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 THE MAKING OF WESTERN EUROPE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 AN INTRODUCTORY 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE YEAR 1815 
 
 With Coloured and other Maps, Plans, 
 and Index 
 
 Vol. I. — From the Earliest Times to the End of the Middle 
 Ages. ss. 
 
 ,, II. — From Henry VII. to the Restoration. 5s. 
 
 „ III. — From Charles II. to the Beginning of the Great 
 War. 5s. 
 
 ,, IV. — The Great European War. 5s. 
 
 On the publication of the first volume of this work 
 in 1907, it was at once hailed as the most original and 
 stimulating presentment of English History that had up 
 to that time appeared. 
 
 It has received the warmest approval from teachers 
 and examiners alike, and each succeeding year (since its 
 publication) has only served to increase its popularity.
 
 L
 
 THE MAKING OF 
 WESTERN EUROPE 
 
 BEING AN ATTEMPT 
 TO TRACE THE FORTUNES OF 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE 
 ROMAN EMPIRE 
 
 BY Gf R: L. FLETCHER 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF ALL SOULS AND MAGDALEN COLLEGES, OXFORD 
 
 VOL. I.— THE DARK AGES 
 300-1000 A.D. 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN :\IURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1912
 
 First Edition . . . January 191 2 
 Reprinted .... February 191 2
 
 Mrs Opimian. — " I think, Doctor, you would not maintain 
 any opinion if you had not an authority two thousand 
 years old for it." 
 
 The Rev. Dr Opimian. — "Well, my dear, I think most 
 opinions worth maintaining have an authority of 
 about that age." I'eacock.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The genesis of the present attempt must be sought in 
 Professor W. P. Ker's fascinating book entitled TJie Dark 
 Ages, the first volume in Professor Saintsbury's series of 
 Periods of European Literature. I am not so vain as to 
 imagine that I can illustrate the political side of the 
 period as he has illustrated the literary side ; but it was 
 his book that first stimulated in me a sort of thirst to 
 know more about the Dark Ages, and, when once that 
 thirst was created, mere idleness prompted me to try and 
 put on paper, in simple form, such ideas as I had been 
 able to collect. 
 
 These ideas are very few. I am continually reminded 
 how little we know, how meagre and untrustworthy are 
 our authorities, how much, to use Mommsen's words, we 
 fall back upon ' the conventionally-received tradition 
 which assumes the name of history ... a mass of mostly 
 worthless legends, which have usually been put together 
 without discrimination of the true character, either of 
 legend or history.' 
 
 I have nothing new to contribute to the elucidation or 
 the testing of such legends. I have read a great many 
 chronicles of the Dark Ages, enjoyed some of them very 
 much, and been excessively bored by others. If I have 
 occasionally been led to quote from them passages 
 which more learned writers have not quoted, I have 
 also rejected a good many that are more or less 
 familiar to English readers. For I think that, as in 
 English history one becomes weary of the sparrow that 
 flew into the lighted hall at night, so in European history
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 it would not serve any good purpose to repeat the story, 
 humorous as it is, of Rollo's peculiar method of doing 
 homage to King Charles the Simple, especially as there is 
 no good evidence that Rollo did homage at all. 
 
 Of secondary, tertiary and modern * authorities,' I can 
 only claim to have read some of the most widely received 
 and ordinary writers in English, French, German and 
 Italian ; for I am unfortunately unacquainted with Magyar 
 and the various Slavonic tongues, in which, we are given 
 to understand, the most truly learned historical works are 
 now written. 
 
 This book, then, puts forward no claims except to give 
 the old story of the * Making of Western Europe ' in 
 rather simpler form than usual. It confines itself wholly 
 to Western Europe, because it is concerned only with the 
 fortunes of the ' Children of the Roman Empire ' ; and even 
 from that family it omits the history of one child, Britain, 
 or England, because the writer has already attempted 
 some illustrations of that history in another book. Thus, 
 should its life be prolonged to a second volume, it will 
 continue to exclude everything east and north of modern 
 Germany, everything east of modern Austria. 
 
 One who firmly believes, as I do, in the literal truth 
 of the essential facts of the gospel story, and yet cannot 
 accept any theory of inspiration in the writers of the 
 New Testament, still less of any continuous inspiration 
 of the Church, must necessarily find great difficulties in 
 dealing with Church History. I cannot help seeing how 
 thickly, even from the earliest times, the Church overlaid 
 the truth with masses of legend and superstition ; and yet 
 I feel both that her success in converting the world was 
 largely owing to her use of superstition, and also that 
 her conversion of the world was the greatest and best 
 fact in human history. Everyone, or almost everyone, 
 will admit the truth of the last statement ; but there is a 
 tendency at the present day, among a highly intellectual 
 school of Churchmen, to lay more stress upon the accretions 
 than upon the essence of Christianity. One hears of 
 divines who are ready to treat the Resurrection of Christ
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 as an allegory, while remaining quite sound on the 
 Apostolical Succession of the Episcopate. To me this 
 position seems somewhat illogical, and, though I shall 
 no doubt be scolded as anti-clerical, I shall comfort 
 myself by remaining a Christian. 
 
 I shall be scolded for other things also ; for I have 
 chosen to write 'Mahomet' rather than 'Muhammad,' 
 have spoken frequently of * France ' and ' Germany ' before 
 there were any countries generally known by those names, 
 and, while rejecting ' Mayence ' and * Treves ' in favour 
 of ' Mainz ' and ' Trier,' have treated ' Cologne ' as the 
 English for * Koln.' I also fear that those who have 
 special knowledge of particular subjects included in the 
 long period, 300-1000 A.D., will be able to point to many 
 mistakes in details. 
 
 I owe my greatest thanks to Mr Ernest Barker, Fellow 
 of St John's College, Oxford, for twice carefully reading 
 and revising this volume ; to the Rev. Dr Kidd of St Paul's, 
 Oxford, and to Mr D. G. Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean 
 Museum, for many invaluable corrections and suggestions 
 in the earlier chapters ; to Mr John Murray, who has added 
 to his labour of publication a most painstaking and useful 
 examination of my text and notes ; and to my son, 
 Mr W. G. Fletcher, for a final revision of the proof from 
 the literary point of view.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Disintegration ok the Empire, and the 
 Infancy of the Church 
 
 II. The Church Victorious and the Barharian 
 Invasions ..... 
 
 III. The Fate of Italy: the Goths to the Front 
 
 IV. The Empire not Dead yet 
 
 V. The New Nations .... 
 VI. Islam and Christendom 
 VII. Charles the Great .... 
 VIII. The Children still Clinging together . 
 IX. The Snapping of the Bonds . 
 
 Index ...... 
 
 43 
 
 83 
 
 114 
 
 155 
 192 
 236 
 270 
 322 
 
 383 
 
 IVl A P S 
 
 The Roman Empire, 300 a.d.-iooo a.d. 
 Western Europe, 300 a.d. 
 Western Europe, iooo a.d. . 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 . p. 40 
 
 a/ end of volume
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER I 
 
 The Sur.jECTS of this chapter are — (i) The causes of the unsatisfactory 
 condition of the Roman Empire in the third century after Christ, 
 especially its bad economic and financial condition ; its barren- 
 ness in the realm of the ideal ; the reforms of Diocletian and 
 Constantine. (2) Over against this, the history, so far as it can 
 be discovered, of the early years of the Christian Church down to 
 the great persecution of 303, usually attributed to Diocletian ; 
 what the Church's 'tradition ' meant to her; what she borrowed 
 from other faiths ; wherein she was well equipped for fighting the 
 battle against paganism ; the growth of her creeds, her canon, 
 her priesthood, her self-government. 
 
 For the Persons who will be mentioned in the chapter, the only 
 table that seems to be necessary is a list of the more important 
 of the Roman emperors. I use the names by which each is most 
 commonly known. For the successors to Diocletian, see Table 
 to Chapter II. 
 
 193 to 211 
 211 „ 217 
 
 
 
 
 B.C. 
 
 A.n. 
 
 
 Augustus • . . 27 to 14 
 
 
 
 
 A.D. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Septimius Severus 
 
 Tiberius 
 
 
 14 , 
 
 , 37 
 
 Caracalla 
 
 Caligul.i 
 
 
 
 37 , 
 
 . 41 
 
 
 
 Claudius 
 
 
 
 41 , 
 
 , 54 
 
 Decius. 
 
 Nero . 
 
 
 
 54 . 
 
 , 68 
 
 
 Galba . 
 
 
 
 68 , 
 
 , 69 
 
 
 Otho . 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 
 Valerian 
 
 Vitellius 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 
 Gallienus 
 
 Vespasian 
 
 
 
 69 , 
 
 , 79 
 
 — 
 
 Titus . 
 
 
 
 79 . 
 
 , 81 
 
 Claudius II. (Got!; 
 
 Domitian 
 
 
 
 81 , 
 
 - 96 
 
 — 
 
 Nerva . 
 
 
 
 96 , 
 
 , 98 
 
 Aurelian 
 
 Trajan 
 
 
 
 9,S , 
 
 , "7 
 
 — 
 
 Hadrian 
 
 
 
 117 , 
 
 , 138 
 
 Probus 
 
 Anloninus I'ius 
 
 
 138 , 
 
 , ifii 
 
 — 
 
 Marcus Aurt 
 
 liiis 
 
 
 161 , 
 
 , 180 
 
 Diocletian . 
 
 249 » 251 
 
 253 
 260 
 
 260 
 
 268 
 
 268 „ 270 
 
 270 
 
 , 275 
 
 276 , 
 
 , 282 
 
 284 
 
 , 305
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE, AND 
 THE INFANCY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 Proxime Dis Consul, qui tantae prospicis Urbi, 
 Qua nihil in terris complectitur altius aether ; 
 Cujus nee spatium visus, nee corda decorem. 
 Nee laudem vox ulla capit ; quae luce metalli 
 Aemula vicinis fastigia conserit astris ; 
 Quae septem scopulis zonas imitatur Olynipi, 
 Armorum legumque parens ; quae fundit in omnes 
 Imperium, primique dedit cunabula juris. 
 Haec est, exiguis quae finibus orta tetendit 
 In geminos axes, parvaque a sede profectas 
 Dispersit cum Sole manus. Haec obvia fatis, 
 Innumeras uno gereret cum tempore pugnas, 
 Hispanas caperet, Siculas obsideret urbes, 
 Et Galium terris prosterneret, aequore Paenum, 
 Nunquam succubuit damnis, et territa nullo 
 Vulnere, post Cannas major Trebiamque fremebat ; 
 Et cum jam premerent flammae, murumque feriret 
 Hostis, in extremos aciem mittebat Iberos. 
 Nee stetit Oceano ; remis([ue ingressa profundum 
 Vincendos alio quaesivit in orbe Britannos. 
 Haec est, in grcmium victos quae sola recepit, 
 Matris, non dominae, ritu : civesque vocavit 
 Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit. 
 Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes. 
 Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes ; 
 Quod sedem mutare licet ; quod cernere Thulen 
 Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus ; 
 Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Orontem ; 
 Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nee terminus unquam 
 Romanae ditionis erit.' 
 
 * Consul, our next to God ! preserve this State 
 Beyond all else in the World's compass great ! 
 
 2
 
 CLAUDIAN ON ROME 3 
 
 These lines were not written, as one might suppose them 
 to have been, at the date when Trajan had extended the 
 Pax Roviana over the civilised world, and the Roman 
 Empire was at the height of its glory and prosperity ; but 
 nearly three hundred years later when the Empire was 
 tottering to its fall, and Alaric was marshalling his Goths 
 for the sack of Rome. The consul whom the last poet of 
 the ancient world thus addressed was a Vandal and 
 probably a traitor. But Virgil himself could not have 
 
 The breadth of Rome's domain what view can reach ? 
 
 What heart her loveliness? her fame what speech ? 
 
 With burnish'd pinnacles that gleam on high 
 
 She flings her challenge to the star-sown sky, 
 
 Mother of War and Peace ! whose mountains seven 
 
 Mimick on earth the order'd spheres of Heaven ; 
 
 Who, ere her hand had tam'd the World to awe, 
 
 Nurs'd in her walls the cradle of all Law ; 
 
 From one small city to her outmost goal 
 
 Her battle line was flung from pole to pole ; 
 
 The Fate, that envied her, beheld with fear 
 
 Her hundred fights in one triumphant year. 
 
 Beleaguered Sicily, dismantled Spain, 
 
 Gaul crush'd on land, and Carthage on the main ; 
 
 No loss could daunt her, no defeat could tire, 
 
 Trebia but rous'd and Cannae warm'd her ire. 
 
 While she, the boasted spoil of hostile brands, 
 
 Marshall'd by Ebro's bank her war-worn l)ands, 
 
 Nor stopped for ocean, till with prosp'rous oar 
 
 Her navies moor'd by Britain's sunless shore. 
 
 She — prouder boast than other conqueror knew — 
 
 Gently her captives to her bosom drew. 
 
 Mother not mistress, made the thrall her kin 
 
 And 'neath her wing call'd all the Nations in. 
 
 Who owes, and owes not to her parent sway 
 
 His civick rights in utmost lands to-day? 
 
 His pastime journeys the wide Empire o'er, 
 
 Thule or the horrid desert to explore ? 
 
 Orontes knows in Syria, Rhone in Gaul 
 
 One speech, one race, one governance for ail, 
 
 Whatever is Earth is Rome ; Rome stands till Earth shall fall ! ' 
 
 ' 1 owe this transliUion to my friend, iMr R. A. Knox, l-'cUow of Tiinity 
 College, Oxford.
 
 4 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 uttered a more adoring or a more utterly sincere belief 
 in Roma Dea. 
 
 If the starting-point of all intelligent interest in the 
 past is wonder, there surely never was such a subject for 
 wonder as the Roman Empire. And perhaps the most 
 astonishing thing about it is, the very short time during 
 which it was what we should now call a ' flourishing 
 organic state.' Financially, it seems never to have been 
 sound at all. The conquests both of the Republic and the 
 Principate seem to have been largely irrespective of any 
 desire for the opening of new markets,^ nor were they 
 prompted by expansion of population ; individuals reaped 
 enormous wealth from them, but, in spite of the theory 
 that the lands of the conquered were State property, the 
 State profited little, except in the exemption from direct 
 taxes that Italy enjoyed in consequence. Economically, the 
 capital came very early in its history to depend not upon 
 its own canipagna^ or even upon Italy, but upon distant 
 provinces, first Sicily, then Africa, then Egypt,'- for its 
 daily bread. Still more are we astonished to read that at 
 least as early as the end of the third century the chief 
 transactions between the State and the taxpayer, as well 
 as those between landlord and tenant, were based upon 
 payments in kind ; ^ that coin was disappearing, and that 
 what the Germans call mediaeval NatunvirtJiscJiaft had 
 begun. Diocletian, by an edict in 301, actually attempted 
 to fix the prices of all commodities all over the Empire. 
 
 The native religion of Rome seems to have been as 
 
 ' The conquest of Britain was perhaps directed to the expansion 
 of the existing market of Gaul. 
 
 - From the reign of Augustus, the Roman corn supply was derived 
 one-third from Africa, one-third from Egypt, and one-third from 
 Sicily, Sardinia, Southern Spain, and Italy. Constantine the Great 
 diverted the Egyptian third to feed the mob of his new capital. 
 
 2 The depreciation of the currency and some very drastic economic 
 'reforms' of Diocletian having made money payments almost im- 
 possible, everything came to rest upon the annona^ or payment of taxes 
 in corn, out of which the State paid its soldiers in the same com- 
 modity, with occasional supplements in the shape of donatives in gold 
 ornaments, or coins specially struck for the occasion.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ARMS 5 
 
 dull, as formal, as uniiispirini^r, as it is possible for a religion 
 to be. Her material for folk tales of glorious ancestors in 
 a remote past was very slender. The Romans were, indeed, 
 essentially a history-loving people ; they clung to this 
 material and thumbed it over and over again, and, when 
 at last a perfect poet arose to express the epic of Early 
 Rome in one perfect poem, he was lifted at once to the 
 gods, among whom he has remained ever since. But 
 Greece or Norway had a hundred golden legends where 
 Rome had but one ; and the groundwork of this one, apart 
 from the magic with which Virgil invested it, would strike 
 a person, previously acquainted only with Norse or Greek 
 mythology, as very poor stuff. 
 
 Roman literature had one glorious outburst in the last 
 days of the Republic and the first of the Principate, but that 
 golden age was the briefest in the history of any serious 
 people ; it was gone like a flash, and what followed it was 
 little better than erudite imitation. As for the Latin lan- 
 guage, even of that age, one of its greatest poets, Lucretius, 
 speaks of its poverty {egestas) ; it needed a Virgil and a 
 Cicero to make it a classical language at all. When, 
 however, they had wrought it into shape, its after-success 
 was amazing. No language has had such a long or such a 
 useful history as Latin ; it was able to adapt itself to all 
 the needs of European thought for seventeen centuries, 
 and even to take, by the pens of the hymn- writers from 
 St Ambrose onwards, a new life when everything else that 
 was Roman was rapidly decaying. Yet one feels that 
 even this succe.ss was more a result of the great influence 
 of the Roman Empire than of any intrinsic merit ; as a 
 vehicle for the highest thought, Latin could never challenge 
 comparison with Greek. In the sphere of arms, indeed, as 
 Claudian's lines prefixed to this chapter show us, Roman 
 valour, patience, discipline, and skill were destined to wear 
 down all opponents. But even to the arms of Rome there 
 were dreadful shocks ; one of the very worst was the 
 annihilation of Varus and his legions in the Teutoburger 
 VVald, near the source of the river Lippe, by the German 
 Arminius in a.d. 9. But from Cannae to Carrhae, from
 
 6 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 Carrhae to Edcssa, from Edcssa to /Vdrianople, some dirus 
 Afer, some Gaul or Goth or Persian is generally at the 
 <^atcs, although happily, once the dreadful African has 
 been disposed of, those gates are, until the middle of the 
 third century, sufficiently distant from the heart of the 
 Empire. As a naval power one feels that Rome might 
 have done much better than she did. For two centuries 
 at the outside she was able to keep the Mediterranean, 
 which she then absolutely enclosed, free from Greek 
 pirates, whose energies, except during that time, continued 
 unabated from the dawn of history down to the age of 
 steamships. Mommsen calls her omission to police her 
 other maritime spheres of influence, the Red Sea, the 
 Black Sea, and the northern coasts of Gaul, ' her 
 hereditary sin.' Even Augustus substituted cruisers 
 (Liburnian galleys) for dreadnoughts {trirevies, qiiadri- 
 remes, and quinquerenies), as the units of his Mediter- 
 ranean fleet. There was no trade more despised in 
 ancient Italy than that of sailor. Finally, as for the 
 persons who prided themselves upon being the ' Roman 
 people,' the plcbs of the city seems, from the middle of the 
 second century before Christ, to have been as fickle, as 
 cowardly, as degraded as it was in the worst days of Papal 
 Rome, The Patricians had, indeed, glorious traditions 
 from the recent past ; they had been the making, and, in 
 every crisis, the saving of the State and the Empire ; but 
 the proscriptions of the centuries immediately preced- 
 ing and following Our Saviour's birth had reduced these 
 old families to a number that men could count on their 
 fingers ; and, by the fourth century of our era, though 
 pedigrees, often false, were still religiously kept, senatorial 
 rank was a mere status conferred by the favour of the 
 emperor, and usually won in his service. The people of 
 the rural districts of Italy were, indeed, much better and 
 long remained so ; but, before that same fourth century, the 
 false economic policy of the Empire had crushed all the 
 life out of rural Italy. 
 
 And yet the Roman dominion and the civilisation that 
 it brought was, and still is the greatest factor in history.
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF ROME 7 
 
 How are we to explain this? Shall wc say, with Machia- 
 velli, that men are ' a bad lot ' {tristi — sad dogs, he says), 
 and that success is the guerdon of the worst ? Shall we 
 listen to the mediaeval churchmen, who saw in the whole 
 history of Rome a divinely prepared seed-bed for the 
 infancy of the Christian Church ? ^ I like that explanation 
 better than the other, but I am afraid that the details of 
 the history both of l'2mpire and Church refute it. There 
 is, however, a stratum of truth, unknown to the mediaeval 
 churchmen, at the bottom of the explanation. The very 
 men who ignored the Christians most, the great jurists of 
 the third century, were unconsciously paving the way for 
 the Church by proclaiming that there is a Supreme Equit)' 
 and even an Equality above all the technical distinctions 
 of Roman law, of national and provincial custom ; and so 
 much was this the case that, when the alliance of Empire 
 and Church did come, it seemed the most natural thing in 
 the world on its legal side if upon no other. Nay, there is much 
 to be said for the view that would carr)' this union further 
 down the stream of history, and would look upon the Church 
 as ' the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned 
 upon the grave thereof.' The Church certainly reproduced 
 much of the organisation of the Empire, and kept alive, by 
 sympathy as pathologists would say, the shadow of the 
 Empire, though it quarrelled with that shadow incessantly. 
 The history of the Empire refutes at any rate 
 a Machiavellian explanation of Rome's success, for it 
 was the good qualities of the Romans and not their bad 
 ones which left their mark upon time. And among these 
 we must recognise first and foremost their rooted, prosaic 
 common-sense, their tolerance for other people's absurdities, 
 together with their curiously tenacious belief in themselves 
 
 ' St Augustine is the earliest authority for the story of the ' Vision 
 of Augustus,' which must have Ijeen an early tradition of the Church. 
 Augustus saw a virgin passing fair standing upon an altar, holding a 
 man-child in her arms. He consulted the Sibyl, who replied in 
 hexameters, much too bad to have been written by .\ugustine, that 
 this was a sign of judgment ; and that the King should come from 
 heaven, incarnate in the flesh, to judge the world [De Civitate Dei, 
 •xviii., 23).
 
 8 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 and their fortune. A Roman felt, besides, a need for 
 ' realising himself in the spheres of government, command, 
 and the keeping of order. To that feeling and that belief 
 Europe, as we know it, owes the debt of mere existence. 
 If Rome had not fought to the death that dreadful African, 
 those Gauls, Goths, Persians and Huns, if she had not 
 taken on herself the task of administering what she rescued 
 from them, there would have been no civilised Europe 
 to-day. In that feeling and belief came to be summed up 
 all the aspirations, all the religion of the best Romans. 
 All the dear, if stupid, rustic gods of Latium, all the 
 innumerable foreign gods who were tolerated and even 
 welcomed at Rome, were of little account compared to 
 Roma Dea, the one abstraction which every Roman could 
 adore ; and the so-called worship of the ' Genius ' of the 
 living Princeps was merely a concrete expression of this 
 feeling, a feeling which was, in the Latin sense of the 
 words, at once ' religious ' and ' sacramental.' And to 
 this must be added a system of law, which, beginning in 
 a form extremely and even pedantically rigid, vitalised 
 itself in continuous expansion and continuous adaptation 
 to the needs of the growing Empire. 
 
 That growing Empire was a great deal better off than 
 its capital city. True, a province like Gaul or Africa was 
 at its first conquest generally skinned bare by victorious 
 Roman generals, and the civilian crowd of plunderers 
 which followed in their wake. But once the Roman system 
 of administration was established, there was before the 
 third century little to complain of. The main geographical 
 frontiers had been reached at the time of the Christian 
 era or soon afterwards ; and from that date, for nearly 
 two centuries, the condition of the provinces was one of 
 improving happiness. And I suppose that improving 
 happiness upon any serious scale was then a new thing 
 in the history of the world, which, down to that time, had 
 been marked either by bondage to some grinding Eastern 
 despotism,^ or by the ' irregular jostling and hewing of 
 masterless men.' 
 
 ' This may be deemed too sweeping a criticism for a period which
 
 GOVERNMENT OF THE PROVINCES 9 
 
 To most of her subjects Rome allowed a very fair 
 measure of self-government. Some provinces were wholly 
 free both from tribute and levy of soldiers. Nearly every 
 province had a Coiciliuni at which each civitas {i.e., city 
 and district) was represented ; this body occasionally 
 assessed its own taxes and often presented grievances. If 
 it was not in the strict sense an elective assembly, it seems 
 to have been attended by deputies from the class of 
 curiales, i.e., actual and potential magistrates of the civitas ; 
 it was not convoked or dissolved by the emperor, 
 but met of itself, probably on some festal day, and 
 had a religious basis. An edict of Honorius, in 418, 
 apparently re-establishes the Provincial Assembly of 
 Southern Gaul at the very time when the Goths were 
 permitted to settle there. When the emperor interfered 
 with a strong hand, it was usually because the ' local 
 authorities ' had got their province or their city into 
 a hopeless condition of debt. All over the East the people 
 of the Greek and half-Greek cities continued to live their 
 own lives and to develop, in a peace they had never known 
 before, their ancient civilisations, restrained by the Roman 
 Governor only from putting each other to death. As for 
 'questions of their law,' Gallio, as we know, cared for none 
 of these things. In the West, where there were no 
 ancient civilisations to develop themselves, except in a 
 fringe of Greek colonies along the Mediterranean, Rome 
 introduced the elements of civil life. Round her military 
 stations grew up centres, called colonicc and nnuiicipia 
 (look how wc speak her language to-day on all subjects 
 connected with law, order, government), which became the 
 great cities of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain, and South 
 Germany. As each province was reduced and the conquer- 
 ing legions moved to guard its frontiers, these cities ceased 
 
 included the Macedonian Empire ; but that empire and its offshoots, 
 though they spread Hellenic culture, were in fact based upon the 
 mailed fist and nothing else. It is a criticism that may possibly have 
 to be modified, if we ever learn more about the systems of government 
 of the older Oriental monarchies, concerning which most people are 
 too apt to take their conceptions from the Hebrew Scriptures.
 
 lo DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 to be niilitury staticuis ,'iL all. Eew of them were even 
 walled until the third or fourth century ; there can be no 
 better proof of the Pax Romana. By whatever agency 
 Rome ruled her provinces, it was certainly not by the 
 sword.^ 
 
 If we cannot claim that such an empire would be a 
 nursing mother of new ideas, we can see that it would be 
 an excellent seed-bed for them. We must always 
 remember that more than half of its territory was actually 
 a Greek inheritance, and that over the rest of it Greek 
 merchants were continually travelling. Even in the West, 
 cities like Marseilles, islands like Sicily were so full of 
 Greeks that they were never really Romanised at all ; 
 to-day Marseilles with its ' Acropolis ' looks like a Greek 
 city. Southern Italy itself was more Greek than Roman ; 
 even the possession of Virgil's grave could not make 
 Naples anything but a Greek community. Greek philo- 
 sophy was, after a short period of mistrust, welcomed 
 and at last caressed by such of the lettered Romans as 
 could understand it. One school of it, the Stoic, really 
 chimed in with much that was best in the old Roman 
 character. Claudius, Nero, Hadrian, among the early 
 emperors, were enthusiasts for all things Greek; and Marcus 
 Aurelius wrote his much over-praised Meditations in that 
 language. The Motherland of Culture, Hellas itself, was 
 petted and spoiled by the Romans ' like some beautiful 
 woman who is not expected to respond except by remain- 
 ing beautiful.' In fact the wily Greek not only took 
 captive but took in his staid, dull conqueror.- 
 
 He was by no means the Greek of the Age of Pericles ; 
 nay, he was too often a Greckling without morals, religion, 
 or elevation of intellect ; but always iroXvTpoiro^, always 
 of boundless curiosity. Even while yielding to his blandish- 
 
 ' The sole garrison of Gaul in the second century, with the excep- 
 tion of the legions on the frontiers, was a body of 1200 men kept at 
 Lyons. 
 
 2 ' However much the Greeks showed the Romans that their labour 
 of love was a forlorn one, this made no change either in the labour or 
 in the love.' — Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, i., 254.
 
 FIRST APPEARANCE OF CHRISTIANITY ii 
 
 ments, the best of the Koinans must sometimes have 
 despised him. He sapped the vitality of the old Latin 
 beliefs, as he sapped the virilit)' of the old Latin people, 
 and, until the rise of Christianity, he substituted nothing 
 believable for them. In marched strange Eastern deities, 
 and took possession of many empty, swept, and garnished 
 Roman hearts. 
 
 Unnoticed at first by the side of the Egyptian I sis, the 
 Phrygian Magna Mater, the Persian Mithras, crept in a 
 Jewish deity of whom men spoke as Chreistus, Chrestus, 
 or Christus.^ At first it was largely slaves and women 
 who spoke of Him. At His altar there was no respect of 
 persons or sexes, no differentiation of bond or free. 
 Women were indeed remarkably emancipated — old 
 Romans said too much emancipated — in the first three 
 centuries of our era, but all the traditions both of Greece 
 and Rome regarded them as inferior beings. As for 
 slaves, whose numbers then probably equalled the total 
 number of free inhabitants of the Empire, the law as yet 
 gave them no protection, or next to none. Slavery had, 
 indeed, long been a problem ; Aristotle had been driven 
 to write a very lame defence of it, and it was not recog- 
 nised by the great jurists as any part of the ' Law 
 Natural.' Yet the economic system of the ancient world 
 rested on it, and even those who most felt its cruelty, its 
 wastefulness, and its absurdity, were obliged to say that no 
 one could get on without it. You will notice that the 
 early Christians seldom said anything against it as a 
 system of relations between man and man ; all they said 
 was that it did not enter into the relations between man 
 and God. A slave might be the Bishop of Rome, and 
 might call upon the loftiest patrician to obey him as his 
 spiritual son. 
 
 But such a doctrine was fundamentally at variance with 
 all old Roman ideas. Even more at variance was the 
 
 ' The ci and i and f are easily interchangeable sounds, and even v 
 is found — xPV<^t6^ means 'good,' 'worthy,' 'of happy omen.' See 
 Rackham, Acts of the Apostles, p. 170. The locus classkus for 
 ' ChrestU'- ' is Suetonius, Clauirius, sect. 25.
 
 12 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 other message which the Christians had for the Roman 
 world : — * Thou shalt have none other gods but Me.' 
 Neither Roma Dea, nor the little gods of the Roman 
 household, at whom St Augustine afterwards delighted to 
 poke rather clumsy fun, still less the beautiful naughty 
 anthropomorphic gods of Greece have any existence at 
 all; or rather they have an existence and are, in fact, 
 * demons.' The Church did no doubt, from time to time, 
 borrow customs and doctrines from these, and still more 
 from the Eastern faiths ; and, when it was victorious, it was 
 obliged to make some terms with the deeply rooted little 
 local worships, merely substituting a saint for a nymph or 
 a god as guardian of a well or patron of a city. But as 
 ' gods ' it never would have anything to say to them 
 except Anatlienia estate. 
 
