion of the Christian life embodied in the precepts and /^he example of St. Francis was not destined to have a permanent duration. The lofty ideal of his rule was not long maintained, and the mean appearance which had once been the distinguishing badge of the mendicant friar and his convent was exchanged for sumptuous churches and well-endowed religious houses. The spirit of the founder was gone, and the true source of the strength of his order — its poverty — went with it. But its history, even if all that is good in it be the holy life of St. Francis and the sympathy which his rule exhibits with the poor and the suffering, contains most suggestive lessons in regard to the real life of the Middle Age. We turn now to consider another institution or prac- tice outside of the formal organization of the Church and the State which colored very much the stream of tendency in the Middle Age. I refer to chivalry^ which we may regard as representing the mediaeval conception of the ideal life of a Christian knight. In some respects THE MEDIAEVAL KNIGHT. 347 chivalry may be considered as the finest and most con- summate flower of that civilization which grew out of the influence of the Church upon the Teutonic warrior chief^We may say in the outset that the knight was >) not often in fact, what he is represented to be in the romances of the time, a man whose sole aim in life was the defence of the Church and the championship of un- protected women; but we must remember that such ^Vaa5;^^^^ his professed vocation, and such was the standard B3r^ ^^ which he claimed to be judged. ((UN I \^ERSTT\ The mediaeval knight was a peculiar ^d excep^nal . ^ type, in a great measure the growth of uiie age, and que *^i;^ wholly unlike the warrior of any other period of 'hls^^^ tory. He bears very little resemblance in his conduct and motives, for instance, to those heroes of antiquity of whose exploits we read in the Iliad. Achilles is one of those heroes, perhaps the greatest of them all. His an- swer to the prayer of Hector (whom he had mortally wounded) that he would deliver his dead body for burial to his father is not that of a hero, but of a sav- age. " Cease, Avretched one," he says, " your begging. I wish I had the force and the courage to devour your quivering flesh as a return for the evils you have done me. No ! if your father Priam should offer me as a ransom for your body its weight in gold, I would not give it up. The dogs and the vultures should devour it.'' Heroes who could talk in this way were not likely to be very civil to women. Hear the manner in which Jupiter upbraids Juno : " Remember the time when I 348 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, hung you up in the air with two anvils tied to your feet and your hands bound by a golden chain." Greek women, I suppose, must have been very attractive, or there would probably not have been a Trojan War ; but it is rather discouraging to find that Helen, who was carried off from her home on account of her extraor- dinary beauty, does not seem to be certain whether she prefers Menelaus to Paris; and as to Andromache, I fear that constancy Avas not one of her virtues, not- withstanding the pathetic parting scene between Hector and herself. The mediaeval knight was cast in a different mould. He was a barbarian, not tamed by the Church so as to destroy his warlike instincts, but rather taught by the Church to employ that sentiment of personal indepen- dence and love of adventure which formed the very essence and force of his nature in its defence. He was taught to render valuable service chiefly in two ways, — in the defence of the Church proper when its orthodoxy needed, as it often did in those wild days, armed advo- cacy, and in shielding from cruelty and oppression cer- tain classes of tlie suffering and feeble, especially women, whose protection had always been a particular object of the Church's solicitude. There seems to me to have been no greater instance of the Church's triumph in the Middle Age than this conversion of the weapons of barbarism into agencies for doing effectively its work. It is not difficult to explain the reasons for the progress of the Church in other directions, extraordinary as it BARBARIANS TAUGHT BY THE CHURCH 349 was. We can in a measure, at least, understand it by recalling its thorough organization and wise administra- tion, by means of which history shows us that great re- sults in other undertakings, both before and since, have been achieved. But when the problem was not merely how to subdue the rebellious elements in the Teutonic character by the force of the Church's teachings, but so to control and guide them as to make these rude war- riors her most devoted champions, its successful solution seems little short of marvel lous.( How, then, were Teu^ tonic warriors made Christian knights ? As I have before said, the Church was at first the teacher of the barbarians, not their ally, for it naturally hesitated to trust chiefs who were heathen when they were not Arians with that control over its organization which had always been exercised by the orthodox Ko- man Emperors. Not until the conversion of the Franks, or even later, the date of the coronation of Charlemagne, do we find the old Imperial relations of confidence be- tween Church and State re-established in full vigor. When the alliance was renewed, it was so managed, strange to say, that the conquests of the Franks, nay, even the ferocity and ambition of their chiefs, were made to minister at least to the enlargement of the boundaries of the Church. Expeditions against the heathen by these warriors always had the sanction of the Church. A new way of serving God and mam- mon at the same time seems to have been discovered, and success in such enterprises gratified the lust of 30 350 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. conquest, as well as, in the opinion of the age, advanced God's kingdom. Wherever the Franks conquered, there was orthodoxy firmly planted ; and this, perhaps, is the explanation of the complacency with which the Church regarded such wholesale conversions as those of Charle- magne of the miserable captives on the banks of the Elbe, who saved their lives by abjuring the religion of their fathers, or of the followers of Clovis, who obeyed his order to be baptized as thSy would have done a command to attack the enemy. Christianity and war thus came into a very strange, but a very active, alliance, such as we see illustrated afterwards on a large scale in the Crusades. To fight for the Church was in those days not merely the highest duty, but the noblest ambition also of those whose fathers had always regarded courage in battle as the sum of all virtue. It was very often, as may be supposed, their only way of showing their devotion to it. Grad- ually the effect of this strange combination was seen in the belief, which soon became universal, not merely that the worthiest end of life was to do the Church's bidding, but to do it in the only way possible for a layman, by the power of his sword. Hence lay service of a special kind was recognized as one of the agencies of the Church, and out of the recognition by the Church of such a ser- vice arose the institution of chivalry or knighthood. No one was born to such an honor in the earlier time, not even the king himself. It was open, like the priesthood, to all freemen. He upon whom it was conferred made THE POINT OF HONOR. 351 ])reviously due proof of his fitness, and was then set apart for his work by a solemn consecration, pro- nouncing vows intended to be as binding as those taken by the priest at his ordination. His sword was blessed by the priest at the altar, in token that thence- forth it should be used only in defending the cause of God and of the weak and oppressed. The Church, not always trusting to a sense of duty as a restraining power, appealed to another motive, which often controlled the knight when every other was pow- ^ erless, and that was his pride in maintaining a position which was supposed to be befitting his rank and station. ^ Out of this grew that sentiment of personal honor which i— was so characteristic a feature of chivalry. Men who could never be taught to do what was right because it was right, soon learned to do right because it was a becoming thing in them, as knights and nobles, to do so. Noblesse oblige was the motto of their order. This ^ sentiment of honor was a deep-seated instinct with these children of the North, who are said to have felt a stain upon that honor like a wound. It continued to be the governing principle of the most noble among them long after the standard of what was honorable and the stand- ard of what was true and right differed greatly. The general notions prevailing at a particular time in regard to the point of honor formed the practical guide for the conduct of the knights, affecting them very much as public opinion affects people's actions now. <| Chivalry must not be regarded as maintaining, in any 352 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. proper sense, a moral code. We find even in typical knights the strange juxtaposition in the same person of brute force with the meekness and gentleness of the Christian ; the superb pride and arrogance of the barba- rian with the punctilious observance of the most digni- fied and courtly forms of intercourse; a spirit of rapacity, cruelty, and injustice, often restrained only by the fear lest giving way to it would be deemed unknightly ; a gross irregularity in the marriage relation, combined with a pretentious knight-errantry which strove to redress the wrongs of every oppressed woman except t hose o£ the knight's own wif^ This is a strange jumble; but it means that w^hile knightly life was too often soiled by the common coarse life of the time, still it bore within it a seed which was imperishable, and which has become one of the most precious portions of that heritage which comes to us from the Middle Age. The modern gentle- man in his best estate is the true successor of the medi- aeval knight, and his code of conduct, where it is not wholly based upon a sense of duty, rests upon a sen- timent of personal honor, which teaches him to do some things and to avoid others because in so doing he does what he conceives to be worthy and becoming his position. The unwritten code of the gentleman is as binding upon him as the vows of the knight, and for the same reason, namely, because he scorns to do an unworthy act. . - I have little time left to speak of the Crusades. With the main events of that history I must suppose my THE CRUSADES. 353 readers sufficiently familiar, or at any rate the means of refreshing the memory are within reach should it be needful to do so. I wish now specially to draw attention to a certain aspect of the Crusades, or rather of the cru- sading spirit which brought about alike the WI|!H^against the Albigenses, the conflict with the Saracens in Spain, as well as the Crusades, commonly so called, in the Holy Land. \\t was all the direct outgrowth of the combina- tion of monasticism with knighthood. In the organiza- tion of the Church in those days there was no machinery save that moved by the undying energy of the monks and of the knights which could have set on foot those vast expeditions which, for nearly two hundred years, embarked for the East. Some of the greatest Popes (Sylvester II. and Gregory VII. among others) preached with all their authority the holiness of the cause, urged upon every man the duty of assuming the cross, and promised the highest rewards of the future life to those who should fall fighting for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre; but nothing was done until Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard roused the passions of the European chivalry against the Infidel. The Crusades, as is well known, after the first ardor had cooled, were made by their leaders a pretext for a policy in the East which was wholly condemned by the Church as foreign to the, original design, and by the pursuit of which the great central idea which gave them birth was either forgotten or ignored. But in the beginning those who went were in terrible earnest; they were in earnest not merely 30-^ 354 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. because monks and knights had roused their zeal when Popes and bishops had failed, but because these monks and knights only asked them to follow where they them- selves led. The first Crusaders may have been very ignorant and very fanatical, but these very qualities led them to do some very grand as well as some very foolish things. Take this illustration for instance in regard to the point of honor. When the army reached Antioch, the Moslems, evidently puzzled to understand why this immense array should come from the ends of the earth to secure the free admission of pilgrims to a sepulchre, offered to permit the army to enter Jerusalem if they would do so without their arms. This offer was repelled with scorn by the knightly leaders of the Crusaders, Avho felt that the object of the expedition had not been gained unless the Holy City was conquered by the sacrifice of their own blood. Again, what a picture do we see of the religion of the time, and of the strange combination of pride and humility which marked the ideal knight, w^hen we find Godfrey de Bouillon refusing to become King of Jerusalem ! " No, no," said that highest type of chivalry; "let me be only the defender of the Holy Sepulchre : think not that I can ever wear a golden crown here where the King of kings, Jesus Christ the Son of God, wore a crown of thorns on that day when He died for the sins of the world." I As in the East, so in the West the crusading spirit was kept alive and made aggressive by the monks and the knights. An illustration of this may be found in the THE ALBIGENSES. 355 crusade against the Albigenses, which has been called by an eminent historian the conquest of municipal or republican France, or that portion of the country south of the river Loire, by feudal or knightly France, or that portion, speaking roughly, to the north of that river. The first had all the culture, refinement, and Eoman civilization of the time, but with it loose habits of living and opinions regarded as heretical. Pope Innocent III., once himself a monk, determined to extirpate this heresy by exterminating the inhabitants and filling their places with good Catholics. He called upon Count Raymond ^ of Toulouse/the sovereign of the country, to destroy his own subjects who were alleged to be heretics, and upon his neglect or refusal to do so he directed that a crusade should be preached against them. His principal agents in this work were the Dominican friars and the monks of Citeaux, led by St. Dominic and by St. Bernard. In answer to their frantic appeals for aid in maintaining the orthodoxy of the Church, and with the promise of extravagant rewards both of an earthly and a heavenly nature, the petty chieftains of Northern and AYestern France with their retainers rushed down upon unhappy Languedoc and Provence in overwhelming numbers. There, under the command of Simon de Montfort, the lord of an unimportant fief in the neighborhood of Paris, they waged for many years one of the cruellest wars in history, strangely called a "holy war." By this war the country was wellnigh ruined, the inhabitants killed or driven out of it, and its ancient government completely 356 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. overthrown. Still, the orthodox faith was re-established, the zeal of the monks triumphed ; but the knights who had been the right arm of the Church in this conflict, and who had hoped when they engaged in the crusade to divide that fair land among themselves, founding therein a large number of petty sovereignties, w^ere (it is satisfactory to know) cheated at least of their earthly reward, the province at the close of the war being annexed to the crown of France. The history of Spain in the Middle Age is the history of a crusade of eight hundred years' duration. From the battle of Xeres, in 712, to the final expulsion of the Saracens from Granada, in 1492, there was in that country a perpetual conflict between the Cross and the Crescent. The Yisigothic Christians, driven by the vic- torious Saracens to the mountains of Galicia, kept there the purity of the faith, and never permitted their pur- pose of revenge to falter. They needed no monks to stimulate their ardor ; and Spain presents a curious in- stance in history of a country made Catholic 'par excel- lence by the crusading spirit of Christian knights alone. To them the idea of country and of religion was one and inseparable, and as they slowly advanced, in the course of ages winning one district after another by their swords from the hated Moslems, they left ineffaceable marks of their blind zeal for the faith at every step, — marks so ineffaceable that they are easily recognized at this day in the condition and policy of that country. The brilliant culture of the Saracens found no favor in CRUSADERS IN SPAIN. 357 tlie eyes of these Crusaders, for it was all tainted with heresy, and to them heresy was an accursed thing. The great works of public utility which had marked the Saracenic occupation of Spain, — a system of irrigation, for instance, the fruit of their knowledge of hydraulic science, by which the plains of Granada and Andalusia were made the most fertile districts of Europe, gardens which they planted, rivalling in beauty those of far- famed Damascus, universities which they founded, whose reputation was so wide-spread that they numbered among their pupils a monk who afterwards became Pope as Sylvester II.., grand libraries, the treasure-houses of the wisdom of the past, at that time far exceeding in the number of the books they contained those of any country in Europe, mosques and palaces whose architecture even now excites the wonder of the world, — all these things were not only valueless, they were hateful, to the Spanish Crusaders, and they were destroyed because they had the mark of the beast upon them. There can be no doubt whatever that in the Middle Age the Saracens in Spain were vastly superior to the inhabitants of any other country in Europe in their knowledge of science and its applications to the useful arts. Yet so inseparably was hatred of their religion associated in the minds of their conquerors with every- thing that was characteristic of the Saracens, that Spain was the last country of the West to learn those useful arts of which the disciples of the Prophet had been the pioneers on her own soil. By a natural process, the 358 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. blind zeal against the Saracens was easily transformed to a profound contempt for the occupations in which they engaged, and especially for the labor which pro- duced such wonderful results. Hence the step was easy to a contempt for all mechanical labor; and hence we ob- serve in the history of Spain, from the time the country was occupied by the Saracens down to the present hour, that nowhere else in Europe has the line between those who work and those who do not, between the lords of the country and the inhabitants of the town, between the hidalgo and the pechero, between the soldier and the citizen, been so strongly and deeply marked. We shall find, as we go on in our historical investigations, that labor was in many ways the great civilizer of modern Europe. As it did its work, it had everywhere to over- come the knightly contempt for what was supposed to be its servile character; but in Spain, formidable as was this obstacle, it became w^ellnigh insurmountable, because it was intrenched in the strongest religious prejudice. CHAPTER XIII. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY, THE SCHOOLMEN, AND THE UNIVERSITIES. One method of testing what the true life of a nation is, would be to ascertain its theory and practice in regard to the education of the young. If we can discover what the best minds of a nation at any particular age of its history most thoroughly believe, — in other words, what is taught, and how they teach it, — we have gained some knowledge of the principle of life in that nation and what it holds most dear in that life. Education is, of course, a broad term, and in its widest sense it includes every influence which affects, by precept or example, the actions of human beings. In this sense the education of the Middle Age, of which its peculiar life was the out- come, was moulded largely by forces of which I have spoken in preceding chapters, such as the power of the Church, the remains of Roman civilization, feudalism, monasticism, chivalry, and the like. The question now is, what did the life thus formed teach its own age and those which succeeded it, and what methods did it employ? The impression which many receive is that this era in history ought to serve only as a warning against fundamental errors ; that necessarily its life was a life of force, one solely of conflict, strife, and confusion. 359 360 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why it was formerly tlie practice, and perhaps in some quarters still is, to speak of the Middle Age as the ^^ Dark Ages,'' meaning thereby that they form an era in the world's history in which in all the relations of life the governing power was pre-eminently one in which reason and justice and truth had no sway. When, however, we come to explore more carefully its inner recesses, we find, in strange juxtaposition with the reign of force which is so conspicuous a feature of the time, a very rich, abundant, and altogether peculiar intellectual life, which exhibited its power in the efforts of master-minds to uphold the theories of the Middle Age in Church and State. There was, too, a thoroughly organized and universally adopted system of scholastic education designed to train the young to defend these theories on grounds of reason and of right, and they were supposed to be by this method as well prepared for the performance of the special duties of the life which they were to lead as our young men are educated for their future work. It is this mediaeval technical education of the young, so different from ours^, that we propose to examine in this chapter, as throwing light on the life of the age. That system was one which we may now regard as characterized by fundamental errors: still, it is interesting in itself to study the scheme and methods of instruction in Europe for nearly a thousand years, and, besides, it is, like feudalism, a very curious illustration of the life of the time. Like feudalism, too, it contains, IMPERIAL SCHOOLS. 