 Even to this attitude the tolerant Roman law took 
 but one exception. In the person of the reigning Princeps 
 Roma Dea must be venerated by all men. When called 
 upon to prove your loyalty, you must cast your pinch of 
 incense upon the pedestal of the emperor's statue. It 
 meant little more than we mean nowadays by taking an 
 oath of allegiance to King George; good people who 
 object to swearing oaths are now allowed to ' affirm ' their 
 allegiance in other fashions, and one would have thought 
 that ingenious Roman lawyers might have devised some 
 compromise for a Christian whose loyalty was really 
 beyond all doubt. But the better the Roman Governor, 
 the less could he understand a sect which put religion 
 before patriotism ; the act was so slight, so formal, that he 
 thought that refusal must really mean disloyalty of some 
 secret kind. Yet to the good Christian this little act was 
 the recognition of another god, and that god a living, and 
 often very bad man ; and hence this act became a touch- 
 stone or rather the touchstone of the Faith. Enormous 
 numbers of Christians no doubt complied and cast their 
 pinch of incense, and it depended upon the temper of 
 their bishops and brethren whether or no they could be 
 received back into the fold after compliance. But the 
 great-hearted ones refused, and death was the penalty of
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM 13 
 
 refusal. It is impossible to ascertain, and futile to guess 
 at the number of martyrs in the several persecutions of 
 three centuries ; only we may be sure that it was not one- 
 tenth of what the mediaeval Church believed it to have 
 been. It was probably not one-hundredth of the number 
 of Christian ' heretics ' who suffered death at the hands of 
 the Roman Catholic Church from the thirteenth to the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 You can easily understand that this attitude of the 
 Christians rendered them profoundly unpopular with the 
 mobs of the great cities, cruel and fickle as all mobs in all 
 cities always are. And, though the Christian community 
 was undoubtedly loyal, and in the mass patriotic, its 
 kingdom was not of this world, which was, indeed, in its 
 eyes but a fleeting show. The Second Advent was 
 probably very near, and then Roma Dea, Princeps, 
 praetors, lions, and executioners would be of little account. 
 Even as early as the second century there are found 
 instances in which Christian writers apply to Rome the 
 description and denunciation of Babylon from the Jewish 
 Scriptures and the Apocalypse.^ There were instances 
 also — Tertullian was one — of Christians who openly 
 exhorted their brethren to abstain from all worldly duties 
 and from all service to the State, if not actually to rush 
 forward and denounce the State as an organisation based 
 upon evil. Again, though there were many pious and 
 valiant Christian soldiers in the ranks of the army, there 
 were a few instances in which men of the new Faith 
 openly refused military service. A patriotic Roman 
 might well be excused if he looked upon such persons as 
 rebels and traitors. Were they not an offshoot of the Jews, 
 whose conquest had cost the Empire such rivers of blood 
 in 69-70 and in several later insurrections ? — Yes, and 
 these had been mainly religious insurrections also. 
 Finally, the Christians were, to a large extent, a secret 
 society, about whose mystic rites men told each other 
 ludicrously false tales. 
 
 ' Indeed it is quite .1 tenable theory that passages in the 
 Apocalypse are actually directed against Rome.
 
 14 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 Hence, if a man would be so obstinate as to die for an 
 opinion, which involved at least a presumption of dis- 
 loyalty, an opinion, too, which he either would not or 
 could not explain to the Pnutor — well, the lions were 
 hungry, other criminals were perhaps scarce, the mob was 
 clamorous and might easily become dangerous. In the 
 third century we also find traces of an idea, which Rome 
 in her better days would have repudiated, that the ' gods 
 are athirst' and must be appeased with the blood of those 
 who denied them.^ As for cruelty, it was always a deeply 
 rooted Roman vice, the origin of which, among such a 
 sober people, I am at a loss to explain. It was not, as 
 with some nations, due to outbursts of passion or fear ; it 
 was always there, and it colours the whole of Roman 
 history red. To a Greek, 'games' were just athletic 
 sports;'' to a Roman, they were a series of horrible 
 butcheries of beasts by beasts, men by beasts, men by 
 men. If the Christian Church had done nothing else but 
 abolish such games for ever — and it did not succeed in 
 doing so till the beginning of the fifth century — it would 
 have rendered thereby an inestimable service to mankind. 
 
 There are, then, a certain number of definitely recorded 
 persecutions of the infant Church, from that of Nero in the 
 first to that of Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth 
 century. The last two, 249-251 and 303-312, were un- 
 doubtedly the worst, and extended over the whole Empire, 
 or were intended to do so. From each one of these the 
 Church rose to new vigour and compactness, purified of her 
 weaker elements. No doubt, however, she emerged from 
 each more fierce against her enemies, and more likely, in 
 spite of the commands of her Divine Master, to take her 
 revenge, if ever she should get the upper hand. There 
 was also throughout these centuries a certain amount of 
 
 1 This idea was borrowed, with fatal facility, by the Roman 
 papacy, which, from the twelfth century, consistently preached the 
 duty of exterminating infidels and heretics, and regarded their blood 
 as a sacrifice pleasing to God. 
 
 2 Athens, to her eternal honour, long refused to celebrate Roman 
 games, and when a Roman governor insisted on holding some, the 
 best Athenians simply 'boycotted' the celebration.
 
 JEWISH ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH 15 
 
 sporadic indictment of individual Christians, according to 
 the temper of provincial governors and mobs ; ^ but, 
 generally speaking, it needed an imperial order to begin a 
 regular persecution, and such an order was seldoin given, 
 for the principle of persecution was alien to the spirit of 
 Roman law. 
 
 Meanwhile wc have been speaking of the ' (.'hurch ' and 
 'Christians' without perhaps realising tliaL the words 
 might not then mean all they mean to us. And, as this 
 little book is going to be a history of some Christian 
 peoples, we had better try to penetrate the darkness which 
 hangs over the early history of Christianity. The darkness 
 is much thicker than most men think it to be. The pagan 
 writers seldom mention the Society, and totally miscon- 
 ceive it when they do ; among the vast multitude of old 
 Roman inscriptions remaining to us, those that can with 
 certainty be called Christian are very few even in the third 
 century, and before that are almost non-existent ; those 
 that remain in the Roman catacombs, which were un- 
 doubtedly Christian burying-places, were all furbished up 
 or garbled after the triumph of Christianity. In the last 
 and greatest of the persecutions it is probable that the 
 leaders of the Church destroyed most of their own 
 records. 
 
 One thing, however, is tolerably clear, and that is the 
 Jewish origin of the Church. The Divine Christ was a 
 Jew ; the great Apostle Paul was a devout Jewish sectary ; 
 the earliest Christians spoke and preached to Jews, and in 
 the vernacular tongue of l\ilestine ; a ' Church,' in the 
 sense of a human society with rules and rulers, was first 
 constituted at Jerusalem. The very order of service in 
 our own glorious Liturgy, with its prayers, psalms, and 
 lessons, is based upon the order which had been used in 
 Jewish synagogues. Nay more, when the Church at last 
 emerges into the light of day at the beginning of the fourth 
 
 * In Asia Minor tlie magistrates in the self-govern inj; Greek 
 cities seem often to have been the originators of persecution, although 
 on occasions they refused to listen to the mob, a^., at the riot at 
 Ephesus described in the Acts of the Apostles.
 
 i6 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 century, we find that the bulk of the old Jewish Scriptures 
 and much of the old Jewish beliefs have been incorporated 
 with her canon and her doctrines. Yet by that time there 
 is nothing she hates so much as a Jew, and the Jew returns 
 the hatred in full measure ! The origin of this hatred is 
 not far to seek. The Jews demanded Our Saviour's death 
 not because He made Himself the Son of God, but because 
 He declared Himself to be our Saviour as well as theirs. 
 Their great intelligence was well able to see that He might 
 indeed be — only too probably was — the Messiah of their 
 prophets, but, as He avowed that He came to redeem not 
 only Abraham's seed but the whole world, they shut their 
 ears to His message. Now the Jews were to be found 
 everywhere all over the Empire, some Hellenized and 
 some not, and they swarmed especially at Rome and 
 Alexandria ; to the last they remained a ' nation,' and 
 practically the only nation within the borders of the 
 Empire,^ and in the first and second centuries their 
 national spirit gave the Roman Government more trouble 
 than all its frontiers put together. It was small wonder if 
 the Church, however hostile, failed to get rid altogether of 
 her Jewish origin. But during the interval — her Dark 
 Asfes of which we know so little — between the death of St 
 Paul and the conversion of Constantine, she had done her 
 best to repudiate that Jewish origin, and had become Greek. 
 This change must have been a very early one. Greek is 
 her articulate language, the language in which all the world 
 may hear her voice, probably the language of her earliest 
 written records ; the Greek cities of the near East are her 
 first conquest outside Palestine. Within seventy years 
 from Christ's birth Jerusalem has been made an heap of 
 stones, and then rebuilt with a Latin name ; on the site 
 of Jehovah's Temple is now the shrine of Venus. 
 
 During this same interval the Church has been forced, 
 
 ' We must distinguish carefully between the Jews 'of the Disper- 
 sion ' (which had begun long before the fall of Jerusalem) to whom the 
 Empire accorded special privileges, who were both loyal and largely 
 Hellenized, and the 'Zealots,' who made insurrection in Juda;a in 
 69-70 and again in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.
 
 THE CHURCH'S FIRST MISSION 17 
 
 as all societies must be forced, to give herself some kind of 
 constitution, some basis of self-government, some species 
 of rulers of the several territorial spheres of her influence 
 (some will perhaps call these early rulers ' bishops,' or over- 
 seers, some will call them ' presbyters ' or ciders ; shall we 
 not say at once the words arc synonymous ? ) Some sort 
 of tests or symbols too she will have been getting, to dis- 
 tinguish her members from non-Christians ; later on she 
 will call these symbols creeds, and her members will fight 
 a good deal over their contents and limits. The earliest 
 of them are probably formulas in which a candidate for 
 baptism will have to make his profession ; they may differ 
 in detail in the different Churches. We do not know the 
 words of these earliest symbols ; the Three Creeds, as we 
 now have them, are all much later than their names imply, 
 but may reasonably be supposed to be based upon very much 
 earlier tests.^ But, long before the days of symbols, creeds 
 or formulated doctrine, we may be sure that Christianity 
 set itself to be a rule of life. Its most distinctive possession, 
 which all men will agree to be of utterly Divine origin, was 
 its superior moral code, expounded to the world by the 
 Very God himself, who came upon earth in the form of 
 man in order to expound it. It was just that which the 
 world of the Roman Empire needed most. It is very easy 
 to exaggerate the wickedness of a society which has 
 perished, or is in the act of perishing ; the wickedness of 
 the Gritco-Roman world was a favourite theme for all 
 Christian writers from Paul to Salvian. It is of course not 
 to be supposed that all Christians became at once, upon 
 their conversion, patterns of morality ; and, on the other 
 hand, it would be foolish to ignore the lofty moral doctrines 
 of the Stoic philosophers, the theory of benevolence 
 of the Epicureans, or the virtuous lives lived by many old 
 
 ' The actual wording of the 'Apostles' Creed' may be dated at 
 about 750 A.l). ; but it is virtually the Creed of the Roman Church as 
 early as 341, which, again, differs little from a form in use at the 
 beginnuig of the second century. The ' Nicene' may be dated at 381 ; 
 and the 'Athanasian' at the end of the fifth or the beginning of the 
 sixth century. 
 
 B
 
 i8 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 Roman Pagans ; but the general proposition will remain 
 that a society based upon slaver\- is not likely to be pure ; 
 one that loved the games of the arena, to be humane ; one 
 that drew no sanctions from its vague beliefs in a future 
 life, to be self-restrained. The Christian Church had to 
 preach purity, temperance, mercy, forgiveness, reverence, 
 to a society which had the utmost need for her sermons. 
 
 Then, again, we may be sure that in these her Dark 
 Ages the Church is essentially a brotherhood, a ' flock ' — 
 Christ Himself had used the words, and had loved the 
 homely illustration from the shepherd-life of His native 
 hills. Its meetings are secret, at first in the private house 
 of some believer, later in some building probably bare of any 
 image or ornament. If legal sanction is required for such 
 meeting, it will be granted to the Church in the guise of a 
 ' burial club.' As such a club, but as that only, it may 
 purchase apiece of ground for the interment of its members; 
 and several of the ' catacombs ' of Rome no doubt served 
 the double purposes of cemeteries and churches. Into this 
 flock men are initiated by a rite older than Christ's birth, 
 but one which He had sanctioned by His own use of it. 
 The Church may make this rite of baptism as my.stic as 
 she pleases, and she may require a long probation before 
 admission to it ; — the more mystic she makes it, the more 
 likely is she to impress her converts. It is in any case far 
 purer, far more simple and lovely than the gruesome 
 initiation-ceremonies of other contemporary faiths. And 
 she has another symbol of brotherhood or Communion 
 which, as the Past recedes, she is gradually making ever 
 more and more mystic. We do not know one hour in her 
 history in which the germs of this rite are not visible, and 
 it is alwaj'S in some way a commemoration of her Lord's 
 last supper with His disciples. It is celebrated on her ' holy 
 day,' the day of her Lord's Resurrection, As the doors 
 are shut when it is celebrated, the ignorant world tells 
 false and malevolent tales about it. Perhaps even some of 
 those who take part in it are not wholly /xiyVrai, and hardly 
 know whether it is a Love-feast or a sacrifice. What its 
 shape ma)' have been in the third century we have little
 
 SACRAMENTS, CANON AND PRIPLSTHOOD 19 
 
 means of knowing ; Dr Headlam, one of the first of living 
 theologians, thinks that ' some modern Christians would 
 have been singularly uncomfortable, morally as well as 
 physically, if they had attended any religious service in the 
 catacombs.' Down to the ninth century, Baptism was 
 probably regarded as the more important of the two 
 greater sacraments ; the opinion of the Church upon the 
 grace conferred by baptism hardly fluctuated at all, while 
 upon the Eucharist very widely differing opinions were at 
 different times held, until the strangely materialist 
 doctrine of transubstantiation was laid down.^ But, what- 
 ever the form of Baptism and of the Eucharist, it was 
 these rites which then bound all Christians together, even 
 as the Sacramcntiirn, or oath of the Roman soldier, bound 
 him to the eagles of his legion. 
 
 Another thing at which the Church has been arriving 
 during her Dark Ages is some sort of classification of her 
 early records ; she is feeling her way towards what we 
 call the ' Canon.' Before 300 A.D. she has claimed that 
 certain of these records are not merely historical 
 documents, but writings of men under directly divine 
 inspiration,- and she reaps some advantage from the fact 
 that some of these records (the Jewish Scriptures) contain 
 a comparatively intelligible history of the human race 
 from its earliest years. Certain other records she is 
 inclined to reject from her Canon without wholly condemn- 
 ing them ; such are the so-called * Apocryphal Gospels,' 
 which were the favourite reading of less educated 
 Christians ; on these much of the tradition of the 
 Mediaeval Church will be based. 
 
 Another change of which we can trace the process but 
 dimly has been the growth of a priesthood. There have 
 
 ^ By Paschasius Radbert, in his Dc Corpore ct Sartguine Domini^ 
 in 844. 
 
 ■^ St Mark's Gospel, believed to have been virtually tlie work of 
 St Peter, is now assigned to 60 A.D., and may be fairly assumed to 
 be the first 'written record' ; a New Testament Canon, including at 
 least the four Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles of St Paul, was 
 complete though not 'closed' by zoo A.D. ; and the present Canon 
 was ' closed ' two centuries later.
 
 20 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 been religions in history which have dispensed with this — 
 Islam is one — and we must always beware of confusing 
 ' priests ' with ' rulers ' of a church. But Christianity, 
 perhaps because of its descent from Judaism, perhaps from 
 some absorption of Egyptian and Persian ideas, begins 
 early to invest its rulers with true priestly functions, i.e., 
 functions of mediation between God and man and functions 
 of sacrifice, neither of which can be clearly traced in the 
 age of the apostles.^ However this may be, by the third 
 century bishops are recognised both as rulers and as 
 supreme priests, divinely ordained and inspired, the 
 successors of the apostles. Already we can see a tendency 
 to limit the benefits of God's mercy to those who accept 
 the ordinances of these bishops and priests. 
 
 Lastly, though up to, say 300 A.D., we may fairly 
 surmise that no hard and fast line can have been drawn 
 between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, we know that the 
 Church has often had conflicts within herself The 
 different races of her membership have naturally looked 
 upon doctrines and practices with very different eyes ; 
 even geographical features have not been without their 
 influence upon the minds of believers. Her creeds when 
 
 ' 'tepeyj' is found in Christian writings as early as 120 A.D., 
 ' Sacerdos,' 'ara,' not before Tertullian ; but XftroupYoiVrwc is applied 
 to Barnabas and his companions in Acts xiii., and St Paul (Romans 
 XV. 16) calls himself Xeirovpybu iepovpyovvra rb ivayyeXiou. Our A.V. 
 has 'ministering' as the translation in both passages. Clement of 
 Rome uses Xeirovpyeiv Oei^ and Xeirovpyeiv t(^ iroiixviui. The word, which 
 usually means in the classics ' to perform public duties or services,' 
 is, of course, frequently applied to priestly duties. It is a very 
 difficult question. The heathen world knew of priests too ; a Roman 
 noble hG.ca.mQ a. /iamen or priest of some particular god, and performed 
 priestly functions in his temple merely as an honourable stage in his 
 official; career. The Princeps took among his other titles that of 
 Pontifex Maxtmus, or official Pope of the old Latin rites, without the 
 slightest idea of becoming thereby more 'sacred.' Jewish priests 
 were,' of course, of hereditary and sacred caste, and such has been 
 the status of priests in most other religions. But all, except the 
 Christian priests, were mainly sacrificers, not prophets and pastors 
 also. Perhaps the very earliest Christian conception was that 
 'Christ is our High Priest,' and that all Christians are 'priestly 
 ministers,' without any idea of 'sacrificial' duties.
 
 WHAT IS ORTHODOXY? 21 
 
 they come to be made must, after all, be the sum or 
 symbol of the beliefs of her members. As law usually 
 follows approved custom, so do creeds follow generally 
 approved belief, and traces even of popular superstition will 
 be found in them. Jiut a 'general consensus' will gradu- 
 ally get fixed as to what is, and what is not ' orthodox.' 
 In fixing this orthodoxy, the Church will have had to spurn 
 from her fold many ' false brethren ' too apt to set up 
 their own private judgment, their aipea-i? or ' heresy,' 
 against the judgment of tho.se whom she acknowledges to 
 have been her great leaders, her ' Fathers.' On the one 
 side there have been the ultra-Mystics or * Gnostics,' who 
 have imagined one kind of creed for the ordinary 
 Christian, and a .special one for the more illumined 
 Christian ; they have invented .strange asceticisms of the 
 ' touch not, taste not, handle not ' order ; and on the other 
 side there have been the ultra-Puritans or ' Montanists,' 
 who were for denouncing all learning and all intercourse 
 with the heathen world. But the wise Fathers have 
 steered a middle course between them. These Fathers 
 have been the protagonists in the .strife, not only against 
 false brethren but against the might of heathen law. 
 Ignatius and Justin and Cyprian have died for the faith, 
 and we have actually seen them die. Tertullian, the fiery 
 African, has denounced our enemies so openly, so 
 vehemently that it seems a miracle that he ever escaped. 
 Origen, the greatest of all the early Fathers, has been long 
 in hiding and in extreme danger and dies in prison at 
 last ; and he is so great and so acute a reasoner that, in 
 the fourth century, we shall not feel quite certain that he 
 was not a heretic. These Fathers and many other bishops 
 have held 'Councils' (no doubt at first obscure little 
 meetings, but ever growing in size and boldness) to fix the 
 date of Easter and other festivals, and generally to decide 
 what is and what is not ' Catholic ' — the word is found 
 early in the second century. A hundred and fifty years 
 after this a Council actually deposes a Bishop of Antioch, 
 and puts in a new one, without consulting the Christians of 
 Antioch on the subject — na)- it openly appeals to a heathen
 
 22 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 emperor, Aurelian, to confirm its sentence, and he, treating 
 the whole question as one of property, confirms it. 
 
 It is men like these who have built up what is after 
 all the Church's greatest asset, her Traditiofi, in whose 
 unbroken continuity she never ceases to believe. Going 
 behind even these men she claims to know of a complete 
 catena reaching to the Apostolic Age. Irenaeus was the 
 disciple of Polycarp who had talked with the aged St John. 
 Clement of Rome must have known St Paul (who 
 mentions a Clemens in his Epistles), and had quite 
 possibly known St Peter also. It is a slender thread ? a 
 thread capable of being seriously twisted in three 
 centuries ? Yes ; but it is one which no Christian had 
 any personal interest in twisting. That there were 
 additional strands woven on to this thread, that there 
 were doctrines added which would have astonished the 
 Galilaean fishermen whom Christ chose as his first apostles, 
 few would now deny. Few too would, I suppose, now claim 
 that ' the Church ' of any age was continuously, or even at 
 intervals, inspired from on High ; but the great thing for her 
 was that she honestly believed herself to be so inspired. 
 
 A society thus equipped and compact was likely to 
 prove no mean antagonist even to the Caesars and Roma 
 Dea. Even were we to grant that many of her weapons 
 were forged during the strife, many stolen unconsciously 
 from the armouries of other faiths, the superiority of the 
 Church as a mere fighting-machine will appear when we 
 have considered, as we now must, the moral, spiritual, 
 economic and intellectual barrenness of her opponent. 
 
 If we are to do this properly, we must be allowed to 
 look a little ahead and trespass on the domain properly 
 belonging to the next chapter ; for the struggle between 
 the Church and paganism was by no means over with the 
 conversion of Constantine. First, then, for questions of 
 thought. Except in the domain of law, in which Rome 
 then produced her greatest jurists and perfected her 
 system of equity, the third century was perhaps the most 
 utterly barren of intellectual life in the history of the 
 Roman world ; in the fourth there is a distinct revival, and
 
 DKCAV OK rULTlJRE 23 
 
 a century cannot be called barren which produced a 
 historian like Ammianus Marcellinus, and a poet like 
 Claudian. The former may not always have written in 
 classical Latin, but, after all, 'classical' is a word difficult 
 of definition ; an Elizabethan might well complain that 
 John Morley or Alfred Tennyson did not always write 
 classical English. The Romans at least always believed 
 themselves to be 'classical ' ; but it was a great misfortune 
 for letters that Roman education all over the Empire was 
 wholly diverted towards perfecting the art of talking, 
 called 'Rhetoric' It was mostly in the hands of Greek 
 schoolmasters and professors, who had such subtilty that 
 they could teach you to argue about nothing, on either 
 side, by the hour together. The writers of the Great Ages 
 of Greece and Rome had said most things worth saying 
 far better than any one else is ever likely to say them, and 
 so their works were studied, and lectured upon, and 
 imitated over and over again without any new ideas being 
 evolved from their study. Pagan and Christian alike were 
 soaked in classical tradition, and it was believed by some 
 Christian writers to be a serious drawback to the P'aith 
 that there was nothing for Christian boys to read except 
 the pagan classics. We may indeed rejoice profoundly that 
 the Church, as a whole, refused to reject pagan culture. 
 Even if its 'Fathers' had at any time been willing to do 
 so, the great mass of indifferents who joined the Church 
 after her triumph would have been quite unwilling. 
 
 From the date of the foundation of Constantinople, 
 however, the Greek side of pagan culture did begin to lose 
 its hold on the western half of the Empire ; the Greek 
 tongue was gradually forgotten in the West. St Augustine, 
 though he had read Plato carefully, admits that his own 
 knowledge of Greek was feeble. In the East Greek 
 culture never wholly died until the fall of Constantinople 
 before the Turks, although oddly enough the name "EWrjv 
 came in the fifth century to mean ' a pagan.' The last 
 stronghold of paganism was, in fact, the philosophy school 
 at Athens, which had, on that account, to be closed by the 
 Emperor Justinian in 529. Some of its philosophers
 
 24 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 calling themselves Neo-Platonists produced in the fourth 
 and fifth centuries both at Athens and Alexandria some 
 very daring and independent ideas, occasionally tinged 
 with Eastern Mysticism. Their methods of argument 
 were not without influence on Christian theology ; but I 
 doubt if any of their conceptions have seriously affected 
 the world's stock of thought. In the rest of the pagan 
 portion of the Empire the art of saying things well, 
 whether in Greek or Latin, triumphed over the art of 
 having anything to say ; and at last the only people who 
 had anything to say worth hearing were the Christians. 
 From this condemnation, however, we must except one 
 great subject ; law was scientifically studied and steadily 
 improved at the schools of Rome, Constantinople, and 
 Beyrout (Berytus) ; and, in Italy at least, it never wholly 
 ceased to be studied in some fashion throughout the 
 darkest of the Dark Ages. 
 
 When we turn to consider the moral barrenness of 
 non-Christian society in these centuries, we must always 
 remember the terrible example set by the capital cities of 
 Rome and Constantinople. Demagogues had inaugurated 
 in the second century before Christ a vast system of State 
 Socialism, which fed the unemployed of Rome at the 
 expense of the industrious in the provinces. This horrible 
 system went on with increasing velocity and at increasing 
 cost. First the unemployed were allowed to purchase 
 corn below cost price ; next, they received it free ; then it 
 was ready-made into bread for them ; then pork, wine 
 and oil were added ; worst of all, free admission to the 
 arena was granted to this same class, whose low ideals 
 naturally set the tone of theatrical exhibitions. Beyond 
 bloodshed in great floods, the Roman mob found gross 
 indecency to be the main attraction of the theatre. In 
 the third century A.D., one hundred and seventy-five days 
 in each year were devoted at Rome to shows of one kind 
 or another. The example of the capital was inevitably 
 followed in other great cities. When Constantine made 
 Byzantium the Eastern Capital, and renamed it after him- 
 self, he had to treat its mob as the Roman mob was
 
 LACK OF MORAL FIBRE 25 
 
 treated. I have purposely called this a moral and not 
 merely an economic disease, for there can be no morality 
 where there is no incentive to labour. Industrious pro- 
 vincials lost all faith in justice when they knew that the 
 fruits of their labour went to maintain that kind of 
 thing. This course of action of the Roman State and 
 its results are surely not without warning for European 
 states, and especially for Great Britain, at the present day. 
 Crimes of violence were, before the fourth ccntur}', 
 probably rare. At that date we begin to hear of a failing 
 police on the great roads, and of brigandage in the 
 Canipag7ia of Rome itself, a district where it remained 
 endemic until the middle of the nineteenth century. If 
 one were to take seriously the most famous novel of 
 the ancient world, the Metamorpliosis of Apuleius, one 
 would have to believe that brigands abounded in Thessaly 
 in the second century ; but I think few people would now 
 take Apuleius seriously. As for the sins of profligacy, 
 which are counted by us as the worst moral offences, they 
 were not so accounted in the heathen world. They were 
 no doubt glaring in many classes, for the vile system of 
 slavery and the great facility of divorce made them easy. 
 But I think that the upper class in pagan society was 
 better in these respects in the third century than in the 
 first, and undoubtedly better in the fourth. The worst 
 that one can say of it is, that it had, as a whole, no guiding 
 principle of morality, nor do I see how there can be such a 
 guiding principle without active religion. Fashion was a 
 poor substitute, although it is clear that in the fourth 
 century it was the fashion to be rather good. Men's lives 
 in the best Roman society were then wholly spent in 
 ' doing the proper thing,' in being polite and sedulously 
 attentive to a round of trivial social duties. That is not in 
 itself a characteristic of wicked societies (though much 
 subterranean wickedness may coexist with it), but it is a 
 deification of what a great French lady once called ' the 
 infinitely little.' An intelligent strenuous European of 
 to-day would have been bored to death in most coteries 
 of fourth-ccntur)- .socict)-, whether pagan or Christian.
 
 26 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 When we come to the spiritual barrenness of the age, 
 we are on surer gnnnid. The old gods were utterly played 
 out : — 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 
 Can no more divine, 
 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 
 In the worship of the Sun, in the worships of Isis and of 
 Mithras some, indeed, found a consolation closely akin to 
 that which Christians found in the true faith ; the two 
 last religions were founded upon beautiful Nature-myths, 
 and there is no reason to suppose that they did not elevate 
 their worshippers. Each, at times, ran Christianity hard, 
 and either may sometimes have been, as Paul said the 
 Hebrew law was, ' a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.' 
 Such active religion as there was among the pagans was to 
 be found among the followers of these or kindred gods like 
 the Egyptian Serapis, whose flock was indeed the only one 
 that resisted to bloodshedding the overthrow of a pagan 
 shrine. Besides these Eastern forms, which rose to the 
 dignity of real religions, every species of baser superstition 
 was rife. Talismans, sham oracles, secret magic, were all 
 going full blast long before and long after the triumph of 
 the Church ; Jews, and especially Jewesses, were the great 
 purveyors of such things. In an age of these and kindred 
 superstitions, we must not forget that the Christian Church 
 had a message of terror as well as of pity. No heathen 
 religion ever wielded a weapon approaching in effective- 
 ness the threat of eternal punishment. In the fourth cen- 
 tury, when the mass of men only half believed, that mass was 
 more than half inclined to tremble ; in the fifth and sixth, 
 the ' Church's terrors ' revolutionised the ideas of the world. 
 On the other hand the official religion of the State, the 
 whole business of the Vestal Virgins, with their sacred fire 
 and their guardianship of the ' Seven Fatal Things of 
 Rome,' the old rural festivals, the old Colleges of Augurs 
 and Pontifices, went on, not because anyone believed in 
 them, but from mere innate Roman conservatism. The 
 statuette of Victory in the senate-house was the outward 
 and visible sign of so much past history, and it was nothing
 
 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 27 
 
 more. One is tempted to regret that the Churcli, which 
 found h'ttle difficulty in Christianising local worships by 
 substitutin<4' saints for gods, waged such fierce war on these 
 innocent traditional ceremonies. It would have been so 
 easy and so much in accordance with the later practice of 
 the Church, to turn the rural festivals into royal agricul- 
 tural shows, to place the guardianship of the Septevi 
 Fatalia (on which, moreover, no one but the Vestalis 
 Maxima ever looked) in the hands of St Peter, to dedicate 
 the Lupercal, where the wolf had suckled the immortal 
 twins, to the Virgin Mary, and to change the temple ol 
 Jupiter Capitolinus into the noblest basilica of Christ. 
 
 We may conclude this portion of our subject with the 
 reflection that the coming victor in the religious strife was 
 the victor not only because it contained, however much 
 changed from the Primitive Age, the seeds of Life and 
 Truth, but also becau.se it was by far the best organised 
 society of religion then existing. 
 
 We have now to look for a brief space at the economic 
 and governmental aspects of the Roman Empire on the 
 eve of its disintegration. As its widest extent that 
 Empire stretched from the Tyne to the Tigris and from 
 the Sahara to the Carpathians,^ It was covered with 
 a network of excellent roads, provided with posting-houses, 
 at which post-horses were to be hired at reasonable rates. 
 Both the Latin and Greek races are naturally city dwellers, 
 as our words 'civility,' 'urbanity,' 'politeness,' indicate;- 
 and the great cities were reckoned to be the chief glory of 
 
 ^ This is putting it roughly. The northern European frontier, 
 starting from the mouth of the Ems, strikes south to the Rhine near 
 Nymwegen, and goes up the Rhine to a little below Coblentz ; then 
 curves in the shape of a shallow U, of which the eastern side is the 
 Taunus Mountains, and then runs S.S.E. almost to Nordlingen, next 
 bends N.E. and then S.E. in one shallow curve to Kclheim, and there 
 definitely strikes the Danube, which it follows to its junction with the 
 Drave. From this point it runs across the Hungarian plain eastwards, 
 northwards and eastwards again, crosses the Carpathians, and finally 
 reaches the Black Sea at the mouth of the Bug. The other frontiers, 
 whicli will be of less importance to us, can be followed on the map. 
 
 - We must not, however, underrate the love of country life and 
 even appreciation of country scenery, which vvc find e([ually well
 
 28 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 the Empire. All these contained beautiful basilicas (halls 
 of justice) temples, theatres, market-places, and public 
 baths. Over all brooded the Pax Romana ; and condi- 
 tions outwardly favourable for commercial and economic 
 development, so far as these are compatible with a slave 
 system, undoubtedly existed. In the country districts 
 agriculture, stock-raising and mining were almost wholly 
 carried on by slaves ; the poorest landowner would have 
 one or two slaves ; the greatest might have twenty thousand. 
 The material wealth, or what political economists call the 
 ' capital,' of this ancient world was obviously nothing like 
 that of the same area to-day. The output of necessary 
 commodities was far less, that of mere luxuries proportion- 
 ately far greater — a fact which of itself spells waste on a 
 huge scale. Interest, which nowadays seldom runs above 
 five per cent., then stood normally at twelve, and was often 
 very much higher. Debt seems to have been the constant 
 condition even of the richest individuals and of many 
 communities. This state of things was no doubt largely 
 due to the absence of what we call ' industrial ' capital. 
 Land was the most profitable investment ; directly a man 
 became rich he bought land, and when he became poor he 
 could borrow only from a professional usurer or a richer land- 
 owner, who, if his debtor could not pay, had no resource 
 but to foreclose. Worse even than the perennial condition 
 of debt was the continual decline in population. Before 
 the end of the second century Marcus Aurelius had found 
 it necessary to invite barbarian settlers to come and 
 colonise the north-eastern provinces.^ A hundred years 
 
 expressed by Virgil and Horace, in the first century K.C., and by 
 Ausonius in the fourth a.d. A rich man's country house with its 
 dependencies was probably the origin of most of our west European 
 villages. Ausonius' ' modest little place' in Gaul had attached to it 
 300 acres of arable, 50 of meadow, 300 of vineyard, and 700 of wood- 
 land. Such an estate would probably be self-sufficient for all ordinary 
 economic purposes. 
 
 ' Plutarch, writing at the beginning of the second century, speaks of 
 the universal 6\iyav5pia ; ' the whole of Greece,' he says, ' could only 
 now put in the field as many hoplites as the city of Megara alone sent 
 to fight at Platrea' {De Defectu Oraculorum, 8).
 
 POPULATION AND TAXATION 29 
 
 later Aurelian deliberately abandoned the great province 
 of Dacia, and pulled the frontier back to the Danube. 
 Later emperors had constantly to wrestle with the problem 
 of the decrease of population. 
 
 In the third century a new and much more explicable 
 cause of trouble made itself felt all over the Empire, the 
 increasing pressure of a thoroughly wasteful system of 
 taxation. The simple bureaucratic government ought not 
 to have been an expensive one to work. The imperial 
 domains were simply enormous, and, so far as we have 
 evidence, the Principes spent the revenue derived there- 
 from most freely in the service of the State. There was, 
 for the whole, before the days of Diocletian, but one court, 
 one army, one civil service to maintain ; the same area 
 to-day has to support a dozen different governments, a 
 dozen armies potentially hostile to each other, half as 
 many navies, and a vast number of unproductive and mis- 
 chievous politicians. The total imperial revenue annually 
 raised has been calculated, by Dr Hodgkin, not to exceed 
 6s. 8d. per head of the population. Costly and splendid 
 as the achievements of the ' Public Works Department ' 
 were, that department was constantly relieved, and always 
 expected to be relieved, by the gifts made by rich men to 
 their native towns. These gifts, though perhaps occasion- 
 ally prompted by vanity and by that ' postero-mania ' 
 from which all good Romans suffered, were essentially 
 a duty to those who could afford them. They were 
 often on a scale beyond that of the most self-advertising 
 American millionaire of to-day, and they show that here 
 and there private riches must have been immense. Edu- 
 cation was paid for out of municipal rates and not out of 
 imperial taxes. 
 
 Yet the pressure of taxes was, from decade to decade 
 after 200 A.D., a growing terror.^ Inimilics of senatorial 
 
 ' Many of the indirect imposts of the Middle Ages can be traced 
 back to the Empire, such as the customs dues at frontiers, the tolls at 
 fords and bridges, the oc /rot dues paid by those who brought provisions 
 for sale to markets, the right to hospitalitas enjoyed by officials on 
 circuit, and so on. Perhaps some of these were still farmed and at
 
 30 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 rank were wholly exempt, even for their non- Italian lands, 
 from ordinary direct taxation ; but very heavy extraordinary 
 taxes ^ fell upon them, as well as the obligation to provide 
 shows in the arena, from which no senator could escape 
 without forfeiting all respect. Senatorial rank had become 
 by the fourth century a mere titular distinction, which it 
 was in the power of the Princcps to give to any one ; and it 
 was no doubt very widely given, by which means more and 
 more of the richest estates were withdrawn from the taxable 
 area. Side by side with this you must set the fact that 
 Italy had been wholly exempt from land taxes until the 
 same period, when it was found necessary to abolish her 
 exemption. At the other end of the scale the free non- 
 landowning population of the provincial cities was liable 
 only to a poll tax which did not amount to much. There- 
 fore it was the land tax called aniiona (and paid in kind), 
 and the fact that it fell wholly on the upper-middle and 
 middle class, that was the real evil. Men of these classes, 
 called curiales or decurioncs because the curice or town 
 councils had originally been elected by all the landowners of 
 the district, were owners of town houses and also of estates 
 varying from enormous sizes down to little holdings of 
 ten acres ; they filled unpaid all the offices of their native 
 towns, and had once been proud to fill them. Now the 
 Government demanded a certain definite sum from each 
 province and each civitas, and the providing and collecting 
 of this sum fell wholly upon these curiales. They had to 
 become what the French call solidaires for it,- and the 
 
 very low rates, although the Empire had aboUshed the tax-farming 
 which was such a scourge under the Republic. If we are to judge 
 by the total sum poured into the Treasury, we find it difficult to believe 
 in the oppressiveness of the system. 
 
 1 E.g., aurum oblaticium (something like the English 'benevol- 
 ence' of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), collatio glebalis, a. 
 money payment at irregular intervals, and collatio lustralis of much 
 the same nature. 
 
 '^ We do not know at what date the corporate liability of each 
 civitas for its taxes became the rule ; but it was before the end of the 
 third century. The whole subject is admirably treated by Mr F. de 
 Zulueta, 'De Patrociniis Vicorum'in Prof. Vinogradoff's Oxford Legal 
 Studies, Oxford, 1909.
 
 PRESSURE OF THE LAND TAX 31 
 
 amount demandable was supposed to be assessed on each 
 man's estate, according to the number of tenancies upon it. 
 A new and careful census of the whole Empire was taken 
 by Diocletian, in which each estate or fiitidiis was men- 
 tioned by name. 
 
 From 289 A.I), onwards there was, first at intervals of 
 five, and soon at intervals of fifteen years, a fresh estimate 
 of the amount demandable, and as a rule the demand was 
 increased just in proportion as the number of contributory 
 units fell. The result was that the middling landowners, 
 the backbone of the Empire, were simply crushed out of 
 existence. The senatorial class no doubt profited to some 
 extent by this ruin of those immediately below them, for 
 the absorption of the smaller landowners by the greater 
 was a marked feature of the fourth and fifth centuries. A 
 form of tenure grew up, without the sanction of the law, 
 but gradually acquiring the powerful sanction of custom, 
 called the Precarimn or the Patrodniuju. I surren- 
 dered my land to some powerful man, but continued to 
 cultivate it and pay him a rent for it ; and, in return, he 
 got me off the taxes. Even if he were not himself legally 
 exempt, he was in a position to make a better bargain with 
 the collector than I was. He could bribe or browbeat the 
 judges and officials ; one humorous orator of the fourth 
 century suggests that no judge should be allowed to go out 
 to dinner. Whole villages were thus 'taken into patron- 
 age,' and so more and more burdens were thrown on those 
 who remained free. After the triumph of the Church her 
 lands escaped with very light taxes, and she extended her 
 'patronage' freely. The Crown itself sinned against itself 
 (for its domains were exempt) by taking people into 
 patronage. 
 
 We can find traces of even less legal methods of defeat- 
 ing the tax-gatherers. From some small places they were 
 driven off with showers of stones. The Government find- 
 ing its receipts falling off, turned fiercely upon the payers 
 that remained, and passed law after law to compel them to 
 remain and to continue to pay. It forbade them to seek 
 relief by selling or surrendering their estates to richer men ;
 
 32 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 it forbade them to exercise any trade or profession, or even 
 to enter the army ! ' Stay and be taxed ' was its one 
 message to them ; and in secret flight, sometimes into 
 voluntary slavery, lay their only resource.^ Moreover, the 
 Government made the rank of deciirio hereditary, so that 
 there was no hope that one's children would be better 
 off than oneself: the obvious remedy for this was to have 
 no children. Once we can grasp this dreadful condition of 
 servitude of the best class of the Roman world, we need 
 not trouble ourselves to seek for other causes of its decline 
 and disintegration. 
 
 In the artisan and shopkeeping classes a similar state 
 of hereditary servitude was gradually introduced, and was 
 in full working at the end of the third century. Member- 
 ship of the various trading and manufacturing gilds had 
 once been a coveted privilege of free shopkeepers and 
 artisans. Now it became a status and an hereditary 
 status. A baker's descendants must go on baking for ever ; 
 he whose father was a sausage seller should sell nothing 
 but sausages, but should go on selling them whether he 
 liked the job or not. The Roman Statute Book of the 
 fourth century was full of enactments recalling, under the 
 most stringent penalties, men who had deserted their 
 trades. And this, mind you, was at the very time when 
 the number of slaves was rapidly decreasing, and when one 
 might therefore have hoped that free labour would come 
 to its own. 
 
 This decrease of slavery was merely a symptom of the 
 universal ruin impending over the well-to-do. Men were 
 no longer able to purchase more, or even to feed the slaves 
 they had. Emancipation set in with a rush. The great 
 gangs of slaves who had worked the great senatorial 
 estates as stockmen and shepherds began to disappear 
 
 ^ Notice the curious contrast between 'ancient' and 'modern' 
 history. Governments and kings from the fourteenth till the nine- 
 teenth century more often strove to repress municipal institutions 
 than to encourage them ; the Roman Empire in the third, fourth, and 
 fifth centuries tried to compel them to go on existing in their own 
 despite.
 
 ECONOMIC RUIN 33 
 
 from Italy, Gaul and Spain. In the East the change was 
 less marked, because there were fewer large, and more 
 small properties.^ One curious result of this change will 
 be with us throughout the whole of mediaeval, and far into 
 modern history. In order to get their large estates culti- 
 vated, landowners began to make contracts with their 
 poorer neighbours or even their own emancipated slaves ; 
 these should till the land and pay as rent a proportion of 
 the produce, or pay rent in labour on some portion of the 
 land, and take the produce of some other portion for them- 
 selves. Such men were called coioni, and out of the colonate 
 grew the system of serfdom and of that double ownership 
 of land which underlay so much of mediaeval life. It was 
 probably only this colonate which saved Western Europe 
 from going out of cultivation altogether in the fifth 
 century ; very frequently barbarian settlers called itiqui/tni, 
 from outside the Empire, were invited to come in and 
 till land upon similar terms. The Government, always 
 anxious to make sure of its taxes, showed itself, from the 
 fourth century at least, and in some cases as early as the 
 third, anxious to extend the colonate ; it even distributed 
 waste or ruined lands among the neighbouring owners, 
 and compelled these to settle them and till them. Its 
 own 'plantations' of veteran soldiers upon frontier lands 
 were very laudably conceived but were not an economic 
 success ; such men probably lacked special agricultural 
 knowledge, and their produce was undersold, or their 
 estates bought up by richer men. Thus, though there was 
 some hope for the future in the system of the colonate, for 
 the present mere economic ruin hung over the whole 
 western portion of the Empire. 
 
 As for the Divus Ciusar, who was the head of this 
 sadly perishing fabric, his position also was undergoing a 
 
 ^ The small proprietorship lingered on in the Eastern half of the 
 Empire almost till the tenth century, and may be found co-existing 
 with the system of village communities, to the growth of which the 
 Slavonic invasions of the Balkan peninsula in the sixth, seventh, 
 eighth and ninth centuries gave nmrh impulse. From the tenth 
 century lafi/u/tdia began to prevail in the Kast also. 
 
 C
 
 34 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 change, the beginnings of which we may trace as early as 
 the reign of Aurelian. The * Principatc' of Augustus and his 
 immediate successors had originally been a mere union in 
 one person of all the old magistracies of the Roman Repub- 
 lic ; the extinction of the Julio-Claudian and P'lavian houses 
 in the first century had prevented its becoming anything 
 like a hereditary monarchy. In its best period, the second 
 century, it was recruited by a series of adoptions. In the 
 third the Princeps had become the nominee, and usually 
 the victim of the legions or the Roman mob ; successful 
 soldiers or scoundrels bought the Principate by extravagant 
 largesses to the Praetorian Guards. There must, however, 
 have been some free public opinion left in the Empire, for 
 when a really great man, Diocletian, by extraction a mere 
 Dalmatian peasant, was chosen by the soldiers in 284, he was 
 able, apparently without serious opposition, to inaugurate 
 a series of reforms which were carried on by his successor, 
 Constantine. Diocletian reigned for twenty years, and, 
 including the period of civil war, Constantine for thirty more. 
 At the end of that period we find that the Principate has 
 become an openly acknowledged despotism, or almost a 
 Sultanate ; that the system of administration has been 
 changed from top to bottom ; that the division of the 
 Empire into east and west has begun; that the military 
 element entirely dominates the civil at the court of the 
 emperor ; that the whole system of taxation has been 
 adapted to feed the army and the army alone, and that 
 the chief seat of government has been moved to Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 Of these the first change is the least important. 
 Whatever may have been the origin of kingship among 
 primitive peoples, it has always been apt to take upon 
 itself a sort of divinity, and has been most successful and 
 beneficial when its subjects have acquiesced in this. 
 Triumphant Christianity, while it denied the name of God 
 to Constantine, and burned no incense at his statue, 
 unquestionably regarded him as a 'sacred' person, and 
 openly called him so. The barbarian kings, who founded 
 monarchies on the ruins of the Empire, were told by
 
 DIOCLETIAN'S REFORMS 35 
 
 their bishops that they were sacred, and were, no doubt, 
 glad to behave it. The whole spirit of kingship in the 
 East, near and far, was, and still is of a similar nature. 
 Thus, among the changes that took place in the Roman 
 Empire between 270 and 337, the least were that men 
 prostrated themselves on entering the presence-chamber, 
 that the emperor wore a diadem, and spent a great deal 
 more money on his clothes, food and servants, than the 
 early Principes had spent. Perhaps the greatest advantage 
 that he derived from his enhanced majesty was that he 
 no longer needed to ' explain his policy ' to a senate or 
 to anyone in the world ; stat pro ratione voluntas. 
 
 As for the second principle inaugurated by Diocletian, 
 and arrested only for a time and only partially by 
 Constantine, it was indeed the vastest of changes, and 
 one which my readers will understand better when we 
 have considered the penetration of the barbarians into 
 the Empire. But I cannot avoid referring to it here, for 
 it seems to me to point in the direction of the beginning 
 of the mediaeval world. When Diocletian ^ divided the 
 Empire into four great prefectures, and these again into 
 thirteen 'dioceses,' each containing a varying number 
 of provinces, he was really recognising the fact that 
 nationalities were coming into existence in spite of Roma 
 Dea. By no means all of these dioceses have grown into 
 modern ' countries,' but it has been their tendency to do 
 so ; and, perhaps, had it not been for the conquests of 
 Islam, the prefectures of the East and of Illyricum would 
 now have been divided as much upon Diocletian's lines 
 as his Prefecture of Gaul is into the three great countries 
 of Spain, France, and England.'- I need not plague you 
 
 ' Some writers will attribute only the diocesan system to Diocletian, 
 and suggest that the prefectures were a natural grouping of dioceses 
 which grew up during the next century. 
 
 - (i) In the Prefecture of Gaul lie {a) Diocese of Britain ; {b) 
 Diocese of [Northern] Gaul, which includes the whole course of the 
 Loire, and the valley of the Saune from Lyons upwards ; (t) Diocese 
 of Vienne, including France south and west of Loire ; (</) Diocese 
 of Spain, including the westernmost of the African provinces. (2) In 
 the Prefecture of Italy., {a) Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica are
 
 36 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 with the names of the hierarchy of officials who governed 
 these prefectures, dioceses, provinces. If the Empire 
 had been a simple bureaucracy before, it now became a 
 very complicated one, and infinitely more costly to govern. 
 So vast indeed was the new machine that it was beyond 
 the power of one, or even of several Augusti and Caesars 
 to control ; it ' took charge of itself,' and constantly 
 thwarted reform lest its own interests should be en- 
 dangered. The real point is that the military force 
 maintained in each prefecture was rendered, either by 
 Diocletian or by Constantine, entirely independent of 
 the civil administration. This, in times of danger, is 
 usually reckoned a good symptom ; and, as the need of 
 the Empire in the fourth century was defence of the frontiers 
 before everything else, it seemed to have been introduced 
 just at the right time ; but, in the result, it did network well. 
 Constantine, or his predecessor Galerius at the same time 
 abolished the dangerous Praetorian guards, whose camp on 
 the Esquiline dated from Tiberius, and who had so often 
 murdered emperors and sold the throne. This of itself 
 meant a loss of influence to the city of Rome. At the 
 same time Diocletian or Constantine introduced a radical 
 change into the composition of the army, by the creation 
 of a huge central reserve, quartered in the interior of the 
 Empire, to be moved quickly to any frontier which was 
 
 included in one Diocese of Italy, together with RhtCtia Prima (roughly 
 our Switzerland) and Rhretia Secunda (Bavaria between the Danube 
 and the Swiss frontier) ; {b) Diocese of Africa, extending from 
 Mauritania C;esariensis to the Gulf of Sidra. (3) The Prefecture of 
 Illyricum, whose northern frontier is the Danube from IJelgrade to 
 Sistova, includes {n) Diocese of Dacia, roughly equivalent to our 
 Servia and Montenegro, but extending slightly more east and south ; 
 {b) Diocese of Macedonia, including modern Macedonia, Albania, 
 Thessaly, Greece, and Crete ; {c) Diocese of Illyricum (Eastern 
 Tyrol, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, and a 
 strip of Western Hungary). (4) Prefecture of the East, which 
 includes all the rest of the Empire in five Dioceses, Egypt, ' the East,' 
 Pontus, Asia, and (in Europe only the Diocese of) Thrace, made up 
 of Bulgaria, Eastern Koumelia to Constantinople, and that part of 
 modern Roumania which lies south of the Danube. There were some 
 subsequent changes of these groups.
 
 DIOCLETIAN'S REFORMS 37 
 
 most threatened. These troops were called ' Comita- 
 tenses,' as opposed to the ' Limitanei ' or frontier legions, 
 which were from this time onwards more and more 
 depleted. J^esides these the emperors created a special 
 bodyguard called ' Palatini,' with extremely high pay, and 
 these were largely increased, to the prejudice of the rest 
 of the army, all through the fourth century. The 
 ' Limitanei,' with lower pay and lesser prospects, remained 
 cantoned along the vast frontiers. These they soon proved 
 too few to defend, although an attempt was made in 
 the fourth century to give them a personal interest in the 
 defence, by grants of land just within the frontier to retired 
 veterans, whose children then had a hereditary obligation 
 to serve with the eagles. For recruiting was very difficult 
 to keep up, and a fourth-century legion was seldom at 
 anything like its ' paper strength,' in spite of the fact that 
 barbarians were readily admitted, both into the actual 
 ranks and as auxiliaries, in such numbers that in the fifth 
 century the army was more barbarian than Roman.' 
 
 But Diocletian had gone even further towards separa- 
 tion of the constituent parts of the Empire. In his 
 anxiety to provide for future successions to the throne 
 without bloodshed, he had imagined a strange plan 
 by which there were to be two ' Augusti,' one in the 
 East and the other in the West, and that each of these 
 was to ' associate ' with himself a destined successor called 
 a ' Ca:sar,' who should step into his place at his death. 
 It is easy to sec that the eternal severance between East 
 and West really lay at the bottom of this plan. The 
 scheme did not work, and only led to a civil war, in which 
 there were at one time six Richmonds in the field ; but 
 its main point was revived again in the partition of 395, 
 when the sons of Theodosius took, one the East and one 
 the West to govern. Finally, Diocletian had fixed the 
 
 ' The name legion clung to the smaller units (each one-third of 
 the original 6000 men) which were the rule from the end of the 
 third century ; the reason for the breaking up of the old unit into 
 three was that the frontiers now needed a much more extensive 
 cordon of troops.
 
 38 DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 centre of his own administration so far as it had any 
 centre at alP at Nicomedia, while his fellow 'Augustus' 
 had ruled from Milan, 
 
 Many explanations have been sought for this desertion 
 of the old capital, such as the growing poverty of Italy in 
 contrast with the comparative prosperity of the East, the 
 enormous distance of Rome from the very vulnerable 
 point of the lower Danube, or the need of driving back 
 the hereditary foe of Greece, the Persian, against whom, 
 indeed, Diocletian directed a brilliant and successful 
 campaign. But perhaps we need not go further than the 
 condition of the Roman mob, which four centuries of 
 State Socialism and pampering had now rendered 
 absolutely intolerable. To feed and amuse this million 
 of unemployed and unemployable, now that the corn-area 
 of Africa was contracting and wild beasts were becoming 
 scarce," had become too loathsome a task ; let the Prtefectus 
 Urbi look to it ; if the mob starved it could not easily 
 take vengeance on an emperor who lived in Asia or Gaul. 
 No emperor after this time made any serious sojourn 
 in Rome. 
 
 Grass did not at once grow in the streets of the capital 
 of the world, which still covered some nine square miles 
 of ground, but moral grass grew in the hearts of its 
 senate. The members of this body were no longer in danger 
 of losing their heads at each imperial election, as in the third 
 century, but they lost all remnants of their virility. They 
 continued indeed to elect, on the nomination of the 
 emperor, two persons every year to fill the oldest of 
 Roman magistracies, the Consulate ; and the Consoles 
 ordmarii continued to give their names to the year. Our 
 own historian Bede, writing in the eighth century and 
 being wishful to limit for his readers the exact date of 
 the Saxon invasion of Britain in the fifth, tells us that it 
 
 ^ Ubi Ccesar ibi Roma was Diocletian's maxim. 
 
 - ' For Heaven's sake get me some crocodiles,' writes a fourth- 
 century Prefect of Rome ; the crocodiles came, but were in such 
 poor condition that they had all to be killed on the first day of the 
 Games, and gave no sport at all.
 
 THE ROMAN SENATE 39 
 
 was ' in tlie third Consulate of Acitius.' ' The emperor 
 often deigned to be consul and to give his name to the 
 year. The consuls were still inaugurated with all the old 
 ceremonies of fasces, lictors and curule chairs, after which 
 they were able, in the immortal phrase of Gibbon, ' to 
 enjoy during the remainder of the year the undisturbed con- 
 templation of their own greatness.'- One is indeed 
 constrained almost to admire the placid attitude of the 
 Roman senate during all the changes of the fourth and 
 fifth centuries. To the very last it contained the names 
 of some men worthy to be remembered as gentlemen and 
 as rhetoricians ; ' rich men furnished with ability living 
 peaceably in their habitations,'^ a sort of mixture of the 
 French Academy and a fashionable London Club. 
 
 ' Also, a third consulship was under the Empire a surprising 
 honour for any citizen ; Aetius' is the only known instance. 
 
 - A sixth-century writer, Jordanes, tells us that 'to be called 
 Consul was the sununujn bonum, the first glory in the world.' 
 
 ^ If they did not 'find out musical tunes' they certainly 'recited 
 verses in writing'; this seems, indeed, to have been the chief 
 occupation of a fourth- or fifth-century senator. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 
 xliv. 5, 6.
 
 •:?»rw .(^ tap"" rr^'r;?^^ '''^'F-;*
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER II 
 
 The Time covered is the latter part of the third, the whole of the 
 fourth, and the first years of the fifth centuries. 
 
 The principal SuiijECTS are — (i) The beginning of the 'barbarian' 
 invasions of the Roman Empire, especially in the West, i.c.y the 
 coming of the Goths, Burgundians, Sueves, Alans, Vandals, and 
 other tribes ; an attempt is made to show that they did not come 
 to destroy civilisation but to get a share in it ; also, that the 
 Empire needed them both as colonists and soldiers. (2) A 
 description of the frontiers of the Empire ; its condition in the 
 third century ; the reforming emperors from Aurelian to Con- 
 stantine I. (3) The civil war of 306-324, with the triumph of 
 Constantine ; what Christian influences were at work ; the Edict 
 of Toleration of 313 ; the triumph of the Church. (4) The 
 Arian controversy and the Council of Niciea, 325. (5) Tlie 
 career of Athanasius under Constantine and his successors ; the 
 essential differences between the Eastern and Western theologies 
 and churches. (6) The successors of Constantine, especially the 
 career of Julian, called the 'Apostate' ; his overthrow, and the 
 accession of the dynasty of Valentinian ; the last days of 
 paganism at Rome ; the conservatism of the senate ; the career 
 of Theodosius I., last emperor of united East and West. (7) The 
 real grievances of the Goths from 37S-410; their sack of Rome 
 under Alaric, 410, (8) The division of the sovereignty on the 
 death of Theodosius, 395 ; the reign of Honorius and the settle- 
 ment of the Visigoths in Southern Gaul. 
 
 The chief Actors are : — 
 
 (1) The family of Constantine. 
 
 CONSTANTIUS I., 
 died 306. 
 
 Continiifd on next page
 
 42 
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER II 
 
 CONSTANTIUS I., 
 died 306. 
 
 I 
 
 DIOCLETIAN, Julius, 
 
 abdicated 305, 
 
 died 312 MAXIMIAN, 
 
 His Daughter married ^^^^ 31°. 
 
 GALERIUS, __\ 
 
 died 311. I I 
 
 His Daughter married MAXENTIUS, His 
 
 who died 312. Daughter 
 
 married CONSTANTINE I., 
 who died 337. 
 I 
 
 ill I 
 
 Crispus, Constantine II., Constans I., CONSTANTIUS II., 
 
 died 326, died 340. died 350. died 361, 
 
 ^ r ^ married Eusebia. 
 
 Of no serious importance. 
 
 Gallus, JULIAN, 
 
 died 354. died 363, 
 
 called the ' Apostate.' 
 
 Succeeded by 
 
 JOVIAN, 
 
 died 364. 
 
 Succeeded by 
 
 VALENTINIAN I. 
 
 See next Table. 
 
 (2) The family of Valentinian. 
 
 VALENTINIAN I. ruled with his Brother VALENS, 
 died 375. died 378. 
 
 GRATIAN, VALENTINIAN II., 
 died 383. died 392. 
 
 Galla, 
 who married THEODOSIUS 1., 
 died 395. 
 I 
 
 ARCADIUS, 
 died 408. 
 
 HONORIUS, 
 
 died 423. 
 
 b}' an earlier wile. 
 
 GALLA PLACIDIA. 
 
 See Table 
 in Chapter III.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS AND THE BARBARIAN 
 INVASIONS 
 
 Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae 
 Numina Magna Deum. 
 
 Many people who know no German are familiar with the 
 word Volkerwanderung, and imagine that the Roman 
 Empire was overturned by the mere impact of a vast mass 
 of tribes, all of Teutonic descent, moving westwards and 
 southwards from the borders of Central Asia. That about 
 the beginning of our era such a movement of tribes was 
 going on, is pretty evident. The causes of it we can 
 hardly guess. Ancient Germany was probably not unlike 
 Greece in Homeric times ; force was vested not in any 
 king or state, but in the heads of great families, or in 
 successful leaders of war bands. The one fact in its 
 history of which we can be sure is that many little groups 
 gradually coalesced into several big ones. All had doubt- 
 less some traditions of the past, but of two only, the Goths 
 and the Lombards, were the traditions ever put in writ- 
 ing, and that not until the sixth and eighth centuries 
 respectively. Of one other whole branch of the Teutonic 
 race, the Scandinavian, the entire tradition and mytholog)- 
 survives ; but this was a branch which had no contact with 
 Rome at any period of its history. It is so strange as to 
 seem to us almost impossible, but one old Teutonic 
 tradition, even now widely held by ethnologists, makes 
 the Scandinavian peninsula the original home of the 
 entire Teutonic stock, and it is true that few countries 
 
 43
 
 44 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 have )'icldcd such ' finds ' of primitive weapons as 
 Southern Sweden. Ikit, whence so ever the migration 
 started, we suppose that the rise of strong kingship, some 
 rapid increase of population, pressure of still more 
 barbarous Asiatic savages behind them, above all hunger, 
 may have been the causes that led the several 'barbarian' 
 stocks to hammer on the Roman frontiers. If they often 
 raided within its borders as enemies, they oftener came as 
 suppliants for food and shelter or to offer their services as 
 auxiliaries {fcvderati). Certainly they had no ambition 
 to found new states. Almost to the close of the fourth 
 century the Empire could repel them — unless indeed it 
 wanted them. In pitched battles, even in the fifth century, 
 when they had almost all adopted the defensive armour of 
 the Romans, they were by no means always successful 
 against Roman discipline and strategy. 
 