361 notwithstanding its many strange features, the germs of much that has been transplanted into our own modern systems. We shall probably find in it, too, another illus- tration of the unbroken continuity of liistory, a con- tinuity Avhich is its very essence, but which sometimes escapes our notice as it is hidden from our view for a time beneath the surface of passing events. We should hardly expect at first to find any of the missing links which go to make up the chain in the general practice and habit of scholastic education during that portion of the world's history, when its most conspicuous features were the tumult and strife characteristic of the Middle Age. But we shall discover, if I mistake not, that the mediaeval systems of education have left marks in history as ineffaceable as mediaeval theories of government in Church and State. In the declining Roman Empire, among the many agencies of civilization which the Church appropriated was the Imperial organization of education. During the first three centuries of the Christian era, schools, liber- ally endowed by such Emperors as Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Vespasian, and Theodosius, existed in all the large cities of the Empire, East and West. In these schools the young were taught to read correctly, and after- wards the plots of plays and poems were explained to them, and some outline of history given. Much time was then occupied in translating passages from Greek into Latin and then back again into Greek. The whole system was founded upon a study of language, upon what 31 362 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. we should call now grammar and rhetoric; and this was a sensible basis for the object sought after, which was chiefly to make the young man who was trained in these schools a forensic orator. The Church, fully alive to the necessity of educating not merely her clergy but the youth of the better class of the laity also, was at times sorely puzzled to determine whether they should be trained in schools where the text-books were filled with the praises of the heathen gods and with the horrors of the heathen mythology. Unable at that time to estab- lish schools of her own, the Church permitted her chil- dren to attend the heathen schools, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity. Some of the greatest of the early Fathers of the Church, Augustine and Jerome for instance, had been in their youth eminent scholars after the Roman pattern ; but with a keen recollection of the pleasures of their early studies they retained such a conviction of the pernicious influence on Christian morals of the works of the more celebrated writers of antiquity, that all their influence was used to discountenance as far as possible their study. With the invasion of the Franks the Imperial schools in the West were closed, and a considerable period elapsed in which apparently no systematic instruction was given anywhere to the young. The revival of education, as of many other of the agencies of civilization in that truly darkest of all dark days, — the eighth century, — was due to the Church. By its authority schools attached to each cathedral and each monastery were established. CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS. 363 From these schools all study of Pagan authors was necessarily excluded. The system, the method, the form in which the instruction was given, did not differ much from that which had been used in the Imperial schools. The boys were taught to read, but it was that they might study the Bible and understand the services ; to write, in order that they might multiply copies of the sacred books and of the psalter ; to understand music, so that they might sing with due effect the Ambrosian chant. They studied arithmetic; but it was chiefly that they might know how to calculate the return of Easter. Both the schools attached to the monasteries and those of the cathedrals were thus thoroughly ecclesiastical in their tone and spirit, and the principal object was to qualify the pupils, as I have said, for the performance of the services of the Church. The traditions of learn- ing, so far as it had to do with Pagan antiquity, were wholly lost, buried in the invasion that overwhelmed all that was distinctive in Roman civilization. For nearly two centuries we hear of the studies of the monks of St. Benedict in Italy and the attempt by St. Boniface to transplant into Germany the Benedictine rule with its obligations to study by the monks, of the learning of the Irish monks, and especially of St. Co- lumba at lona ; but it is evident that what was taught in the monastic schools was very narrow and meagre in its character, and the reverse of liberalizing in the modern sense in its spirit. 364 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, Out of one of these schools, however, came a man who was to open a new era in education in Western Europe, and that was Alcuin, the head of the cathedral school of York. This school, strange to say, was situ- ated near the outer limit of civilization, in a country more utterly and purely Teutonic, — that is to say, more barbarous and less Roman, — at that time, than any other portion of Western Europe. And yet the school itself was full of the traditions and methods of St. Benedict, and of Pope Gregory the Great, his disciple and admirer. Although in so remote a corner of the world, the ex- planation of the cause of the great eminence of this school is not difficult. The secret is to be found in the character of the library attached to the school. This library contained not only the dogmatic works of the Fathers of the Church, but portions, at least, of the writings of Virgil, of Lucan, of Pliny, of Cicero, and of various other classical authors. Charlemagne, who aspired to be not merely the con- queror of the world, but its civilizer also, met Alcuin in Parma towards the close of the eighth century ; and, with that sure judgment of human character which is one of the gifts of truly great men, he invited the scholar to reside at his court at Aix-la-Chapelle, and to establish in the palace itself a school, in which those who were looking forward to holding high positions in the Church and State under him should become pupils. The establishment of this school forms an era in the history of education; for although one of its objects, ALCUIN AS A TEACHER. 365 like tliat of the cathedral and monastic schools, was to confirm those who were there instructed in the orthodox faith, yet the position of the scholars, many of whom seem to have been of the laity, and the method of teach- ing adopted, differed from those found elsewhere. In his zeal for learning, Charlemagne himself became a pupil ; and his example was followed by his three sons, by his wife, by his sister, — in short, by all the members of the royal family, — and by other distinguished personages at his court. Alcuin taught at this school of the palace Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics or Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, — that is to say, three arts and four sciences, as they were then classified, — the trivium and quadriviumy as this method of instruction was afterw^ards called in the mediseval universities. It may be admitted that this seems a strange division of the subjects of human knowledge and inquiry ; and yet it embraced a good deal more than would now be taught under such heads, and all that was at that time sup- posed to have anything to do with the development of a man as a Christian and a good subject of the Emperor. Alcuin's ignorance of some of the elementary notions of grammar, rhetoric, and particularly of astronomy, is very conspicuous : still, with all his blunders, he possessed that which is perhaps the most valuable gift of the teacher, the power of awakening in the minds of his pu- pils interest in the subjects taught. Charlemagne's zeal, at least, was so stimulated by the knowledge he gained, poor and starving as it seems to us, that he issued an 31* 366 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. edict or capitulary in 787 which has been called the great charter of modern European education. In this he tells the bishops that the study of letters, both for their own instruction and for the purpose of teaching others, should be regularly kept up among the clergy, and that such learning is absolutely essential if they desire to understand the mysteries of the faith and the true meaning of the figurative and allegorical language of the Scriptures. This edict was followed by two others before the close of the century. In the first the Emperor directs that candidates for orders shall not be taken solely, as formerly, from the servile class, but from the sons of freemen, and in the other, after arguing that study is a means whereby the life of the righteous is nourished and ennobled and the man himself fortified against temptation, he directs that hereafter, in all the schools, provision shall be made for the gratuitous in- struction of the children of the laity. We think of Charlemagne as the monarch and conqueror of the world. Perhaps we do not as often recall the imperishable and fundamental ideas upon which he really built, not merely the idea of a universal monarchy after the pattern of Imperial Rome, but als5 an idea which was to be the most fruitful of all that rule us in modern times, — that of universal and gratuitous education. But Charlemagne seems, like many others before and since, to have outgrown his teacher, even when that teacher was so eminent a man as Alcuin. Among other subjects in which the keen inquiring mind of the CLEMENT HEAD OF THE PALACE SCHOOL. 367 Emperor had a special interest was astronomy./ The planet Mars having disappeared from the heavens for nearly a whole year, Charlemagne naturally asked his teacher what could be the meaning of this phenomenon. He was told that the sun had detained the planet in its course, but had at last released it through the fear of the Nemsean lion, the star having become visible again first in the constellation of Leo. / Even in those days this theory of the movement of the heavenly bodies must have been, to say the least, very unsatisfactory to a man like Charlemagne. At all events, we find him soon after transferring Alcuin from the palace school to the post of abbot of the monastery of St. Martin at Tours, at that time the most richly en- dowed religious house in Europe. His place at the head of the palace school was supplied by an Irish monk named Clement. The monasteries in Ireland, as has been said, were the refuges of learned men during the whole period when the invasions of the barbarians had swept nearly every vestige of the old civilization from the Continent. A form of Christianity grew up in that island, and was propagated by its monks in Scotland and the northern part of England, which was peculiar at least in this, that it was wholly independent of \\\^ au- thority of the Roman See. These Irish monks studied astronomy in a rational way in order to determine the correct time for observing Easter, a subject in those days deemed of great importance, and the Irish Church differed from the Roman in regard to the true date 368 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. of that festival. The Irish monks also studied certain of the Greek philosophers, not merely from a love of learning, but also that they might thereby train them- selves in those dialectical methods of reasoning of which Plato and Zeno, and, above all, Aristotle, had been the chief teachers. The clergy of the Roman obedience were not then permitted, as I have stated, to study for any purpose the profane authors, and this not merely because true orthodoxy should be founded on faith and not on reason, but because it was said that such was the antagonism between Paganism and Christianity that it was unbecoming that the praises of Jove and of Christ should be spoken even in the same language. Charlemagne, as I have had occasion often to say, was a man far above his age in general ideas, and was not to be governed in his grand scheme of education by petty and narrow speculations such as these. Having found an Irish monk who really knew something about astronomy and was familiar with Greek authors, he hesi- tated not, to the great disgust of the orthodox clergy of his Empire, with Alcuin at its head, to install Clement at once as the chief of the palace school. He builded better than he knew, for by this act he was unconsciously shaping the course and direction of the higher mediaeval education, and beginning a controversy in which for ages great men fought on both sides, one party under the banner of free inquiry and of reason, and the other under that of faith and the authority of the Church. We know little of the instructions of Clement of Ireland, INFLUENCE OF THE PALACE SCHOOL. 369 but it is clear from what followed that the Irish school of philosophy, the result of a training so unlike that given on the Continent, maintained its footing at the court of the Carlovingian Emperors during the larger portion of the ninth century. This novel system of philosophy and dialectics was taught by a succession of Irish monks, the chief of whom was the famous John Scotus Erigena, who became attached to the court in the time of Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne. Of his special influence I shall speak hereafter; but the point now requiring our attention is this, that the period during w^hich the narrow, technical, and almost formal system of instruction adopted by Alcuin had sufficed for all wants had passed, and that a philosophy upon a broader basis and with higher aims kindled the zeal of scholars. From the palace school at Aix-la-Chapelle, after its reorganization, went out scholars who soon be- came masters, and who, moving from place to place after the manner of that age, and propagating their doctrines, spread the love of the new philosophy and gained prose- lytes everywhere. Shortly after, the Church schools themselves, becoming tired of teaching only grammar and arithmetic, were desirous of introducing the study of philosophical methods ; renowned philosophers often became the heads of these schools, and taught with such brilliancy their favorite theories that, although many of them became chief dignitaries of the Church, their fame with their contemporaries as well as with posterity rests upon their having been great teachers, and not upon 370 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. their having held exalted positions in the hierarchy of the Church or the State. The philosophy which these men taught is known in history as the Scholastic philosophy, and they as its teachers are called Schoolmen. For six hundred years this system or method of philosophizing was taught in the schools or universities of Western Europe, and was regarded as the means of solving the darkest and most intricate problems of human life. It has been the fashion of modern times to decry this system as a meaningless one, and as utterly unfitted for the purpose to which it was applied. The terms ^^ scholastic" and " schoolmen" have been made terms of opprobrium ; the philosophers of the Middle Age have been regarded as blind leaders of the blind, and their method of solving the great problems of the universe simply as a sort of technical jargon without any reality or practical outcome, and amounting to hardly more than a mere play on w^ords. The schoolmen who were the teachers of the Middle Age had, it is said, more to do with making that age dark than either the Churchmen or the knights. The controversies of the schoolmen and their methods have, it is true, been long since forgotten ; and yet it ill becomes us as students of history to disdain the investi- gation of a system which for so many ages formed the intellectual food of Europe. And the very first thing which strikes us as we consider it is that, like feudalism, it was a uni versa!. gysjeig^ and one which remained in full lorcelintir the conditions of life in Europe were wholly SCHOLASTICISM. 371 clianged, and hence that there must have been some- thing in it which made it suited to the circumstances of the time in which it was supported by this general opinion. I shall endeavor to give some account of this mysterious subject, well aware of the difficulties in the way of satisfactorily explaining it. In the first place, then, it is to be regarded simply as a method, or agency, or instrument, — an organon, as the word is used by Aris- totle and Bacon, — of teaching the truth. It was not in itself, at least at first, a science, but a method agreed upon by those who held differing views on abstract sub- jects, by which the correctness of those views might be ascertained, and a standard by which their differences could be measured. The usual explanation of scholas- ticism is that its object was to reconcile revelation with reason, to establish the truth of the Christian myste- ries by the syllogistic form of reasoning adopted from Aristotle. Of course it is true that all schoolmen were ecclesiastics, and that there were certain dogmas of the Church concerning the being and nature of God, the Trinity, predestination, and free will, and the like, which, were often explained and defended by them in the syl- logistic form ; but the priest and the philosopher were never merged in each other. The sacraments and other Christian mysteries remained always in the province of theology, while philosophy was permitted and en- couraged by the Church to investigate the vast field outside. In all times and under all systems of religion both theologians and philosophers have agreed that the 372 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. nature of the Deity may be a proper object of scientific study. How, then, did this system grow up, and how did it become the universal solvent of all the great problems which disturbed the human mind in the Middle Age? The first step was taken in the schools formed after the pattern of Charlemagne's palace school. Dialectics or logic, it will be remembered, was one of the subjects taught in the trivium, or the elementary department of instruction in the schools. It was there used for the pur- pose of explaining the meaning of words, — not merely their definition, which was more properly the province of grammar and rhetoric, but the relations of words to each other, and even their hidden meanings. The result that followed from this practice is a striking illustration of the truth of the statement that " words are things." Take for instance the word " Will.'' How much must one know if he comprehends fully the meaning of that little word ! — about free-will, for instance, its relations with foreknowledge, the limitations of its power, its re- sponsibility, etc. And so with all words which repre- sent abstract ideas : to know them thoroughly is to know clearly the things they represent. But, more than this, they sought to know the true logical relations of words with other words; and hence a rudimentary idea of science grew up which is nothing more than such a classification of our knowledge that we may understand the true rela- tion of cause and effect. Hence logic, which sought to establish a true co-ordination of our ideas by giving us SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 373 an accurate knowledge of the meaning and relations of the words used in expressing them, soon became not merely the master-science but the only science, because it had drawn all the others to itself. It was the key which unlocked them all. At best the others, such as grammar, arithmetic, geometry, taught men facts ; logic was the true bond which united them all together and showed the relations of each to the other. It was in the endeavor, first, to explain the mean- ing of all abstract terms and their relations, and, sec- ondly, to defend the conclusions so reached by the syl- logistic process, that the scholastic philosophy was led into those refined and subtile distinctions of the meaning of words or terms and their relations which make it so difficult for us moderns to comprehend them, and which have led many to think that the conclusions the school- men reached with such painstaking ingenuity and learn- ing were, after all, of no practical value. The difficulty was, as we can see clearly now, in attributing an exag- gerated or false value to the dialectical method as an in- strument for reaching truth. The practice was to place all questions, great and small, in those days, in the cru- cible of logic to test their meaning, and to ascertain whether their elements could be formed into a proper syllogism. If the process seems at first only a method of constructing ingenious puzzles, we are to remember that the greatest problems of human life were solved, as well as a knowledge of the mysteries of the Divine government reached, to the satisfaction of some of the 32 374 MEDIJLVAL HISTORY/ acutest intellects the world has ever known, by this method of accurately defining the terms in which, by the rules of logic, they were supposed to be properly expressed, and then deducing the relations between them growing out of terms so defined. In pursuing this method of ascertaining the meaning of words or terms and their relations, the schoolmen soon discovered that words were things ; and shortly after- wards arose the celebrated controversy about ^^ univer- salsy'^ which was the technical name given to certain words expressing general ideas. The question was whether the word which denoted a general idea or a " universal" presented a real object to the mind, a true subsisting entity outside the mere abstract conception of it by the intellect. For instance, what does the word "humanity" in its logical sense mean ? Is it a thing really and ob- jectively existing, or is it a mere word to mark our gen- eral conception of the human race ? Those who believed that universals or general ideas were objective realities were called Realists, while those who denied the real existence of universals, and who asserted that nothing actually is but the individual, that of which the senses take cognizance, were called Nominalists. The quarrel between these parties lasted until the time of the Re- naissance, when the fame of Plato, who was the first Realist, superseded that of Aristotle, the great master of the Nominalist schoolmen. Into the merits of the controversy I cannot pretend to enter. It is very clear, however, that it was regarded by the parties as something ARISTOTLE AND THE SCHOOLMEN. 375 much more serious than a quarrel about mere words. Tlie Church watched its progress with the greatest jeal- ousy, fearing the rationalism of such men as Erigena, Roscelin, and Abelard. The gravest questions of the- ology, as well as those which seem to us most fanciful and trivial, became involved in the debate. The school- men, with their peculiar logic, did not hesitate even to explore the nature of the Trinity. Such was the acrimony of the rival- parties in this logical conflict that the theology of the time seems to have fallen into the hands of contentious disputants, and its dogmas became an occasion of strife instead of objects of faith. Aristotle ruled paramount in these controversies, and under his supposed autliority the schoolmen tested the strength of their philosophy by its power to explain the true character of universals, — in other words, to solve that question which in one form or another is to be found at the basis of all metaphysical speculation, ancient and modern, — viz., whether our conceptions of things are merely the result of combinations in our own minds, or whether they inhere in the nature of the objects presented to our senses. To work out the refined and subtile distinctions involved in the logical method was not only the constant and most cherished occupation for ages of the best-trained intellects, but, what perhaps was even more remarkable, the youngs men who flocked, literally by the tens of thousands, to the universities, not merely of Paris and of Oxford, but everywhere throughout Europe where learning was 376 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. taught, came to listen to lectures and to hear disputa- tions upon these abstruse subjects by men whose fame was great because they were great schoolmen. The enthusiasm of the young men of that time for this scholastic philosophy it is not easy to explain; and I am sure it would be difficult to imitate it now, even had we Scotus Erigena, Roscelin, and Abelard on the one side denying the reality of " universals/' and Anselm and St. Bernard on the other affirming it. This enthusiasm, and the multitudes who were moved by it, becan e the immediate cause of the founding of modern universities. Of these, the University of Paris and that of Bologna were the oldest. The first became for many centuries so celebrated as a school of theology that it was known as the first school of the Church in Europe, while that at Bologna was equally distinguished as a place for the study of the Roman law. Towards the close of the twelfth century the University of Paris was fully organized by the establishment of the four faculties of arts or philosophy, theology, the canon law, and medicine. The king, Philip Augustus, in the year 1200 (and his example was followed by his successors), granted the university exemption from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals and from taxa- tion, while the Pope, Nicholas lY., gave full authority to its professors to teach and manage schools throughout Christendom and to assume the titje of doctors. The number of the students is said to have been at one time equal to that of the citizens, and to have reached during UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATION. 377 the fifteenth century thirty thousand. This vast number of students made it necessary that for the purposes of instruction and discipline there should be a system of organization, and that adopted was the division of the students and professors into nations^ in which their posi- tion depended upon the country from which they came, and not upon the faculty whose instructions they at-- tended. Each nation formed a distinct body, composed of the professors and students from a particular district, and the procurator or head of the nation was elected by this body. All the nations united in the election of the head or rector of the university, thus establishing that fundamental principle in university government that its president should be chosen by those who have the best opportunity of knowing the qualifications of the person proposed, and his fitness for performing the duties devolving upon him. I call this principle a fundamental one, for it prevails to this day throughout Europe, and it is worthy of remark that it is so reason- able in itself, and has been so approved by universal experience, that it remains the only method of gov- erning human beings which has been unchanged by all the changes of the last seven hundred years. The system was, as may be inferred, one of training and mental discipline rather than one designed to impart a knowledge of facts. The instruction given in the faculty of arts, and later in that of theology, — the principal fac- ulties, as 1 have said, of the University of Paris, — com- prised those subjects contained in what were technically 32* 378 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. called the trivium and the quadriviurriy the first or ele- mentary course embracing grammar, logic, and rhetoric, the second or advanced course music, arithmetic, geom- etry, and astronomy. The number seven had a mystical significance in the Middle Age. There were seven car- dinal virtues, seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, etc.; and perhaps for this reason there were said to be seven fundamental branches of human knowledge. But probably nothing was very thoroughly taught, according to our modern notions, save the scholastic philosophy, especially in its application to theology. The method of teaching did not differ at the University of Paris from that which had been employed by cele- brated private teachers previous to its establishment. It is not easy to account for the vast multitude of stu- dents who crowded around celebrated schoolmen who expounded their system, whether in the university, or, as in the case of Abelard, in a secluded place in the country, whither he had retired, hoping — as it proved, in vain — that his lectures would be less crowded by en- thusiastic pupils. It is certainly a strange spectacle of the life of the Middle Age to find its intense intellectual life consumed by a violent quarrel about the reality of ^^ universalSj^ and to find the educated men of the time, not only at Paris but at the centres of instruction every- where throughout Europe, disputing with each other, as Realists and Nominalists, with as much mutual bitterness and hate as those who were fighting in another sphere under the party names of Guelph and Ghibeline. UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 379 In the absence of printed books the instruction given by these teachers was necessarily oral. The students in these universities had little other aid than their note- books to enable them to prepare for their examination for the degree of Master of Arts, the principal value of which consisted in the license to teach which accom- panied it. The University of Paris was a power of the first magnitude throughout Europe during the Middle Age. In France it was the counsellor of her kino;s in their many disputes with the Popes, and its arbitrament was sought and its decision regarded as final in all ques- tions of conflict between the Church and the State. Philip le Bel consulted it on the question of jurisdiction between himself and the Pope ; and Charles V., with a just estimate of the glory which this renowned establish- ment had brought to his throne, gave it the title o^ fille atnee des rois de France, and rank and precedence in the kingdom immediately after the princes of the blood. The university was regarded as the stronghold of ortho- doxy; but it did not hesitate to speak in the tone of authority to Benedict XIII. when he was elected Pope, urging upon him the necessity of reform in the Church. In the Council of Constance, in the fifteenth century, where a most honest effort was made to bring about a reform of the Church by means within itself, the leading spirit was Gerson, who was the president of the Council, being at the same time delegate, of the University of Paris and ambassador of the King of France. When we hear the Middle Age spoken of as the Dark Ages, as 380 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. the period of arbitrary and unchecked force, never let us forget that at no epoch in the world's history, ancient or modern, did scholars more worthily fill their true position as the guides of the world, and never has their authority been more generally recognized or more readily obeyed in all that concerns the highest interests of man- kind, than in these self-same Dark Ages, as they are called. While philosophy and theology were thus occupying the attention of the acutest intellects of Europe at Paris and at the other universities in France and in England, another subject, a knowledge of which was to have a profound influence upon the destinies of Europe, was being taught at Bologna in Italy, and that was the Roman civil law. The foundation of the celebrated university at that place is said to have been coeval with that at Paris. The general organization in both institu- tions was the same, but (as it often happened), while Paris became the headquarters of the schoolmen, Bologna was the resort of students of the civil law, or civilians as they were called. The revival of this study is only another of the countless proofs we meet with of the permanent influence of the Roman civilization. As the Roman law, known to the students of the Middle Age only as embodied in the Pandects and in the Code of Justinian, was supposed to be the instrument which had been actually used for governing the world by a system of Imperial despotism, the German Emperors when they sought to make themselves in their heterogeneous STUDY OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW. 381 dominions successors to the Imperial Caesars desired to avail themselves of the same method of administration to produce the same results. At the same time and at the same place grew up a disposition to study the new science called the Canon law, which was a system of Church law, made up of the decrees of Councils and of Popes, and forming the basis for its orderly administra- tion. To Bologna, as to Paris, students flocked in crowds. In the middle of the fourteenth century the number was over thirteen thousand. Whether they all became civil or canon lawyers I am unable to tell. The vast attend- ance of students at these universities presents, too, a problem in mediaeval life which I have never been able satisfactorily to solve. How they all managed to spend the five or six years in residence which were required before they presented themselves for examination for a degree, what was the nature of that examination, whence the students came, and where they went after being graduated, are all questions which are difficult to answer. We are impressed, upon a survey of mediaeval educa- tion, with the absence in it of any instruction in either natural or applied science. We measure in these days our civilization so entirely by our knowledge of the forces of nature and our control over them for our own purposes, that we are naturally inclined to think that scholars must have been really very ignorant in those ages. But we must remember that the leaders of the age are to be measured by a different standard, when the object of education was mental training, and riot the 382 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. acquisition of knowledge. It is most true that revela- tion and authority were the bases of all speculations in the Middle Ages, as scepticism and individualism are those of inquiries which have proved so fruitful in re- sults in modern times. The question now is not which is the best or the truest system (and no one system of education can be the best for all times), but why such a one as I have described was necessarily the outcome of the peculiar circumstances of the life of the Middle Age. There is a link which binds the education of that age to that which has become the popular form in our own day, just as there are links which connect such institu- tions as feudalism and the mediaeval Church with our modern civilization. If education now means chiefly the acquisition of a knowledge bf facts, we may find in the gradual introduction of the Arabian philosophy and Arabian science, especially in the methods of studying the science of medicine in the mediaeval universities, illus- trations that our own methods are not wholly original. I speak of Arabian science ; but it should be more prop- erly called Greek science as studied and applied by Arabian philosophers. In the early days of Moham- medanism in Syria, all the works of Aristotle (not merely his Logic), as well as the treatises on medicine of Hippocrates and Galen, and of the Alexandrian as- tronomers, were accessible to the learned men among the Arabian conquerors, and were made the subject of profound study. A rational system of medicine and astronomy derived from the Greeks came thus to the STUDY OF MEDICINE. 383 knowledge of the Saracens, and was carried by them wherever the conquering arms of the Prophet led them. In this way the extraordinary development of the ma- terial civilization of the Arabs in Spain during their ascendency there is accounted for. It was impossible to hide the light of science such as the Arabs taught in Spain, and it soon began to shine in the dark places of Christian Europe. As in Syria of old, so in France and in other parts of Christendom philosophy stole in under the protection of medicine. " It was," says a great writer, "as physicians that the famous Arabian philosophers, as well as some Jews, acquired great fame and authority. There is not among them a philosopher who had not some connection with medicine, nor a physician who had not some connection with philosophy. The translators of the most famous philosophers, Averroes and Avicenna, were physicians. Metaphysics only followed in the train of physical science." The faculty of medicine in the uni- versities, which had hitherto been somewhat neglected in Western Europe, became under the teaching of the Ara- bian doctrines one of the most important of the depart- ments of instruction, and that at Montpellier and the school at Salerno were as crowded with medical students as the university of Paris with schoolmen, or that of Bologna with civilians or canonists. The old scholastic philosophy could not escape the contagion of the methods of physical investigation used in the study of medicine. Gradually the influence of these methods made itself felt in the universities, and, when it became apparent, the 384 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. alarm of the orthodox and of the Church authorities led them in vain so to order the teaching of the professors that the very timid doubts which had been expressed, in some quarters concerning the claims of the Church should be forever silenced. An attempt was made of the most strenuous kind to place the whole instruction in the University of Paris in the hands of the Domin- icans and Franciscans, hoping thereby that this old stronghold of orthodoxy should be preserved to the Church. This attempt failed; but these orders excluded from the universities were not idle as champions of the faith. They produced the five great modern schoolmen whose special work it was to do what it has been 'often erroneously said was the duty of all,-^^viz., to reconcile revelation and the authority of the Church with human reason by Aristotelian methods more fully understood. Scholasticism at the last, however, from the prodigious mental activity which it kept up, became a tacit universal insurrection against authority/: it was tlie swelling of the ocean before the storm. It began to assign bounds to that which had been the universal all-embracing do- main of theology. It was a sign of a great awakening of the human mind when theologians thought it both their duty and their privilege to philosophize. There was a vast waste of intellectual labor, but still it was intellectual labor, and, as we shall see, it was not, in the end, unfruitful. CHAPTER XIV. THE LABORING CLASSES IN THE MIDDLE AGE. There is perhaps no more striking contrast between modern life and the life of antiquity and of the Middle Age than that presented by the different social position and influence of those engaged in trade, and especially in the industrial and mechanic arts, in the two epochs. At the present day, and especially in this country, the successful man of business is king, ruling our society in nearly all its departments with an authority as un- challenged, and often as arbitrary, as that of the most despotic sovereign who ever sat on a throne. With the natural disposition of mankind to worship success, those who become rich in this way are looked upon as objects of imitation and envy. Not only so, but the methods which they have adopted in becoming rich are considered appropriate for the attainment of very dif- ferent ends in life from mere money-getting. Self-made men, as they are called, — that is, men without any liberal training, who have thus become rich by their own exer- tions, — are not only the arbiters of trade and leaders in social influence, but they are too often the guides in the special development of religion, of politics, of education, and of benevolence, and, in short, determine not merely 33 385 386 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. the ideal to which society should aspire, but the methods by which it should be reached. It may not at once occur to many that this extraordi- nary all-pervading power of wealth, and the social con- sideration which it gives, are among the most modern developments of modern times. There were, of course, rich men who were self-made both in antiquity and in the Middle Age; but men grown rich by trade do not seem to have been held in honor in either epoch. Their want of social consideration and influence is abundantly clear from the works of the great writers of the time. Cicero, for instance, in writing to his son, tells him that those who gained their livelihood by mercantile pursuits, as well as those who followed the mechanic arts, were incapable of any noble sentiment; while Seneca, who was one of the two sages of antiquity who, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, needed only baptism to procure them admission to the Christian's heaven, speaks of the useful arts of life as the fitting occupation only of slaves. Such is the uniform testimony of writers who have de- scribed the condition of Europe down to a period as late as that of the Reformation, and even later. In this view of life, so strange to us, there was more reason than appears on the surface. The source of the contempt felt until modern times for those whose lives / were passed in trade or in industrial labor, as very j plainly appears, was this, that until a period compara- •^ tively recent these pursuits were entirely confined to slaves or to a servile class. The emancipation of labor, LABOR IN ANTIQUITY. 387 then, and its elevation to its condition in oiir time, when we hear so much of its dignity, was the emancipation of those who labored from slavery, and from that taint which in public opinion in Europe has always affected everything connected with slave labor. Tlie history of the laboring classes in Europe is the history of the progress of the larger portion of the population from /Slavery to freedom. I have already given a sketch of f the history of those who, it was said, served the State by their swords, and of those who served it by their prayers: I now propose to say something about the history of the remaining class, those who preserved it by their labor, a subject of far greater dramatic interest, \Jtii my opinion, than the others. We must go to the history of Rome for a knowledge of the beginnings of the laboring class in Europe/ just as we go there as to the source from winch we must derive our information concerning the early history of the noble and the priestly classes which ruled in the mediaeval time. The slight esteem in which labor and the useful arts were held in the early history of the republic was due / perhaps originally in some measure to the few wants of the people as compared with those of later times. While Rome was struggling not for supremacy but for exist- ence, she regarded as desirable only those things which made good soldiers. She encouraged agriculture because it gave her strong recruits for her armies and fed them ; but the artisan lived poor and despised in his workshop,! 388 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. with no prospect of bettering his condition. Like all 'classes in Eome, the workmen were enrolled in special or- ganizations called collegia^ or trade corporations. Their members were few, and were made up of those engaged in the commonest handicrafts, such as would be required by a people with the simplest wants. All this was changed when the Roman armies carried their conquests beyond the boundaries of Italy. Sicily, Spain, Africa, and Greece were pillaged, after the manner of ancient war- fare, of their richest treasures for the benefit of the Ro- man republic, the population of the city, and its armies. At once the ancient simplicity of habits was exchanged for the wildest extravagance and luxury. A very large portion of the booty of these wars consisted of vast num- bers of slaves, many of whom, both male and female, especially those who were brought from Greece and Syria, were not only persons whom we should now call of liberal education, but many of whom also were the most skilled artificers then knqwn to the world in all that ministers to a taste for refinement, culture, and luxury. The work of these slaves soon made Rome a very rich city; but it did not, as may be supposed, elevate the con- dition of the native free Roman workman, whose labor was brought into competition with that of the slaves who had been so highly trained. So hopeless, indeed, did the struggle become that it seems to have been almost wholly abandoned ; and it may be said here that one great cause of the final decay of the Roman power was the constant use of slaves in increasing SLA VES IN ROME. 389 numbers to the exclusion of free laborers in every kind of skilled labor. This practice turned the poorer Roman citizens into a hungry mob, crying panem et circenses, and later it destroyed agriculture in Italy, and with it the free population it nourished, giving up the soil to sheep pastures, which could be -managed more profitably, because more cheaply, by slaves than by free- men. Latifundia perdidere Italiam, is the profoundest reflection of Pliny the Elder; and these three words, according to him, contain the secret of the history of the downfall of the Empire. , The slaves, in vast and increasing numbers, were em- / ployed in three different ways at Rome. They were j occupied either in the personal service of their masters, ! manufacturing within the house what was needed for its use and adornment, or they were let out to others for similar purposes, or they became gladiators in the cruel amusements of the amphitheatre. Their skill in all the mechanic arts had a deplorable influence upon the condition of the free laborers, who became, owing to the impossibility of competing with the servile labor, the most troublesome and seditious class throughout the Empire. Their collegia, Avhich had been originally in- ^ tended for their protection, were suppressed as dangerous ( to the State during the great civil and social wars. They were abolished because they had then become asylums for the discontented ; and this policy was kept up for the same reasons, and from the same fear, by the Em- perors for nearly a century. Later, the utter prostration 33* 390 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. I of industry made it necessary to reorganize these cor- ( porations, with the hope of finding employment for tlie vast mass of proletaires whom the State, from motives of safety if not of humanity, was called upon to pro- vide for. In the third century, the conquests ceasing, the num- ber of slaves grew less ; the larger portion of the working class, however, were, although nominally free, the chil- dren of slaves or of freedmen ; and the collegia, which were originally designed to protect their industry by giving them a monopoly, became a powerful means in the hands of the government for controlling them. This class, even when its labor was most necessary, was still without social position or influence in the Empire.' y It was composed chiefly of three groups, all, of course, free, or at least not slaves : 1st, those who worked in the public service in the construction of roads and buildings, and in preparing the material necessary for the equip- ment of the army ; 2d, those who cultivated the public lands of the Empire in order to provide the food with which the government undertook to supply the mob of Rome, the specially dangerous class of the Em2)ire at that time; and, 3d, those who worked at any trade I which they preferred. The constitution of these collegia interests us specially because they were the model upon which the jurandes iand gildes of later times were formed. The privileges which were attached to them do not seem to have com- pensated for the obligations which were forced upon r: ORGANIZATION OF LABOR, 391 their members. ( They had the monopoly of production, each in the work of its own particular collegium; they were, at least for a long time, exempt from the military / service of the State, as well as from being forced to as- sume the doubtful and costly honors of the curia ; but such exemptions were considered as marks of ignominy, and not as privileges conferred. There was among these workmen none of that individual liberty which, begetting rivalry and enterprise, we regard, in modern times at least, as the strongest incentive to skill in one's calling. In the Koman Empire every one was bound, as if by a chain, to the special work in which he was engaged. The colonist was tied to the land, the public officer to his charge, the curialis to his municipiuniy the merchant to his shop, and the workman to his collegium. If there was any liberty of action, it belonged not to the indi- vidual, but to the corporation of which he formed part, wliich both in law and in fact absorbed the workman. This method of organizing labor, which became at last only an ingenious system of keeping a troublesome ele- ment of the population in due order and subordination, was one of the characteristic peculiarities of the Roman administration, and it was swept away by the invasions. '.Industry upon any large scale was, of course, destroyed by this terrible calamity, and there was nowhere any recuperative power : the individual had long before per- , ished in the embraces of the State. One of the first results of the invasions, so far as the condition of the laborer was concerned, was to bring him back again into 392 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. that state of slavery from which he had been at least measurably emancipated by the system of the Roman collegia. The towns in Gaul through which the in- vaders passed were filled with workmen, and there were among them many, no doubt, nominally freemen; but the invaders took little heed of the free or the enslaved condition of the working class, and made them all, indis- criminately, captives, — prisoners of war, — and therefore they all became slaves. The conquerors soon became embarrassed by the number of their captives, and even by their skill in handicraft; for the Teutonic invaders had few of the wants which the luxurious and civilized Eomans had felt when they had forced their captured slaves to minister to them. Thus not only in Gaul, but wherever Roman civilization had taken root, these slaves were very much in the way, for in the new life whi(*h the Teutonic invasion introduced there seemed no place for them. Hence at no period of history has there been greater suffering on the part of an industrious and intelligent population of skilled laborers than when it was found that, as there was no longer any demand for their skill, they must engage in the rudest and most unaccustomed labor as slaves under barbarous task- masters. So much for the trade organizations in the cities of the Empire. The position of the rural or agricultural laborer \ was somewhat different. He was called colonus. Men of this class were not slaves ; in this sense, at least, that they Avere not regarded by the law as mere chattels. They SLA VES BECOME BOND-LABORERS. 