 But long before that time Rome actually wanted them 
 very badly. Some means of arresting the decline of 
 population, of getting the tax-owing lands cultivated, of 
 filling the imperial armies, had to be found. And so, by 
 deliberate policy, whole provinces were peopled with 
 foreigners, whole tribes were enrolled Tis fcederati. It was 
 in the cavalry that there was the greatest demand for 
 them ; in this arm the Roman forces had always been least 
 strong, and it was by this arm that the barbarians were 
 destined to possess Rome. Every emperor from 
 Constantine to Honorius enlisted fresh and fresh con- 
 tingents of Teutonic cavalry. When Theodosius the 
 Great had deliberately inaugurated the principle of setting 
 up one great commander i^nagister 7itrmsque niilitice) to 
 have all power in the West and to stand as the emperor's 
 right hand there, and two^ in the East, we find that, with 
 the possible exception of Aetius, all such commanders in 
 the West were of barbarian or semi-barbarian descent. 
 Yet all clung passionately to the name and style of 
 Romans ; self-seeking and disloyal to a particular emperor 
 a Goth who had taken his pay might be ; but to the Empire, 
 
 ^ In the East there was a magister peditum and a vtagister 
 eqiiitum.
 
 TEMPER OF THE 'BARBARIANS' 45 
 
 to ' Romania,' and to all that stood for civilisation he 
 was always loyal. We have no evidence — perhaps 
 because they did not write memoirs — that the 'Goths' 
 despised the unwarlike Romans and Greeks, but much 
 evidence that they were themselves despised by these, 
 and put up with it meekly. In short they did all 
 they could do to debarbarise themselves and become 
 Romans. 
 
 There are exceptions to this general rule as to the 
 mutual attitudes of Romania and Barbaria. Once (in 41G) 
 there was in Italy such an enthusiasm for Goths that an 
 emperor had to forbid Romans from dressing themselves 
 and wearing their hair after the Gothic mode ; but this 
 was probably only a temporary movement of whirligig 
 Fashion. On the other hand, far away in the North-West 
 there were sea-wolves, our own Saxon ancestors, who did 
 not care a jot for the Majesty of Rome, did not want to be 
 civilised, and simply went on slaying. And there was one 
 terrible savage from Central Asia, Attila, King of the 
 Huns, who would perhaps have destroyed every trace of 
 F^uropean civilisation if Romania and Barbaria had not 
 combined against him.' With these exceptions Goths, 
 Sueves, Gepids, Herules, Burgundians, even Vandals, even 
 non-Aryan Alans, even heathen Franks, seem mainly 
 to have wished for a share in the riches and prosperity of 
 Romania, and to become Roman gentlemen. 
 
 Of course they failed of this last wish. The traditional 
 Goth, both of history and fiction, was 
 
 'rough ;ind lough and extremely gruff.' 
 
 His manners were bad, his voice loud, his dress inadetjuate, 
 his appetite more than adequate. Like Alan Breck, he 
 was no doubt ' a bonny fighter,* and given to outbursts of 
 fury, in which he would go, bare sark,- at anyone or 
 anything. The Gaul of Julius Ca:sar's days had been 
 
 ' It is true that Attila employed as secretaries men who knew 
 Latin ; possibly even he might have been 'converted' to Romania. 
 
 -' The etymology of 'lierserkcr' is doubtful; the N.E.D. prefers 
 'bear sark ' ' in a Ijear's coat.'
 
 46 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 much the same, but three centuries of the J^ax Romana 
 had tamed him and everyone else whom it had over- 
 shadowed. All experience — and, after all, men and 
 empires arc justified in relying on experience — led Rome 
 to think that she could tame any barbarian. She forgot 
 that, in the fourth century she was old, shrunken, half- 
 starved, and almost childless. 
 
 But the point I wish to make is this, that, whereas 
 down to the close of the third century Rome had repelled 
 far vaster barbarian invasions, slaughtering these same 
 tribes in such numbers as, when stated even by educated 
 Roman historians, sound to us quite incredible, she 
 welcomed in the fourth century the barbarian penetration 
 and Romanised its elements ; and yet those elements did 
 not give her enough strength to resist the new and prob- 
 ably smaller invasions of the fifth. The last statement 
 must, however, be taken as referring principally to the 
 West ; in the East she did on the whole successfully drive 
 back the Northern invaders with her left hand, while with 
 her right she kept at bay the far more hostile Persians. 
 When at last in the West the barbarians stepped in and 
 carved the Roman provinces into kingdoms, they did so 
 almost regretfully, and only because, in the beautiful words 
 of Dr Hodgkin, ' the last leaf had fluttered down from the 
 withered tree ' of Ancient Rome. 
 
 When we come to look at the invasions in more detail, 
 we shall find that it is difficult to separate them from what 
 I have called the ' penetrations ' or from the other events of 
 the history of the Empire, even from events which have, 
 apparently, so little connection with barbarian invasions as 
 theological disputes. The first thing to realise is that the 
 frontiers of the Empire had never been long free from war, 
 and that from the third century onward such war was 
 almost incessant. The system of legions massed at several 
 great stations on a frontier defended, between the stations, 
 either by great walls with watch towers or by very small 
 pickets of troops, was bound to prove a failure if all the 
 frontiers were assailed at once, a casualty that actually 
 happened in the third quarter of the third century. The
 
 DETAILS OF THE FRONTIERS 47 
 
 three most critical points are the Euphrates, the Danube, 
 and the Rhine ; and with the last of these we must group 
 that south-western corner of Germany, protected by the 
 long defensive works of Trajan and Hadrian which, 
 roughly speaking, stretched in a hollow curve from 
 Coblentz to Regcnsburg.^ ' Alamans' and other Germans 
 are for ever hammering at this barrier, as ' Franks ' arc at 
 the Bclgic provinces of Gaul on the Lower Rhine. After 
 the abandonment of Aliso in Westphalia (the modern 
 Paderborn) by Tiberius, the outposts are Castra Vetera 
 (nearly opposite the modern Wesel), Moguntiacum (Mainz) 
 and Castra Regina or Regcnsburg ; which are fed from 
 their several bases of supply at Augusta Trevirorum on 
 the Moselle (which we know as Trier) and Augusta 
 Vindelicorum or Augsburg. Further eastwards, Rome has 
 to defend Trajan's great conquest of Dacia-beyond-the- 
 Danube - i.e., much of our Hungary and Roumania, till 
 it is wisely given up by Aurelian; after which comes 
 the turn of the provinces of Noricum, Pannonia, Mrcsia, 
 and of Dacia Ripensis. The outposts of these will run 
 right along the Danube from Vindobona (Vienna) and 
 Aquincum (Pesth) to Mursa at the mouth of the Drave 
 and Singidunum (Belgrade), Viminacium (at the con- 
 fluence of Morava and Danube), Ratiaria (VVidin), 
 CEscus (at the confluence of Isker and Danube), 
 Novae (near the modern Sistova), and Durostorum 
 (which is now Silistria) ; and the feeding bases will be 
 Sirmium on the river Save, a now vanished city, and 
 Naissus, at present Nisch on the Morava, through which 
 places runs the great road from North Italy to the East. In 
 these regions it is the Goths whom we fear most. Lastly, 
 there is the Euphrates ; for, although Mesopotamia and even 
 districts beyond the Tigris were more than once, and once 
 for sixty consecutive years (297-363), in Roman hands, and 
 
 ' See notes supra, p. 27, and infra, p. 49. 
 
 2 Dacia was probably always a mistake ; Hadrian had wished to 
 surrender it. To be at all secure, its eastern limits should have 
 extended to the river Don. Marcus Aurelius had to defend it, and in 
 consequence the whole Enipirc, ayainsl the worst storm since the 
 Punic wars.
 
 48 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 though Armenia inclined more to Rome than to Persia, 
 the outlying fortresses were for ever in danger and 
 especially after the advent to power in Persia of the 
 Sassanid dynasty early in the third century ; these last 
 were more warlike, more Oriental, less civilised than their 
 predecessors the Arsacids. Zeugma on the Euphrates is 
 the critical crossing-place ; Nisibis in Mesopotamia is our 
 great outlying Roman stronghold, and Antioch the best 
 basis for our eastward-marching armies. 
 
 Then again we must realise that this bad third century 
 was the age in which emperors were made and unmade 
 by the dozen in the camps of the frontier-legions. Such 
 men were often obliged for their own safety to lead their 
 legions to Italy, either to kill the reigning emperor or to 
 coerce the senate ; the frontier would thus be left bare 
 and your Goth, your Alaman or your Persian would soon 
 be across it. On the whole one is surprised to find what 
 valiant fellows most of these shortlived soldiers' emperors 
 are, and how gallantly they carry on the losing battle 
 Maximin (235), though himself of Thracian descent, fights 
 fiercely to guard the frontier against worse barbarians. 
 Decius, whose pedigree is doubtful, has an evil reputation 
 as a persecutor of Christians, but he is an antique Roman to 
 the core, and falls in battle against the Goths in Dacia 
 (251). The brave Valerian flies to the succour of Nisibis, 
 is captured by the Persians at Edessa, and never heard of 
 again (260). Meanwhile the Gothic horsemen are looming 
 ever larger and larger ; the left wing of their great moving 
 nation contrives to ship itself across the Black Sea,^ and 
 sweeps the northern coasts of Asia from Trebizond to 
 Chalcedon ; nay, crosses the Bosphorus to ravage Thrace, 
 and holds out a hand to the right wing of the same nation 
 which pours over the Danube from Dacia ; perhaps it is 
 from some of the captives which they carry back with them 
 
 1 There were outlying Greek cities nearly all round the shores of 
 the Dlack Sea, which the Roman fleet tried, with very indifferent 
 success, to defend from pirates and ' Scythians ' ; and it was probably 
 from some of these cities that the Gothic invaders now ' borrowed ' the 
 means of transport.
 
 VALIANT DEFENCE OF FRONTIERS 49 
 
 that these Goths, first of barbarians, learn some rudiments 
 of Christianity. The year 268 may be taken as the worst 
 that Rome as a civilised power had seen since the creation 
 of the Principate, and it is probable that the Balkan 
 peninsula and the northern provinces of Asia Minor never 
 recovered their prosperity after these inroads. 
 
 But the turn of the tide was coming with the series of 
 great emperors, Claudius II., Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian. 
 These begin the restoration of discipline in the legions and 
 exploit their valour. The Goths are driven in headlong 
 flight northwards again, and Dacia, beyond the great river, 
 is abandoned to them. Noricum and Pannonia are 
 delivered from the Alamans who had actually penetrated 
 the Alps into Italy. Egypt and Syria are torn afresh 
 from the hands of a remarkable warrior and Hellenist 
 Queen, who had set up for herself at Palmyra ; a rebellion 
 in Gaul, which has been smouldering for over a decade, is 
 suppressed before Aurelian, the strongest emperor since 
 Trajan, is murdered in 275. Two ominous signs of the 
 future are however seen in his reign ; he ascribes his 
 victories not to Vesta of the Roman hearth, but to the 
 Eastern ' God of the Sun ' ; and he builds walls for Rome. 
 Other cities have to follow the example of the capital, for 
 avSpeq 6v reixn 7roA<9 is becoming an exploded proverb.^ 
 But Probus took up the work of Aurelian, refortified the 
 Rhine,'- planted colonies of veterans along it, with a regular 
 ' feudal ' obligation on their lands to supply horse and 
 foot to the legions ; pacified the Franks on the Lower 
 Rhine, and planted some of them in Gaul and Britain ; 
 planted other barbarian colonists in Thrace, and took 
 16,000 /a-de rati into Roman pay. The predecessors of the 
 
 * Frontier cities were of course always walled ; but, during the 
 first two centuries, the only walled city within the interior limits of 
 the Pax Romana was Rhodes. 
 
 '^ The Limes or frontier of the first or second century had been 
 a regular series of fortifications, in stone or earth work, with a military 
 road running behind it. In the third century much of this was 
 decayed, and Aurelian and Probus seem to have drawn back the 
 frontier to the great rivers, with an occasional tcic-de-pont beyond 
 them. 
 
 D
 
 50 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 Dervishes of our own day were driven back into their 
 Soudan ; the Isaurian mountaineers received severe lessons 
 in the highlands of Asia Minor. Probus, moreover, was the 
 last emperor who seriously set himself to conciliate the 
 senate, and to leave civilian appointments largely in its 
 hands. 
 
 Diocletian, in the intervals of carrying out the reforms 
 to which I referred in my earlier chapter, has always this 
 frontier task on hand. Not much personal fighting in the 
 first line can be with certainty ascribed to him, but his 
 activity in organising defence can be traced everywhere. 
 From his vantage points at Sirmium and Nicomedia, he 
 will watch his ' fellow-Augustus,' Maximian, his ' associ- 
 ated Crcsars,' the savage Galerius in the East, and the 
 highly civilised Constantius in the West, doing their duty 
 sternly. It is Galerius who pushes the Persians back 
 behind the Tigris, perhaps even further than Trajan 
 did, thus making the last 'expansion' of the Roman 
 Empire ; and it is Diocletian who, for the last time replaces 
 a vassal king of Arsacid descent upon the throne of 
 Armenia, to be a thorn, for a century to come, in the side 
 of the Persian. Meanwhile, in the far North-West, 
 Constantius has to deal with a strange phenomenon, no 
 less than a Roman admiral, Carausius, who has turned 
 pirate or been playing into the hands of Saxon pirates on 
 the shores of Britain and Gaul. He has lasted for a 
 decade, with his chief arsenal at Boulogne, but is finally 
 murdered in Britain, and Constantius re-establishes the 
 Pax in the Channel. 
 
 It may have been Diocletian who, in 303, began the 
 last and very savage persecution of the Christians ; these 
 had enjoyed nearly half a century of peace, and grown with 
 such amazing rapidity that they were now a power in 
 every army, and a power to be reckoned with in the 
 State. But, as 305 was the year of Diocletian's abdica- 
 tion, and as the persecution lasted off and on till 312, it 
 should perhaps be more truly ascribed to Galerius. Con- 
 stantius, in his sphere of government, simply omitted to 
 put the edicts in force ; he was a monotheist at least,
 
 RISK OF CONSTANTINK 51 
 
 even if he was not under Christian influences. With 
 the abdication, however, of the great Diocletian^ who 
 retired to the Dalmatian coast, to grow cabbages and 
 build his marvellous palace of Spalato, by Salona, 
 civil war was at hand, and the death of Constantius 
 brought it to a head, 306. 
 
 Dimly enough we shall be able to resolve this civil war, 
 first into a duel between two Caesars for the West and a 
 duel of other two Caesars for the East (but always with a 
 tendency to spread itself into what an Irishman would 
 perhaps call a ' duel of four ' ), and then into a duel 
 between the East and the West. 
 
 Young Constantine, the son of Constantius, had been 
 at the Eastern court, and had seen with horror some 
 bloody scenes of persecution ; perhaps he had spoken his 
 mind against them, for, when Galerius got full power in 
 the East about 305, he had fled to his father's army in 
 Gaul and was in North Britain when that father died. 
 The British legions at once hailed him as Augustus, and 
 Galerius was forced to recognise him. Me fought valiantly 
 against the Franks on the Lower Rhine, drove them back 
 with great slaughter, and then turned his eye southwards. 
 The tangled set of quarrels that goes on for the next few 
 years is hardly to be expressed in intelligible sentences. 
 C;esars and Augusti spring from the ground like mush- 
 rooms and are knocked down as quickly. Maximian twice 
 abdicates and twice resumes his claims to the Western half 
 of the Empire ; he is threatened, not only by Constantine, 
 whom at first he hopes to conciliate, and to whom he gives 
 his daughter to wife, but by his own son, Maxcntius, who 
 grabs at Africa, grabs at Italy, at Rome. In the East, on 
 the death of Galerius in 311, two fresh pretenders to the 
 title of Augustus, Licinius and Maximin, start up and fight, 
 each for his own hand ; from them we may cheerfully avert 
 our eyes. In 310 Constantine is obliged to dispose of his 
 father-in-law, Maximian, who is officially hekl to have 
 'committed suicide,' and must then deal with Maxcntius. 
 
 It is Gaul versus Italy, an antagonism which we shall 
 meet more than once in the next two centuries ; but it is
 
 52 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 Gaul more loyal to Roman ideas than Rome itself. Gaul 
 is always the eldest and most loyal child of the Roman 
 Empire. In 312 Constantine is over the Alps with a small 
 but splendid force of Gallic legions disciplined in the late 
 struggle on the Rhine, and probably penetrated with 
 Christian influences. Maxentius, based on Rome and 
 claiming without much justice to be the candidate of the 
 senate, though probably not an active persecutor of the 
 Christians, was in much larger force, but allowed his 
 generals to be defeated at least twice while he remained 
 inactive at his base. If we may believe the first historian 
 of the Christian Church, Bishop Eusebius of Cccsarea, 
 some time before the armies met, Constantine saw a vision 
 of the Cross in the sky, and dreamed a dream that if he 
 put the Cross upon his standards In hoc signo vmces} 
 Constantine, in his old age, told this story to the good 
 bishop and confirmed it with an oath. Eusebius apparently 
 knew nothing of it when he wrote his Chiircli History 
 in the emperor's lifetime, and it first appears in his Life of 
 Constantine written in 338. 
 
 Was the emperor indeed a convert? It is a question 
 of supreme interest ; we know that he was a monotheist ; 
 we know also that, though no far-seeing sage, he was 
 an enthusiast, who believed in direct divine help of some 
 sort. His pagan friends believed in it too, and said that 
 it was his deified father Constantius who came to succour 
 him in the struggle. The only subsequent pagan emperor, 
 Julian, also believed in direct divine help, and threw away 
 a great Roman army in the belief. That Constantine 
 for twenty-four years after his victory ruled practically in 
 the Christian interest is also clear, but whether he was 
 ever baptised is another question. Eusebius clearly states 
 that he was — upon his deathbed ; but the full story of 
 his baptism by St Sylvester is not found earlier than 
 the sixth century. There is no great reason to doubt 
 that he presented to the Bishop of Rome for a residence 
 his wife's palace, called ' the Lateran,' or that he built 
 
 ' Tot;r<fj viKo. : SO In Euseb., Vit. Con,, I. 2S ; not'Ev Tovnp, as usually 
 iiuoted.
 
 VICTORY OF CONSTANTINE 53 
 
 the two first public Christian churches in Rome, the 
 Basilica of the Lateran and that of St Peter on the 
 Vatican Mill. Constantino's enemies used to say that 
 as Christian bishops would absolve a man from any crime, 
 the emperor had turned Christian in order to get absolved 
 from his political murders. However this may be, it seems 
 clear that, in 312, the Cross was the best, perhaps the 
 only flag for a monotheist. Under it a brilliant victory 
 was won over Maxentius' enormous host, at the Milvian 
 bridge, two miles from Rome, and Maxentius was slain 
 in the battle. Rome made no defence, for it was weary 
 of Maxentius who had proved himself a gory tyrant ; 
 Constantine, though he scrupled not to clear rivals from 
 his own path, was essentially not a man of blood, and he 
 was well received by the senate. He came at once to an 
 understanding with Licinius, the abler of the Eastern 
 rivals, and, in the joint names of Constantine and Licinius, 
 was put forth in 313 the Edict of Milan, not under any 
 specially Christian influences but at the wish of the 
 'party of all reasonable men.' It gave the Christians 
 complete toleration and religious equality. That Maximin 
 would oppose them was certain, and that Licinius, when he 
 had beaten Maximin, as he did soon after, would quarrel 
 with Constantine was more than probable and came to pass. 
 But Constantine was the first soldier of the age, and 
 each successive victory confirmed his belief in the favour of 
 the Divine Christ. By 326, after much toil and fighting, 
 he was master of an united Empire of East and West, and 
 had put to death his own son Crispus, who was supposed 
 to be plotting against him. He did not neglect his 
 frontiers, and we find him once aiding against the Goths 
 on the lower Danube certain ' Sarmatians,' of whom he 
 planted colonies in Thrace, But the important work of 
 his later years was the definite creation of a new capital 
 on the Bosphorus, the best point from which the Empire 
 could be cared for as a whole. For this purpose he chose 
 the old Greek city of Byzantium, long one of the most 
 flourishing commercial stations of the Ancient World. It 
 stands on a narrow peninsula, defended on three sides by
 
 54 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 deep waters, and is the natural stepping-stone from 
 Plurope to Asia and back again. Here were no traditions 
 and privileges like those of Rome, for which the new 
 spirit of ' Sultanism ' needed to have any regard ; from 
 ' Constantinople,' as the new capital was renamed, the 
 Empire could be regarded as a whole. And here we can 
 see how essentially Constantine's aim was the same as 
 that of the Christians, namely, to reform the old narrow 
 ' Romanism ' for the benefit of the world at large. Rome, 
 however, never forgave him, and the last great poet of 
 Rome, Claudian, speaks in bitter words the hatred of 
 the old for the new city ^ and, as far as he dares, of the old 
 gods for the new. The steady paganism of the majority 
 of Roman senators may well be ascribed to spreta injuria 
 Roince. 
 
 We may be sure, however, that Constantino was an 
 emperor even more than he was a Christian ; he did not 
 lay down the title of Pontifex Maximus, which all his 
 predecessors had held ; he defrayed, as they had defrayed, 
 from his own purse the cost of all the religious ceremonies 
 of old Rome : and, if he closed some of the more scandalous 
 of the shrines of Venus, he probably did so in obedience 
 to the public opinion of their districts. He seems to have 
 made an excellent patron of Church councils, and perhaps 
 all the better from the fact that, though a man of high 
 culture, he was no theologian. The Church victorious 
 was far from being united in itself and, but for the unity 
 of the Empire, might easily have broken up into as many 
 sects as there were afterwards nations within that Empire s 
 boundaries. In the very year of the Edict of Milan, 
 Constantino was appealed to on the question, then raging 
 in Africa, ' Can a man who has blenched in the late persecu- 
 tion be absolved?' He appointed a small commission 
 of bishops to give him advice, but it was as Lord of the 
 World that he spoke the sense of this commission and his 
 own in favour of mercy. In the next year a council of 
 Gallican bishops at Aries confirmed this judgment, and 
 
 1 'Et liyzantinos proceres Graiosque Quirites,' etc. (in Euiropium, 
 i'-, 135).
 
 COUNCIL OF NIC/r«:A 55 
 
 also declared that Christianity was not incompatible with 
 military service. 
 
 These were questions most interesting to the practical 
 mind of the West, but, immediately after the final victory 
 over Licinius, the emperor had to solve a question which 
 had arisen in the more speculative East. The great 
 Council of Nicaia, which has given its name to a whole 
 age of Church history and to one of our three creeds, 
 met in 325 to 'determine the true nature of God.' The 
 theological difficulty, which was to 'divide the whole of 
 Christendom by an iota,' arose at Alexandria in 321 with 
 the excommunication of the popular preacher Arius. The 
 doctrine of the Trinity as it now appears in the three 
 creeds had long been a belief of the Church, but it had 
 hardly yet been authoritatively defined. The whole of the 
 coming difference between the spirit of the Latin and Greek 
 churches was foreshadowed in the fact that this was an 
 Eastern and not a Western question. The Western 
 peoples were far more ready than the Eastern to accept 
 marvels, mysteries, and unintelligible doctrine, but they 
 were content that these should remain unintelligible. 
 The Easterns ever sought to find a philosophic basis for 
 them, and to put into earthly formulas those spiritual 
 truths which are incapable of being bound by formulas 
 at all. 
 
 Clearly the spirit of the Church had been for accepting 
 a perfect unity of the Father and the Son. Arius, the 
 father of Arianism, did not in actual words deny the 
 divinity of the Son ; but what he said was that, whereas 
 the Father was from all eternity and had no beginning, 
 the Son had had a beginning ; once He ' was not.' Hence 
 He was, as later Arians said, o/xotoi^Vto? ^ (of like nature 
 
 ' The word was unknown to Arius himself, and is first found about 
 the year 357 ; but as it is then classed among words wliich are not to 
 be used, it must have been in use before that date. The late William 
 Bright in his history of the Church from 313 /£> 451 well points 
 out that one of the main attractions of Arianism lay in the fact that 
 its assertion of an inferior Godhead would come home to persons in 
 transition from Polytheism to Christianity.
 
 56 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 or essence) rather than o/jloovo-io^ (of one nature) with the 
 Father. This doctrine had already spread widely in 
 the East before the Council of Nicrea met ; to the West 
 it was as yet almost unknown. Of the bishops present 
 at the council, 318 in number, most belonged to the 
 eastern half of the Empire, and there were a few even 
 from beyond its frontiers, e.g., from Persia and Arabia. 
 Constantine addressed the Assembly in official Latin, and 
 then fell back upon Greek, the tongue most familiar to 
 his audience. The real prompter of the bishops who 
 were hostile to Arius was a young deacon called Athanasius, 
 and some heat was displayed. In the end a formula 
 was found, to which all but two of those present were 
 able to subscribe, and it was distinctly an Athanasian 
 formula, ' the Son is of one essence with the Father.' All 
 who held otherwise were formally anathematised. All 
 the glory of the decision fell to the great Soldier-Emperor, 
 who, as yet unbaptised and perhaps never baptised, had, 
 without being in the least a partisan, striven for peace 
 and unity within the Church. 
 
 He won thereby for himself twelve years of comparative 
 peace, and for the Roman Empire, long after it had 
 become nothing but a name or a symbol, an alliance 
 with the Catholic Church of untold value. The theological 
 storm did not at once subside. Even into the formula 
 of Nicaea some restless bishops began to read an Arian 
 significance, or, perhaps for the sake of peace, to explain 
 away their own previous words against that formula. 
 Against these the Athanasians had the strong ground 
 of holding fast to the formula itself, and were quite 
 ready to anathematise all who would not accept the 
 most rigid definition of the undefinable. In such an 
 age, in such a crisis of Church history, and among such 
 a people, opinions must have been constantly liable 
 to changes, and we should, I think, hesitate before accept- 
 ing the received Catholic story that all the Arians or quasi 
 Arians were necessarily rogues, who sought only for 
 power and high place in the Church. 
 
 Athanasius, for his part, refused to communicate with
 
 TRIUMPH OF ATHANASIUS 57 
 
 bishops who would not accept his own rigid interpretation 
 of the Nicfean doctrine, and when he was elected Bishop of 
 Alexandria in 326, his stubbornness displayed itself even 
 in the teeth of successive Church councils. One of these 
 in 335 went the length of deposing him from his bishopric, 
 and the perplexed emperor exiled him to Trier for eighteen 
 fateful months. I say fateful, because Roman Gaul, 
 where was all the best and most intelligent life of the 
 West, surrendered itself wholly to him, and never there- 
 after wavered in its attachment to Catholicism. If France 
 is the eldest child of the Roman Empire, she is also the 
 eldest child of the Catholic Church. But this exile left the 
 subtle Arius a free hand in the East, where his friends 
 were rapidly winning over the court and Church to his 
 side when he died in the year before Constantine. 
 
 And in 337 that emperor died also, full of days, riches 
 and honour, and Constantius, his son, proceeded to murder 
 most of his relations. I will not weary my readers with 
 the bloody tale. The murderer was, nevertheless, awake 
 to his imperial duties, and faced Persians on the Euphrates 
 and insurgents in the West with steady tenacity, though 
 with by no means steady success. An usurper Magnentius, 
 with Frank and Saxon fasderati, was annihilated by 
 Roman discipline in Pannonia, and in the Alps (351, 353), 
 and Constantius was soon left sole ruler of the world. In 
 this capacity he once, but once only, paid a visit to old 
 Rome, a visit, alas, too much like that of a half-foreign 
 overlord to a provincial town full of interesting antiquities. 
 But even Constantius, though he began the rooting out of 
 paganism everywhere else, did not dare to disturb the old 
 pagan rites of Rome. On the secular side then, the life- 
 work of Constantine the Great suffered little in the hands 
 of his ruthless son, but on the ecclesiastical side all was 
 not so well. 
 
 Athanasius returned in triumph to Alexandria, with 
 the conscience of Gaul in his pocket, and took up an 
 attitude of lofty superiority towards the court and Church 
 of Constantinople, which had the effect of making 
 Constantius lean strongly to the Arian side. Fierce riots
 
 58 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 at Alexandria compelled Athanasius again to fly to Italy, 
 where he captured the conscience of Christian Rome, as 
 he had captured that of Gaul ; it was upon this occasion 
 that he took with him two unwashed monks from the 
 Egyptian desert, at whom cleanly senators stared with 
 some wonder. It would be difficult to say that there had 
 been any time, since the fall of Jerusalem, at which great 
 deference had not been paid by all Christians to the 
 opinions of the Roman Church, and, from the opening of 
 the third century at least, the letters of its bishops carried 
 greater weight than those of any other. But, if we are to 
 seek a definite period from which some sort of actual 
 primacy among bishops was acknowledged to belong to 
 him of Rome, we shall date it best from the hour when 
 Christian Rome began to give her unwavering support to 
 Athanasius and his doctrine. 
 
 In the fourth century a considerable section of the 
 Eastern Church was Arian, or Semi-Arian, and they were 
 Arian missionaries who converted most of the barbarian 
 tribes ; a circumstance of grave moment for the future 
 history of the Empire, for, while racial antipathies counted 
 for comparatively little, the theological hatred of the Gauls, 
 Italians and Spaniards of Roman descent and Athanasian 
 creed, for the Arian Goths, Lombards, Vandals and 
 the like, was to make any blending of the old and new 
 races very difficult. The court of Constantinople remained 
 more or less Arian longer than any serious section of the 
 Church, in fact, till 378 ; and it was to the Church of the 
 East, rather than to its court, that the Church of Rome 
 now began to address herself seriously. It was Rome that 
 demanded a fresh general council, which met in 343 at 
 Sardica to settle the question. The Arians seem to have 
 behaved very badly ; in fact their representatives sulked and 
 declined to attend the conferences unless the Athanasians 
 should be excluded. Finally, they seceded and left the 
 field clear for their opponents, who at once anathema- 
 tised them and ordered all excluded Athanasians to be 
 restored to their Sees. The most interesting result of 
 the council was, however, that nearly all the bishops present
 
 TRIUMPH OF CHURCH OVER STATE 59 
 
 agreed to .idmit the See of Rome to be a general tribunal of 
 reference for bishops. The rapidly approaching triumph 
 of the Church over the State is seen in the utter powerless- 
 ness of Constantius against Athanasius, who declared almost 
 open war on him. The emperor could indeed drive the 
 bishop to flee from Alexandria' to the desert and its 
 monks, but when he overawed small majorities at councils 
 in Gaul and Italy into confirming his action, the greatest 
 Western bishops withstood him to his face. At Sirmium 
 he appeared for a moment to have better success (357), and 
 a council agreed to some sort of mediatory formula ; but 
 Athanasius was never less defeated. In the desert he had 
 found the true churchmen after his own heart, men who 
 lay in lairs of wild beasts, men who had not washed for 
 thirty years. Bishops and even councils might be coerced 
 or might yield to the blandishments of secular men ; but 
 these monks knew that to refuse all obedience to the State 
 was the real mark of sanctity. It is difficult for an}'one 
 out of sympathy with dogmatic definitions to acquit 
 Athanasius himself of something of this spirit, something 
 of that ' be thou therefore anathema,' which was to inspire 
 Hildebrand, Becket, and all successful Roman churchmen ; 
 but it is impossible to refuse to him high praise for the 
 gallantry with which he fought the battle and taught the 
 faith to which all later generations have rightly given 
 the name of Catholic' He did indeed bear the brunt of 
 the strife ; he was Athanasius contra nmndinii, and 
 Athanasius pro ecclesia. 
 