393 might serve in the array, and contract a lawful marriage; and a slave could do neither. But they were bound to the estate of the proprietor on which they lived, adscripti^ glehce; they were subject to corporal punishment, and had no redress at law for the hard treatment of their mas- ters ; but, on the other hand, the owner could not sepa- ]'ate them from the domain and sell them, and their tenure was secure on the payment of a fixed rent. At the epoch of the invasions, then, the mass of the rural population throughout the Empire were bond-laborers, not slaves in the strict legal sense. Let us mark the transition from the Roman eolonus to the Teutonic serf or villein ; for the last relation grew out of the first as a / consequence of the invasions. j The Eoman laborer had, it is true, been in dependence upon the owner of the soil and attached thereto, but he was also the subject of a central general government whose laws he was bound to obey. But among all nations of German blood, power originally rested upon two foundations: first, upon the possession of land; and, secondly, upon distinction in rank. As a result of the invasions, the central general government bein^ destroyed, the proprietor of the land became the sov-i. ereign of all those who dwelt upon it. Sovereigntyil and property, therefore, were vested in the same hands, ] and the laborer had no guarantee against oppression in the provisions of a State law which was equally binding upon him and his master. It was precisely this arbitrary and capricious despotism, which existed long 394 MEDiJEVAL History. f before the feudal s/stera became generally established, I which rendered that system so oppressive to the laboring / man of the mediaeval period. It is interesting to observe that in these days of oppres- sion the complaints of the patient workmen were directed not so much against the exactions of the lords, excessive as they were, as against the uncertain character of the demands which these lords might make upon them ; in other words, to the absence of contracts which would clearly settle their mutual relations. The struggle be- tween the laboring class, both in town and in country, against the noble class, after the lands had been divided among them, and during the whole continuance of the feudal system, was a struggle not so much to diminish the amount of service rendered the lords as to settle clearly the nature of that service and to make it fixed and certain. The abolition of villenage or serfdom was merely the substitution of a contract for fixed service for the arbitrary and capricious demands of the feudal supe- rior; and the freedom of the towns or communes, as it was called, was not a freedom from paying taxes to the lord, but freedom from being pillaged at will by him, — a privilege purchased, as we have seen, by the payment of a certain sum of money mutually agreed upon. When such contracts could be made and kept, it is evident that the chains of feudal dependence were becoming loosened; and this formed, as we shall see, the stepping-stone by which the laboring class reached at last, after the severest struggles, the condition of absolute freedom. INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC MOTIVES, 395 Out of this arrangement grew ttiat class of farmers, or peasant proprietors, or freehold ing yeomen, as they have been diiferently called in different countries of Europe, which forms, as has been said, the backbone of modern society. Observe the process by which all this was brought about. It was due in a very small measure to the influence of that sentiment of piety and benevo- lence which has sometimes taught men the injustice of holding their fellow-men in bondage, or even to the ex- ample of the Church itself in dealing with its own serfs, but rather to purely selfish and economic considerations. It was a scheme on the part of the lords to secure from their estates larger and more certain revenues than they had previously yielded, and was founded on the prin- ciple that in every way, as well for the laborer as for the! master, free labor was more profitable than slave labor. ) These contracts for fixed rents and services seem to have been extended gradually to all rural laborers, whether technically bond or free, so greatly had they proved to be of advantage to the lords. Thus we see now clearly that, out of the pure selfishness of the lords, a system, which \ was intended by them only to increase their wealth and \ power, in the end really became one out of Avhicli grew/ the first and the most permanent characteristic of mod-S ern freedom, — namely, the right of each man to sell his^ labor at- hi s o\ SiU3^ price. Not only this, but, in the uni- versal greed of the lords to increase their wealth, slaves had been contracted with on the same footing as other laborers, so that practically an equality of condition^ 396 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. was established be£ween these classes, and slavery, which, in one form or another, had been the normal condition of the larger portion of the human race in all previous history, gradually died out in Western Europe, simply because it was not profitable, but not before giv- ing birth to the modern freeman. These movements, which extended over all that part of Europe which had been occupied by the Teutonic invaders, and which gradually, during several centuries, were changing its social condition, have always seemed to me among the most striking illustrations in history of that Divine providence which makes not merely the wrath but the selfishness and wickedness of man to praise Him. This mighty revolution, the results of which were, of course, wholly unexpected, was so silent in its movement that we can scarcely tell when it began. But we do know that its immediate cause was the abso- lute necessity of raising money in large sums to enable the kings to prosecute their wars. Thus, we find in England in the early part of the fourteenth century Edward III. " selling manumissions,'' as it is politely described, to the serfs on the royal demesne, and in France, about the same time, Louis X. (le Hutin, Headstrong) issuing his famous edict by which his serfs were permitted to buy from him their freedom at a round price. The example of the kings was soon fol- lowed by the great vassals of the crown, with what effect on the condition of the serfs we have seen. This was the starting-point not merely in industrial freedom WORKING CLASS IN THE TOWNS. 397 for the serfs and laborers throughout Europe, but, in England at least, the beginning of their political free- dom also. ^Such laws as the Statute of Laborers, which professed to regulate arbitrarily the rate of wages^r the >^ Statute of Apparel, which undertook to prescribe the cost of the dress of the laboring class, however much they might have been adapted to serfs, who held every- thing at the mercy or caprice of the lord, were entirely out of place as a mode of ruling free laborers, as the government found to its cost in various uprisings of the population. In regard to the working classes in the towns, and their relations to the governing power, there are three things to be considered separately if we wish to get an accurate idea of their condition. There is, first, the na- ture of the government of the towns themselves, which at an early period, comparatively, was withdrawn from the feudal lords and vested in the local magistrates; secondly, there were the trade corporations in the towns, one for each principal branch of industry, whose mem- bers were the sole electors of the town magistrates; thirdly, there were the glides or confreft'ieSj composed / of artisans, usually, but not always nor necessarily, H^ forming part of the trade corporations. T he mediaev al T' life in the tmvns-rested iipoix-t his threefold ba ais. — ^Out of this city life, and by virtue of the education and ex- / perience he gained there, came that prominent figure in \ our time, — the modern skilled workman. I have described in a previous chapter the manner in 34 398 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. which the towns secured their freedom from feudal servitude and the transfer of the local government to their own magistrates. The question now presents itself how this change of the governing class affected the traders and mechanics, the bourgeoisie as well as the workmen, who had no vote in the choice of their rulers. Accord- ing to Mr. Green, the rights of self-government, of free speech in free meeting, of equal justice by one's equals, were brought safely through the feudal tyranny in Eng- land by the traders and shopkeepers of these towns, organized as they were after they became free from feudal servitude. It seems to me that the claim is somewhat too broad ; for, while unquestionably this organization produced much political activity in a cer- tain class, it was so narrow and contracted in its scope that it concerned itself very little with the interests of the larger portion of the inhabitants. The commune (which was the technical name of a freed city in France) had its own revenues, raised by means of taxation and of loans. The magistrates were generally chosen by the members of the trade corporations only. The kings were favorable to the establishment of free cities upon the lands of their great vassals, and frequently aided the townsmen in their efforts to secure their exemption from feudal servitude, with the object, however, of lessening the power of the feudal lords against the crown. On their own royal domains they discouraged the establish- ment of free cities, lest the inhabitants might be thus with- drawn from their absolute control. Wherever, however. GOVERNMENT OF FREE TOWNS. 399 a free town was created, there the political education of the citizen, by means of his participation in the govern- ment, began. In this way, both in France and in Eng- land, the power of that class which had, in the end, so large ^ share in the government of both countries, — a class composed in each of the towns of the principal traders and mechanics, and called in England burgesses, and in France la bou7'geoisie or tiers-Mat^ — took deep root. The organization of the town corporations was the means by which this class entered upon political life, and it thus took a long step towards acquiring that social position and influence which it has ever since retained. What, then, were the ideas, what was the policy, which guided these town governments in the exercise of their functions ? The best answer is to be found in this con- sideration, that the political system in the towns was founded upon citizenship, acquired only by virtue of membership in some one of the trade corporations exist- ing in them. From the beginning it had some of the features of an oligarchy. It was when the inhabitants were working industriously and trying to accumulate property that they felt most keenly the feudal oppres- sion of their seigneurs and strove to form these glides, or corps de metiers, as they were called in France, for their mutual protection. The motive of the desire for the freedom of the towns was the security of their pos-A^ sessions ; and the money to purchase that freedom fromy the lords came from the tradesmen, who wished to insure' their possessions by doing away with any pretext for 400 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. arbitrary acts. Hence the first thing done by these free toAvns was to adopt measures, after their own peculiar fashion, to protect the rights of labor. And these rights were not at all the rights belonging in common to all workmen, but the particular rights and privileges,of cer- tain workmen formed into trade corporations within the town, not unlike, in many respects, our modern trade- unions. These rights were claimed and strenuously defended for centuries against any interference from outside the town, and were in no way founded upon any I theory of the equality of all workmen, but were rather j regarded in the nature of privileges. The avowed policy was 'everywhere to establish monopolies in the fullest sense of the word, to maintain a discrimination against those of the non-privileged class, both outside and in- side the town. Their constant efforts, as long as they remained self-governing, were thus directed to the special protection of those of the inhabitants who were members of the trade corporations, and this was done by main- taining their exclusive right to work within the town, by jealously guarding against the intrusion of strangers into the trades carried on there, and, in short, by every measure which made the labor of those they represented more profitable. They did not even hesitate to reduce the number of the workmen, so as to make the gains of those who had the exclusive privilege of work greater. j For all practical purposes, then, the government of (the free towns was merely the government of the trades \forraing their constituency, and their policy was a policy ED V CATION OF THE WORKMAN, 401 of trading privilege and monopoly. j^ While this policy, perhaps, was necessary for their own protection against the lawlessness of the time, and while no doubt it taught the lesson which is the first lesson to be learned in a popular government, the habit of mutual aid for mutual protection, yet it is none the less true that the system was wholly out of sympathy with that generous recog- nition of the universal rights of man, as such, to free- dom, which is the most characteristic and fruitful truth of our own times. On what may be called the educational side the gov- ernment of free cities had some important advantages. Its policy of the jealous exclusion of strangers from the trades of the town made it necessary that those trades should be so organized that their members should pro- duce good work, and that they should come, with that object in view, under the strictest discipline.^ Each of the trade glides was provided with an elaborate organi- zation to eifecfcthis purpose. The members were divided, as a general rule, into three classes, — the apprentices, the i workmen, and the masters. The apprentices, who were of a limited number (and usually the sons of the work- men or of the masters only were admitted to that posi- tion), were most carefully trained and instructed in their particular art, or mystery, as it was called. No one was allowed to pass from a lower grade to a higher in the gilde without the strictest examination, not merely as to his capacity as a workman, but as to his moral character also. Those who aspired after this examination to the 34* 402 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. ])lace of master-workmen in any particular craft were obliged not only, as I have said, to have passed a long period of severe apprenticeship, but were also required before their admission to the full privilege of a master to produce a specimen of their skill in their particular art' (called in France a diej-dJoduvre), which was rigor- ously criticised and often found deficient by the exam- ining board, composed of the chiefs of the company. The result of all this education was to produce, neces- sarily, thoroughly skilled workmen in numbers probably greater than any other system of the organization of labor has been able to do. Again, every piece of work made by any member of the craft at any time, no matter what was his grade in the company, was subjected before it was offered for sale to a minute and thorough inspec- tion by officers of the body/ One obvious result of such a system was to maintain among the artisans, members of the same gilde, a strong feeling of pride in their work and of attachment to the company which protected them in it. ^"Eut it may be readily inferred that this sentiment wa's not confined in its influence' upon the workman merely to his special position as such. It no doubt nourished in him some of the most important characteristics of the true citizen, such as love of in- dustry, and personal independence, and city pride; and all this is to be considered as a compensating circum- stance when we remember how completely the system was based upon the monopoly and exclusive privilege of the few. GILDES AND CONFRERIES. 403 There was another peculiarity which grew out of the government of the free cities by means of these trading corporations, which had an immense influence upon city life during the Middle Age. Inseparably associated with each of these trade companies, although not always forming part of it, was a charitable organization for the benefit of its members, called in England a gilde^ and in France a confrerie. The principle of these organizations, which was that of the mutual aid and protection of its members, is among the oldest and most permanent ideas of the Teutonic race, and was in full operation for cer- tain purposes long before free cities or trade corporations were thought of. In the days before the invasions societies existed in Germany and the North of Europe which were called glides. They were so called because the word signifies a feast, given at the common expense of the society whose members partook of it, and at these feasts it was the custom for those present to take an oath, to aid and protect each other. H ere w e see the firs t germ of that spirit of a ssociation and of mutual an d voluntary helpfulness which has always distinguished,'^ and to this day distinguishes, the Teutonic from the Latin races. The aid and protection which these gildes were organized to afford were not of that kind which their successors were called upon to give. The ancient Germans, of course, had no mechanic arts and no com- mercial occupations; but in the absence of anything like law or public order in those rude days they felt the need of seeking by combination with their comrades that 404 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. protection for their persons and their property which their nominal chief could not or would not give them. The weak, therefore, associated themselves with the strong to make a common resistance to oppression; they bound themselves to each other by a solemn oath ; they chose their leaders, and, when they became Christians, a patron saint; t hey ate and dranli_ta ^?eth^p-at^certain fixed pe- riods ; and^ embo ldened by their numbers, they asserted thftirpowp|- nnd hpnnmp \x\ f.imft thprnsplypg tTip- lawlcsS ^nppc onnm^n n £ -r>fliPr« Out of this ancient and persistent habit of mutual help- fulness grew what was known in England's Saxon days as franlc-pledgej by which, as I have before explained, a responsibility for the acts and offences of each member of the society was attached not primarily to himself but to his family, and especially to the gilde to which he belonged, and this frank-pledge thus became an important instrument of social order in those days. Any member could call upon his glide brothers for assistance in case of violence and wrong ; if falsely accused, they appeared in court as his compurgators; if poor, they supported, and when dead they buried him. On the other hand, each member was responsible to the gilde, as it was to the State, for order and obedience to the laws. A wrong of brother against brother was also a wrong against the general body of the gilde, and was punished in the last resort by expulsion, which left the offender a lawless man and an outcast. In its main features this Was the organization of the trade glides in towns, exclusive ADVANTAGES OF THE CONFR^RIES. 405 monopoly of work, and charitable aid to suffering com- rades. But we must not forget that while the regu- lations of the trade corporations were founded upon the selfishness and cupidity of the citizen and the artisan, those adopted by the glides or confreries were taught by that Divine charity which is the source of the virtues of the man and the Christian. The members of the confrSrle concerned themselves about the happiness of their fellow-members, as the burghers did about their privileges. When in danger they invoked the Divine aid, and caused prayers and masses to be said for the benefit not merely of their own souls, but for those of their relations, friends, and benefactors also. Their object was to make of the mem- bers of the gilde, who were also generally of the same trade, one family united in one faith under the protection of the same saint and brought into close relations by the enjoyments of a common social intercourse. No one of the members was permitted to live in poverty : the two opposite principles of pride in their gilde, and the charity which was its ruling motive, alike forbade it. Like some of our modern institutions of charity which are the direct and legitimate successors of the glides of the Middle Age, such as the Free-Masons, the Odd- Fellows, and kindred associations, a good deal of both time and money may have been wasted in processions, regalia, and the like, while they were . carrying on some of their work ; and yet we must not forget that the great motive and object of that work was to aid those whom 406 . MEDIEVAL HISTORY. sickness or misfortune had made helpless. When we think of the civilizing power in our days among work- men of mutual aid societies, we may imagine the influ- ence of organizations with the same end in view in the Middle Age. Close union between workers at the same trade, social enjoyments in common, innocent recreation for the workman who was almost constantly penned up in his shop, prayers said in common, a large spirit of charity and mutual succor from the ills of poverty, — such was the ideal life of workmen belonging to the privileged glides in the free cities of the Middle Age. Could it have been made the real and actual life of such work- men, what a paradise society would have become! There can be, I think, no doubt that the privileged workmen in the towns (not the mass of the laboring population outside the glides, who, as I have said, like the 'proletarii or the miserrima plebs of Rome, were in fact, if not in name, mere slaves) were, on tlie whole, more than contented with their position./^The work- man loved his glide; he felt that he had not been forced by the despotism of a master to enter it, as the Roman workman went into the collegium^ whether he would or not. Besides, he felt that he had reached the rank he held in the glide by his own efforts, and he^ fancied that the privileges which he enjoyed by virtue of his membership had come down to him from the re- motest antiquity./ He was proud of his rights, with that sort of intense pride which poor human nature always feels when it is conscious that it has the exclusive FEUDAL AND FREE LABORERS. 407 possession of a privilege. That privilege which he guarded with such jealous care was as his life-blood, for by it he and his family were protected not merely from the rivalry of strangers in their trade, but also from the arbitrary caprice of the lord. Besides this, he generally helped to choose his own magistrates, aided to enforce the laws he had had a part in making, was judged by his own peers, and generally took a consider- able part in the government of the town in which he lived, the gilde to which he belonged being both a subdivision of the municipality and a school of political education. The movement which resulted in rendering both in the towns and in the rural districts the feudal dues a fixed and not an arbitrary sunf was not freedom in our sense, but no doubt it was the first step made by the working class in both towards political liberty and social equality; but the goal was far distant, and the path by which they reached it a most difficult one. Such was the oppression of labor by arbitrary exactions in France that an agreement on the part of the lords to be con- tent with any portion of it, no matter how large, pro- vided that portion was a fixed amount and sum settled beforehand, was regarded as an immense boon. But neither in the towns nor in the country was the work- man long permitted to be under the delusion that he had been an immediate gainer by freedom from feudal ser- vices. For the arbitrary feudal dues were substituted fixed taxes to the towns and the king, the only change 408 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. being that they were regularly levied and constantly in- creased in number and in amount. It would be impos- sible here to enumerate all the burdens which the fiscal ingenuity of the ministers of the King of France and of his great vassals, who were all petty sovereigns, im- posed upon the products of labor for many generations. A glance at some of them is instructive, especially if the history of England at contemporaneous periods, so far as it aifects the labor question, be kept in view. There was the taille^ a general tax levied upon the presumed value of each person's estate, the hauban, on its product, the transportation-tax, road-tax, ferry-tax, river-tolls, tax on all sales either of produce or merchandise. These are only specimens of the many vexatious claims which j the king or the lord who was the sovereign made upon | the inhabitants of town or country. Then in addition there were the corv^es, the pressure of which was most felt by the rural population, such as the obligation of each peasant to have his grain ground at the lord's mill, his grapes turned into wine at the lord's press, and his flour made into bread at the lord's bakery, and all this, of course, at the lord's prices. Under such a system, as the misery of the people in- creased the productiveness of labor diminished, and the wonder is that the French workmen were not wholly crushed ; but patience was for a long time the badge of all their tribe, and the spirit of resistance seemed driven out of them by the habit of slavery. It was not until seven-eighths of the population of France found that DISCONTENT IN FRANCE. 409 four-fifths of the product of their industry were taken from them to support the other eighth of the popula- tion, composed of the nobles and the clergy (who paid no taxes and were subject to no corvees)^ in idleness and luxury, that their large stock of that virtue became at last exhausted. Then wide-spread revolt, under the name of La Jacquerie^ among the peasants and the un- enfranchised workmen of the towns, added during the fourteenth century the misery of civil war to the horrors of the English invasion, and to the wretched condition of those who depended upon the reward of their labor to keep them from starvation. These revolts only weak- ened the people, and were powerless to effect a change. The increasing expenses of the kings of the Valois race, owing to their wars and the extravagant habits of the court, made necessary new expedients still more oppres- sive than the old of raising money from the exhausted population. The unwillingness or inability of the States- General, which was supposed to represent all classes in the kingdom, to afford any relief, and the harsh exercise of the royal authority in enforcing its demands upon those towns which had once been its allies in subverting the overgrown pretensions of the feudal nobility, drove the people to despair. All this, persisted in for centuries, with an utter disregard of the welfare or happiness of the people, could have but one ending; and that was reached in the terrible vengeance of the French Revo- lution. Even those who at that time looked back most calmly on the history of their country felt that that 410 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. history taught them that there could be but one remedy against a continuance of the horrors from which they had suffered for more than five hundred years, and that was to be found in the utter destruction of the privileged classes, the clergy and the nobility of France. That revolution was simply an explosion of the dangerous elements which had been gradually gathering in the heart of the country since it had become apparent that the promise of freedom to the working classes and of representative institutions was never to be fulfilled. They never forgot that this promise had been constantly broken by the rulers of France ever since the days of Philip le Bel. The French Revolution, then, first gave to traders and mechanics on the Continent of Europe political and social equality, and hence placed upon a permanent basis the influence and control of the class who are such conspicuous actors in the social life of our time. The contrast between the history of France and that of England, so far as the labor question is concerned, is very striking and instructive. The English were called by Napoleon I. " a nation of shopkeepers ;" and it is certain that the legislation of the country, from the time of the early Norman kings to the present, has been dic- tated by an unceasing effort to extend the influence in the government of the country of the trading classes. The feudal system, and afterwards the autocratic monarchical system, were thoroughly organized and established in England, but neither of them was strong enough to CONTRAST IN ENGLAND. • 411 resist the force of enfranchised workmen contendino: for the rights of labor. By the charter of Henry I. (1071- 1127) the king promised that the barons should be forced to do justice to their serfs, and to renounce the practice of tyrannical exactions from them. His grand- son, Henry II. (1178), among other reforms, divided the kingdom into six judicial circuits, the courts in which were presided over by judges of his own appointment, and whose functions were extended to the abolition of all feudal exemptions from the royal jurisdiction. The Magna Charta of King John (1215), besides establish- ing that fundamental principle of English freedom, "that no man in the realm should be deprived of his life, lib- erty, or property, except by the judgment of his peers and by the law of the land,'' provided that the serfs on the estates of the barons should be protected from their lawless exactions, in precisely the same terms as these barons themselves were guaranteed protection against the oppression of the crown. The towns, too, were secured in the enjoyment of their municipal privileges, in their freedom from arbitrary taxation, in their rights of jus- tice and of common deliberation, and in their power to regulate trade within their limits. But the great and fatal blow against the supremacy of the feudal system in England was struck when, in the reign of Henry III., Simon de Montfort, as has been explained in a previous chapter, summoned each town in the kingdom to elect two burgesses who should represent it in Parliament. Out of this revolutionary movement (1264) grew the 412 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. House of Commons. This body, and especially the bur- gesses who represented the trading class in it, in the end directed the policy of the government. To the influence of this class we owe that policy in regard to trade and labor which, truly representing the English instincts in such matters, always makes itself heard with paramount autliority in the House of Commons. Its history pre- sents to us the most striking picture of the virtues and defects of a people whose civilization is the outgrowth of many and of diverse influences, but of none more potent than the desire to preserve the supremacy of British trade, which by many is regarded as the necessary result of a devotion to British interests. OP THB ^ CHAPTER Xy. MEDIEVAL COMMERCE. With our conceptions of a true civilization is insepa- rably associated the idea of movement. In our estimate of the influences which control the destiny of a people, movement almost always signifies progress and improve- ment, and immobility, stagnation and sometimes decay. We think, for instance, of the history of a vast empire like that of China, and we see the same general ideas — religious, political, and educational — prevailing there now which have controlled the country for thousands of years, and that this condition is the result of a fixed policy of immobility in accordance with the views of all its great sages, philosophers, and statesmen. Although we cannot deny that in one sense the Chinese are a highly civilized people, yet we feel that from our point of view their system is wholly out of harmony with our ideal of civilization, simply because it is stationary and non-receptive, and therefore we regard their condition as non-progressive, if not actually retrograde. We do this, not merely because it is unlike our own, but because it is based upon the theory that it was completed for its own purposes ages ago, and because it carefully ex- cludes what we have been taught from history to think is the most valuable peculiarity of any civilization, its 35* 413 414 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. capacity for improvement. We believe that movement or change the result of a certain receptivity is essential to true progress, and hence we have come to consider these two things as bearing to each other the relation of (;ause and effect. We have, however, also learned that it is not every cause which breaks up the monotony of a nation's life and disturbs its old relations, not every movement, in other words, which necessarily promotes civilization and progress. Take India for instance, a country which, from the time of the first Aryan invaders to the present, has been overrun by foreign arms and ruled by foreign dynasties, which has been the spoil of such scourges of God as Genghis-Khan, Tamerlane, and the long line of despots called the Great Moguls, to say nothing -of the rule of the East India Company, and of its successor, the English government. This country has been subdued over and over again, and dynasties established by men differing in religion, race, and political ideas, having nothing in common but the lust of conquest; indeed, in its history there seems to have been always movement of a certain kind; yet, so far as Indian life and Indian habits, Indian civilization, in short, are concerned, the movement has been hardly more than a ripple on the surface; the result of it all has been conquest, and not assimilation and therefore gradual growth and change. Indian life in its essential features does not differ from what it was when Alexander the Great declared its great river the boundary of his Empire. MO VEMENT AND ASSIMILA TION. 415 Hence movement in order to produce a fruitful civil- ization must be something more than mere conquest, or even the permanent occupation of one country by the people of another. I have endeavored to exhibit the great historical examples of the principle of progress resulting from true assimilation following the conquest of one country by another in the case of the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire. Under the circum- stances which I have detailed, by means of the assimila- tion of the Teutonic principle of personal independence with the Roman organization of law and its supremacy, powerfully aided by the influence of a common Chris- tianity, the civilization of our modern times grew out of these heterogeneous, if not opposite, elements. The glory of European civilization is that it is formed in no cast-iron mould, but is always more or less in a condition to be shaped by the ideas, discoveries, inventions, or new relations — the environment, as it has been called — which may grow up around it at any particular epoch. During the darkest period of the Middle Age, after the fusion of the barbarian, the Roman, and the Church was completed, it seemed that the greatest danger to its life was from that immobility which is characteristic of Oriental civilizations settling upon it. I conceive that Europe was saved from the dangers of this immobility, that the life of her people was made not only more com- fortable, refined, and cultivated, but also more liberal, comprehensive, and receptive, by the peaceable means of the more frequent intercourse of her people, not only ^ 416 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. with their own countrymen, but also and especially with the Mohammedans of the East, through the instrumen- tality of commerce. / To nations at a certain stage of their life, which may / be called the formative or receptive stage, commerce has always proved the great civilizer; and indeed I might go further, and say that just in proportion to a nation's foreign intercourse, not confining such intercourse to an exchange of commodities merely, has its civilization been promoted. The greatest States of antiquity gained their real and permanent influence from the political education and habits of mind which this intercourse fostered, a condition which became a more important element in shaping their life than even the changes which were the result of the wealth which commerce brought to them. Commerce followed in the wake of empire then, as it does now. What would have been the influence of Greek civilisation had it not been for the infl.uence ^nd power of the Greek commercial colonies in the Mediter- ranean and the Black Sea ? and in what would the con- quests of the Romans have differed from those of Attila and Tamerlane had not their intercourse with the Greeks added to their power of subduing and plundering na- tions the knowledge of the Greek art of civilizing them? Foreign conquests have a permanent influence only as they engraft the ideas of the conquerors upon the nations they subdue. """The principle of the necessity of intercourse with foreign peoples in order to better our own is a cardinal ISOLATION OF MEDIEVAL TIMES. 417 })rlnciple with all students of the history of civilization. The human animal, like all other animals, is improved after a time by the infusion of new blood, which is only another name for new ideas. " If I were asked," says Sismondi, a writer not at all in sympathy with the prac- tices of Catholicism, " what was the knowledge acquired during the Middle Age which did most to quicken and develop the intelligence of the people of that time, I should say, without the slightest hesitation, the knowl- edge of geography acquired by the pilgrims to the Holy Land.!ii | Let us consider, then, the obstacles which for a long time during the Middle Age restricted that commercial intercourse which we deem so essential to progress, and then we may better understand the changes which took place in the whole aspect of society when commerce was revived and extended. That which strikes us most for- cibly when we think of the condition of the people of Western Europe in the Middle Age is their isolation from the rest of the world, an isolation caused by the absence not only of commercial intercourse, but of in- tercourse of any kind, with the nations by which they were surrounded. There was, it is true, one common bond which united them, — that of the Christian faith, as organized on the fundamental principle of submission to a common spiritual father called the Pope ; but the more closely they were tied together by such a chain as this the more repellent and unsympathizing they became to those outside of them. To maintain any 418 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. relations with the infidel Mussulmans, who at that time had the monopoly of the productive resources of the world, was a crime against the Church ; and intercourse with other Christian countries, then peopled by those called Greek schismatics, was an oifence against the same authority scarcely less grave. Wars on a large scale, and between communities diifering in religion, habits, and ideas, had ceased, so that the lessons which even that stern teacher had so often taught the world by educing a working system of an improved kind out of the con- flict of hostile races were no longer learned. The con- sequence was that Western Europe, from the period of the cessation of the invasions down to that of the Cru- sades, had a population more ignorant, brutalized, and, in our modern sense, more uncivilized, than during the worst period of the decaying Roman Empire. As if to make the contrast more striking, that portion of Europe then under the Pope's obedience was sur- rounded both on the east and west by communities dif- fering from it in the form of their religion, but vastly superior to it in all that makes a civilized people. It is a humiliating confession for the student of Christian civilization to make, but it must be made if the truth is to be spoken, that Spain under the Saracens, Western Asia under the Caliphs of Bagdad, and even the Byzan- tine Greeks, in all the useful arts, as well in those which adorn life as in those qualities of culture, refinement, and general intelligence which raise a people in the scale of national well-being, were immeasurably superior to ROMAN COMMERCE. 419 the coarse knights, the coarser peasants, and the fanatical priests who at that time made up European Christian society. As I have often said, the seed was indeed there, but its growth was slow, covered up as it was by the protecting arm of the Church and choked by the dense ignorance of the people. It needed the warmth and light which came from other lands to quicken its life. In other words, there would probably have been no civilization, in our sense, in Europe, had there not been commerce with the East; and the history of the development of that commerce in all its far-reaching efiPects is the history of one of the richest and most fruitful sources of our modern life. There is, therefore, a peculiar interest in the study of the history of mediaeval commerce. The age stands out in striking contrast in this respect both with that which preceded and that which followed it. The Roman Em- pire, great as it was by its arms, owed even more of its greatness, or at least its permanent influence in the world, to its commercial intercourse. As soon as the Roman power was definitively established in Italy by the result of the Punic Wars, the Mediterranean Sea, the great basin of the civilizations of antiquity, bathing three con- tinents with its waters, became the highway not merely to the farther conquests of its arms, but, what is more important, to its relations with peoples of a different type from its own. The Romans gained by these conquests and the intercourse resulting from them not merely power and wealth, but also a knowledge of that 420 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. art in which they have excelled any people in history, -and which became the most characteristic and permanent feature of their policy, — the art of successfully govern- ing peoples of different races and religions. That art rests mainly, I conceive, upon a spirit of comprehensive- ness, the result of a large experience of different types, of which the wonderful organization of their law was the outgrowth. We may safely say that the Komans would never have adopted such a system had they confined themselves to Italy. This, however, was the general result, reached very gradually, and dependent in a great measure on the changes produced by the intercourse of the Eomans with strange people, and the necessity of adapting their rule to foreign habits, and the introduction of a certain cosmopolitan spirit among themselves. We do not always get an adequate idea of the extent of ancient commerce, and especially of that of the Romans, so that we fail to estimate rightly the importance of its influence in history. ) We must remember that the Romans, by their con- quests and by their subsequent commercial intercourse, were brought into relations with the most wealthy and flourishing communities of tlie world. From Greece and the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea they brought not only their literature and their laws (so potent in shaping their destiny), but also those habits and tastes for refinement and luxury and the means of gratifying them which made the Roman character during felie Empire so different from what it THE TRADE WITH THE EAST, 421 had been under the republic. In those days riches and culture were far more inseparable in men^s minds than they have ever been since. I All the precious products of the Greek cities, in Greece proper and in Asia Minor, flowed in abundant streams into one reservoir, the city of Kome, which thus became not only the Imperial city, but the richest city in the world. The love of luxury and the means of paying for its enjoyment stim- ulated in a wonderful degree commercial enterprise. The Romans, not satisfied with all the appliances of a luxurious life furnished by the wealth and productive- ness of the cities on the Mediterranean, extended their covetous desires to farthest India. From the time of Solomon that vast country had been regarded as the source of fabulous riches of a kind produced only within its own borders. To reach this El Dorado the Romans of the Empire established no less than three routes. The first was by » way of Alexandria and the Nile, thence across the Isth- ) mus to the Red Sea, and thence down the coast of Mal- abar ; the second, through Syria by way of the famous city of Palmyra to the Persian Gulf; and the third, by way of the Black and Caspian Seas and the river Oxus. By these three routes the Romans received from India pearls and other precious stones, spikenard, myrrh, frank- incense, silk, spices, precious marbles, slaves, women's [ dresses, girdles, etc. So immense was the demand, not of course in the city of Rome only, but among the wealthy in the Roman provinces also, for these articles, 36 422 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, and so high was their cost, that although the wines of Italy and Asia Minor, metals, arms, cloths, and the like, were exchanged for them, yet it is estimated by no less an authority than Pliny the Younger that besides all these things the amount of moneysent by Borne to India for their purchase amounted yearly to fifty millions of sestertia (about two millions of dollars). The Mediter- ranean Sea, from the Gates of Hercules to the Bosphorus, continued as long as the Roman rule lasted what it had been in the time of its predecessors, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and the Greeks, the highway of com- merce and the true road to a more complete civilization. Roman merchants transported from Spain the metals with which that country abounded, and poured through Marseilles, an ancient Greek colony, that stream of trade which fertilized all the cities of Southern Gaul and gave them those monuments of civilization which even now in their ruin attest the Roman power. It is not usual to regard the Romans as a commercial people, and certainly, as I have said, the class engaged in trade was not held in honor in the Imperial city; yet of the two master-passions of the human mind, the love of gain and the love of war, it is hard to say which had more to do with extending the permanent influence of Rome in the world. ^^^^ "We come then to the Middle Age, the age of con- trasts, so utterly unlike that which had gone before and that which succeeded it ; when commerce, external and internal, had perished in the invasions ; when the routes REVIVAL OF COMMERCE. 423 by sea and land were forsaken and wellnigli forgotten; when, in consequence of the theories of the Church, . nothing was done to encourage peaceful intercourse with « foreign countries ; when immobility, isolation, and, as a result, barbarism, took the place of enterprise, free com- mercial intercourse, and the civilization which had been attendant upon them. There can be no more striking picture of the darkness and terror of those days than this utter cessation of those relations of men with their neighbors which had been created and stimulated in the days of antiquity by the love of gain. Such a condi- tion_ could not be lasting, for, had it been, the life of European society would have been degraded to that of savages ; but several centuries passed before there were signs of revival. / The dawn at last appeared on the borders of that y f Mediterranean Sea which had witnessed the decline of the commerce of which it had been the principal means of communication in the days of its glory. The circum- stances which led to the founding of Venice are well I known. A few inhabitants of the towns on the main- ) land of Italy, in order to save their property and their lives from Attila and his Huns, took refuge in the marshy islands which are found at the mouths of the \ rivers Brenta and Adige. There the barbarians, having no vessels, could not molest them, and there, deprived i of all other means of gaining a livelihood, they began in a feeble way a commerce which gradually extended ^ from one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the other, and ^ 424 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. made Venice the richest and one of the most powerful States in Europe during the Middle Age, because she was the most commercial. At the other end of the Italian peninsula, Naples and Amalfi, towns which seem to have been practically independent in their government of the Greek Empire, of which they were the last relics in Italy, still kept up by means of a large fleet, to their own great profit and advantage, their commercial rela- tions with the East. Pisa and Genoa emulated their example, and the commerce they carried on with Egypt, Syria, Constantinople, and the ports of the Black Sea not only enriched them, but filled the interior towns of Italy with Oriental products, stimulating the taste \ for that peculiar culture, refinement, and luxury which ) precious books, precious stones, and precious works of | art never fail to foster. All this, of course, was the work of centuries; but it went on unceasingly, gradu- ^ ally melting the rugged natures of the conquerors of Europe wherever it could reach them, as the warm winds of the South the snows of winter. ) Every movement of commerce in those days by the cities on the Mediterranean was a step forward in civili- zation. Nor must we suppose that this influence was confined to Italy. Three great transalpine routes were established, leading from the South to the North of Europe, which were made use of as soon as the mer- chant had reasonable security for the safe transportation over them of his merchandise which came from the East. These consisted chiefly of articles of luxury, and were TRAFFIC OF THE ITALIAN TOWNS. 