 If Constantius was an Arian, he made up for it by a 
 thorough repression of paganism ; though he refused to 
 destroy the fabric of temples, he closed them to worship, 
 and forbade sacrifices and auguries under the penalty of 
 death. Yet at this very time a certain rally of paganism 
 was taking place, not indeed at Rome, where alone the 
 emperor had not dared to disturb it, but at Athens and 
 even Alexandria itself. The Neo-Platonists, mentioned in 
 my first chapter, began to see that the strength of their 
 Christian opponents lay in the possession of a doctrine 
 * Five successive exiles are counted in the history of .'\thanasius.
 
 6o THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 and a Church ; they began, therefore, to formulate doctrines 
 for themselves, to establish ascetic priesthoods, and to 
 invent m}'steries. Quite unexpectedly they found an ally 
 in the last scion of the house of Constantine. 
 
 Constantius was childless, and, if one could speak of an 
 'heir* to the Roman Empire, an idea quite foreign to 
 the old notions of the principate, such an heir could only 
 be found in his nephew Julian. Why Julian had not been 
 put to death in his childhood is not clear, for his uncle was 
 always very jealous of him. Perhaps the Empress Eusebia 
 protected him ; anyhow he was sent away to govern Gaul, 
 where, with no previous soldier's training, he won a great 
 victory over a German host near Strassburg (357), and 
 endeared himself to the soldiers. His tutors had soaked 
 him from infancy in Homer, and he knew the Iliad and 
 Odyssey by heart ; then, at the University of Athens, he 
 passed under the influence of the Neo-Platonists, from 
 whom he imbibed a kind of vague pantheism — ' The Soul 
 is to seek reunion with the Spirit of the universe.' His 
 life was singularly pure and virtuous, and he always refused 
 to attend the degrading representations in the theatres. 
 He was obliged to profess, for his safety's sake, an outward 
 belief in Christianity. But over the pearly pink and cream 
 of the Parthenon still gleamed the statue of Athene 
 Promachos, and the goddess seemed to speak to this young 
 and ardent Hellenist. Soon he turned also to Mithras and 
 the Sun God, and, while probably continuing to hold to a 
 monotheist 'First Cause of all,' he found room in his 
 Pantheon for all the old gods of Greece and for some new 
 ones. Moreover, these gradually became real gods to 
 him, each a representative of some principle of wisdom or 
 valour ; Christianity, he thought, was enfeebling the world 
 by undervaluing the old military aper)'/, which had been so 
 dear to the elder gods. 
 
 His Gaulish legions, after his victory at Strassburg, did 
 after their kind and wished to proclaim him Augustus ; but 
 for nearly three years he refused to be a rebel, until, in 
 360, his uncle, under pretext of a Persian war, demanded 
 that he should send all his best troops to the East. Then
 
 JULIAN THE 'APOSTATE' 6i 
 
 at Trier Julian revolted, and, though he opened negotiations 
 with Constantius, he made them impossible by openly 
 proclaiming his belief in paganism. With what feelings 
 his own army, of which the vast mass must have been at 
 least nominally Christian, received this announcement, we 
 do not know. As he moved eastwards towards Illyricum 
 he reopened the pagan temples, and was well received 
 everywhere ; but one can hardly doubt what would have 
 been the result of a conflict between the young and the old 
 emperors, the old and the young faiths, if Constantius harl 
 not died suddenly in 361. At the end of that year Julian 
 reached Constantinople and was acclaimed sole Augustus. 
 He showed himself merciful and fairly tolerant, recalled 
 Athanasius from his exile, received with civil contempt 
 deputations of Athanasians and of Arians, and, by promis- 
 ing full toleration to both, angered each sect far more than if 
 he had persecuted it. He reopened the temples of the old 
 gods, and declared that he would punish all riots against 
 their services. Finally, with all the malice of a modern 
 radical, he forbade Christians to teach in the schools. 
 
 You would have expected that old Rome would have 
 risen and lifted this champion to the skies. She did 
 nothing of the sort. Hers was a passive and historic 
 attachment to a singularly unexciting ritual. Julian wished 
 to set on foot an active propaganda of quite un-Roman 
 complexion — orders of ascetic priests, deep mysteries of 
 Oriental origin, even heathen monasteries of a kind. 
 There was in him a vein of real fanaticism as well as a 
 vein of extreme simplicity ; like our own James H., he 
 would promote to honour any hypocrite who professed 
 himself to be a convert. To the placid conservatism of old 
 Rome all this was nothing but a supreme bore, to be 
 paralleled only too closely with the nasty black monks and 
 the shrieking anathemas of Church councils. What the 
 East thought of it all we have little means of knowing, 
 for it was all over .so soon. Julian had at once to prepare 
 for a great fight with Persia, and, while getting his army 
 together, spent his nights at Antioch in close and ascetic 
 communion with his e:ods. He foresaw no limits tu what
 
 62 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 these grateful gods would do for him ; to say that he 
 expected to be a new and more successful Alexander, is to 
 put it mildly. The long silent East should vibrate to the 
 lost chord of Hellenism, and so, as Napoleon took scientific 
 men to Egypt, Julian's army was accompanied by tribes of 
 Greek philosophers and Roman haruspices, who may 
 perhaps have smiled when they met each other on the 
 banks of the Tigris, as they were believed to smile 
 when they met on the Capitoline Hill. 
 
 They had soon little else to smile at. The King of 
 Armenia, the old ally of Rome, said drily that, for his part, 
 he was a Christian, and had no mind to aid the spread of 
 Hellenism. Julian thoroughly mismanaged his campaign 
 by pressing on too far and too fast. Yet he displayed also 
 the most dauntless valour, and fell in fight while guarding 
 the rear of his starving army as it marched up the great 
 river after a vain attempt to bring the Persian hosts to a 
 pitched battle (363). The disaster was a terrible one for 
 Rome ; the line of the great Constantine was at an end, 
 and Jovian, who was chosen, not so much as emperor but 
 as pilot, to lead the remnant home, had to submit to any 
 terms that Persia demanded. These terms were the 
 abandonment of all Diocletian's conquests, the surrender 
 of the Roman protectorate of Armenia, and the P2uphrates 
 for frontier. Jovian died before home was reached, and 
 Valentinian, a brave soldier of lowly origin, was elected 
 emperor by all the oflficials of the East, civil and military, 
 at Nicaia. 
 
 We must now shift the scene to Europe for many years to 
 come, and we shall soon see that all the European provinces 
 are in a bad way. We shall see the new dynasty — for 
 Valentinian's family ruled or provided rulers connected 
 with it by marriage, for both East and West, for well nigh a 
 centur)' — making valiant head against the incoming 
 barbarians, but playing an ever more and more losing 
 game ; the Empire is never again quite what it had been 
 under Constantine and Constantius. But we shall watch 
 with interest the praiseworthy efforts even of weak rulers 
 to keep close the connection between the West and East
 
 VALENTINIAN I. 63 
 
 which rightly seems to thcni the best plank of safety. We 
 shall watch also the steady march of Roman Christianity 
 at the expense both cf dying paganism and Eastern 
 heresies, not only in the West but at Constantinople also ; 
 and, alas, side by side with this, the steady increase of 
 puerile superstitions, sanctioned and applauded by the 
 greatest names in Church history. 
 
 Valentinian, fully accepting the principle that a division 
 of duties must be made, chose his own brother Valens to 
 be his fellow-Augu.stus in the East, and his little son 
 Gratian to be his successor in the West. Laws must run in 
 the name of both Augusti, or they will be invalid. He 
 resided much at Trier, but, if he had a capital, it was Milan, 
 a station from which the Rhine and Upper Danube 
 frontiers could be watched at the same time. His whole 
 reign was practically spent in frontier warfare. In a 
 lonely valley of the Odenwald beyond the Upper Rhine 
 you may still see a giant pillar and a giant block of 
 syenite marble lying on the ground ; tradition believes 
 them to have been the materials of some monument 
 of Roman greatness, which Valentinian's soldiers,^ perhaps 
 surprised and cut off at their work, left behind them. All 
 the territory beyond the Rhine and Upper Danube had 
 long been lost, and was now swarming with barbarians ; 
 the frontier of the rivers themselves was in the gravest 
 peril. The Alamans raided as far as Paris before they 
 got a lesson from the Roman arms at Chrdons ; the 
 great general Theodosius had to give another lesson to 
 the Picts who had clambered over the Roman Wall of 
 Britain. It was on the frontier of the middle Danube that 
 Valentinian died in 375. 
 
 Valens on his (lower Danube) frontier had been much 
 less successful ; he .seems to have thoroughly mismanaged 
 the Goths, who were becoming the question of the hour. 
 For nearly a century they had kept peace, being no doubt 
 well satisfied with their new province of Dacia. ]h\t they 
 
 ' Mommsen, however, says that the last emperor o( whom any 
 memorial has been found beyond the Rhine is Gallicnus {Provinces^ 
 i., 165).
 
 64 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 were now beginning to feci pressure from behind from the 
 savage Huns, who perhaps had been chased back from the 
 Chinese frontier and looked like overrunning all Eastern 
 Europe. The Goths had been friendly to Julian, and had 
 sent troops to aid him against Persia ; but these troops 
 were inclined to kick against Valens, who seems to have 
 detained them in the Balkan peninsula against their will. 
 Their leaders beyond the Danube demanded their re- 
 lease, and Valens thrice sent troops against them without 
 much success. On the other hand, there was a strong 
 party of Goths who desired peace with Rome ; and this 
 we must presume to have been the Christianised (though 
 Arian) section of the nation. In 373 the Eastern wing 
 of the said nation was decisively beaten by the Huns, and 
 smelted into that great Hunnic Confederation of which 
 we shall hear more half a century later ; while a large 
 band of the Western or ' Visigoths,' in terror of the 
 same fate, seems in 376 to have been seeking for a refuge 
 within the boundaries of the Empire. 
 
 A good bargain might have been made; the Empire 
 wanted warlike colonists and auxiliary cavalry ; the Goths 
 wanted food, safety and land. Valens undoubtedly con- 
 sented to his officials making some such bargain, and an 
 enormous band of Visigoths with wives and children 
 crossed the Danube ; but on the Roman side at least the 
 bargain was never honestly fulfilled. Food was not 
 supplied, and the mere lack of this led the newcomers on 
 to riots, to plunder, and at last to open war, which raged 
 for two years (376-8) all over Thrace ; and the tamer Goths 
 called in the wilder. Young Gratian at Milan had an Ala- 
 man war on his hands, and could not come in time to help. 
 Valens was at Antioch with his eyes towards the Euphrates ; 
 but he collected the whole force of Eastern Rome, moved 
 rapidly back to defend his capital, met the Goths, now a 
 regular fighting army, at Adrianople, and died in battle 
 against them. Forty thousand Roman legionaries are 
 said to have fallen with Valens ; and the fight may indeed 
 be called the last one of the old Roman army. It was 
 essentially a victory of cavalry over infantry, of the lance
 
 WHAT IS 'EUROPE'? 65 
 
 and the long sword over the pilum and the short sword, 
 of impact over cohesion. The victorious Goths entirely 
 failed to take Adrianople or any other great city ; but for 
 the second time within fifteen years the prestige of the 
 Empire had suffered a fearful fall, and a new Augustus had 
 to be provided for the East. 
 
 Gratian's brother, Valentinian II., though proclaimed 
 Augustus on the death of his father, was too young to 
 rule, and the Court of Milan, therefore, in concert with the 
 officials at Constantinople, chose Theodosius, of Roman- 
 Spanish birth, whose father of the same name had lately 
 distinguished himself on the Roman Wall of Britain, to rule 
 in the East. Division of administration and of frontier-duty, 
 not division of sovereignty, is the key to all these dualities of 
 rule ; and it is not always easy to see where the line of 
 demarcation between the spheres of duty of Milan and 
 Constantinople actually ran. It is a point of some import- 
 ance, for after all 'Europe' is a geographical expression; 
 the ' Europe ' of which men thought in the fourth century 
 is by no means the same as that of the twentieth. Supposing 
 that the Roman Empire, as ruled from Constantinople, had 
 maintained Asia Minor against the Mahomedans down 
 to our own days and had kept the Slavonic nations at 
 bay on the Danube, we should perhaps now reckon Asia 
 Minor part of Europe and Russia part of Asia. But in 
 the centuries to come the Eastern half of the Empire did 
 neither of these things, and therefore, say in the tenth 
 century, one might very easily reckon the whole of the 
 Balkan peninsula to 'Asia.' In the fourth-century parti- 
 tions, this same Balkan peninsula was always divided 
 somewhere ; Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Lower Moesia, 
 and 'Scythia' were always reckoned in the Eastern 
 sphere, as Pannonia and Dalmatia were always in the 
 Western ; but there were provinces (in modern Servia, etc.) 
 which were reckoned now to one, now to the other sphere ; 
 such were Upper Moesia and Dardania. 
 
 It is a great misfortune for us that at the death of 
 Valens we lose the last trustworthy Roman historian, 
 Ammianus Marcellinus. A Greek of the fifth century 
 
 E
 
 ^ THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 called Zosimus takes us on a little further, but he is a 
 singularly prejudiced person, who hates both Christians 
 and barbarians, and can see nothing good in either of 
 them ; and even he deserts us on the eve of the Gothic 
 sack of Rome, There are tantalising fragments like those 
 of Olympiodorus and Priscus and the Ravenna Chronicle 
 known as the ' Anonymus Valesii,' but they fail just 
 when one needs them most. As for the churchmen, we 
 have a great many lives of saints — the Life of St Martin 
 by Sulpicius Severus was the text-book of the Latin West 
 in the fifth century ; we have Orosius' Seven Books of 
 History Against the Pagans, but he is hardly to be quoted 
 as an authority, for he wrote at the desire of St Augustine 
 about 417 to prove the truth of Christianity by the judg- 
 ments of God ; we have the Latin Chronicle of St Jerome, 
 which is largely a translation of Eusebius and ends at 378 ; 
 and we have continuators of the same which just connect 
 it with the Liber Pontificalis ; this last began to be written 
 early in the sixth century, and continued almost without 
 a break to give some sort of a life of each pope down to 
 the third decade of the fifteenth.^ But to all the early 
 chroniclers of ecclesiastical matters, the discovery of the 
 relics of some obscure martyr, or the definition of 
 some iota of doctrine mean much more than the nation- 
 making which was going on in the West. We gather, 
 however, that Theodosius, and not the feeble sons of 
 Valentinian I., became at once the protagonist when he 
 took the purple in 379 ; he may be reckoned into the 
 dynasty because he married into it. He took Constantine 
 for his model, but he went far beyond him in filling his 
 Eastern legions with Goths, Franks, Vandals and every 
 species of barbarian whom he could attract. This indeed 
 
 ^ M. Duchesne concludes for the commencement of the Liber 
 Pontificalis in the middle or end of the reign of Theodoric ; the author 
 then wrote ' lives ' for the earlier popes, of whom perhaps up to that 
 time only lists and dates existed, and it pleased him to attribute his 
 work to Pope Damasus who had died in 384. Subsequent continua- 
 tors were generally almost contemporaries ; there is a bad break at 
 end of ninth century ; the text of the early part was much altered 
 and interpolated in later ages.
 
 THEODOSIUS I. 67 
 
 saw the only thing he could do, for the old Roman army 
 of the East had perished at Adrianople, and the day of 
 cavalry was coming. Horse-archers must have been intro- 
 duced about this time, and lancers to combat the cavalrymen 
 of the barbarians. Thcodosius was thus able to pacify the 
 Goths, for whose families he also strove hard to find lands 
 for colonisation ; but the result was that the army ceased 
 to be really Roman at all. Yet with this army we shall 
 see that he was able to stand forth as the champion of 
 Rome against a far more truly Roman army, that of Gaul 
 and Britain. The reason of this paradox lies in the rising 
 preponderance of the Church and of churchmen. 
 
 The first Valentinian's opinions on the Trinity were 
 orthodox ; he maintained, however, in the West a strict 
 toleration towards both parties and even towards the 
 pagans during his eleven years of rule. Valens clung to 
 the Arianism of Constantius. But the Arians in their 
 bitterness spoiled their own cause ; they began to start a 
 different formula, that of krepoovcrio? — 'the Son is of a 
 different nature from the Father' — and this would really 
 have meant a duality of the Supreme Being. Both the 
 learning of the East and the unlearning of the West rose 
 against this ; the East by the mouths of Basil * the Great ' 
 and Gregory of Nazianzus, and the West by the mouth of 
 Aurelius Ambrosius, whom we know as Saint Ambrose of 
 Milan, a man of the purest Roman patrician descent, who 
 had been a great civil administrator before he became a 
 bishop. This united movement of orthodoxy was accom- 
 panied, as usual, by a fresh cry for the independence of 
 the bishops from lay jurisdiction which, also as usual, 
 was voiced by the bishops of Rome. Gratian and his 
 colleague Valentinian II. were at the mercy of the 
 bishops, and Theodosius prudently decided to throw in 
 his lot on the same side ; thus for the first time there was 
 a perfectly orthodox, perfectly clerically-minded emperor 
 on each throne. In 380 edicts were put forward in the 
 name of both emperors, fully accepting the tradition that 
 St Peter was the founder of the Roman Church, and that 
 all deviation from the doctrine taught by the Pope
 
 68 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 (Damasus) was to be punished.^ In 381 the Second 
 * General ' Council, that of Constantinople, though it 
 consisted wholly of bishops from the Eastern half of the 
 Empire, fully admitted the primacy- of the Bishop of 
 Rome, but gave him of Constantinople the next place 
 ' because Constantinople is new Rome.' This council it 
 was that all but settled the text of the Nicene Creed as 
 we now have it in the West, one clause alone, the filioqice 
 clause, being added by a Spanish Synod of Toledo in 589. 
 How Theodosius got over the penal clauses of his edict 
 with regard to his barbarian soldiers, who clung stupidly 
 to their Arianism, does not appear. 
 
 One result might have been easily foreseen ; it was 
 the death knell of the empty conservative paganism of 
 old Rome, If it is not certain that Gratian refused to be 
 hailed as Pontifex Maximus, it is certain that he withdrew 
 the royal subscription which alone defrayed the cost of 
 the old rites. The Atrium of the Vestals was closed, 
 the statuette of Victory finally removed from the Senate 
 House. One wonders how long it was before lamps and 
 garlands were hung at the street corners before little 
 statues of saints and virgins, as they had been used to 
 hang before the images of the Compital Lares at the same 
 spots. 
 
 What made this desecration harder to bear was that 
 the young emperor's chief councillor and general was one 
 Merobaudes, a Frank ; and against this, if not against his 
 contempt for Roman traditions, Gratian's Western subjects 
 
 1 This edict of 28th February 380, dated from Thessalonica, seems 
 to me of the highest importance ; it makes the civil arm into the tool 
 of the ecclesiastical, almost into its executioner ; and its wording was 
 probably not forgotten by later popes. See for its text Codex 
 Theodosianus, xv,, i. 
 
 - By primacy we must not, I think, understand anything more 
 than an honorary headship ; no jurisdiction is implied. The claim 
 of the Roman churchmen that such jurisdiction was conferred at this 
 time on their bishop rests on an alleged reply of Gratian to a petition 
 of the Roman Bishop to the effect that the See of Rome was to be 
 the ultimate tribunal of appeal for all bishops. This rescript of 
 Gratian is given in Migne, Patrologia Latina, xiii., 583, but the 
 authority there quoted for it is weak.
 
 END OF PAGANISM AT ROME 69 
 
 began to protest. The British legions were the first to 
 nnove and chose their general Maximus as Caesar; Gaul 
 followed suit with tumultuous welcome, and when the rebel 
 began to advance towards Italy, Gratian's own troops 
 forsook and murdered him (383). Now Maximus appears 
 to have been, or professed to be, as orthodox a Christian 
 as Theodosius,^ and, as his army certainly was a much 
 more Roman one than that of the East, one would have 
 expected Italy, so far as she had any will left, to welcome 
 Maximus ; Theodosius in fact evidently expected it, for 
 he temporised and recognised the rule of Maximus in Gaul 
 and Britain for four years, very much to the disgust of 
 young Valentinian II., who held Italy and Africa and 
 claimed all the West. But the Italian bishops to a man 
 supported Theodosius, and this finally turned the scale in 
 his favour. When in 387 Maximus moved towards Italy, 
 Valentinian fled to Theodosius, who met the army of Max- 
 imus on the Save, defeated him utterly in the next year at 
 Aquileia and put him to death. Again cavalry had beaten 
 infantry, the barbarian had beaten the Roman legionary. 
 
 One last piteous appeal the senate of Rome put forth 
 to Valentinian when he returned to Milan, for the restora- 
 tion of their little ' Victory ' ; it was all they asked, and 
 it was Rome, widowed of htr pnnceps as of her gods, who 
 asked it. But Ambrose stood by the boy's side and, in 
 the teeth of all his Privy Council, sternly said ' no.' 
 Shortly afterwards the young emperor was murdered in 
 Dauphinc, probably with the connivance of one Arbogast, 
 a Prankish soldier who had been gradually getting all the 
 military power at his court. If Arbogast ever thought of 
 making himself emperor, he soon thought better of it, 
 and chose a Roman Senator Eugenius to be his puppet. 
 The Roman senate seems to have applauded, for, 
 if not a heathen reaction, it was decidedly an ' anti- 
 clerical' move. Yet it looks as if the sympathies of 
 most Christian and most Catholic Gaul were enlisted 
 
 ' And indeed did some persecution of heretics on his own 
 account, against which it is pleasing to see that the aged Saint 
 Martin, apostle of Gaul, protested.
 
 JO THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 on the same side, and perhaps many of the former 
 friends of Maximus were in the game. Theodosius was 
 again obh'ged to temporise for two years before he 
 was ready to strike ; when he struck he struck home, 
 yet it was only after a very severe battle at the north- 
 eastern gate of Italy that Arbogast and Eugenius were 
 overthrown and destro}'ed on the river Frigidus beside 
 Aquileia (394). 
 
 Theodosius had proved himself victor over many things 
 other and older than these usurpers. Without active perse- 
 cution but with civil contempt, he put down for ever the 
 last vestiges of heathen rites, and almost the last traces of 
 senatorial independence. From that time onwards perse- 
 cuting edicts of the fiercest kind both against paganism 
 and heresy stain the pages of the Roman Statute Book. 
 It remained for the next Emperor Honorius to confiscate 
 all the remaining property of the temples in the shape of 
 lands and endowments (408). On one of the visits of 
 Theodosius to Milan a scene took place which is graven 
 for ever on the world's memory. He had ordered or 
 allowed a large massacre of citizens at Thessalonica, in 
 revenge for a riot directed against a most righteous act of 
 imperial justice. St Ambrose showed the truly noble side 
 of the power of the Church when he forbade Theodosius 
 to enter Milan Cathedral until he had done penance for 
 this most un-Christian and un-Roman act of vengeance ; 
 and Theodosius, with equal nobility, bowed to the true 
 voice of the Christian Church.^ In the next year (395) he 
 died, leaving behind him the reputation of a great soldier 
 and a devoted eldest son of the Catholic Church. 
 
 This date of 395 has been taken by some historians as 
 marking the real epoch which divides the Ancient from 
 the Mediaeval World. I see no special reason for this ; the 
 triumph of the Church over the State was assured rather 
 at the accession than at the death of Theodosius ; his army 
 was as full of barbarians (who indeed got drunk, quarrelled, 
 and fought at his table to the disgust of the polite Roman 
 
 1 The exact date of this incident is a matter of dispute ; it may 
 very well have been before his victory over Eugenius.
 
 ALARIC AND HIS GOTHS 71 
 
 and Greek officials) as those of his two sons, while the civil 
 administration remained for at least a century in the hands 
 of Roman and Greek officials. Indeed the only real 
 change in 395 is that it was marked by the first clear case 
 of hereditary succession ; the official magistracy of the 
 principatc has given place to the territorial sovereignty of 
 a family. Arcadius, the elder son, takes the East, 
 Honorius the younger takes the West, and each treats his 
 dominion as a property not an office. One cannot exactly 
 say that the West liked the idea, for Gaul, though she was 
 slow to move, hated, as ever, the barbarians in the army 
 who supported the arrangement ; and Africa actually 
 rebelled, but was quickly put down. On the other hand 
 Rome, by the mouth of Claudian, hailed Honorius and his 
 Romanised-barbarian general, Stilicho the Vandal, with 
 great joy in the last poetry of the Ancient World. Little 
 did Claudian realise that, to most of the inhabitants of the 
 Empire, the ' Rome ' whose glories he sang was soon to mean 
 not Roma Dea, but the anathemas of a Christian bishop. 
 
 At the Eastern Court we may perhaps see a certain 
 reaction against the Gothic influences of the late reign ; at 
 any rate, before the end of the century, the Go\.\\\c fa^dc rati 
 are profoundly discontented. Probably Arcadius failed to 
 pay them their wages ; certainly Bishop John Chrysostom 
 said unpleasant things about their obstinate Arianism. 
 There were other Goths who, ever since 379, had been 
 promised land-settlements which they had not got. 
 Perhaps the mere weakness of the two young emperors 
 tempted them. Anyhow, we now hear of one Alaric ' the 
 Balth,' who had fought for Theodosius against Eugenius, 
 as moving about at the head of a large army of Visigoths 
 on his own account (396); and this in lllyricum itself. It 
 was, of course, flat rebellion, and was accompanied by a 
 series of demands for a definite tract of territory to colonise, 
 and a definite sum of money and supply of food until these 
 lands could bear crops. 'If not' — the Goths would help 
 themselves, and they appeared to be in force enough to 
 do so. ' Barbaria ' had thrown down the gauntlet to 
 ' Romania,' this time within the Empire.
 
 72 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 Arcadius had done simply nothing to stop them ; whether 
 he could have done much we have no means of knowing. 
 Probably he even actually connived at the Goths moving 
 into Hellas itself. Athene, indeed, saved her Athens from 
 sack, but they ravaged Attica and the Peloponnese with 
 some thoroughness. Probably it was only the experience 
 of twenty years before that prevented them from attacking 
 the great cities of the Balkan peninsula. Though their 
 ravages were not a good way of drawing attention to their 
 unquestionable wrongs, it is hard to see what else they 
 could have done. 
 
 Now the one person on whom the West, if not also the 
 East, would naturally call to stop Alaric was the Vandal 
 Stilicho, whom Theodosius had created captain-general of 
 all the forces of the West ; these may well have been twice 
 Alaric's numbers, though also largely barbarian. Whether 
 or no Stilicho played into Alaric's hands, or intended to 
 use him for his own ends is one of the problems of history, 
 and annexed to it is the problem of Stilicho's own 
 character. The logic of facts looks against him ; but 
 Claudian, a whole-hearted Roman imperialist, was his 
 champion, and Claudian's verse rings true. Let us hear 
 the facts. First in 395 and 396 Stilicho twice crossed the 
 Adriatic, and succeeded in manoeuvring Alaric out of 
 Greece into Epirus, at the same time saying to Arcadius, 
 'let us give these Goths a good section of the Illyrian 
 provinces and once more make them our allies.' Arcadius 
 (or his minister) was clearly jealous of Stilicho, and 
 would not listen to this or to any of his proposals for 
 pacifying the Goths,^ though Arcadius was afterwards 
 willing to treat with Alaric on his own account. Thereon 
 in 401, Alaric, who had in the interval been raised on a 
 shield and proclaimed ' King,' moved into Italy ; Stilicho 
 met him on the river Tanaro, at Pollentia (402), in a battle 
 as indecisive as that of Sheriffmuir, 
 
 For some say that we wan, and some say that they wan. 
 And some say that nane wan at a', man. 
 
 ^ The matter is well discussed by Professor Bury in his edition of 
 Gibbon, vol. iii.. Appendix xiv.
 
 STILICHO AND ALARIC 73 
 
 Alaric was certainly allowed to escape with little loss, and 
 Honorius, who now for safety moved his headquarters 
 from Milan to Ravenna, became as jealous of Stilicho as 
 Arcadius had always been. The idea began to take root 
 that Stilicho had come, or intended to come to terms with 
 Alaric, to the prejudice of both the Eastern and Western 
 courts, and perhaps to put his own son on the throne of 
 both ; at the least, he seems really to have desired to 
 separate the whole of Illyricum from the sphere of 
 Constantinople. Alaric fell back again to the head of the 
 Adriatic, and there he must be supposed to have spread 
 his Goths at free quarters on the country for six years to 
 come. Honorius visited Rome in 404, and celebrated a 
 triumph ^ with the ' games/ the last games in Roman 
 history. For a good Christian monk, Telemachus, rushed 
 into the arena and endeavoured to separate the gladiators ; 
 he was killed, a martyr, if ever there was one, to a noble 
 cause ; and his death awakened the better conscience of 
 the newer world. In the next year (405) a fresh horde 
 of barbarians of various tribes under one Radagaisus 
 poured over the Alps and penetrated as far as Tuscany, 
 where Stilicho shut them up in a trap until they 
 starved, surrendered, or melted away into the soil ; this 
 did not look like disloyalty on the part of Honorius' 
 general. 
 
 Next, the legions of Britain, horrified at all this 
 barbarian welter around the dearly honoured Metropolis, 
 proclaimed a certain Constantine as Augustus ; and the 
 last of the legions crossed over from that unhappy island 
 in order to make good their usurper's footing in Gaul. 
 Gaul welcomed any anti-barbarian movement, as well she 
 might, for at the end of 406 a vast host of Burgundians, 
 Alamans, Franks, Sueves, Vandals and Alans poured 
 across the Rhine and began to do after their kind. Some 
 say that Stilicho prompted this invasion in order to throttle 
 
 ' There had been no triumph since Diocletian's just a cen- 
 tury before ; Narses, after his final defeat of the Goths, celebrated 
 a triumph in Rome in the middle of the sixth century, and I believe 
 this was the last that Rome saw.
 
 74 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 the usurper Constantinc ; if that were true he was indeed 
 a traitor to ' Romania,' but, by the same test, he was loyal 
 to Honorius, who dreaded Constantine much more than 
 he dreaded the barbarians. Then Stilicho suggested that 
 Alaric should go and fight Constantine on Honorius' 
 behalf in Gaul ; but that leader had by this time other 
 ideas in his head. 
 