425 soon sought after with so much avidity by the rude pop- ulation of Germany that the trade became a lasting and most profitable one. Two of these routes followed the course of the rivers Rhine and Danube, the one reaching the extreme north and \)i\^ other the centre of Germany, and the third passing through the country from the foot of the Alps to the Baltic northeasterly. On these three routes are to be found the most famous historical cities of Germany : they were the true, almost ^ the only, centres of civilization in transalpine Europe in the Middle Age, and they were made so because they were the entrepots of commerce between the East and the West. All this was, directly or indirectly, the work of the traffic on the Mediterranean kept up by the Italian cities I have named. While the rest of Europe was in a state of stagna- tion, we should not forget that a great deal of the prodigious activity of these towns was owing to their having been self-governing. They were, therefore, able to adopt and carry out a policy suited to their own peculiar needs and position, and that policy was neces- sarily, in the confusion of the times, exclusively a com- mercial one. f From the tenth century their ambition was, in true commercial spirit, to monopolize the trade of the Mediterra nean, ca rryin g on the b usiness not for their own account only, but also for that of all their neighbors. The Venetian policy was, while maintaining with the greatest care the independence of the republic, to keep on good terms with the two opposite powers, the 426. MEDIAEVAL HISTORY, Byzantine Emperors and the Emperors of the West, — a task in the fulfilment of which even their extraordinary skill sometimes failed. They succeeded more frequently by adopting a policy the basis of which at all times was the protection of their commercial interests. Their ^system, which was regarded in the Middle Age as a model of practical wisdom, was imitated by the other Italian commercial cities, and the result was that they became not only the providers of the wants of the world, but also set the fashions in all matters of taste and luxury to the rest of Europe,) little considering, doubtless, that, while their sole object was to make money for themselves, they were unconsciously giving a characteristic tone to the general life of the time. There are many aspects in which the influence of the Crusades may be viewed, some of which we have already considered ; but the permanent result, about which there can be no dispute, was the change produced by them in the condition of the world by the increased intercourse between the East and the West to which they gave rise. When we remember that commerce, before the discovery of America, meant simply an exchange of commodities between the East and the West, — that is, between Asia and Europe, — and that intercourse, and especially com- mercial intercourse, between the people of these two different portions of the world was denounced by the Church as a crime because it regarded the Orientals as Infidels, it is not difficult to understand that wonderful changes must have been produced by any shock which COMMERCE AND THE CRUSADES. 427 broke up this practice of exclusion. A curious and most unexpected result of the crusading expeditions should be noted. They were undertaken with the hope of making the line dividing the Christian and the Infidel broader and deeper ; but the intercourse of those engaged on both sides, forced as it was, produced a directly opposite result, and made those widely-separated races respect each other more and more as they came to know each other better. It is amusing to read in contemporaneous accounts how each party regarded the other before they met as savages, or as worse, devils incarnate. It was long before the cultivated, polished, and luxurious Mussulmans could look upon the Crusaders in any other light than that in which the Romans had regarded the rude hordes of Attila, that is, as the mere ofFscouring of the earth; and so it is wonderful to observe how slow the soldiers of the Cross, with their lofty conception of the charac- ter of the Christian knight, were to recognize in Saladin a far truer and nobler knight than their own leaders, Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus. When the Crusades began, the cities of Asia Minor were still the seats of wealth and luxury, which, indeed, ( they had been from the earliest antiquity; and, whatever / may have been the opinion of the Crusaders concerning the religion of the Infidels whom they had come from the ends of the world to fight, it is very clear that they soon became alive to the new worldly pleasures with which these cities tempted them. They not only eagerly shared in these pleasures, but their tastes became so 428 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. formed by what they saw and enjoyed that they were not satisfied on their return to their homes to resume their former rude habits of life. All the appliances of luxurious living could at that time be found only in the East, and the desire to gratify the new taste stimulated to a remarkable degree the commercial intercourse be- tween the East and the West. Whatever other countries of Europe lost in population and resources by the Cru- sades, it is very clear that these expeditions enriched Italy, and especially made the fortunes of the republics S. of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. These maritime cities, which already before the Crusades possessed an exten- sive traffic, gained immensely by these wars. Their fleets transported many to the Holy Land, and Venice ' at least, with characteristic commercial enterprise, forced / those who desired to embark in her vessels to work their ; passage, so to speak, by insisting upon their capturing, \ for the benefit of Venetian commerce, Zara, on the Dal- matian coast, and Constantinople. These conquests gave / Venice not only the trade of Syria, but extensive pos- \ sessions on the mainland of Greece and in the Archi- pelago. Thus, while religion was striving to sever the population of the East from the West, the Infidel from the Christian, commerce was binding them with bonds which were not loosened until tlie discovery of the Western world removed the seat of trade from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of the Atlantic. Thus much for the maritime commerce of the South of Europe. Nearly contemporaneous- with it was a THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE. 429 movement of the same sort, but better organized, in the North, under the direction of a system known in mediaeval history as the Hanseatic League. The word Hanse, in Norman French, signifies an association, and this association was formed of cities and ^ princes in Germany and the North of Europe, without regard to nationality, who desired to trade with each other, and whose commercial intercourse could not be carried on safely or profitably in those wild times without the pro- tection of a powerful confederacy such as this. The rulers of the petty principalities of Germany and the North not only did nothing to encourage industry and protect commerce in their States, but often despoiled both merchants and artisans of their wares in thcstowns, or robbed them while they were transporting them from one town to another. The towns became in this junc- ture, as so often, the true saviors of society, and their efforts to protect themselves and the fruits of their industry, no doubt, prevented the relapse of Germany to its original savage condition. These towns for our present purpose may be divided into two classes, the one the manufacturing, the other the commercial ; the first, of course, chiefly in the interior, and the latter on the coast, principally, in the beginning, on the shores of the Baltic. The object was, first, to secure the safety of the merchandise transported from one of these in- terior towns to another from the attacks of the robber- knights, who were accustomed to plunder the merchants travelling on the- great routes of trade, and then, by 430 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. means of the ships belonging to the maritime cities, to transport the manufactures of these towns to places in the North where they might be exchanged for the raw materials and products so abundant in that portion of the world. ^ It was necessary, such was the lawlessness of the times, that these ships should be protected from pirates, just as those who journeyed by land had to be guarded from the attacks of the robber-knights. The energy, vitality, and enterprise which the pursuit of industry and trade gives suggested to those towns interested associations among themselves as the most efficient means of mutual protection. By the year 1350 seventy of the principal cities of Germany and Holland formed a commercial confederacy with these objects chiefly in view. Nearly a hundred years before, the Hanseatic League, originally intended for the protection of trade both by land and by sea, and composed of cities on both shores of the Baltic and of the neighboring towns in Poland and West Eussia, had been formed. All similar associations in Germany were soon merged in it. Of this league the famous city of Lubeck was chief and presidents There were assembled within its walls at stated intervals Diets, composed of representatives of the towns belonging to the league, which enacted laws for its government and settled its general policy. This associa- tion, as time went on and its usefulness became apparent, grew most extended in its operations and formidable in its power, wielding an influence not inferior to that of any regular government in Europe, and yet outside POLICY OF THE LEAGUE. 431 and independent of them all, — a curious and unique instance in mediaeval history, not only of a veritable impenum in imperio, but also of representative govern- ment long maintained and completely successful in the objects it had in view. The object of this association was, in one word, com - iiieJ!;:cial -monopoly, to be gained by acquiring the ex- clusive control of the carrying trade of the North of Europe. Its leaders wished to secure for it on a grand scale in the commercial affairs of Europe the same exclu- sive privileges which the members of the gildes or trade corporations possessed in the towns. We may form some idea of its power when we consider what it proposed to do, and what in the course of time it actually accomplished. It undertook to protect its members, from oppression while engaged in carrying on their trade, to guarantee, by armed force if necessary, the security of all the com- mercial routes which the members might pass over, to enforce the observance, both by its own members and by the strangers with whom they traded, of wise com- mercial regulations, and to extend the commerce of the association as widely as possible, both by sea and by land. For these purposes the Hanseatic League raised armies, equipped vessels of war, madei^aties and alli- ances with foreign powers, and, in sj^t, for nearly five centuries exercised all the functioas of a regular govern- ment in carrrying out its plai6. All this time^ be it remembered, it was entirely independent of any govern- ment or country in Europe, and held them all in such 432 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. I subjection by virtue of Its monopoly of the trade of their subjects that it became a power of the first magni- / tude In the settlement of the general European policy. The reason at the bottom of all this was a very simple, but It seems to us now a very singular one. It was this. In those days no country In the North of- Europe had a national marine, such as those of the republics on the Mediterranean. There were then no national commercial interests, such as now form the basis of the national policy of at least all maritime nations, and commerce seems to have been regarded for a long time in that part of the world as affecting the important interests of the population hardly more than we should be affected by a change, for instance, in the methods adopted for /the transportation of the mails. The feudal mind was never able to comprehend the far-reaching effects of a com- mercial policy, and of course never dreamed of its des- tiny when commerce should become king. It was not, In short, regarded as a national concern at all. It ex- isted only, as was thought, for the supply of wants which were looked upon as mainly artificial, and there- fore any agency which did this limited work well was considered all-sufficient.^ A striking illustration of the Indifference during the Middle Age to commerce as an affair of national impor- tance and as a source of national wealth, and of the sud- den change of opinion on this subject, at least In Eng- land, Is found in the history of that country during the reign of Edward III. As is well known, the principal EDWARD in. AND ¥HE LEAGUE. 433 agricultural product of England down to the middle of the fourteenth century was sheep's wool. This wool had long been shipped to the manufacturing towns in Flan- ders, where it was woven into cloth and sent back to England, together with whatever else of Flemish pro- duction its value would buy. This sort of trade had long continued in England, and was entirely in the hands of the agents of the Hanse, who had their gilde- hall in London, and whose ships carried the outward cargo of wool and brought back the homeward cargo of manufactured articles. But it seems to have struck that most sagacious of English kings, Edward III., that this was a process, so far as his own country was concerned, which might be called "burning the candle at both ends." He determined to stop it. He was without ships suitable for such a trade, and, like the other rulers in the North of Europe, he was wholly dependent upon the Hanse for the conveyance of foreign merchandise. But this did not deter him, and he issued an order that here- after no wool should be exported from the kingdom, and no woollen cloths should be imported. By so doing he 1 accomplished three things, none of which he had prob- ably anticipated. 1, He laid the foundation of manu- facturing industry in England ; 2, he destroyed utterly the monopoly of English commerce by the Hanse ; and, 3, he substituted for it the English mercantile marine, thereby creating two at least of the most important ele- ments in -the greatness and wealth of modern England. But other countries in the North of Europe were not 37 434 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. strong enough to secure for their own vessels their own carrying trade and thus make themselves independent of the Hanseatic League. For more than two centuries / the Hanse maintained its supremacy in the Northern (seas, and kept up especially an active trade between the manufacturing towns of Flanders and those in Northern Germany and on the Baltic, in each of which it estab- ^lished a comptoir, or factory, managed by officers of the League, and from which, as entrepots, the goods were distributed to places in the most remote parts of Russia, Poland, and Sweden. Notwithstanding the discomfiture of the League in England, commerce in the North re- mained under its control, for without its aid,Jn the existing condition of the world, its pursuit would have ^been wellnigh impossible. The Hanse took advantage of its position by forcing the States within whose ter- ritory were situated the towns with which it traded to make treaties with it, and to levy upon the cargoes trans- ported by its vessels duties so much lower than those exacted from others that it soon crushed out all attempts at rivalry. This system of commerce prevailed until the discovery of America, and the consequent diversion of trade into new channels, and the establishment by the Northern powers of a national mercantile marine with special privileges and exemptions. The Hanseatic League had outlived its usefulness; but it was not for- mally abolished by the public law of Europe until the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, when, as we have said, the occasion for its peculiar service had long passed away. HUMANIZING INFLUENCES, 435 Of course the commerce of the North produced no such sudden and extraordinary effect on the civilization of Europe as tliat of the Mediterranean ; yet in building 1 up towns and in the exchange of commodities between them, It trade stimulated by the desires of people of widely diversified wants, it not only settled permanently the industrial status of Europe, but by so doing laid the foundation of a general policy, since adopted by all her ^ statesmen, of protecting by treaty and legislation the in- \ terests of the trading and laboring classes of the nation. / There were various humanizing influences incidental to the prosecution of mediaeval commerce which are suf- ficiently familiar, but which perhaps it may be well to recall here, because their influence reached into far later times. There was, for instance, the whole system of credit and banking in commercial transactions, which, it is true, grew out of the necessities of the case, but which was not only wholly out of harmony with the general tendencies of the Middle Age as I have had occasion to describe them, but in direct opposition to the authority of the Church, whose uniform testimony was that the taking of interest for the loan of money was a high crime.X We have been taught to believe that the mediaeval age/ was pre-eminently a religious age, in which Church au-l thority was supreme. And yet, in striking opposition to this view, we find that when two motives of action, that of religion and that of gain, were set before large classes of men in those days, they never seem to have hesitated, any more than men now do, to risk their souls 436 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. if they could make money. They did this whether they were driving hard bargains with the Crusaders who desired to be helped on their way to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, or whether they were making their fellow-Christians pay, in defiance of the authority of the Church, high rates of usury. Another great modern humanizing principle — " the noblest innovation," as it has been called, "of modern times" — was the practice, if not the principle, of religious toleration; arid it had its origin in the intercourse of the mediaeval traders. There is a universal religion, the obligations of which are recognized alike by Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels, and that is one based upon the principle of fair and honest dealing between man and man. When the Christian merchants found that the followers of the False Prophet paid their debts punc- tually and fulfilled their contracts with the strictest honesty ; when they found the outcast Jew always ready, as a capitalist, to assist them in any enterprise which promised gain in return for the money advanced ; when traders were brought into daily intercourse with those whose religion differed from their own, and found how I many ideas they had in common, — it was simply impos- 1 sible that they should look upon and treat those not of \ their religion as children of Satan, such as the Church / represented them. Thus, strange to say, the practice of toleration was largely due to the most selfish of human instincts, — the love of gain. There was another change in the mediaeval conception COMMERCE AND MODERN HABITS. 437 of life produced by commercial intercourse which it is important to notice. The ideal ofj;_perfec|: life in those days according to the Christian standard was poverty , the monastic life being regarded as thaJiighest jtype-becanse i ^was a scetic. Commerce and wealth stimulated the introduction of luxury, and habits of luxurious living became so general that neither the denunciations of the Church nor the sumptuary laws nor the statutes of Ap- parel enacted by the State could do anything, for a time at least, to check the wild extravagance of fashioU;,.,^his was, no doubt, an evil while it lasted ; but out of it came in the end great good. If the people in modern times lead more cleanly, decent lives, in more convenient and comfortable houses, than they did in the Middle Age, it is due in a great measure not merely to the increase of wealth in itself, but to the higher standard of living which was made possible by the introduction into Euro- pean life of many things which are now objects of the first necessity, but which in the rude life of the past^ were thought by the sober-minded to be sinfuljuxuriea^ So we owe to mediaeval commerce the birth of that benign system of international law which to-day is the only force that keeps each nation in its appointed sphere and enables it to do its appointed work without clashing with its neighbors. As there were no inter- national relations in the mediaeval era, the stranger, out of the jurisdiction of his immediate petty sovereign, was in the fullest sense an enemy and treated as such. There was one exception to this rule which painfully marks 37* 438 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the prevalence of class distinctions at that time. The noble, by virtue of his nobility, was the citizen of the Christian world. He claimed in all countries equal privileges, and they were accorded to him without hesi- tation. But the trader or the merchant, whose calling took him sometimes through a half-dozen miserable little principalities in as many days, had no such rights. If he were shipwrecked, his merchandise, if it were driven ashore by the waves, as well as the lives of those of the crew who might be saved, were by law at the mercy of the lord who owned the land upon which they were washed up. This was his feudal right ; and in accord- ance with it the property was confiscated to his use and the crew became his slaves. There was another practice in the mediaeval era which may be mentioned to show not merely how foreign the spirit of the time was to the encouragement of commerce, but also to show what we have escaped from by the gradual growth of commercial ideas^ This practice was founded upon what was called le uroit d^aubainey by which any stranger dying out of his own country was prohibited from making a will, and by which no stranger was permitted to receive a legacy from a subject of an- other jurisdiction. In either case an attempt to transfer property worked its forfeiture, and it was confiscated to the lord of the fee. This was an extreme application of the principle of antiquity that no one who had not civil rights, that is, who was not a member of the particular city or people among whom he lived, could lawfully ] INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. 439 transmit property in any way. When we remember that there were no nations in the mediaeval era in our sense, and that Europe was divided into a multitude of petty feudal sovereignties, each of which enforced this rule as against the other, we may form some idea of its destructiveness to that commerce whose existence is dependent upon the trust that contracts made in good faith shall never depend for their fulfilment on the contingencies of human life. This was one of the first subjects which occupied the attention of that diplomacy ^vhich grew out of the intercourse created by commerce. Shortly after the Crusades, Consuls were_ appointed by /those republics trading in the cities of the East, to reside there and watch over the interests of their countrymen [ who might be engaged in trade, and shortly after, or / rather more than a century later. Ambassadors, one of whose functions, at least, was to look after similar in- terests, were accredited by the sovereigns of Europe to those countries with which their intercourse was most frequent. CHAPTER XVI. THE ERA OF SECULARIZATION. I HAVE endeavored by the illustrations which I have given of the life and history of the Middle Age to make it clear that the most characteristic and prominent feature of that life was that which made it the era of authority, in special and striking contrast with the era of individ- ualism, or that social condition in which the exercise of private judgment is regarded as the true rule of human action. It is hard for us to conceive, at the present day, when this right of private judgment is universally recog- nized, how far the opposite principle of authority was carried in mediaeval times; yet we must try and gain some adequate conception of it, for thus only can we understand the basis not only of mediaeval life, but of our own, as well as the cause for the striking difference between them. It is hardly too much to say that the contrast between the two eras is due perhaps quite as much to the controlling influence of one or the other of these two opposite principles as to any other cause. In discussing the historical life of Middle Age insti- tutions I have given examples of the universal and unchecked force of this principle of authority, — how it extended not merely to the control of the actions of men, but moulded the expression of all their thoughts 440 AUTHORITY AND INDIVIDUALISM. 441 and opinions ; how it formed the standard of the conduct of their lives ; liow for such purposes its recognition was not a matter of choice, like that of respect for public opinion in this day, for instance, against which men, if they be brave and honest enough, may sometimes fight, but a firm belief in a visible and omnipresent power possessing all the machinery and appliances of a thoroughly organized government for the purpose of enforcing its authority. We come now to consider how this era of authority thus apparently resting perma- nently upon a universally recognized basis was gradu- ally supplanted by the great force of modern times,-^- individualism. The power which shaped men's thoughts and lives in the Middle Age was, as I have explained, vested in the Church, and its ideal conception of human life was to make this world the city of God, built up under its authority and guidance. Above all things in the Middle Age men sought to be good Christians. The claim of the Church's jurisdiction extended to the whole of human life, — not merely to a man's acts, but to his opinions, and not merely to his religious opinions, but to his opinions on every subject of human inquiry and interest, however remote some of these subjects may appear to us to have been from the sphere of theology. For more than six centuries, as I have explained, the Church was the only tribunal of opinion recognized in Western Europe on all subjects. Divine and human. Its decrees were not always obeyed, but its jurisdiction was never questioned. Let 442 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. us consider for a moment the extent of its power outside of the theological domain proper. A life of poverty, for instance, was the highest form of life known to the Church, and was therefore so recognized by the -people in the Middle Age. But w^hat did the conception of life involve ? Industry and commerce, the most fruitful of all the sources of civilization in modern times, had but a stunted growth, as has been seen, during the larger por- tion of the mediaeval era. Not only were the rewards of industry, which now stimulate human activity so strongly, then regarded as objects wholly undeserving of the zeal and energy of the true Christian, but the means also by which such results are reached in modern times, such as the borrowing of money on interest, and commercial in- tercourse with those who were not Christians, were posi- tively forbidden by the Church as highly sinful acts. So, in regard to the sciences, all original investigation was prohibited by the Church, not because the Church was opposed to investigation of anything which in itself might be considered doubtful, but because all questions of science, as well as those of morals and divinity, were supposed to have been settled by the authoritative in- terpretation by the Church of statements found in the Bible. The earth's cosmogony was thought to be ex- plained in that book as fully as the plan of redemp- tion. Thus, the world could not move, because Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still ; it could not be round, because the Bible was supposed to declare that it was flat ; and the true object of maritime expeditions, if CHANGE IN MEDIEVAL IDEAS. 443 they were made at all, should be not to enlarge the do- mmions of existing kings, or to increase the means of supplying the wants of their subjects, but to convert the savages that might be* found in the new countries, and make them good Christians. And so with everything which is called in modern times science. It was not the Church's external force or pressure, at least in the earlier times, which indisposed men to investigate the forces of nature, but the mental atmosphere in which they lived, — the profound conviction which had grown with all their experience of life that the discussion of such problems was needless, because the Church, whose authority all recognized, had settled and decided them. All this was destined to pass away; and I propose to consider some of the earlier steps in this process of change. It is usual to ascribe that great change which took place in Europe by which the mediaeval era was brought to a close, to a general revolt of reason against authority, to a universal protest of the human conscience in favor of the right of private judgment against what are called the tyrannical usurpations of the Church. But this seems to me an inversion of the historical order. Men do not revolt against any system which has gov- erned them for ages simply because of philosophical objec- tions to that system. The first step is the one which they take when they feel keenly its practical inconveniences or grievances ; this breeds discontent and opposition ; and then it is time enough to seek for reasons to justify their desire for change, and to adopt measures to bring 444 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. it about. This is the course of all revolutions ; and it was the course of that in which the revival of learning and the Reformation were the last and not the first steps. The first symptom of the discontent which was fast growing in Europe in the fifteenth century with the all- pervading authority of the Church was, in general terms, restlessness. People were growing tired of the restraints which were imposed not so much on their opinions as upon their ordinary course of life. Men became more worldly because, as time went on, the world spread out before them irresistible temptations which had never been presented to their fathers. They grew less Chris- tian in the Church's sense; that is, they gradually ceased to ascribe to the Church's typical virtues of poverty^ chastity, and obedience that paramount importance w^hich they had held in the control of human life in earlier days. They were none the less devoted sons of the Church and stanch advocates of its authority. Ortho- doxy of belief and outward conformity have often co- existed with neglect of the practical duties of religion. They felt the restraint her laws imposed upon their desires none the less, however, and the result was that when they attempted to escape from these restraints a strange spectacle was presented of an endeavor to har- monize their own self-indulgence in those new ways of life which seemed so tempting with professions of obe- dience to the authority of the Church. The truth is, the world was tired of the restraints which the Church had imposed upon it, just as it had become tired of the THE NATION AND THE CHURCH. 445 Crusades. People were weary with the practice of self- denial, not because they doubted the Church's authority and duty to enforce it, but because other objects, which were not consistent with a self-denying spirit, became more attractive to their minds and claimed their atten- tion, such as love of adventure, the pursuit of riches, and fondness for luxurious living. In short, from a variety of causes, the era of secularization, in which the human side of man's life was chiefly regarded, was supplanting the era of authority, in which man's destiny in his future life had been the exclusive preoccupation of all. Let us take some illustrations from instances of this change of mind or of public attention in Europe towards the close of the mediseyal era proper, and we can then best see what objects were substituted for the previous exclusive devotion to the interests of the Church, and why their pursuit at last completely overshadowed the position which the Church had formerly occupied. Perhaps the first great subject which interested in common the rulers of Europe, who may be considered the representatives of the public opinion of the time, when the bonds of the Church's discipline were felt less heavily by them, was a desire to build up in their respective countries nations in our modern sense^ — that is, to estab- lish a central monarchical authority with a uniform rule over a large district peopled by the same race. To do this it was necessary not only to suppress the local feudal sovereignties among whom the rule of the land and its inhabitants had been divided, but to give practical shape 38 446 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. also to a theory of exclusive nationality of which the Church had given no example and with which she could have no sympathy. The extreme outgrowth of this sen- timent, it may be said, was the substitution of patriotism for religion, loyalty to the State for faith in the Church. The Church had always claimed universal sway, not merely from the nature of its constitution, of which the very essence was a common recognition of the equality of all mankind in its eyes and their obligation of obedience to a common rule, but also because, wdth its usual pre- science, it foresaw that separate national kingdoms might mean in the end, as turned out to be the case, separate national Churches, — a condition of things in w^hich the unity of the Church, and especially the claim of com- mon obedience to the See of Eome, might be seriously endangered. The Holy Roman Empire was founded on this essentially anti-national theory. But the Church was powerless to check the new-born ambition of the kings of Europe to found powerful nationalities and family dynasties. The movement was a general one, and its execution absorbed much of the attention heretofore given to Church questions, and directed the thoughts and actions of those who then ruled Europe into a different if not an opposite channel. There was as yet no open hostility to the Church ; but a national policy of governing meant one not controlled by Church influence or authority. It is not necessary to repeat here the story of the process by which the great iiefs in different countries in Europe were gradually NATIONAL POLICY AND annexed to the crown. It has been seen iK^^i^ys in France, in the fifteenth century, by vam established the royal authority firmly throughout the kingdom and became King of France in reality as well as in name ; how the power of the English nobility was ruined by the Wars of the Roses, which resulted in making Henry VIII. a more powerful monarch than any of his predecessors; how, in Spain, the various kingdoms of that country had become united under the sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, and a centralized mon- archy had been founded by the suppression of all local jurisdictions, as well of the nobles as of the towns; how even in Germany, where the feudal principle, as opposed to that of centralization, finally prevailed, large states with distinct interests, such as Prussia and Austria, were created. Everywhere about the same time a common sentiment, the desire to establish distinct and powerful nationalities, prevailed. The nation, or the king as representing it, — national or dynastic interests, in short, — soon occupied that foremost place in men's minds which they have ever since held, to the exclusion of the policy which had previously pre- vailed, of maintaining by secular means the authority of the Church. The creation of nationalities in the modern sense gave rise to a multitude of new and conflicting interests, and to policies for promoting them essentially worldly in the Church's sense. Their harmonious or- ganization was a task of the most difficult and delicate kind, and engrossed the exclusive attention of the best 448 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. trained men ; and in the execution of such a work little or no aid could be expected from the theory, or practice of the Church. Indeed, the advancement of many of those interests which had become essential to the nation's life, the chief object of which was the supply of needs mainly of a selfish and material kind, was inconsistent not only with the principle upon which the Church's authority w^as maintained, but also with that conception of the true ends of man's life which had been character- istic of the mediaeval era. Men's tempers were not changed, at least consciously, but the aim of their lives was totally different from what it had been. The rulers of Europe were quite as warlike in the twelfth century as they were in the six- teenth, but how different were the motives which guided them ! There were no national wars of ambition during the mediseval era : if an invasion took place such as that of France by England (during the Hundred Years' War), it was to support a claim, as in the case of Edward III., by inheritance, and not to extend dominion by robbery. The Church (sometimes, it is true, by making very fine and subtle distinctions) never recognized the lawfulness of war among Christian men, except as an appeal to God to decide the right. There was but one war, or one form of war, which the Church encouraged, and that was for the defence of the faith and the extirpation of the Infidel. But that reverence and obedience to the Church's au- thority which had moved all Europe, by the one common impulse which it felt during the mediaeval era, to join at EFFECT OF NA TIONAL WARS. 449 the Church's command in an effort to rescue the Holy- Sepulchre from the Infidel, was out of date in the middle of the fifteenth century almost as much as it is now. It was not becalise men had ceased to love war; but when nations became developed into nationalities, with a powerful national organization, they fought for different objects and were moved by different impulses. The Church always claimed that one of the most important objects of her mission on earth was to secure peace and order. The history of the Middle Age would hardly prove that she had been successful in this mis- sion ; yet it is a significant fact that no sooner had the principle of nationalities become the settled policy of Europe in place of that of Church authority, than, for a time at least, confusion and anarchy everywhere prevailed. National rivalries were excited, and national wars — wars of ambition only, of which the desire to gratify the pride, to advance the family, or to extend the dominions of the rulers of the principal kingdoms, was the moving impulse — became for centuries the normal condition of Europe. It is hard to find any other name or motive, for instance, for such wars as the expedition of Charles VIII. against Naples, or for the interminable conflict between Charles V. and Francis I., in which Henry VIII. became involved. Still, these wars were the off- spring of a national, or at least of a dynastic, impulse, and they not only directed men's attention to objects far other than those which the Church would have approved or encouraged in the day when it was the dominant power 38-'^ 450 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. in Europe, but they formed also a standard by which the decline of that power may be measured. The Church itself at that time, strange to say, or rather its visible head, the Pope, had become so oblivious of the traditions of his high office as to be engaged in wars with the same worldly and ambitious ends in view as his fellow-sovereigns in Europe. The Popas set a bad example in the fifteenth century to those kings who loved war and who were striving by it to extend their dominions in order to gratify their ambition or to aggrandize their families. Towards the close of the Middle Age, in the fifteenth century, the Popes had ceased to rule Europe by that moral power which had been enthroned in the persons of such men as Gregory the Great, Hildebrand, or even Innocent III. Their authority as heads of the Church had not only sensibly declined, for reasons which I have fully discussed in previous chapters, but, strange to say, they themselves seem by their policy to have recognized the altered con- dition of the times. Hence they appear in the history of the fifteenth century as Italian princes, with the same anxious desire to provide for their families, to found dynasties, and to extend their territory, as moved in those days the other rulers of Europe in Italy and elsewhere, and no longer in the august and imposing form of God's vicegerents on earth. Sixtus IV., In- nocent VIII., Alexander VI., do not seem a whit less worldly, or less moved by worldly ambition and policy, than those kings of Europe who were then striving to POSITION OF THE POPES. 451 consolidate a power founded on purely selfish and dynastic interests. The Popes in those days seem to have been regarded by their brother potentates as quite on a level with them, — that is, simply as rivals in pursuit of the same earthly objects. Hence one of the signs of the decadence of the papal authority was the readiness with which the Pope's territory was invaded by men calling themselves Catholics, whenever a policy of conquest of any Euro- pean power made it convenient to do so. In former ages and under the old Popes such an attempt would have been regarded as sacrilegious, and excommunica- tion would have at once followed. Charles YIII., how- ever, marched through the papal territory to his con- quest of Naples without any fear of the Pope's weapons, spiritual or carnal, and would have hesitated as little to fight against the troops of the Church as against those of any Italian prince who might oppose his advance. The Popes in the fifteenth century were mixed up with all the intrigues for the dismemberment of Italy and with the claims made by each robber for a share of the spoil; and no wonder, when the august functions of the head of the Church were eclipsed by the pretensions of an Italian prince seeking only to extend his worldly power and to found a family, that the power which had so long ruled the destinies of Europe, which was, after all, a power on a moral basis, the public opinion of Europe, fast crumbled away. The tradition of the time when all Europe obeyed one 452 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY, spiritual head still survived, but, practically, long before the Reformation the bond of the old allegiance was broken. Men who cherished this tradition were struck with horror when they heard that Francis I., the eldest son of the Church, as he proudly called himself, had entered into an alliance with the Infidel Turk against Charles Y., the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, — that the lilies of France were mingled with the crescent of the Infidel in the assault upon the Christian Empe- ror's stronghold ; but what must have been their dismay when they heard that this very Emperor, who theoreti- cally held his office by the authority of the Pope, had not only besieged Rome with an army of German Prot- estant landsknechts, but had made the Pope prisoner, and that he had at last been crowned Emperor by this very Pope on condition that he would restore his family, the Medici, to the sovereignty of Florence ! Thus, naturally and necessarily, the restraints of the era of authority became gradually loosened by the attitude which the Popes in the fifteenth century, who had been the heads of the system enforcing such authority, had assumed. It is impossible, it seems to me, to overestimate the encourage- ment given by the attitude of these Popes to the substi- tution in Europe of the worldly and secular policy of the nation for the spiritual authority of the Church and exclusive devotion to its. interests. But besides this new policy of nationalities, with its disintegrating effect upon the Church's authority, various other tendencies, all leading to the same end, that of WORLDLINESS AND LUXURY. 453 subverting the exclusive authority of the papal system, combined to bring the mediaeval era to a close and to aAvaken a permanent interest in a totally new class of subjects. Men became worldly as their control over the forces of nature increased, and asceticism formed no longer the ideal conception of life. Wherever there was commerce, in Italy, in Flanders, in the towns of Germany, the new life penetrated. The great objects of men, as they grew richer, were to increase steadily the share of comfort accessible to all, to stimulate man's intellectual forces so that the fruit of utility in its widest sense should be produced in the amelioration of his condition and in the increase of his knowledge. Thus they sought to secure industrial development, lasting tranquillity, and universal harmony, to provide for the most thorough investigation of all subjects, and to encourage the appreciation of all objects of human and natural interest. The luxury and magnificence of those who had become rich in commercial Europe in the fifteenth century were in as great contrast with that poverty of the preceding age, which the Church had exalted as the very crown of all virtues, as with the senseless vanity which is so char- acteristic of many rich people of our own day. Con- sider the manner in which the Medici employed their wealth (and they had hosts of imitators wherever the new tide of riches had reached in Europe), and mark the contrast between them and the mere rich man, both mediaeval and modern. We should not forget that \ 454 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. the era of the highest glory of scholars in Italy, when their title to consideration had almost supplanted that of the authority which had so long ruled the world, and when they were honored as they had never been before since the days of Pericles, was the era in which great fortunes were first made in that country by trade. The Medici's private fortune, as it has been well said, was a sort of public treasury freely open to learned men. Scholars were in those days the companions, friends, and correspondents of true merchant princes like the Medici in every part of Europe. Costly manuscripts were pro- cured from the distant East for these scholars; their works of inestimable value were published at the expense of the merchants who had found out the noblest use of wealth. Statues and medals were collected for the benefit of the investigation of artists ; the learned were honored guests at the tables of the wealthy ; and for the first time (alas ! perhaps also the last) the rich man and the scholar met on those terms of cordial familiarity and sincere friendship which removed any sense of obligation be- tween them, standing as they did on a footing of equality as man to man, and without a thought of any degrading relation as of an inferior to a superior. Such was the representative typical man in Italy on the eve of the Renaissance, or the age of transition from the mediaeval to the modern era. I have dwelt upon his position and influence, not merely because the increase of the power of scholars marked the decadence of the Church's authority, but also because the most hopeful era in LIFE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGE. 455 European history was that in which scholars held their true place. During the whole of the fifteenth century, everywhere in Europe where there were riches and that prosperity which riches bring, the new secular spirit was rapidly developed. In Flanders, which was then a hive of industry, we notice it, just as we do in Italy at the same period. " Man. abandoned,'' says M. Taine, "the ascetic and ecclesiastical regime that he might interest himself in nature and enjoy life. The ancient compression was relaxed : he began to prize strength, health, beauty, and pleasure. . On all sides we see the mediaeval spirit under- going change and disintegration, ^n elegant and refined architecture, very diiferent from the early Gothic, con- verted stone into lace, festooning churches with pinna- cles, trefoils, and intricate mullions, so that they became like vast caskets, the products rather of fancy than of faith as of old, less calculated to excite piety than wonder. In like manner chivalry, which in its earlier day was simply the highest lay service of the Church, became a mere parade. In Chaucer and in Froissart we are spectators of the knights of the time, — their pomp, their tourneys, their processions, and their banquets (all the marks of the new reign of frivolity and fashion), tlieir extravagant and overcharged costumes, the crea- tions of an infatuated and licentious imagination. In short, in France, in Flanders, and in Italy, the life of the court and the princes seems a perpetual carnival." At the marriage of Philip the Good, Duke of 456 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. Burgundy (1420), the streets of Bruges were hung with tapestry; for eight days and eight nights a stone lion spurted forth Rhine wine, while a stone stag discharged Beaune Burgundy, and at meal-time a unicorn poured out rose-water or malvoisle. "On the entry of the Dauphin into the city," says Taine, " eight hundred merchants of divers nations advanced to meet him, all clad in garments of silk and velvet. At another cere- monial, the duke appears with a saddle and bridle covered with precious stones; nine pages covered with plumes and jewels followed him, one of the pages bear- ing a salad-bowl of the value of one hundred thousand crowns, the duke himself wearing jewels estimated in value at a million." And yet these men, in the midst of all this pomp, ostentation, and luxury, claimed to be good Christians, and especially good Catholics. If such was the case, it is clear that obedience to the authority of the Church, which during the Middle Age had en- joined the practice of asceticism and self-denial, was no longer yielded, just as the virtues which had been re- garded of old as typical of the true Christian had gone entirely out of fashion. While men professed to respect the authority of the Church, and claimed to be, above all else, good orthodox Catholics, the whole policy of their lives was such as to destroy the faith of the world both in the Church's authority and teachings. I have thus endeavored to explain how the two classes of men who have ruled Europe in modern times — the scholars and the rich — gradually established their power INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. 