 In 408 died Arcadius, leaving an infant son Theo- 
 dosius II., and about that same time the, perhaps ground- 
 less, perhaps justifiable fears of Honorius led him to get up 
 a mutiny in Stilicho's army, which resulted in the murder 
 of that general. This murder at once left Alaric ' in the 
 air ' ; all hopes of getting his claims fairly considered were 
 at an end, and he must look to himself. He talked, or is 
 said to have talked of mystic voices and oracles leading 
 him on — whither? To Ravenna and the Crown of the 
 West ? No barbarian ever dreamed of the latter, and the 
 former behind its milesof marshes was almost as impregnable 
 as Venice afterwards was among her lagoons. But Rome, 
 even behind the walls of Aurelian, recently repaired with 
 ominous care by Honorius, was perhaps not so impregnable, 
 and every barbarian believed that the streets of Rome 
 were paved with gold. 
 
 Yet we can see that Alaric hesitated long and made, as 
 it were, every offer of peace before playing this terrible 
 card : 'Give me and mine lands in Rhaetia or in Illyricum 
 or sufficient lands anywhere, and make me captain of your 
 army as Stilicho was' is the text of all his offers to 
 Honorius. He was refused again and again. In 408 he 
 besieged Rome a first time, and, though he was quite 
 powerless to take it, he nearly starved it out by occupying 
 the line of the Tiber between Ostia and the City ; the story 
 goes that the barbarian slaves fled in numbers to his host. 
 He seems to have retreated from this first siege only for 
 a heavy ransom ; in 409, after fresh rejections of his offers 
 by Honorius, he thought of a new plan. He would create 
 a puppet emperor, who would give the Goths both lands 
 and office ; and one was easily found in the Senator 
 Attains, late Prefect of the City, a gentle, cultured person,
 
 FIRST SACK OF ROME, 410 75 
 
 possibly of pagan leanings. But, when the practical 
 barbarian said, ' Right — now I will go to Africa ^ and over- 
 throw Count Heraclian who keeps your granary, and then 
 come back and establish your throne,' the Roman patriot- 
 ism of Attalus refused to hear of such a thing ; let Alaric 
 rather have a serious try for Ravenna. Alaric unwillingly 
 agreed, and, as he advanced northwards, Honorius was 
 making all preparations for flying to Constantinople by sea 
 when a good reinforcement of Eastern troops arrived at his 
 port. Then Alaric threw over his puppet, and, after fresh 
 vain offers to Honorius, turned southwards again to Rome. 
 It must have been by treachery or from fear of utter 
 starvation that his troops were admitted through the 
 Salarian Gate on 24th August 410. For three days the 
 Goths held the city, and, though we know that, from 
 fear of what St Peter and St Paul might do to them, they 
 protected the greater churches, they soon collected a great 
 wealth of gold and silver, and freed a great number of 
 Gothic slaves. More than that we do not know. The 
 Christian writers are too much inclined to look upon the 
 Goths as instruments of God against a half-pagan city for 
 us to place much reliance on their stories of Gothic 
 * mercy.' Such archctological evidence as we have points 
 the other way to a regular sack, accompanied, especially 
 among the rich palaces on the Aventine Hill, with 
 extensive burnings and, in all probability, with all the 
 other regular horrors of conquered cities. At any rate 
 after a few days Alaric was prudent enough to draw off his 
 men for the absolutely necessary conquest of Africa. He 
 intended to sail from Reggio, but died, we know not how, 
 before he reached the port. 
 
 His mission seemed to have failed. His Visigoths 
 were as landless and as foodless, though not quite as 
 moneyless, as before. But — he had taken Rome. The 
 twelve centuries, typified by the twelve Vultures which 
 
 * Africa was always dissatisfied and inclined to rebel since the 
 early part of the fourth century ; its Church was torn by a violent set 
 of heretics called Donatists (extreme Puritans), who maintained an 
 episcopate of their own in the teeth of the existing Catholic episcopate.
 
 y6 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 Romulus saw as he founded the city, were at an 
 
 end : 
 
 And when Rome falls, the World. 
 
 Two contemporary writers, but only two seem to have 
 realised the truth; Jerome in his cell at Bethlehem and 
 Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in Africa. Oddly enough the 
 former, although the comparison with Babylon and Sodom 
 is not absent from his lamentations, seems to feel the loss 
 to civilisation and history more than the latter. But it was 
 the arrival of exiles flying before the Goths that induced 
 St Augustine to begin writing of that City of God which 
 is independent of centuries and walls, which trusts in no 
 vultures, and fears no Goths. Augustine was a true 
 Roman citizen, and died long afterwards urging from his 
 death-bed the defence of a Roman city ; Empire and 
 Church had hitherto been inseparable in his imagination; 
 but in the ' City of God' he says that the Empire is the 
 child of Cain, the Church the child of Abel. The Church 
 is beginning to separate her cause from that of ' Romania.' 
 A far worse omen than Augustine's metaphors was that no 
 one in Rome seems to have realised that anything par- 
 ticular had happened. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the infinitely more living limb, Gaul, 
 events were moving fast. We must remember that Gaul 
 had never yet been an united country. Between the 
 northern and the southern provinces there had always 
 been a well-marked division, and the two German pro- 
 vinces, now practically gone, had always been regarded 
 mainly as outworks. It was Roman patriotism and 
 Catholicism that now began to make all Roman Gauls 
 feel themselves, not only one people but the most important 
 of Western peoples. The usurper Constantine, while 
 bravely making head for Rome against the fearful 
 barbarian irruption of 406, prudently held out the hand to 
 Honorius, who would have been wise to take it in friend- 
 ship. But Honorius was before all things ' a family man,' 
 and Constantine, who was trying to hold Spain as well, had 
 caused some of Honorius' Spanish relatives to be put to 
 death. No terms therefore could be made, and the ravag-
 
 THE VISIGOTHS TO GAUL yy 
 
 ing German tribes swept on over the Pyrenees into the 
 only imperial European province yet untouched, and one 
 of the richest in pastoral and mineral wealth. Sueves and 
 Vandals ravaged in Gallicia, Vandals in Boetica (Anda- 
 lusia), Alans in Lusitania (Portugal). Apparently they 
 could take no great cities, but over the open country they 
 spread like locusts. Poor stupid Honorius seemed rather 
 glad, for at least this spoiled the game of Constantine. 
 And what would the late conquerors of Rome itself say to 
 all this ? 
 
 All the treasures of Aurea Roma are of no use to a 
 man who cannot find food to buy with them ; and it must 
 have been mere starvation that caused the northward 
 retreat of the Goths. They were led by Adolf, brother-in- 
 law of Alaric, who, however, did not take the title of king. 
 They carried with them, half as guest, half as hostage, 
 Galla Placidia, the half-sister of Honorius, with whom, to the 
 unspeakable anger of the ' Family Man,' Adolf proposed 
 marriage as the price of a close alliance with the Court of 
 Ravenna. Such a marriage might carry with it the 
 prospect of succession to the Western throne, but we have 
 no evidence that Adolf thought of this. In 412 the Goths 
 passed on into Southern Gaul, just when Constantine had 
 been overthrown by Honorius' general, Constantius, at Aries. 
 There they begged again for food and lands to settle on ; 
 and the emperor, who would do anything to get back his 
 sister, promised both. But Heraclian in Africa was now in 
 full revolt from him and stopped the corn ships ; there was 
 no food to send. Thus we are brought to see the real 
 state of desolation to which Western Europe has been now 
 reduced : its fortunes and its future shape in nations are 
 determined by the ruinous price of corn ; it has become all 
 but impossible to feed an army even in the hitherto un- 
 wasted countries of Gaul and Spain. Adolf had to do the 
 best he could for himself by seizing the territory, and even 
 the three great cities of Southern Gaul, Narbonne, Tou- 
 louse, and Bordeaux ; by what means he took them we 
 know not — oh, how dark it is getting ! Already to the 
 northward had come in a new tribe, the Burgundians, and
 
 78 THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 
 
 had seized upon lands on the middle Rhine. Adolf 
 married Placidia, apparently with much goodwill on her 
 part, passed on, still in quest of food, into Eastern Spain 
 and was murdered at Barcelona, 415 or 416. Then the 
 Goths chose VVallia as their king, and he sent the widow 
 back to Ravenna, where her brother at once married her 
 to his general Constantius. 
 
 With the settlement of the Visigoths in Southern 
 Gaul we may, I think, claim to have reached at last the 
 dividing line between the Old and the New worlds. The 
 futile timid emperor, who cared more for the health of his 
 tame fowls than for the sack of Rome, has left a mark 
 upon history which nothing can efface. By mere rescript, 
 perhaps by mere acquiescence without rescript, he became 
 the Father of Nations. Whether the idea were his own, 
 or his far abler sister's, or that of Constantius or of some 
 statesman whose name is lost, perhaps indeed of some 
 eunuch of the half-Eastern Court of Ravenna, Honorius 
 perceived that the only thing now to be done was to 
 accept the logic of facts, to commence the recognition of 
 nationalities within the boundaries of the West, to pretend 
 that it was all with the goodwill of Rome, and to reserve a 
 nominal suzerainty over all for Rome : — " You terrible 
 Goths, whom I have seen at such close quarters, may hold 
 what you have grabbed ; you may make your own laws 
 and set up your own government : you may tax my 
 provincials as you please : you will find them far better 
 administrators of your revenues than your prodigal selves ; 
 if you fight among yourselves we shall not interfere. 
 Only remember this : it is all by the grace of God and 
 Honorius ; the boundaries of the Roman Empire are still 
 intact ; you are all children of the Roman Empire. By 
 the way we are sorry you are mostly Arians, but you must 
 settle that matter with our bishops and your Catholic 
 neighbours. And now I will go and feed my hens." 
 
 After this recognition of the Goths, that of other 
 settlers was merely a question of time ; a question of time 
 also that the Goths would themselves occupy the best part 
 of the Spanish Peninsula as they began to do some thirty
 
 END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 79 
 
 years later. All the new settlers would be only too glad 
 to accept the situation, and would try to believe in its 
 sincerity. For the moment Honorius confirmed to the 
 Goths the possession of Aquitania Secunda and some more 
 of Southern Gaul, including Bordeaux and Toulouse but 
 not Narbonne.^ It was not indeed their whole ' promised 
 land,' for that was to be Spain, but it was clearly the 
 door into that wonderful country. In the great days of 
 Spanish history, Gothic descent, though it must have been 
 hard to trace, was to be the proudest boast of a Spanish 
 hidalgo ('son of someone'), and sangre azul, the blue 
 blood of the fair-haired warriors from the North, was to 
 pass into a proverb. 
 
 Having done these things Honorius died in 423, the 
 champion, if words can make a man champion of anything, 
 of an united Roman Empire of East and West, You may 
 stand by his actual tomb and that of his sister in their 
 mausoleum at Ravenna, a little low building, on the outside 
 of common dull brick, on the inside glowing with all the 
 marvels of mosaic, as fresh as when it was laid upon the 
 walls : — 
 
 Magnarum rerum magna sepulchra vides. 
 
 ' What he actually ceded was Aquitania Secunda, the northern 
 part of Gallia Narbonensis and a part of Novempopulana. Toulouse 
 remained the Gothic capital for more than a century after the Gothic 
 conquest of Spain.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER III 
 
 The Time covered is roughly the fifth century. 
 
 The principal Events described are — (i) The Vandal conquest of 
 Africa in 429-439 ; the Vandal sack of Rome in 455. (2) The 
 Hunnish invasion of the Empire from the East and the overthrow 
 of the Huns in Gaul by Aetius in 451. (3) The theological 
 disputes arising in the East, known as the Monophysite contro- 
 versy ; the Church councils consequent thereupon ; the pontificate 
 of Leo I. (4) The reigns of the last puppet emperors in Italy 
 ending with Romulus, deposed in 476 ; the dying down of rill 
 really imperial institutions in the West ; the readiness of the 
 'barbarians' to accept such of these as survived. (5) The 
 'kingdom' of Odoacer in Italy, 476-490; its overthrow by the 
 Ostrogoths under Theodoric ; the peaceful reign of Theodoric 
 in Italy till his death in 526 ; the unfortunate Arianism of the 
 Goths ; Theodoric's position among the other ' barbarian ' 
 kings in the West. (6) The coming of the Franks into Northern 
 Gaul ; Clovis and his Catholicism. (7) The agitated reigns of 
 Zeno and Anastasius at Constantinople. 
 
 The Actors in these events are very various and difficult to group ; 
 but we may make a Table : — 
 
 (l) Of the Rulers of Italy after the death of Honorius in 423. 
 
 GALLA PLACIDIA, half-sister of Honorius, married first to Adolf 
 the Visigoth, then to CONSTANTIUS (who is sometimes reckoned 
 as Constantius 111.). She died 450. Their son is 
 'VALENTIN! AN 111., 425-455.'--- There is an usurper, 
 
 JOHN, 423-425, and, later, an usurper, 
 
 PETRONIUS MAXIiMUS, 455; then a series of puppets set 
 up by the provinces or by the barbarian army leaders, namely : — 
 
 AVITUS, 455-456. 
 
 MAJORIAN, 457-461. 
 
 SEVERUS, 461-464. 
 
 ANTHEM I US (after an interregnum), 467-472. 
 
 OLYBRIUS, 472. 
 
 GLYCERiUS, 473-474. 
 
 JULIUS, called ' Nepos' 474-47;. 
 ^ROMULUS, 475-476, deposed by 
 
 ODOACER, King or Patrician of Italy, 476-490, deposed by 
 
 THEODORIC, King of the Ostrogoths, King of Italy, 490-526. 
 81 F 
 
 I S
 
 82 
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER III 
 
 (2) Of the Rulers of Constantinople (often wrongly called ' ?2mperors 
 of the East ' ). 
 
 ARCADIIJS, 
 died 408. 
 
 THEODOSIUS II., 
 
 died 450. 
 
 I 
 A Dausfhter, 
 EUDOXIA, 
 who marr'ed 
 VALENTINIAN III. 
 of the West. 
 
 Pulcheria, 
 
 who late in her life 
 
 married 
 
 MARCIAN. 
 
 He died 457, 
 
 and was succeede 1 
 
 by LEO I., 
 
 died 474. 
 
 He left a Daughter 
 
 who married 
 
 ZENO, 
 
 died 491, 
 
 Fucceeded by 
 
 AMASTASIUS I., 
 
 died 518. 
 
 succeeded by 
 
 JUSTIN I. 
 
 (See Table to Chapter IV,) 
 
 (3) For the Franks, see Table to Chapter V. 
 
 (4) For the Ostrogoths, see Table to Chapter IV.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE KATE OF ITALY; THE GOTHS TO THE FRONT 
 
 Hie tandem stetimus nobis ubi defuit Orbis. 
 
 In Western Europe the Empire is henceforth but the 
 shadow of a shade ; and my readers may be spared details 
 about those who wore its crown. Starvation is more and 
 more to the front, and, for Italy at least, all seems to 
 depend on keeping open the connection with Africa and 
 with Constantinople. There is a momentary usurpation 
 of a secretary called John, but it is soon over and Galla 
 Placidia, for whom one gets to feel a good deal of affection, 
 virtually rules Ravenna, in the name of her young son 
 Valentinian III., till her death in 450, and, when she 
 disappears, the end is very near. She clung tight to her 
 best plank, the close family connection with the Court of 
 Constantinople, where reigned Theodosius II., also under 
 strong petticoat government, that of his mother Eudoxia 
 and his sister Pulcheria. Placidia's favour is disputed by 
 several generals, Felix who at first holds the command at 
 Ravenna, young Actius who has been brought up among 
 the Huns, and the Roman Count of Africa, Boniface. 
 Felix trips up the heels of Boniface, and perhaps drives 
 him into momentary disloyalty. The common story goes 
 that Boniface called in the Vandals to Africa to spite 
 Aetius. Probably the Vandals needed little calling. We 
 do not know where they landed in Africa, but, if they 
 could cross at all, they are not likely to have merely 
 crossed the Straits and so incurred the tedious land march 
 
 83
 
 84 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 through Mauritania ; perhaps they sailed straight to 
 Caesarea. Anyhow in 429 under their able King Genseric, 
 they landed somewhere and pressed rapidly on towards 
 the granary of Rome. 
 
 In thinking of the 'Africa' of that name at that day 
 we must get rid of all ideas of the 'antres vast and 
 deserts idle ' of the present time, although it is perhaps 
 startling to be told that it was 'an European Island,' 
 inhabited by a race originally of kin to the Aryan 
 Europeans. Roman Africa, z>., the provinces of Africa, 
 Numidia and the two Eastern Mauritanias, was in fact, 
 both racially and geographically, separated from the 
 Dark Continent to the south of it by a great range 
 of mountains and thence by the desert of the Sahara. 
 Eastwards from the Carthaginian Peninsula came again 
 a stretch of desert with only a few coast settlements 
 until Cyrene was reached, which, with Egypt, more properly 
 belonged to the sphere of ' Asia.' But Africa proper and 
 Numidia, and especially that peninsula which juts out to 
 meet Sicily, were then as rich and fertile as any part of 
 Gaul ; and they were neither Eastern nor Greek but 
 Roman-African, almost ' nationalist' They were the 
 inheritance of conquered Carthage, and Rome held them 
 more fiercely than she held any other province, lest 
 Dido's dreadful threats should again become effective 
 factors in history. The greatest of the ' Latin ' Fathers 
 of the Church, Augustine, and the fiercest of the early 
 Christian logicians, Tertullian, were both Roman-Africans. 
 All along the westward shore, to and beyond the Straits, 
 Roman cities were dotted in the provinces of Mauritania. 
 Tingis (Tangier), the capital of the westernmost of these, 
 was always reckoned as an outpost of Spain rather than 
 of Africa, and the whole of Mauritania Tingitana had gone, 
 in Diocletian's new division of the Empire, into the diocese 
 of Spain. It is interesting, in the light of the events of 
 the eighth century of the Christian era, to learn that pirates 
 from this region often plundered the rich province of 
 Boetica long before the birth of Christ, and necessitated 
 Roman garrisons being kept on the Guadalquivir. The
 
 THE VANDALS IN AFRICA 85 
 
 southern frontier of Roman Africa, it is true, ended ' in 
 mountains, peopled as to-day by wild Berber and 
 ' Moorish ' tribes ; and these now joined the Teutonic 
 Vandals in the race for plunder. The Donatist heretics, 
 who abounded in Africa and perhaps outnumbered the 
 Catholics, even welcomed the invaders ; they were 
 suffering many things from the vigorous Catholicism of 
 St Augustine, now Bishop of Hippo, the second cit)' of 
 the province. 
 
 It was a complete conquest, though Boniface, even if 
 he had once been a traitor, fought most valiantly against 
 the invaders ; only three cities Cirta, Hippo and Carthage 
 held out for a time, and the last of these fell in 439. 
 Ravenna appears to have been powerless to help, and 
 Actius has been much abused for counselling Placidia to 
 accept the inevitable. But the truth is that Italy had 
 no course but to make peace with the man who kept the 
 keys of her corn-bin, and the Vandals were only too 
 glad to agree to pay a rent of corn and oil for the 
 lease of their new estate ; thus a new child had been 
 born to the Roman Empire. A particularly froward 
 one, however ; Genseric is the first barbarian king 
 who is much more than a name to us, and he is one 
 of the most unpleasant. He did not desire to learn 
 the lessons of civilisation, and that is perhaps the 
 reason why ' Vandalia ' was such a short-lived child. 
 But he was a clever savage, and he saw that the 
 Western Mediterranean offered a splendid field for an 
 accomplished pirate.- First of Southern barbarians the 
 Vandals became a sea-power, and their fleets became 
 the terror of the sea coasts until their overthrow b)- 
 Constantinople in the sixth century. 
 
 ' Perhaps more properly speaking there was no "southern 
 frontier.' Roman troops had, at one time or another, showed them- 
 selves at several oases south of the mountains, but their permanent 
 outposts, LambcEsis, Theveste and Thamugadi, were on the northern 
 side of the range. 
 
 - His situation at Carthage has, from this point of view, been 
 very naturally compared with the situation of numerous other Corsair 
 powers in later ages at Algiers and Tripolis.
 
 86 THE FATE OF rfALY 
 
 But while this new terror threatened Europe from the 
 South and developed every day, a still worse terror 
 appeared in the North, a mighty cloud hanging for ten 
 years over the Danube frontier, and then passing west- 
 wards to Gaul — the Huns. If Theodosius II. had reigned 
 in Western Europe in the seventeenth century instead 
 of at Constantinople in the fifth, he would have been 
 the Jesuits' ideal king. He would pay any price for 
 the shoulder-blade of a martyr, and may be said to have 
 founded the trade in relics which is by no means dead 
 to-day. His court, in which his terrible virgin sister 
 Pulcheria bullied his wife Eudocia, was like a monastery 
 dependent upon a rigid nunnery. It was he, who, at the 
 instigation of his bishops, re-enacted in stringent terms 
 Constantius's prohibition of marriage with a deceased 
 wife's sister ; ^ and he in whose name the ' Theodosian 
 Code,' or collection of those laws which had been published 
 since the days of Constantine, was issued. Perhaps the 
 most remarkable example of the ecclesiastical spirit of 
 his legislation is the title of his Code (ix., i6. 12), which 
 banishes ' mathematicans ' from the whole Empire unless 
 they will burn their books in deference to Catholic scruple 
 and promise never to practise their arts again. But 
 Theodosius also inflicted a very creditable defeat on the 
 Persians about 421, and after this the Eastern World was 
 at comparative peace for nearly twenty years. What 
 the Huns were doing during those years we can only 
 guess ; but there is some evidence that before 440 the 
 dominion of their kings extended northwards to the 
 Baltic ; as to its Eastern limits we have nothing but 
 conjecture to guide us. Bands of them had been willing 
 to serve as Roman mercenaries, and had been so employed 
 ever since the days of Stilicho. Aetius had very largely 
 relied upon them, and until the date we have now reached 
 had been their warm friend. About 440 we begin to find 
 their king, Attila, turning his attention to the frontier of 
 
 ' Codex Theod.^ iii., 12. 2. Possibly this was a piece of feminine 
 spite of Pulcheria against her uncle Honorius, who had successively 
 married two daughters of Stilicho.
 
 THE COMING OF THE HUNS 87 
 
 the Roman Empire; and in 441-2 he raided the Balkan 
 Peninsula far southwards, destroying many cities, and 
 spreading such terror that the walls of Constantinople had 
 to be strengthened. The Huns were no would-be settlers 
 or colonists ; they came only for plunder, rapine and 
 murder ; grass grew not where their horsehoofs had passed. 
 The palace of their king was a rude wooden hut in ' Old ' 
 Dacia, perhaps somewhere on the river Maros ; but it 
 was a hut in the middle of a movable camp of perfect 
 horsemen and archers. Into dependence on this camp 
 their leaders had gradually smelted large fractions of 
 those Teutonic tribes which they had vanquished or chased 
 westwards before them. More than one such tribe had 
 a civil war of its own going on : if there were a dispute 
 e.g., as to the chieftainship of the Franks, and one claimaint 
 appealed to Rome for help, his rival was sure to appeal 
 to Attila, who was thus able to pose as the rival of Rome 
 for the suzerainty of the Teutonic tribes. Among his 
 followers were sections of the Gepids, Sueves, Rugians, 
 Burgundians and Franks, and, one regrets to observe, the 
 whole family of the Eastern or ' Ostro-Goths.' Savage 
 as he was Attila ' knew his world ' and how to play 
 upon its fears ; he rejoiced when he was told that the 
 churchmen spoke of him in whispers as anti-Christ ; but 
 he was quite willing to accept enormous bribes from 
 Theodosius in the name of tribute. In a later age all 
 sorts of traditions gathered about his name as the 
 ' Scourge of God.' Theodosius' troops had indeed 
 once beaten him back across the Danube, and had 
 built a flotilla on that river to patrol it ; it was perhaps 
 this that in 450 induced him to turn his attention 
 to Gaul. The worst feature in the situation was the 
 close alliance v/hich he made with Genseric the Vandal ; 
 if the Vandal invasion of Italy had actually come con- 
 temporaneously with Attila's westward march, one does not 
 see how any Western civilisation could have been saved. 
 
 The death of Placidia in the West, and Theodosius in 
 the East in the same year (450) brought on a crisis. 
 According to the ordinary story a foolish princess
 
 88 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 Honoria, daughter of the former, had got herself into 
 trouble, had been shut up in the monastic Court of 
 Constantinople, and now sent Attila a ring and bade him 
 come to her deliverance.^ The savage had no objection 
 to adding to his stock of wives, if he could make a new one 
 an excuse for raiding the West. Thus Valentinian III. 
 was somewhat surprised to receive from Attila a demand 
 for Honoria's share of her 'inheritance.' In the East 
 the new Emperor Marcian, a valiant soldier, at once with- 
 drew the tribute which Theodosius had paid for many 
 years to keep the Huns quiet. Attila joined a body of 
 Alans who were settling in Gaul, and had just got 
 themselves well beaten by the Visigothic King, Theodoric, 
 Theodoric had no doubt been conquering more of South- 
 eastern Gaul than the settlement of Honorius in 419 
 had warranted, and Aetius had been frequently in arms 
 against him ; but Placidia had made little steady effort, 
 and the far-sighted Aetius soon came to see in the 
 Visigoths, already the deadly foes of the Vandals, 
 the best allies of Rome against the Huns ; also. Northern 
 Gaul was still Roman and sent all its forces to help Aetius 
 and Theodoric. 
 
 We find Attila in the summer of 451 besieging Orleans, 
 which is almost the central point of Gaul, and Aetius 
 hurrying to Gaul to collect such troops as he could find 
 for its deliverance. He was joined by the Visigoths and 
 by large fractions of the Burgundians and of the Frankish 
 infantry, armed perhaps already with the frmicisca, or 
 battle axe, the smaller cousin of the old Danish weapon 
 of our own history. At some place unknown — the best 
 guess is M^ry-sur-Seine near Troyes — they met the Huns 
 in what is usually known as the Battle of Chalons. Attila 
 seems to have been less actually beaten than stopped ; 
 but he was so badly stopped that it was one of the 
 ' decisive battles of the world.' Gaul and the West were 
 saved. The Huns rolled back through Pannonia and 
 
 ' The story is mainly derived from the later historian of the Goths, 
 Jordanes ; but Priscus, a better authority, says that Attila did demand 
 Honoria's hand.
 
 GROWTH OF THEOLOGY 89 
 
 across the Alps in 452 ; they ravaged all the fertile plains 
 of Northern Italy, and wiped out its greatest city Aquileia, 
 at the head of the Adriatic. It is possible, though not 
 likely, that the islands at the mouth of the Brenta, which 
 had already been colonised by the ancestors of the 
 Venetians, received some of the fugitives from Aquileia. 
 The old name ' Veneti ' is found again as early as the sixth 
 century. Either starvation, or fever, or bribery, or the 
 fear of an East Roman army which might meet him in 
 front turned Attila northwards again. But the legend 
 ran that, when the Romans sent good Pope Leo on an 
 embassy to the barbarian on the river Mincio, over the 
 Pope's head the figures of St Peter and St Paul appeared 
 in the sky, and that the awe of that vision saved Rome. 
 
 Attila died by some unknown death in 453, and his 
 dominion crumbled at once ; in a bloody battle on the 
 Lower Danube, the Ostrogoths and the other Teutons, 
 among whom we now hear of the Langobards or 
 ' Lombards,' threw off the yoke of the Huns, who rolled 
 back upon Russia and, as a nation, are heard of no more 
 in history.^ Marcian had sent help to these Teutons, and 
 the result was that we find the Ostrogoths getting allot- 
 ments of lands in Pannonia, 
 
 Before we contemplate the final disappearance of 
 imperial authority in the West, we must take a moment to 
 consider the theological process which had been going on 
 since the settlement of the Trinitarian doctrine in 381. In 
 the first place Augustine, an excellent Platonist though 
 his Greek was shaky ,2 had been systematising a special 
 theology for the Latin Church. It was a theology too 
 high and pure for the incoming night of superstition to 
 
 ' The Avars, who begin to appear on the Danube in the sixth 
 century, were probably of kindred race to Attila's Huns. The 
 Bulgarians, and other horrors who masquerade as civilised nations in 
 the Balkan Peninsula to-day, may very well be of Hunnish descent. 
 Hun auxiliaries are found in the Constantinopolitan army throughout 
 the sixth century. 
 
 ^ Augustine knew more Platonism than he did Plato, perhaps some 
 of it was Neo-Platonism. See H. O. Taylor, The Mediaval Mind, 
 i-, 55-
 
 90 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 comprehend. Much of it was indeed drawn upon by the 
 most learned of the later schoolmen, such as Aquinas ; but 
 most of it remained neglected, if unanathematised, until 
 brought to life again by the Reformers in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries. In it are few subtle speculations as to 
 the ineffable nature of God, but all is concerned with the 
 more practical question of the relation of man to God, with 
 the fear of punishment, with the means of Grace and the 
 hope of Glory. And far away in a hermit's cell at 
 Bethlehem another ' Father of the Latin Church,' St 
 Jerome, is elaborating, for Latins and Greeks alike, 
 another set of rules of life which, he little foresees, will set 
 the Augustinian theology in the shade for a thousand 
 years to come. While Jerome, the first scholar of the age 
 and the only one who knew Hebrew, is translating for the 
 Catholic Church of Rome the Bible into the text which 
 that Church still uses and which we call ' the Vulgate,' he 
 is also preaching, to a world all too ready to listen, the 
 practice of celibacy as the highest ideal. His writings will 
 be the foundation stone of monastic life in the West a 
 century later. That life, some form of which has been 
 dear to the Eastern mind in all ages, from the days of 
 Elijah to the fakirs of Modern India, was already 
 immensely popular in the Egyptian desert. Christian 
 Monasticism had not originally been either Greek or 
 Latin, but Coptic, i.e., native Egyptian, though it is 
 just possible that a few Greek and Latin fugitives from 
 the persecutions of 303-13 had joined it. It is to 
 women and clergy, and especially to fugitives who may 
 have lost their wealth in the wars, that Jerome preaches 
 this disastrous ideal. He also preaches up the value of 
 relics, of pilgrimages, of prayers to the saints ; and 
 one is sorry to observe that he is for persecuting the 
 very sensible Greek bishops who object to such things, 
 Jerome is perhaps the first person to apply the Old 
 Testament denunciations of the Amalekites to his 
 Christian brothers when they do not agree with him. 
 Thus in him is already born the spirit of the mediaeval 
 papacy. Rome is already his great ally.
 