457 in the fifteenth century in formidable, even if uncon- scious, antagonism to that of the Church. The result was a complete revolution in the ruling power of Eu- rope, no less real because it was silent and gradual, and this power, becoming first the strong supporter of the national as opposed to the ecclesiastical policy of rule, and afterwards wholly identified with it, broke up the mediaeval conception of life and its government. This movement was accelerated by the inventions and maritime discoveries which, before the fifteenth century closed, inspired man with greater confidence in himself, because it gave him fuller control over the forces of nature and new power to make them minister to his selfish desires. Certainly it needs no argument to show that whatever other effect upon the general life and ideas of the time may have been produced by the general use of gunpowder in war, and the invention of printing, these changes must have very sensibly affected the position of those who had wielded absolute authority both in the Church and the State. They meant that power was being transferred from the hands of the few to those of the many; they were potent agencies, first, to instruct the many as to the desirable and attractive objects of life which were within their grasp, and, secondly, to teach the common soldiers of the armies for the first time in history that they had become by the use of fire-arms practically equal in force to those whose superiority in war, as it was conducted during the Middle Age, had practically overwhelmed 39 458 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, them. We may be quite sure that the sense of their importance and power, and of the possibilities within their reach, thus begotten among vast multitudes who for many generations had been only humble and sub- missive slaves to power, as embodied in the Church or the monarch, was the true germ of all the revolts against the authority of both which have characterized European life ever since the sixteenth century. The fifteenth century was fruitful in these germs, which grew up and literally choked out the life of pre- ceding ages. Not only were men's minds enlarged and stimulated by the results of the invention of printing, and their power against the old system of rule immeas- urably increased by the use of gunpowder in war, but new avenues were opened about the same time to the fresh activity and energy of that class of the popula- tion, far the most numerous of any, whose special in- terests had hitherto been wholly neglected by those who governed them. Among other means of gaining wealth and power which tempted the new-born spirit of enterprise and ad- venture, were those presented by the great maritime dis- coveries of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth century. These stimulated most powerfully the imagi- nation of men who had just become conscious of their power. The discovery of America, the voyage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and the circumnavi- gation of the globe by Magellan and his voyage through the Pacific Ocean, were events of momentous magnitude. COMMERCIAL INTERESTS. producing quite as much change in the moral and ia- tellectual life of Europe as in the geographical notions which then prevailed. It was not merely that by these discoveries a new hemisphere had been added to the Old World, but that the new interests which were created by these discoveries totally changed the current of men^s thoughts and opinions, and that, these interests becoming, as time went on, more and more important, the result was that from that day to this the relations of America to Europe have had a preponderating influence in deter- mining the general policy of the government of the principal nations of the world. Commercial interests, industrial progress, colonial dominion, national policy in place of dynastic or family aggrandizement, — these have been the springs of government in modern times ; and their source is to be sought in the discovery of America and the new methods of reaching the East. The Church's authority, at least as an infallible ex- pounder of scientific truth, was not strengthened by these discoveries. Her cosmogony, by which she taught that the earth must be flat and that there could be no anti- podes, was proved, of course, to be fallacious. And yet it is worthy of remark, as a strange mingling of the old with the new, and as showing the general prevalence of the belief that the great object of maritime discovery was to make the inhabitants of the new countries Christians, that as soon as Ferdinand and Isabella had learned from Columbus the success of his voyage they made a formal application to the Pope (Alexander VI.) to confirm to 460 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. the crown of Spain the countries which the great navi- gator had discovered. And the Pope, exercising in the premises the power of the chief and universal bishop of Christendom, granted the application, and fixed as the boundary between the dominions of Spain and Portugal a line drawn from the Arctic to the Antarctic circle, one hundred leagues west of the Azores. Another curious illustration of this mingling of tlie old faith with the new desires in men's minds in this era is found in the famous mediaeval legend of Faust, or of the Devil and Dr. Faustus, as it was then called. The scholars of that day were allured by the secret of enjoy- ment as the source of strength possessed by the ancients, but they believed that they could recover this lost treas- ure only by the suicide of their souls, or, what was equiv- alent to it, the censure of the Church. " So great was the temptation,'^ says Mr. Symonds, " that Faustus paid the price. After imbibing all the knowledge of his age, he sold himself to the Devil, in order that his thii^t for experience might be quenched and his grasp on the world strengthened. His first use of this dearly-bought power was to make blind Homer sing to him ; Amphion tunes his harp in concert with Mephistopheles; Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride. The story of Faustus is, therefore, a parable of the impotent yearnings of the spirit in the Middle Age, its passionate aspirations, its fettered curiosity, combined with tlj^ conscience-stricken desire to pluck the forbidden fruit," POPULAR DISCONTENT. 461 Nor was this restlessness confined to rich men, or strong men, or learned men. It had penetrated deep into the minds of the niasses, and gave token that a new era, that of an aggressive individualism, was approaching. This was manifested in different ways in different coun- tries of Europe as the peculiar circumstances of each differed, but the spirit of revolt was conspicuous in all during the fifteenth century. In England it showed itself by a popular insurrection against the social evils of the time in Church and State, which is known in his- tory as Jack Cade's insurrection. In Germany, where the mass of the peasants were so utterly crushed by the despotism of their rulers that no power of resistance was left, the same spirit timidly manifested itself in the popular literature of the time. The most remarkable books in Germany of that time are the Eulenspiegel (Owl-Glass) and Reinecke Fuchs (Reynard the Fox), and they both have this common characteristic, hostility to the existing social condition, and especially to the abuses of the Church. The fable of the fox is made a symbolical representation of the defects and vices of human society, and it is applied to the conduct of dif- ferent classes of men, which is brought to the standard of the sober good sense and homely morality which are asserted to be the only true source of the claim whereby kings hold their cro^vns, princes their lands, and all authorities and powers their due value. Such were some of the germs which, fermenting in the popular mind in Germany, grew in fifty years with such amazing rapidity 39* 462 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. that they form the true basis of the Reformation of Luther and of the Peasants' War. This same era of transition, which I have called that of secularization, had its peculiar characteristics of a lit- erary kind in Italy, as elsewhere. Ever since the days of the Emperor Frederick II., the free-thinking king of the two Sicilies, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the tendency of the writings of those who moved the popular enthusiasm was against the principle of ab- solute authority and in favor of individualism. This tendency showed itself by constant appeals to the human side of man's nature, as opposed to the old notion that man's position in this world was chiefly that of proba- tion or preparation for a better state. Petrarch and Boccaccio, the great poets of that time, have been called essentially humanists. Their humanism consisted in a new and vital perception of the dignity of man as a rational being, apart from theological determinations, and in the further conception that classic literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom. Out of the developments of these opinions grew the Renaissance, or the revival of learn- ing, which was simply a revolt against the old theories of belief, made in utter disgust with their barren results, and using the free spirit of antiquity as an instrument of reform. But the history of this glorious revival and of its permanent influence upon the civilization of Europe does not come within the scope of these studies. I have thus come through long ages of night and CONCLUSION. 463 darkness to the dawn of that new day, in the splendor of whose meridian we now live. If I have taught any j lister appreciation of our own modern life by showing how, born out of chaos, it has been nurtured by the gifts of the noblest intellects of all time, and its better part preserved amidst the strife and convulsions of ages, I shall have accomplished my purpose. APPENDIX. BOOKS OF EEFERENCE. The following is a list of books of authority, in French and English, concerning the history of the Middle Age. It might be made much fuller ; but I have thought it best to give the titles of those books only which maybe found in any well-furnished public library. r/*/^^^.-^ j^^e ^«^^/i:J . jp^ •^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Eoman Empire. - Milman, History of Latin Christianity. N Merivale, History of the Romans. Champagny, Etudes sur I'Empire Romain. "^ Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration. ^ Seeley, Roman Imperialism. Dureau de la Malle, Economic politique des Romains. Ozanam, Civilization in the Fifth Century. ^ Laurent, Etudes sur I'Histoire de I'Humanite. Savigny, Droit Romain. ■^ Guizot, Civilization in France. ^ Bryce, Holy Roman Empire. "~ ^ Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages. "^ Coulanges, La Cite antique. ' Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders. ^ Maine, Village Communities. -Maine, Ancient Law. 'Flint, Philosophy of History. Ockley, History of the Saracens. ■^Irving, Life of Mahomet. Bos worth Smith, Life of Mohammed. 405 4^6 APPENDIX. - Clarke, Ten Great Religions. Kenan, Etudes. Eenan, L'Histoire Religieuse. Conde, Arabs in Spain, ^ Finlay, History of Greece. M'Lear, Early Missionaries. Thierry, Recits Merovingiens. ^ Thierry, Conquete d'Angleterre. ^Thierry, Histoire du Tiers-Etat. ^ Martin, History of France. Mullinger, Schools under Charlemagne. Boutaric, La France sous Philippe le Bel. Boutaric, St. Louis et Alphonse de Poitiers. Cantu, Histoire des Italiens. ^Sismondi, Histoire des Ropubliques Italiens. ^Prescott, Life of Philip II. SFreeman, Norman Conquest. "Freeman, Historical Geography. Palgrave, English Commonwealth. ■^Stubbs, Constitutional Histor^^^ England. ""Hallam, Middle Ages. \y^ Pearson, History of th^ Middle Age in England. Creasy, History of the Middle Age in England. ^Xrreen, History of the English People. Knight, History of England. Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury. ^ Remusat, Life of Anselm. *~"Michaud, Histoire des Croisades. Cherrier, Histoire des Empereurs de la Maison de Souabe. ^ Coxe, House of Austria. ^ Schaff, Church History. ■""Ranke, History of the Popes. Knighton, Life of Frederick II. "NKohlrausch, History of Germany. APPENDIX. 407 Lewis, History of Germany. Haureau, La Scolastique. Lacordaire, Vie de St. Dominic. Oliphant, Life of St. Francis of Assisi. ■^Symonds, The Kenaissance in Italy. Burckhardt, The Renaissance in Italy, ^^aine, Italv and the Netherlands. ^Newman, The Idea of a University. * ' Maurice, Mediaeval Philosophy. Thornton, History of Labor. "* Thorold Rogers, History of Prices. ^Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe. SLecky, History of Rationalism. ^Lecky, History of European Morals. Donol, Histoire des Classes ouvrieres. yin9ard, Histoire du Travail. Levasseur, Les Classes ouvrieres. Depping, Histoire du Commerce dans le Levant, Worn, Histoire de la Ligue Hanseatique. Camden Society's publications. INDEX. Alaric, 23. Visigothic king, 60. Alcuin as a teacher, 365. Alfred of England, 210. American life, historical basis, 191. Anglo Saxons, whence they came, 199. occupation of England, 201. organization and traits, 203. Antrustions, 72. Arabian boundaries, 102. commerce, 103. religion, 105. Arian Goths, 42. Arians, toleration of Catholic wor- ship, 45. Attila and Pope Leo, 32, and the Huns, 262. B. Barbarians, tribes, 23. classes among, 44. education, 46. equality and personal indepen- dence, 47. ideas of crime, 49. Battle of Poitiers, 77. Benedictine rule, 337. Bishops, mediaeval, 273, Bond-laborers, 393. Byzantine Empire, 107. C. Canon law, 381. Capet, the family of, 147. Champs de Mars, 76. Charlemagne, family, 75, crowned Emperor, 82. conquests, 86. King of the Franks, 89. , capitularies, 91. patron of learning, 93. hero of legend, 94. failure of his system, 95, 120. founder of modern Germany, / exteftttif his Empire, 129. degeneracy of his race, 131, attitude towards the Church, 280. Chef-d'oeuvre, 402. Chivalry as a moral influence, 352. ' Christianity before Constantine, 28. influence of moral precepts, 27. Church, primitive organization of, 29. after Constantine, 55. under the Merovingians, 62. influence of its unity and visi- bility, 271. ecclesiastical punishments, 295. the Babylonian captivity, 299. the great schism, 300. Council of Constance, 301. 40 469 470 INDEX. 1^ Church, reaction against its au- thority, 303. her authority in science over- thrown, 460. Cities of Asia Minor, their wealth, 427. Civil and canon law, study of, 381. Clement of Ireland, 367. Clovis, Roman Consul, 52. baptism of, 59. Collegia, 388. Commerce, its humanizing influ- ence, 435. fosters religious toleration, 436 and modern habits of life, 43 and international relations, 43: Condottieri, 326. Conversion of Northern tribes, 65. . Crusaders, characteristics, 354. .J Crusades affect commerce, 427. against the Albigensesy 355. in Spain, 357. D. Discovery of America, effect upon commercial policy, 459. Dominican and Franciscan school- men, 384. ^ — A --E. England, Roman conquest and rule, 193. Danish invasions, 209. Christianity introduced, 211. the Church becomes Roman, 213. Dunstan, 215. the Norman conquest, 218. feudal system under the Nor- man kings, 220. Archbishop Langton, 224. England, King John and Magna Charta, 224. Simon de Montfort, 227. rise of House of Commons, 227. Lanfranc, 228. Anselm archbishop, 229. Norman policy towards the Church, 229. policy of the Church, 231. Dominicans and Franciscans, 233. Wyclif and Lollardy, 234. Hundred-Years' AVar, 235. Anglo-Norman life, 237. the towns and the glides, 239. condition of the people, 241. Edward III. sells manumis- sions, 396. the labor question, 411. English life, historical basis, 189. possessions in France, 235. Equality among the barbarians, 47. Europe after Charlemagne's death, 129. Faust, legend of, in the Middle Age, 460. Feudal system, sketch of, 135. -^ Fiefs, how conferred, 137. characteristics of, 143. Fixed services, 394. France, Capet, Hugh, king, 147. English kings feudal lords in, 149. free cities in, 151. Hundred- Years* War, 153. roturiers become nobles in, 153. States-General, 154, 299. centralization, 155. absorption of fiefs> 156. INDEX, 471 France, natural boundaries, 157. Ilanseatic League, its work, 431. Franciscans, life of, 345. and Edward III., 433. Frank-pledge, 404. its final dissolution, 434. Franks, original seat of, 25. Heraclius, 108. their position and character, Hermits and cenobites in Egypt, 58. 335. Frederick 11. Emperor, 317. Ilildebrand, Gregory VII., 283. Free towns, political system in, 389. Holy Roman Empire, theory of, 83. exactions in, 406. G. I. Iconoclastic dispute, 266. German tribes, 161. India, civilization of, 414. dynasties, 164. Indirect influences in history, 333. Germany, development of feudal Individualism and authority, 441. system in, 159. Invaders, permanent occupation of, Henry of Saxony, 163.—* 23. feudal independence, 165. number of, 51. free cities, 167. principles of government, 53. their kings Roman Emperors, Invasions, 21. 170. nature of, 50. Otho the Great in Italy, 171. Inventions and maritime discover- relations of Emperors to the ies, 457. Popes, m.. "Investitures," the, 176, 289. rule of Emperors in Italy, 175. Italian cities, trafiic, 425. the Investitures, 176, 289. '" Italy, sentiment of nationality in, Henry IV. and Gregory VII., 306. 177. and the Lombards, 310. Frederick Barbarossa and the civil power of the Bishop of towns in Italy, 179. Rome, 311. ' ~- Electors of the Emperor, 183. castles and city walls built, 313. Council of Constance, 185. Lombard League, 315. results of decentralization, 187. city republics, 319. Rudolph of Hapsburg, 187. tyrants and usurpers in the Guelphs and Ghibelines, 316. cities, 325. Glides, origin of, 403. the ideal Italian prince, 327. and confreries, 397. tyranny and culture combined. 329. H. invasion by Charles VIII. of France, 330. Ilanseatic League, 429. dynasties at the close of the its origin and objects, 430, fifteenth century, 331, 472 INDEX. J. Jeanne d'Arc, 155. John of England, 149. K. Knights employed in the lay service of the Church, 348. trained by the Church, 349. the point of honor, 351. L. Labor in antiquity, 387. La Jacquerie, 409. Latin language, 40. Le droit d'aubaine, 439. Literature, popular, in Germany and Italy, 461. Lombard League, the, 315. Luxury and wealth in Flanders, 455. M. Mayors of the Palace, 74. Mediaeval knight, the, 347. Medici, how they employed their riches, 464. Medicine, study of, 383. Merovingian kingdom, 71. Middle Age, duration, 13. general characteristics, 14. isolation of the people, 417. Mohammed, early life, 112. doctrines, religious ideas, 113. not an impostor, 117. conversion oif the Arabs, 119 armed propagandism, 121. conquests of his followers, 123. Monasticism not confined to Chris- tian practice, 334, work of Benedictine monks, 339. N. National policy and ambition, 447. wars and mediaeval ideas, 449. Nationalities and the Church, 445. Nations in universities, 377. Northmen, invasion, 145. Papal rule, its predominance, 251. theory, 252. missionaries, 259. Patriarchates, 255. Peasant proprietors and yeomen, 395. Pepin, crowned king,«78. Patrician of Rome, 81. Persia in the time of Mohammed, 111. Philip Augustus, 377. Philip the Good, magnificence of his wedding, 456. Pilate, superscription on the cross, 39. Pope, supremacy of the, 257. position in the later Middle Age, 451. Popes and the invasions, 261. greatness of the early, 267. effect of their rule, 269. growth of their pretensions, 275. alliance with the Emperors, eff"ects of, 277. disputes with different sover- eigns, 294. , Realists and Nominalists, 374. Riches, increase of, as affecting the Church's power, 453. INDEX. 473 Roman Empire, Western, date of Science and the Middle Age, 442. extinction, 13. Serfs and villeins, 143. civilization, elements of, 16. Simony and a married clergy, 284. Empire, limits, 18. Slavery and the invasions, 390. Empire, prosperity, 19. Slaves in Rome, 389. cities in Gaul, 20. Statute of Laborers, 397. materialism, 27. , administration, 34. T. rule of the provinces, 37. niHuicipia, 37, 38. Taille and hauban, 408. army in time of Mohammed, Teutonic tribes, 25. 111. Theodosius, penance of, 32. Rome, recognition of Pope of, 56. Thierry, description of the life of commerce' and Roman civiliza- the Frankish kings, 73. tion, 416. Trade, monopoly in towns, 400. commerce, routes to the East, 421. U. s. Ulphilas and the Goths, 45. Universals, 374. St. Ambrose, 32. University organization, 377. St. Anskar, 68. of Paris, and its power, 379. St. Augustine's theory, 264, 285. of Bologna, 380. St. Benedict, 337. Usury condemned by the Church, St. Bernard, 349. 435. St. Boniface, 6»^ St. Columban and St. Gall, 66. V. St. Dominic, 342. Vandals, 23. St. Francis of Assisi, 343. Venice, commercial policy, 426. Saracenic invasions, 99. Verdun, treaty of, 133. Saracens, commerce and civilization of the, 419. Saxon Heptarchy, 208. Scholasticism, 371. Schools, Imperial organization, 361. cathedral and monastic, 363. influence of the palace, 369. Village communities, 43. Visigoths, 23. W. Weregeld, 49. Workmen, education of, 401. Wyclif, 234. THE END. a.ixx»7x x/.nLXXi STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. 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