 MONOPHYSITE HERESY 91 
 
 Meanwhile the East has fallen tooth and nail on 
 another question as to the ' nature of God,' a question 
 which, in one shape or another lasts at least down to the 
 seventh century. Had Christ one nature or two natures, a 
 Divine and a human ? Was Mary the ' Mother of God,' 
 or only of the Man-Christ? The fiery and vindictive 
 Cyril of Alexandria said she was the Mother of both 
 natures, and he captured Rome (which did not understand 
 such questions nor even the Greek in which they were 
 asked) merely because he had been the first to appeal to 
 her in Latin. The sense of the East seems on the whole 
 to have been the other way, in favour of Cyril's opponent 
 Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople ; and there were 
 council upon council, anathema upon anathema. At the 
 First Council, Ephesus (431), Cyril entirely dominated the 
 situation, to the prejudice of the churches of Antioch and 
 Constantinople ; to the prejudice also of the authority of the 
 gentle Emperor Theodosius, whom the fierce Alexandrian 
 prelate and his fiercer monks from the Egyptian desert 
 simply terrorised. Eighteen years later at the Second 
 Council of L3phesus, known afterwards as the ' Latrocinium,' 
 these bloodhounds threatened to tear their opponents 
 limb from limb rather than that one iota of the doctrine 
 which they believed to have been their beloved Cyril's 
 (though of course they were far too ignorant to understand 
 it), should perish ; the unfortunate patriarch, Flavian, was 
 so badly mauled at the Council that he died three days 
 afterwards. Such in those days were the methods of 
 establishing orthodoxy ; old St Gregory of Nazianzus had 
 remarked nearly seventy years before that he ' had never 
 seen a Council of the Church end well.' To soberer Rome, 
 now ruled by the great Pope (afterwards Saint) Leo I., such 
 methods were distinctly displeasing. Leo would fain have 
 held the next council in Italy, and established at one and 
 the same time the Doctrine of Two Natures and the 
 Primacy of his own See. But he had to be content with 
 sending deputies to the Fourth General Council, that of 
 Chalcedon in 451. This indeed established the Roman 
 view on the Nature of Our Saviour, admitted fully a formal
 
 92 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 precedence to Rome over all other churches, but declared 
 the See of Constantinople to be second in rank and 
 entirely independent of the Roman jurisdiction. The 
 Monophysite (One Nature) heresy had a long life at the 
 Eastern Court, and made the streets of more than one 
 Greek city run with blood in after years. 
 
 And now for the sad fate of Italy. Valentinian III., 
 perhaps in jealousy, murdered his one wise General 
 Aetius in 454, and was murdered in revenge in the next 
 year ; his widowed empress, Eudoxia, being compelled 
 to marry a senator Petronius Maximus who usurped the 
 throne of the West, called upon Genseric — so runs the 
 tale. The truth is that to Italy, as to Africa twenty year, 
 before, Genseric needed little calling; ever since the 
 defeat of Attila some stroke from Carthage was to be 
 expected, and in 455 it came. Rome made no attempt 
 at defence when a vast Vandal fleet entered the Tiber, 
 and in 455 for fourteen days she was pillaged from the 
 Capitol to the Pig Market {Forum Suariuni), from the 
 Vatican to the Suburra. The amount of bloodshed is 
 again a disputed point ; but droves of the noblest Romans 
 of both sexes were carried off to slavery in Africa, and 
 all the movable treasures of the city with them. The 
 Vandals were very much worse barbarians than the Goths ; 
 if, as some would have us believe, Alaric's was only an 
 ' occupation ' of Rome, Genseric's was a thorough sack, 
 in which even Church treasures were not spared, and after 
 which, in spite of the traces which remain of real activity 
 on the part of some senators, we may say that Rome only 
 played at being Rome. As regards the outward appear- 
 ance of the city, it was probably not the devastations of 
 Goths and Vandals that made any great difference. Quod 
 non fecenmt Barbari fecerunt Barbcrini (a great papal 
 family of later ages) ; from Constantine's time, if not 
 earlier, the plunder of ancient buildings, to get material 
 for new ones, had been going on ; and from the fourth 
 century onwards the use of any new material had 
 apparently stopped. All the early Christian churches 
 were built from the material of older buildings, mostly
 
 GAUL FALLING AWAY 93 
 
 temples ; for, with one or two exceptions/ it was not till 
 the opening of the seventh century that such temples as 
 were left standing were exorcised of demons and turned 
 into churches — the Pantheon being the most notable ; 
 civil edifices may have been used as churches from a 
 much earlier date. But in the Dark Ages any and every 
 old material was used, even for the meanest purposes ; 
 walls have been found entirely composed of the fragments 
 of marble statues ! 
 
 In 455, the East cither could not or would not send 
 help to Italy ; but Gaul, dear faithful Gaul, would try. She 
 tried in union with the Visigoths, who were now slowly 
 beginning to feel themselves one people with hers. Avitus 
 a Gallo-Roman noble assumed the purple with their aid, 
 was crowned at Aries, and somewhat grudgingly received 
 in ruined empty Rome. Marcian from Constantinople 
 approved, and the two of them prepared for revenge on 
 Carthage. But then Rome in foolish pride resented an 
 emperor who had come with the favour of the Goths 
 of Gaul, and unfortunately for Avitus the Goths at that 
 very time were pouring over into Spain (whence they 
 expelled the Sueves) and could send him no material help. 
 And the commander of such troops as were left in Italy 
 was a sullen, faithless barbarian, Ricimer the Sueve, who 
 was jealous of the Visigothic allies of Avitus. He refused 
 to do the new emperor's bidding, fought and beat him at 
 Piacenza, deposed him and made him a bishop ! It was 
 the last effort of Gaul for the cause of 'Romania'; from 
 this time the great Gallo-Roman families began to hold 
 aloof from Government ; they enlisted their own retainers 
 
 ' Gregorovius says that the Church of San Stef;ino Rotondo on 
 the CceHan hill was actually the first instance ; it had been either 
 the Temple of Faunus or of the Emperor Claudius, and was 
 consecrated; in 483; in 528 Pope Felix IV. also turned part of a 
 temple into the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damianus. Imperial 
 sanction was needed in each case, as the public buildings of Rome 
 were imperial property. The worship of saints was growing apace, 
 but each saint was worshipped mainly in his own locality ; most of the 
 dedications in early Christian Rome were to Roman citizens or 
 other persons martyred in Rome.
 
 94 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 and fortified their elegant villas into feudal castles ; the 
 feudal age had begun, and the Pax Roniana was at an 
 end. The imperial power was not ' disobeyed ' ; it was 
 merely ignored. Social necessities were beginning to 
 beat political institutions out of the field. It was brigands 
 whom these men dreaded more than Gothic or Frankish 
 armies. Yet it was long before such men could come to 
 neighbourly terms with the barbarian kings, who, for their 
 part, manifested no desire to ill-treat them. The ' rude- 
 ness ' of the Goths, and their contempt for culture appalled 
 the Roman gentlemen ; one of the best points about 
 the Ancient World had been that culture was a badge of 
 rank ; one of the worst points of the Medinsval World was 
 that a gentleman was hardly a gentleman if he could read 
 and write : 
 
 Thanks to Saint Bothan son of mine, 
 Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line. 
 
 But by 474 all Southern Gaul except Provence was 
 already in the hands either of the Burgundians or of 
 the Visigoths, who were also steadily getting the better, 
 in Spain, of Sueves and of such Vandals as were left 
 behind there. From this time onward the various 
 barbarian kings of the West begin to address themselves 
 to Constantinople rather than to Rome. For all still 
 regard themselves only as lieutenants of an emperor. 
 The image of the reigning emperor is put upon their 
 coins, and they accept titles such as ' Patrician,' ' Magister 
 Militum'or even 'Consul' from him. This attitude was 
 worth to them the more or less willing obedience of the 
 Roman subjects in their territories, and it explains the 
 comparatively easy fusion of the new and old races, and 
 the way in which the new monarchies were able to take 
 over the administrative system and officials of the old 
 Empire. 
 
 In Italy Ricimer went on playing the part of king- 
 maker from 457 to 472 ; and, in proportion to the favour 
 his puppets got from Constantinople, he had or had not 
 a chance of maintaining them. Leo I., who succeeded
 
 LAST PUPPETS IN THE WEST 95 
 
 Marcian in 457 on the Eastern throne, was determined 
 to keep a hand on the West also, and twice the West and 
 the East in concert prepared fleets for revenge on 
 Carthage ; for Ricimer, whatever else he may have been, 
 was the deadly foe of the Vandals. But one fleet was 
 burned by the astute Gcnscric before it could leave the 
 shores of Europe, and another was betrayed by the 
 treachery or incompetence of a Greek admiral in the 
 harbour of Carthage itself Could East and West hold 
 together any longer ? The first of Ricimer's puppets, 
 Majorian, was a real valiant Roman of the old stamp, the 
 last legislator as well as the last warrior of old Rome. 
 One of his edicts shows us that the 'jerry-builder' was 
 already at work quarrying the temples of the city ; 
 another forbids people to take monastic vows before the 
 age of forty. But Majorian was too good for Ricimer who 
 pufled him away ; and the next three puppets, Severus, 
 Anthemius and Olybrius need not detain us a moment, 
 save for the fact that Ricimer had to besiege, take, and 
 plunder Rome before he could put the last of them on the 
 throne. Olybrius died in the year of his elevation (472), 
 and Ricimer had predeceased him in the same year. The 
 senate, which ever since the death of Galla Placidia had 
 actually been gaining in power, although of course it was 
 really helpless if a barbarian Magister Militum chose to 
 browbeat it, nominated one Glycerius ; but Leo's widow 
 said 'no, take my nephew Julius,' hence called Julius 
 Nepos ; Julius beat Glycerius, and was beaten by one 
 Orestes, who set up his fourteen-year-old son Romulus 
 (475). One year later Ricimer's old army, a mass 
 of Teutonic focderati, ' Herules,' ' Rugians,' ' Scyrians,' 
 anything you like — perhaps the dregs of Attila's quondam 
 allies, perhaps mere soldiers of fortune, broke out into 
 mutiny under a chief called Odoacer. They acclaimed 
 this person at Pavia as their ' king,' and they demanded 
 one-third of all the land of Italy to colonise for themselves. 
 They killed Orestes, and then Odoacer took up the baby 
 Romulus from his baby throne at Ravenna in his hairy 
 barbarian arm.'^, and set him genth' on the floor ; said
 
 96 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 there was no imperial throne at Ravenna any longer, no 
 outward or visible sign of Roman authority in the West. 
 That there was still a ' Roman Empire ' Odoacer did not 
 deny, but its seat was at Constantinople, and thither 
 Odoacer sent to the new Emperor Zeno to get confirma- 
 tion of what he had done. 
 
 Zeno, besides being almost as great a barbarian as 
 Odoacer (in fact he had been an Isaurian brigand turned 
 soldier and favoured by Leo), was in no position to say no. 
 He would have liked to help Julius, the candidate of the 
 East, but he had troubles of his own on hand. So west 
 of the Adriatic all was now over ; only Odoacer had to 
 avoid adding the words ' of Italy ' to his title of ' King,' 
 and called himself rather ' Patrician.' 
 
 The Fates who spin the threads of history have some- 
 thing better to do than to juggle with coincidences of 
 names ; but there is surely a smile to be spared for the 
 terrible irony which gave to the last two Roman rulers of 
 the West the names of Julius and Romulus. 
 
 The deposition of Romulus at Ravenna in the year 476 
 can neither be dismissed as wholy unimportant, nor on the 
 other hand can it be taken as the beginning of Mediaeval 
 as opposed to Ancient history. I gave a reason at the end 
 of my last chapter for preferring for this purpose the date 
 of 419, when Honorius acknowledged the foundation of a 
 nationality within the bounds of the Empire. And the 
 ' Severance of the West ' from the authority of the Roman 
 Emperor at Constantinople must be placed a great deal 
 later than 476, although we shall find it difificult to assign 
 any very definite date. The best thing I can do is to trace 
 the fortunes of the several Children of the Empire as 
 simply and briefly as possible, in the hope that my readers 
 and I shall be able to agree upon some date in a later 
 century for the final cutting of the apron strings. It is, 
 however, a story difficult to tell without some breaches of 
 continuity, for from this time forward if the Mother — the 
 Empire whose seat is on the Bosphorus — has a continuous 
 and connected history, her Western children have several 
 continuous and by no means well-connected histories. In
 
 BARBARIAN KINGSHIP 97 
 
 other words \vc shall have to follow in Italy, in Gaul and 
 in Spain separate processes, if not of reconstruction at least 
 of 'shaking down* to new sets of conditions. We shall 
 have to see how each of these accommodates itself to the 
 fact that ' its world (i.e., the Mother Empire) has failed 
 it ' ; and all the time we shall hear the ruler of that world 
 asserting that there has been no such failure, that the 
 said world is very much alive, very Roman, and an 
 Empire. 
 
 Our task would be an easier one if we could get at any 
 real idea of the view which the barbarian kings took of 
 their new positions. Had they any foresight of the proud 
 destinies of their several nations ? German historians have 
 been very apt to ascribe some such foresight to their old 
 heroes, and English historians have upon the whole been 
 inclined to follow German. One Teutonic King of Italy, 
 TheodorictheOstrogoth,did,indeed,orderhis Roman friend, 
 Cassiodorus the younger, to write a history of the Goths ; ^ 
 but it seems to have been rather of an apologetic nature, 
 and designed to show the Romans that the Goths were not 
 such bad fellows after all, and that Roman gentlemen need 
 not be ashamed to be called their subjects. Apart from 
 this, one has to judge the mental attitude of such kings by 
 their acts, and, with few exceptions, these acts seem for a 
 long time to point in one direction only, namely, a desire 
 to remain under the suzerainty of the Roman Empire, and 
 a conviction that that Empire alone can legalise their 
 power. 
 
 And yet there is a sense in which the advent of Odoacer 
 at Ravenna marks an epoch, for the barbarian seems to 
 have had some dreams of an united if not of an inde- 
 pendent Italy. In many different ways he showed himself 
 to be an active, pushing fellow. For instance, he appointed, 
 without consulting Zcno, a Prefect of Rome, and after a 
 
 ' This history is known to us only through the version of it by 
 Jordanes, a man of 'barbarian' descent, who wrote, probably in the 
 Eastern half of the Empire, about the year 551. If the book did 
 come from the East, it must have been one of the last Latin works 
 written there. 
 
 G
 
 98 TIIK FATE OF ITALY 
 
 few years interval a consul.^ He dealt severely with 
 other invaders or would-be invaders, such as Thuringians 
 and Rugians, who were pressing on his north-eastern 
 frontiers. He dominated Rhstia ; and when he had 
 built himself a little fleet at Ravenna to keep off Vandal 
 pirates, he made use of it to get hold of a strip of land in 
 Dalmatia across the Adriatic He kept rather a heavy 
 hand upon popes, and even interfered in a papal election 
 (that of Felix in 483) ; and once at least he issued coins 
 without putting Zeno's head upon them. 
 
 In this attitude he was somewhat helped by the tension 
 which had come about between the Eastern and Western 
 branches of the Church upon the old question of the 
 One or the Two Natures in Christ In the Eastern 
 patriarchates, in spite of the outward acceptance by East 
 and West of the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, there 
 was a great deal of discord on this question. The in- 
 tellectuals of the Eastern capital were, and long remained, 
 for the most part, Monophysite {i.e., for 'One Nature'), 
 while its mob was Catholic ; the emperor, therefore, was 
 always in a difficult position between his clergy, his 
 senators, and his mob. He was in a still more difficult 
 position towards the West, which had but one mind, that 
 of the Catholic Bishop of Rome, on the subject. Should 
 the emperor seek out a formula of compromise, which 
 with difficulty the East might accept, he would be certain 
 to bring a hornets' nest about his ears in the West. Zeno 
 sought and found such a formula in the ' Ilenotikon ' or 
 Act of Union, which was indeed fairly well received all 
 over the East. He at once became a heretic in the eyes 
 
 ' Already the practice had arisen for the emperor to appoint one 
 consul for the East and another for the West ; Justinian appointed 
 the last Consul for the East in 541 ; the Western Consulate also died 
 out during his Italian wars, and from that date chronology in the 
 West is reckoned from the ' Indictions,' or quindecennial revisions 
 of taxation, until the tenth century, when the practice of dating from 
 Christ's birth began to be general in the West. The Byzantines 
 complicated matters by taking, in the seventh century, to dating from 
 the creation of the world, which they placed 5509 years before 
 Christ's birth.
 
 THE OSTROGOTHS 99 
 
 of the Roman Church. A fair opportunity thus seemed to 
 be offered to a barbarian ' King' of Italy, if such could be 
 found orthodox enough to please the Italian priests. 
 Odoacer, however, was an Arian, perhaps a bit of a tyrant 
 also, and did not please them. But Zeno pleased them 
 even less, and the theological tension ripened into some- 
 thing like a schism, which lasted through the reign of the 
 next emperor, Anastasius (491-518), for he also showed 
 toleration to the Monophysites. 
 
 Now Odoacer in the course of his wars in the Julian 
 Alps, which I may perhaps be pardoned for calling the 
 'jumping-off place' for would-be invaders of Italy, had 
 come into conflict with the powerful tribe of the Ostro- 
 goths, or East-Goths, whose Western brethren we lately 
 escorted under imperial sanction into Southern Gaul and, 
 without such sanction, into Spain. The Ostrogoths after 
 freeing themselves in the reign of Marcian from Hunnish 
 domination, had wandered about the Balkan Peninsula, 
 and even cast greedy eyes in the direction of Constantin- 
 ople. By hard knocks to other Teutonic tribes they had 
 won for themselves the leading position in that region, and 
 had recently been granted lands in Pannonia. Bands of 
 them had also taken service as fcvderati^ in which capacity 
 they alternately rendered valuable service on the Euphrates, 
 and plagued the emperor with demands for extravagant 
 pay and for further settlements in land. One becomes, in 
 fact, aware that it profited an emperor very little to 
 'settle' a tribe in a province like Mcusia, Noricum, or 
 Pannonia, because that tribe at once began to smell more 
 riches further to the southward. Zeno had been feebly 
 trying to play off his settled against his unsettled Goths, 
 with the result that the latter had lately pushed their 
 ravages into Macedonia, Epirus, and even Thrace. Their 
 leader, called Theodoric the Amal.cameto Constantinople, 
 where he had already spent much of his bo)'hood as 
 a hostage, was petted, feared, and, in 4S4, created 
 consul. 
 
 He was born in 454, and so at the date we have 
 reached, was in the prime of manhood. When he heard
 
 lOO THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 of Odoacer's pushings into Pannonia, he disliked the news 
 very much. Zeno also disliked Odoacer, and began to 
 think that this half-tamed Gothic Consul might as well go 
 away to Italy — a province at present of much less import- 
 ance in imperial eyes than Macedonia or Thrace — and do 
 some handstroke on Odoacer. The bargain was easily 
 arranged, and it was distinctly with Zeno's sanction and 
 with the title of ' Patrician ' that Theodoric started at the 
 head of his tribe, with wives, waggons, and children, perhaps 
 200,000 persons in all, in 488. They fought their way 
 along the Great Western Road in a fearful winter, the 
 men's long beards stiff with ice; tribe after tribe went 
 down before the Gothic horsemen, and when they came to 
 the jumping-off place they met Odoacer. His army, a 
 very heterogeneous one, fought hard at the crossings of 
 the Isonzo and the Adige, but was duly beaten on each 
 occasion. Verona (Bern) was the first great city the 
 Goths took in Italy ; hence their leader is, in later German 
 song, Dietrich vo7i Bern. Back and back he pushed his 
 foe and in 490 beat him again on the Adda, and it now 
 became a question what the tribes beyond the western 
 Alp-barrier, Burgundians and Visigoths, would say to this 
 victorious career. The former, not yet a prey to the 
 Franks, and with a powerful hold on the North-western 
 Alps, were allies of Odoacer ; but King Euric of the 
 Visigoths sent prompt and substantial help to his far-off 
 kinsman, and Odoacer had to creep back into Ravenna. 
 Theodoric made skilful and justifiable use of the imperial 
 sanction which he had obtained and, even before he began 
 the blockade of Ravenna (490), Sicily and Southern Italy 
 had declared for him. Not, however, till 493 did Odoacer 
 give up the game and offer to capitulate. Even then the 
 terms of surrender were violated, and Theodoric slew his 
 rival with his own hands, one of the very few bloody deeds 
 and the only shameful deed ever recorded against him. 
 Some time before this — the date is uncertain — he had 
 been ' lifted on the shield ' and proclaimed king ; in 
 after years he dated his reign from his victory at Verona. 
 His title was merely ' King of the Goths ' ; in fact, how-
 
 THEODORIC, KING OF ITALY loi 
 
 ever, he was King of Ital)-, and one of the worthiest 
 who ever reigned there. 
 
 Whatever Gothic kingship, or any other Germanic 
 kingship may have meant in the days of Tacitus or to 
 the minds of Whig historians of the nineteenth century, to 
 its contemporaries in the fifth and sixth it seems to have 
 meant absolute power after the model of the later Roman 
 Empire. We search in vain for any traces of regular 
 * a.s.semblies of free warriors,' or of any other limitations 
 on the Crown ; nay, there is no hereditary nobility outside 
 the god-descended ' Anial ' race to be found at all. There 
 is no nobility except that earned by service ; the king 
 chooses his personal followers or bodyguard as he pleases. 
 The supreme legislative, judicial and military power is his 
 alone, saving always the polite bow towards the Lord of 
 all the World at Constantinople. When the race of the 
 Amals fails, the army of the Goths will indeed elect a king 
 as freely as they will murder a king;' but, once elected, 
 and as long as he is unmurdered, he is absolute. And, so 
 far as we can see, it is the same with all other Teutonic 
 tribes who obtained settlements within the Roman 
 Empire.- 
 
 Nor do we find among the subjects of Theodoric any 
 distinction drawn between Goth and Roman, except that 
 the Goths alone bear arms. They arc paid, like the 
 legionaries of old, both by donations and rations {amioncB), 
 and for this the Italians have of course to be taxed, pre- 
 sumably upon the old Roman plan of land-tax. Whether 
 any regular land settlements were also allotted to these 
 soldiers, we do not know. Odoacer's/a-rtV^-r?// had claimed 
 one-third of Italian lands, but had they got them ? if they 
 
 ' 'The Goths,' says Gregory of Tours, thinking perhaps more of 
 his contemporaries, the Visigoths, in Spain, than of the Ostrogoths, 
 'have the detestable habit, when one of their kings displeases them, 
 of killing him and putting another in his place ' {Historia Francontm^ 
 iii., 30). 
 
 - The Lombards, who did, and several Germanic tribes, e.g.^ the 
 Bavarians, who did not obtain such settlements, had an hereditary 
 nobility ; but even with them we find no traces of the origin ol a 
 ' Parliament ' or a ' Constitutional Monarchy.'
 
 I02 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 had, such lands, being naturally forfeited, may have passed 
 to Gothic landowners. This is at least probable, but we 
 cannot be sure ; for the most part, the Goths appear 
 merely as soldiers garrisoning important cities.^ The 
 whole system of administration by prefect and senate 
 remains Roman. Learned Romans, like Liberius and the 
 younger Cassiodorus, come to the king's side, write 
 his letters for him, and try to teach him to sign them 
 with his own name ; he seems, however, never to have got 
 beyond the first five letters of it, and to have traced these 
 through a stencil plate. Noble Romans of the Anician 
 Gens, the last glories of the dying senate, like Symmachus 
 and Bocthius, are his courtiers and personal friends. The 
 Roman law seems, for any evidence we have to the 
 contrary, to be the law for all his people, though he also 
 claims legislative power and issues edicts;-' he solemnly 
 republishes in one of his edicts many of the titles of the 
 Code of Theodosius II.; in fact, as he writes to the 
 emperor, he is taking the Imperial system for his model. 
 This, however, is not till after 497, when Anastasius, who 
 had at first left his letters unanswered, was brought to 
 acquiesce in Theodoric's dominion in Italy, and to con- 
 firm to him the title of patrician. Catholic bishops also 
 came to the Gothic Court, and were graciously received by 
 this Arian king, who from the first had promised security 
 of life and property to all who would accept his rule ; from 
 a Catholic, Maximinian, afterwards Bishop of Ravenna, 
 
 1 Schroder, in his Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, argues that the old 
 Roman system of billeting troops, whether Roman or barbarian, on 
 the Provincials, was made the basis of a land settlement when the 
 barbarians had got into the provinces for good ; that the shares of 
 land allotted to the barbarians out of the estates of each Roman 
 landowner differed in the different countries, but that one-third was 
 the normal share ; he admits that in Gaul there was no such robbery 
 of the Provincials (Schroder, pp. 103-5). 
 
 - It is from analogyonly that we can argue that a Goth would at 
 least claim to live by (or as the phrase went ' to live ') Gothic law, 
 7>., primitive Teutonic custom. If he was allowed to do so, 
 Theodoric's tribunals must have been acquainted with such custom, 
 and administered it to Goths.
 
 THEODORIC AND THE CHURCH 103 
 
 we get what is perhaps the best chronicle of his 
 reign.' 
 
 Everything which recalled the past glories of Rome 
 was dear to Theodoric. In the year 500 he visited the 
 city, bestowed honours on the senate, addressed a public 
 meeting in the Forum, gave chariot races and food to the 
 plebs. His care for ancient buildings was exemplary ; he 
 enjoined the prefect to restore Pompey's theatre ; he 
 carried on the drainage of the Pomptine marshes, and he 
 was a great restorer of aqueducts. Indeed, it is quite 
 possible to maintain that but for ' this Goth,' the remains 
 of classical antiquity, whether built or written, might 
 have perished altogether in Italy; for it was his friend 
 Cassiodorus who not only sketched out the system on 
 which mediaeval education was afterwards to rest, but also 
 in his old age retired into a monastery founded by himself 
 and set his monks to the task of copying Latin manuscripts, 
 a work of which the next famous Roman in history. Pope 
 Gregory the Great, would certainly have disapproved. To 
 the Church also, although he refused to persecute Jews 
 and punished those who did so, Theodoric, if in himself 
 an Arian evil, was also a necessary evil as long as the 
 quasi-schism with the East lasted. For, although Anastasius 
 made professions of his adhesion to the decrees of Chalcedon, 
 he by no means lived up to them, and generally showed 
 himself most impiously inclined towards religious peace 
 and the Henotikon. The Popes of the time were intent on 
 condemning the memory of a tolerant Patriarch of 
 Constantinople called Acacius, and on grouping all his 
 adherents, living and dead, under the penalties of excom- 
 munication ; and everyone knew what that penalty involved 
 in the next world. The East would not hear of this, and 
 yet the emperors still claimed the right of confirming the 
 elections of the Bishop of Rome. And so, Theodoric, 
 Arian as he was, was actually appealed to by the Roman 
 Church in 498, when there was a double election, accom- 
 
 ' M. Duchesne and Dr Hodgkin have come to the conclusion that 
 this bishop was most probably the author of the Chronicle known as 
 the Anonymus Va/esii, or at least of the Second Part of it.
 
 I04 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 panied, as was usual in such cases, with a lot of bloody street 
 fighting ; and he supported the candidate (Symmachus) 
 to whom the emperor was opposed. He even called 
 Church councils to confirm his man and they confirmed 
 him (501, 502). The tie of Italy to the Empire must have 
 been strained almost to breaking point, when all this could 
 be acceptable to the Italian public. 
 
 Ravenna, however, remained Theodoric's capital, and 
 keeps the best traditions of him, both of the Christian art 
 of his day and of his quasi-imperial rule. It was he who 
 built the splendid Church of San Apollinare Nuovo (at 
 first dedicated to St Martin). His own mausoleum, with 
 its wonderful cupola made of a single stone, proves that 
 the art of the engineer was not wholly dead. He had also 
 palaces both at Pavia and Verona. Altogether, though 
 clouded at the end, the thirty-six years of Theodoric's rule 
 afford rather a pretty picture, a sort of Indian summer 
 during which Italy recovered a good deal of prosperity on 
 the eve of her final ruin. 
 
 If we consider the king's position in relation to his 
 fellow barbarians to the north and west of the Alps and 
 across the Mediterranean Sea, we shall discover that he 
 was a great deal more than a successful warrior, nay that 
 he was a true statesman, whose object was peace. He 
 came in his old age to give the law to Vandals, Visigoths, 
 Burgundians and Franks alike, and to be the protector of 
 lesser tribes whom some of these would have oppressed. 
 The Vandal with his fleet perhaps at first loomed largest 
 in Italian eyes, and Theodoric's attitude seems to have 
 been that, if ever he had a serious quarrel with the 
 emperor, the Vandals would be his only possible allies, as 
 they would also be his most dangerous potential enemies. 
 But Genseric in his old age (he died in 477) had given up 
 piracy and become almost respectable ; he had made 
 treaties both with Zeno and Odoacer, and, though holding 
 on to Sardinia and Corsica, relinquished all but a tiny 
 strip of Sicily. From this Theodoric took no steps to 
 evict the next King of the Vandals, and even sent his own 
 sister to be queen at Carthage. The Vandals in fact
 
 VANDALS AND FRANKS 105 
 
 seevicdx.0 be the best rooted of the Teutonic settlers within 
 the Empire. They had won Africa in fair fight from the 
 Romans, and so they had grabbed all the richest lands of 
 the province, and reduced the Roman landowners to 
 slavery or to the condition of rent-paying tenants. It 
 might be supposed that their constant wars with the 
 mountain tribes on their southern frontier would keep 
 their swords from rusting. Such, however, was not the 
 case ; in the hot and fertile province, surrounded as they 
 were with every luxury, their energies quickly vanished. 
 Moreover they were far more bitter Arians than any other 
 Teutonic tribe ; they alone seriously persecuted Catholics. 
 And so, if the East were ever to begin a Catholic and 
 Imperial crusade to recover its power in the West, Africa 
 would not be a bad province to start with. Rut this was 
 hidden from Theodoric. Meanwhile the Visigoths were 
 always his warm friends; their King Alaric II. married 
 one of his daughters. As for the Burgundians they readily 
 made their peace with him. Both these monarchies 
 maintained on the whole the same attitude towards the 
 Roman law and the religion of their provincial subjects as 
 himself, although the Visigoths occasionally showed them- 
 selves less tolerant to the Catholics. 
 
 Not so the Franks, of whom we have as yet hardl)' 
 heard since the days of Constantine the Great. From the 
 very first these persons stand out in contrast with other 
 Teutonic tribes. Like our Saxon forefathers the\' are 
 foot-soldiers,^ heathens, and men of bloody hands. Though 
 they have frequently served 2iS, focderati in Roman armies, 
 they have not learned Roman discipline or respect for 
 Rome ; they have no defensive armour and they use 
 missiles rather than lances, namely, short barbed javelins 
 and short battle axes which can either be thrown or 
 wielded. Some of them carry shields so large that the)- 
 * Professor Oman well points out that the tribes who came from 
 the 'steppe' country, north of the Lower Danube, like the Coths, 
 or who had perhaps sojourned there long, like the Lombards, were 
 natural horsemen ; the Saxons and Franks on the contrary came 
 from the marshy country by the Elbe and Weser mouths, and so were 
 naturally foot-soldiers. (Art of War in the Mitldle .'\ges.)
 
 io6 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 can float across rivers on them.' Further they already 
 fight in the dense 'column' of men to which their 
 descendants will cling down to 1815. 
 
 Their law — the * Law of the Salians,' so called from 
 their home on the Isala or Yssel at the back of modern 
 Holland — has no touch of Roman in it ; it is, like the early 
 Saxon laws, full of man price {ivcrgihl), of kindreds, of 
 legalised bloodfeud, of weird German symbolic acts ; 
 daughters do not inherit family land, only sons. Their 
 first incursions into the Gaulish Provinces had been accom- 
 panied by far more cruelty to the Gallo-Roman land- 
 owners than those of Visigoth or Burgundian. The 
 Walloon {i.e. Celtic) population of Southern Belgium is 
 very possibly a result of a large displacement of Gallo- 
 Romans from Lorraine and Champagne at the first inrush 
 of the Franks ; further south too some may have been 
 driven from the plateau of Langres into the inhospitable 
 mountain region of the Vosges. The lines of Frankish 
 migration are, however, rather uncertain, and the most 
 natural ' gate ' for them to enter by would be the low hill 
 country that separates the sources of the Scheldt from 
 those of the Somme. Before 450, perhaps as early as 430, 
 we find a Frankish tribe as far west as the river Somme ; 
 and, in the latter half of that century, when the Huns 
 have come and gone, we hear of a Frank king, Childeric the 
 ' Merovingian,' fighting the Emperor Majorian's ' patrician ' 
 yEgidius, taking Cologne and Trier, and pushing on to the 
 Loire, where he meets some Saxons, who presumably have 
 come up that river from its mouth. This man reigned at 
 Tournay in Belgium, where his actual grave was found in 
 1653. As the shadowy Roman occupants of the throne at 
 Ravenna successively disappeared beneath the horizon, the 
 little Roman province in Northern Gaul, with a capital at 
 Soissons (Augusta Suessionum), stood out like a lonely rock 
 in a stormy sea, valiantly defended by another patrician, 
 Syagrius, son of .^gidius.- Him Clovis, son of Childeric, 
 
 ' Gregory of Tours, iii., 15. 
 
 " It is interesting to notice the Picard and neighbour districts, long 
 the richest and most populous parts of France, as the last relic of
 
 CONVERSION OF CLOVIS 107 
 
 attacked and beat to pieces in 486, and so became the 
 founder of the mighty state of France, her ' Louis the 
 First,'' ancestor of the first of the 'Three Races' of her 
 kings. 
 
 He was a terrible barbarian. Soon after his victory 
 he stole or enticed away a niece of a Burgundian king, 
 Clotilda, who made him promise to become a Christian, 
 and, like herself, a Catholic. Not until 496 did he, in the 
 middle of a battle (against some equally heathen Alamans) 
 which was going against him, remember this promise. 
 Then he called upon his wife's God and, of course, 
 immediately won his battle. Forthwith he and three 
 thousand fierce Franks with him were baptised by St 
 Remigius, Bishop of Rheims.'- And so at last the Catholic 
 Church has got a stout barbarian sword upon its side. 
 Clovis' conception of his new faith was a remarkable one ; 
 when told the story of Christ's sufferings and death, ' If I 
 and my Franks had been there,' said he, ' we would have 
 avenged Him.' The whole spirit of the Crusades, which 
 were so essentially French, both in their conception and 
 execution, was already in those words. 
 
 The ease with which the Gallo-Romans accepted the 
 rule of this blood-stained ruffian, coalesced and became 
 one people with his Franks, and served, from the first, in 
 his army (presumably in the old Roman legionary equip- 
 
 Roman dominion in Gaul ; Laon was perhaps the most serious rival as 
 a capital that Paris ever had ; Rheims was a competitor of Tours for 
 sanctity. At the bridge of Soissons converge roads to England, 
 Flanders, and Germany. 
 
 ' The actual order of the Kings Louis is not reckoned from Clovis 
 or any Merovingian, but from Louis L, son of Charlemagne of the 
 second race of French kings. 
 
 - No contemporary tells the story of the holy avipulla brought 
 full of oil by a dove from heaven when Clovis was going to be 
 baptised. It is first found in Flodoard's History of the Church of 
 Rheims (i., 13). Flodoard who lived 894-966 may have copied from a 
 life of St Remigius by Hincmar ; an obscure reference to it is found 
 in the ninth-century annals of Saint-l?ertin. But later story-tellers 
 mix up the baptism with the anointing to the kingship, and later kings 
 of France were anointed at their coronation with oil consecrated in 
 this ampulla.
 
 ro8 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 ment, i.e., with defensive armour), shows how great was 
 the power of the Catholic faith, and shows, therefore, how 
 stupid or how unfortunate were Goths, Rurgundians and 
 Vandals in clinging to their Arianism. Rejoicing in his 
 new faith, and eager to fulfil its precepts as expounded to 
 him by his bishops, Clovis sprang at the Burgundians, at 
 the Visigoths, and smashed them one after the other. 
 There is no sort of doubt that the Catholic subjects of 
 these Arians, if they did not actually invite the Franks, 
 threw all their sympathies into their cause. Even bishops 
 like St Caesarius of Aries were openly accused of 
 treasonable correspondence with Clovis. Gaul apparently 
 lay at the mercy of the Franks until Theodoric, watching 
 the line of the Alps from his palace at Verona, began to 
 open his eyes to this new danger. Alaric II., the 
 Visigothic king whom Clovis had just slain at Poitiers 
 (507), was Theodoric's son-in-law, and Clovis was already 
 besieging the great Southern city of Aries when the 
 Ostrogothic horsemen appeared (510) for its deliverance. 
 This time, after a fierce battle, the lance beat the battle 
 axe, and the course of Frankish victory was stayed. 
 Theodoric united Provence with his own kingdom, saved 
 Gallia Narbonensis for his Visigothic cousins, and even 
 procured a temporary re-establishment of the kingdom 
 of Burgundy, of which a considerable tract was given in 
 523 to Theodoric himself, and which the Franks only 
 finally subdued eight years after his death (534). 
 
 But the whole of Northern Gaul was a Frankish king- 
 dom, and Clovis murdered all his relatives and rivals with 
 magnificent impartiality. He must have exterminated 
 nearly all the old ruling families, if there ever had been 
 such, for there is no trace in sixth-century Frankish 
 history of any nobility other than that of service to the 
 Crown ; all freemen whether of Frank or Gallic race 
 appear equally liable to taxes and military service ; and, 
 like Theodoric's, the personal followers (called ' antrus- 
 tions ') of the king are chosen by him from all classes. 
 How far the dominion of Clovis extended on the right 
 bank of the Rhine, we cannot say ; only we hear of
 
 CLOVIS IN GAUL AND GERMANY 109 
 
 constant wars with Alamans and Thuringians, and of 
 Thcodoric's incessant watchfulness to save Rha,'tia from 
 the Franks. In fact it is Clevis who begins, from his secure 
 possession of Gaul, to reverse the set of the tide of men, 
 which for five hundred years at least has been to the West. 
 Within fifty years from his death the Eastern boundaries 
 of his grandchildren's power have reached the Lech and 
 the Elbe ; there they have confronted and fought Slavonic 
 races. There was in this movement no ' consciousness of 
 destiny ' ; all a Frank king saw was so much territory he 
 had grabbed, so much more he intended to grab, and 
 somebody else's hoard of treasure which he would steal if 
 he could. From some victory of the Franks at the end of 
 the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, the valley of 
 the Main received a strong Frank colony and the name of 
 ' F^ranconia,' which still appears on some atlases ; it is 
 probable that the Alamans were driven from this district 
 further to the south, and finally settled in the modern 
 territories of Wurtcmburg and Baden, which in the next 
 ages were called first Alamannia and then Swabia. The 
 French name for Germany, L'Allemagne, is no doubt a 
 survival of racial hostility dating from these days. When 
 Gregory of Tours uses the word ' Francia,' he means the 
 Rhine Valley and Frankish possessions east of the Rhine ; 
 the rest is to him still ' Gaul.' It was only in the next 
 three centuries that FiiDicia steadily extended its meaning 
 to include all north of the Loire and east of the Couesnon. 
 The Gallo-Roman clergy cried their new sovereign to 
 the skies, and in return he and, with few exceptions, his 
 descendants showed a careful respect for the ever-increas- 
 ing riches of the Church. Me sent embassies to Constantin- 
 ople, and Anastasius, to whom Gaul was a mere far-away 
 name, graciously nominated him consul ; when Clovis 
 went to pay his devotions to the blessed St Martin 
 at Tours, he dressed for the part. Gregory of Tours who 
 tells the story is evidently hazy as to the meaning of the 
 terms ' Consul ' and ' Augustus.' If only Clovis' territory 
 could have passed whole to one of his sons, an United 
 Kingdom of France might have come into existence
 
 no THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 several centuries earlier than it did. But, when he died in 
 511, his kingdom was divided in accordance with Frankish 
 custom among his four sons ; and Theodoric was relieved 
 of his greatest fear, for these young men at once began to 
 quarrel with each other. 
 
 In his later years the Ostrogothic king appears almost 
 as an Emperor of the West ; to him the tribes of Central 
 Germany looked as their protector, to him the Burgundians 
 and Visigoths. Noricum, Rhaetia, Pannonia and the whole 
 Dalmatian coast were in his possession, and he guarded 
 them carefully against worse barbarians. In the Adriatic 
 and, as the Vandal power declined, in the open Mediter- 
 ranean the fleet of Ravenna ruled the waves. It was not 
 likely that Constantinople would long look on unmoved at 
 such a phenomenon. 
 
 In that beautiful city the long reign of Anastasius had 
 been preparing the way for the longer reign of Justinian. 
 In religious matters the emperor had little quiet. There 
 was a strong Catholic party which had always resented the 
 Henotikoii ; it worried the emperor throughout his life, 
 and blackened his memory after his death. Yet in secular 
 matters he had done fairly well ; he had fortified his 
 Persian frontier, he had built the fifty-mile-long wall thirty- 
 five miles north of the capital, from Selymbria on the Sea 
 of Marmora to the Black Sea ; it was a mighty line of 
 defence, and had a broad ditch behind it along which boats 
 could be towed. He had remitted at least one most 
 vexatious tax, and yet he left a large treasure to his 
 successors. He had reorganised the army and cared 
 incessantly for the comfort of his soldiers ; the successful 
 campaigns of Belisarius and Narses under Justinian owed 
 everything to Anastasius' forethought. But all this counted 
 for nothing in Catholic eyes when set against ' the deadly 
 and damnable sin of toleration.' Three successive 
 insurrections disturbed his last years, and during the third 
 of these Anastasius died, at a great age, in 518. The 
 throne was seized by the Captain of the Guard, Justin, an 
 old soldier, on his father's side of humble, perhaps of 
 Slavonic origin, but adopted by the great senatorial house
 
 LAST YEARS OF THEODORIC iii 
 
 of the Anicii. His elevation was practically an election 
 by the Catholic faction among the soldiers. A reaction at 
 once set in ; Monophysites and Arians were excluded from 
 Church, Army and Civil Service. A complete reconcilia- 
 tion with the Western Church was set on foot and, to the 
 prejudice of Thcodoric, triumphantly carried out. 
 
 Theodoric had never taken any steps to hinder such a 
 reconciliation, though he must have known that it would 
 threaten his power ; but he was vexed when he heard of 
 the commencement of persecution of the Arians in the 
 Eastern capital. He was still more vexed when he 
 discovered traces of a correspondence, which perhaps was 
 really a conspiracy, among the Roman senators with the 
 new Court of Constantinople. We have no means of 
 ascertaining the truth about this matter ; but it seems 
 clear, first, that the native barbarian woke in the aged 
 Gothic king (he was hard on seventy), and, secondly, that 
 the senate played a very mean part. After denunciation, 
 not by Gothic but by Roman courtiers, two of the leading 
 senators, Boethius and Symmachus, were condemned to 
 death by that very senate which we can only suppose 
 to have been equally guilty, if guilt there was, with them. 
 Boethius' fate has become celebrated, because he was not 
 only the intimate friend of Theodoric, but also the last 
 learned man of the West, translator of Aristotle, Platonist, 
 astronomer, mathematician, mechanician, and author of the 
 most popular philosophical treatise of the Middle Ages,^ 
 the De Consolationc PJiilosopJiicc, written during his 
 imprisonment. He was put to death in 523. In the next 
 year Theodoric, with strange simplicity, despatched a very 
 unwilling Pope, John I., to Constantinople to remonstrate 
 against Justin's treatment of the Arians. John was only 
 too well received in the East, and having totally failed to 
 fulfil any part of his mission, was imprisoned on his return 
 
 ' Professor W. P. Ker calls him ' the interpreter of the ancient 
 world and its wisdom, accepted by all the tribes of Europe from one 
 age to another, and never disqualified in his office of teacher, even by 
 the most subtle and elaborate theories of later schools ' {Dark Ages, 
 p. loi).
 
 112 THE FATE OF ITALY 
 
 to Ravenna and died in prison — obviously a Catholic 
 martyr. 
 
 One perceives, however, that, if the great Gothic king 
 had left a stalwart son behind him, the most orthodox ruler 
 of the East would have thought twice before attempting to 
 recover Italy with the sword. But when Theodoric died 
 (526) his representatives were his only legitimate daughter 
 Amalasuntha, already a widow, and her son Athalaric aged 
 ten. Only one other man of Amal descent, so far as we 
 know, remained in Italy, Theodahat, an exceedingly un- 
 popular Romanised Goth, and a false knave into the 
 bargain. Athalaric was recognised as king and Amala- 
 suntha as regent. A woman of equal culture and high 
 spirit, she was even more devoted to the traditions of 
 Roman civilisation than her father, and perhaps even 
 unduly anxious to educate her boy in what remained of 
 these traditions. Cassiodorus continued in office as her 
 prime minister. The rough Gothic soldiers, who had 
 perhaps grumbled at such tastes in their hero-king, had no 
 mind to tolerate them at all in a woman, and seem to have 
 set the boy against his mother. She vowed, and began to 
 take vengeance on these men, but first secretly asked for 
 help from Constantinople in case she should need it. 
 Nothing more opportune for the ruler of that city 
 could have happened.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER IV 
 
 The TlMic covered is, roughly, the sixth century. 
 
 The Events described arc — (i) The career of the Emperor Justinian 
 as lawgiver, builder, statesman, and conqueror ; especially the 
 reconquest of Africa and Italy by his generals, Belisarius and 
 Narses, and the consequent destruction of the Vandal and Ostro- 
 golhic nations ; the results of that conquest ; the origin of 
 monasticism in the West ; certain theological difficulties of 
 Justinian, especially with the weak popes who preceded (jregory 
 the Great. (2) The coming of the Avars into the 15alkan 
 Peninsula, and of the Lombards into Italy, 568. (3) The weak 
 successors of Justinian at Constantinople, and the career of the 
 famous Pope Gregory the Great, 590-604. 
 
 The chief Actors are, with the exception of Justinian, not kings 
 or emperors ; but a table of the rulers at Constantinople is 
 necessary. 
 
 (i) JUSTIN I., usurped the throne, 518, died 527, 
 
 PI is Nfpliew was 
 JUSTINIAN I., 527-565, married to Theodora (who died 54S). 
 
 He liad two Nfphncs of importaiirc, Germanus, died 567, and 
 JUSTIN II., Emperor, 565-578. 
 
 I 
 A Daughter, who married 
 TIBERIUS II., 578-582. 
 
 I 
 A Daughter, who married 
 MAURICE, 582-602. 
 Deposed and murdered by the usurpei, PHOCAS, 602-610, 
 
 who was deposed and 
 murdered by 
 llERACLIUS I., 610-641. 
 (See Table in Chapter VI.) 
 
 (2) Of importance, also, are the last Ostrogothic rulers in Italy : — 
 TIIEODURIC, died 526. 
 
 His Daughter, 
 AMALASUNTHA, and her second Husband (?) THEODAHAT, 
 died 5.'^5. died 536. 
 
 Her Boy, Her Girl, 
 
 ATHALARIC, MATASUNTHA, who married the usurper, WITIGES, 
 died 534. died 539. 
 
 Unconnected with these is the last Gothic King of Italy, 
 TOTILA, died 55:. 
 
 113 H
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD VET 
 
 Omnia castella expugnari posse dicebat, in quae modo asellus 
 onustus auro posset ascendere. {Cicero^ to Atiicus, i., i6, 12.) 
 
 And now the ruler of Constantinople was no longer the 
 rough old soldier Justin but his nephew Justinian, who came 
 to the throne in 527 — the most remarkable man that ever 
 occupied the throne of New Rome. The nine years of his 
 uncle's government had been marked mainly by a vigorous 
 prosecution of the Persian war, and Justinian was already 
 forty-four years old when he was crowned. By the side of 
 him was crowned the wonderful beauty Theodora, of whose 
 origin strange tales were told — after her death. Whatever 
 we may come to think of the emperor's character — patient, 
 abstemious, laborious, suspicious, ruthless — he may at least 
 claim to have been one of the best served and the most 
 fortunate men in history. He codified the law of Rome 
 into such a shape that in after ages his code became the basis 
 of all civilised European systems of law except the English. 
 He reconquered for the direct rule of the Roman Empire, 
 with means which appear to us ludicrously slender and ill- 
 adapted for the purpose, Africa, Italy, and a great deal of 
 Spain. He was lord of the sea from Alexandria to 
 Bordeaux. He not only built churches by the hundred (in 
 the literal sense of the figure), but he covered the eastern 
 and central portions of his dominions with strong fortifica- 
 tions against external foes and internal risings. And he 
 kept at bay in the Balkan Peninsula, by diplomacy and 
 gold almost without fighting, barbarians of an infinitely 
 
 114
 
 JUSTINIAN'S CODE 115 
 
 more noxious kind than had yet invaded ' Europe.' And 
 when he died, the whole system he had erected crumbled 
 to pieces in such a very few years, that he has been 
 accused, as it appears to me unjustly, of having rather 
 exhausted civilised Europe than strengthened it, of having 
 only smoothed the path for the final barbarian deluge. 
 
 ' The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to 
 the world ends ' (if I may be allowed slightly to vary Sir 
 Henry Maine's text) 'as it had begun, with a code.' 
 Before Justinian had been six months upon the throne his 
 great jurist, Tribonian, had begun the work of harmonising 
 into one system all the principles of Roman law, whether 
 derived from the dim and distant code (called the Twelve 
 Tables) of the early republic, from the Scnatus-consulta 
 of the later republic, from the constitutions of the principes 
 and emperors, from the Codex Theodosianus which had 
 arranged them, from the edicts of the preetors (who had 
 applied principles of equity ywj gentium where strict civil 
 law JUS civile had failed to meet the case), or from the 
 Responsa Priidentuui or body of counsel's opinion on hard 
 cases. It was not the first time such a thing had been 
 attempted ; in the second century Gains had written his 
 fiistiliites, as a legal text-book for legal students, and 
 these institutes were taken as the groundwork of Justinian's 
 own. Now, however, for the first time ' Law ' and 
 ' Equity ' were fused into one system, for the whole of the 
 civilised world, in the name and by the authority of one 
 man, the emperor. Stark and uncontrolled by any human 
 })Ower, his royalty stands out ; it is royalty that alone 
 gives sanction to a law. That is why nations, which in 
 after ages clumsily hammered out for themselves the 
 rudiments of what we call ' Constitutional Government ' or 
 ' Limited Monarchy,' or nursed anything like an efficient 
 native system of customary law, were unwilling to receive 
 Justinian's code as the basis of their legal system, until some 
 external power was strong enough to force it on them. 
 Alone the system of that singular people the English 
 proved tough enough to resist it almost wholl)'. The work, 
 as perfected in the sixth century, divided itself into three
 
 ii6 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 branches, the Codex of Statutes {leges), (529),^ the Digest 
 of Common Law {Jus), otherwise called the Pandects, 
 (533). 3^"d the Institutes, a brief and scientific exposition 
 of the principles underlying the whole (533). It is 
 this last that all students of law regard as their primary 
 text- book at the present day. 
 
 And before the Imperial legislator had been two years 
 in power he had also shown how intimate was to be the 
 connection of his Crown with the Christian Church, by 
 closing for ever (529) the last open doors within which 
 Greek philosophy, alas ! too much suspected of pagan 
 leanings, still brought things to the test of reason ; the 
 doors, namely, of the University of Athens. The professors 
 of the liberal arts — there were but seven of them left — 
 finding themselves thus deprived of a livelihood, thought 
 at first of a possible refuge in Persia. The Persia of the 
 Sassanids was not, however, the comparatively civilised 
 country of which they had read in their Herodotus and 
 their Xenophon, and, if they ever went, they soon returned, 
 and probably dragged out an uncomfortable existence 
 in the theological atmosphere of some Greek city. They 
 had better have gone to Southern Italy, where in that 
 very year St Benedict was founding at Monte Cassino, 
 the pattern of all the monasteries of the West ; to the 
 monasteries such learning as was permitted to survive 
 was soon to fly for refuge. A great German historian 
 has well pointed out that, when free discussion of philo- 
 sophical subjects was prohibited. Christian theology was 
 the greatest loser. Not only did it lose its one possible 
 opponent, but its training ground also. All the great 
 theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries had been 
 schooled in philosophy ; and, for five hundred years to 
 come, no more original ideas found their way into theology, 
 no more original expositors of that science arose. Ignor- 
 ance too of everything except theology was a necessary 
 result. This had indeed long been progressive. To the 
 ' fathers ' of the Church there was something impious in 
 all explorations of the secret of Nature, indeed in all 
 ' Second Edition, 534.
 
 SEDITION OF 'NIKIi' 117 
 
 knowledge that did not prove or confirm the truth of 
 Scripture. 
 
 In Justinian's sixth year his throne was almost upset 
 by a fearful tumult in his capital, known as the ' Sedition 
 of Nike.' The remnants of the unorthodox party, which 
 had been suppressed in 518, were perhaps at the bottom 
 of this movement, but ostensibly the ringleaders were 
 partisans of a certain ' faction ' among the chariot - racers 
 in the circus. We have already learned how great was 
 the passion for spectacles in the Ancient World. When 
 gladiators died out, chariot-racers became the popular 
 favourites, and chariot-races the most popular .spectacle. 
 One imagines that, even in the largest conceivable arena, 
 it must have been an exciting sport to watch, with plenty 
 of collisions, broken limbs and deaths among the drivers; 
 and it often ended in a free fight between their partisan.s. 
 At this time there were only two factions, called Stjjuoi 
 or ' peoples,' ^ the ' blues ' and the ' greens ' ; and every 
 idle blackguard in the city had an hereditary attachment 
 to the one or the other. So vast and so dangerous had 
 these two mobs become that they were already political 
 factors with which every government had to reckon. Wc 
 must suppose that their wires were generally pulled by some 
 caucus of political agitators of superior intelligence, although 
 it is difficult to prove this. But if one can imagine two 
 rival crowds, which have also become political and religious 
 trade-unions, shouting abusive epithets at each other at 
 a football match, and at last tearing down the ropes and 
 breaking in upon the ground, one may get perhaps some 
 notion of the constant disturbances in the arena of the 
 Eastern capital. Often one of the factions would demand, 
 at the opening of the games, the release of a prisoner, 
 the dismissal of an unpopular Commissioner of Police, 
 or even of a Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and the 
 emperor was but too often obliged to give way. Un- 
 
 ' Originally these divisions had some political meaning, and had 
 probably been military divisions of the people of the city. See 
 Professor Bury's excellent Appendix on them in his Gibbon, vol. 
 iv., p. 53«.
 
 ii8 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 doubtcdly it suited some emperors to have at their disposal 
 a large and dangerous rabble devoted to their cause — 
 provided always that the opposing rabble were not larger 
 and more dangerous. 
 
 Now, in 532, the tumult began with the Green faction, 
 which was supposed to be Monophysite, and therefore 
 hostile to Justinian ; but, and this was unusual, it ended 
 in a coalition of the most dangerous elements of both 
 factions, the probable explanation of which is the severe 
 pressure of new taxes recently introduced by the govern- 
 ment. Half the city was burned in the riot, the palace 
 was all but stormed, a rival emperor was acclaimed in 
 the circus, and only the arrival of the great Macedonian 
 general Belisarius, at the head of regular troops victorious 
 from the Persian wars, saved the situation. There is 
 a story that Justinian had prepared to fly or abdicate, 
 but was prevented by the firmness of his wife. When 
 Belisarius at last stormed the circus, it was at the expense 
 of thousands of lives. But the net result was that the 
 emperor's government became stronger than before. 
 
 On the site of the still smoking ruins Justinian began 
 within a few weeks to rear that marvel of art which 
 still preserves his memory in the Turkish capital, the 
 ' Church of the Divine Wisdom,' or * Saint-Sophia.' The 
 architect was a Greek, Anthemius of Tralles, and the work, 
 at which the emperor in a mason's apron had laboured 
 with his own hands, was finished in five years. * I have 
 beaten Solomon,' he exclaimed when he saw it completed. 
 
 Saint-Sophia and the Corpus Juris have defied time. 
 It is not so with the achievement of Justinian, of which 
 we must now treat — namely his recall, by no gentle means, 
 into the bosom of the Mother-empire, of those children 
 in the West who seemed to have all but cut the apron- 
 strings. While Amalasuntha, in her quaking regency at 
 Ravenna, was affording one pretext for interference, a 
 parallel pretext was afforded by the course of events at 
 Carthage. There the Vandals had just deposed a tolerant 
 and Roman-minded sovereign called Hilderic, and set 
 up one Gelimer in his place. Peace with Persia, where
 
 BELISARIUS TO AFRICA 119 
 
 the great warrior Chosroes Nushirvan had just become 
 king, was a necessary preliminary for a war in the 
 Mediterranean, and in 531 Justinian purchased it by 
 a heavy bribe; and, with the blood of Nike scarcely dry 
 on their swords, the soldiers of Belisarius were got ready 
 for an attack upon Africa. This attack would take the 
 form of a Catholic crusade ; and such a crusade would 
 indeed have been a perilous job had the Arian form of 
 Christianity any real vitality in it, or were the Arian 
 governments of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals capable 
 of combining for their common defence, Amalasuntha, 
 however, had promised to shelter the fleet of Justinian 
 in Sicily, and so, in June 533, Belisarius started from the 
 Golden Horn. He was then about twenty-five years of 
 age, and had already reaped laurels on the Euphrates. 
 Throughout his wars he was accompanied by his Greek secre- 
 tary, Procopius of Caesarea,^ who has left us a most spirited 
 and intelligent account of his master's victorious career. 
 
 The means at that master's disposal were so insignifi- 
 cant, that one comes to the conclusion that he must 
 have been one of the greatest leaders of men in warfare 
 that ever lived. His army, which was conveyed in five 
 hundred transports and escorted by ninety ships of 
 war, rowed by oars, did not exceed 15,000 men of various 
 nationalities. One slips into the habit of calling it a 
 Roman army, because it moved at the will of a Roman 
 emperor, and because the contemporary Greek historians 
 call it Roman ; but, in reality, if it were anything beyond 
 a bundle of mercenaries and fccderati, it was a Greek 
 
 ' Procopius is a historian whom one may fairly reckon to be 
 classical ; he is perhaps best to be compared with Ammianus 
 Marcellinus for, like him, he had seen war actually going on. No 
 doubt he would have compared himself to Herodotus and Polybius, 
 both of whom he consciously imitates. Though a Christian, he cares 
 nothing for the theological disputes of his day. Into the vexed 
 question whether he was or was not the author or sole author of the 
 Anecdota, commonly called the Secret History, I do not feel competent 
 to enter, and I have not drawn upon it in my text. Suffice it to say 
 that this is a book written after the fall of Justinian's system 
 vilifying him and Theodora in every possible manner.
 
 I20 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 power. The inhabitants of Italy, whether Goths or 
 Italians, spoke of it as 'Greek,' and the only parts of 
 Italy upon which any lasting effects of its victories 
 remained were in the extreme South, the old Magna 
 Gra^cia. The footmen were largely Greek-speaking 
 Thracians, or barbarous Isaurians from Asia Minor; the 
 cavalry consisted largely of foederati, Huns (splendid 
 horsemen and bowmen), or Herules. The best strength 
 lay in the heavily armed horse - archers or cataphracti, 
 from the Asiatic provinces ; they carried lance and sword 
 as well as bow. In spite of its victorious career, one must 
 pronounce it to have been a thoroughly inefficient army, 
 carried in a poor fleet, which took two months to reach 
 Sicily, and whose men openly told their general that if 
 attacked by the Vandals at sea they would fly. The 
 provisions on board were rotten, the water was insufficient. 
 During the whole campaign alternate hanging and petting 
 had to be applied to make the men do their duty ; and 
 even Belisarius failed to maintain discipline after his 
 final victory over the Vandals. When left to garrison 
 conquered Africa, nearly half these ' Romans ' mutinied 
 and combined with the dregs of the Vandals and with the 
 wild Moors from the Jiintei-laiid ; and it was ten years 
 before complete peace was restored in a province which 
 this force had conquered in little more than ten weeks. 
 
 Yet in the course of that rapid conquest the patience, 
 the loyalty, and the wonderful resourcefulness of its great 
 general triumphed over all obstacles, even over the 
 continual clamour for hopelessly deferred pay. His 
 landfall on the peninsula of Carthage was made, in 
 September 533, some ten days' march to the south of the 
 city. Gelimer seems to have been entirely unaware that 
 any attack was intended on him, and a large part of his 
 troops were at the time in Sardinia. City after city 
 joyfully opened its gates to Belisarius, and the Vandal 
 attempts at defence were of the most miserable. Only 
 after Carthage had welcomed the invaders within its walls 
 did the Vandal king begin to prepare in earnest for its 
 recapture. Belisarius spent the last two months of the
 
 FALL OF TIIF VANDALS 121 
 
 year in fortifying the city, and then met and utterl)' 
 defeated Gelimer outside it in the battle of Tricameron. 
 The Vandals taken in the battle were slaughtered whole- 
 sale, and the victors flew upon the treasure-chests which 
 the barbarian king apparently carried about with him. 
 The spoil was immense, and no doubt included many 
 objects of value plundered from Rome eighty years before. 
 Gelimer himself fled to Numidia, where he was soon after- 
 wards caught ; he was then sent to Constantinople and 
 allowed to live in peace, although he refused to turn 
 Catholic. So was Vandalia wiped off the roll of nations 
 in a three months' campaign. Belisarius, on his return to 
 the East, was granted a Roman triumph ; the treasures of 
 the old Jewish temple, which had been found among the 
 Vandal booty, were sent to the Church of Christ's 
 Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Those historians who like 
 scolding the successful characters of history have argued 
 that, if Justinian had only left the Vandals alone, Africa 
 would not, a century later, have fallen to the Arabs ; but 
 the history of the last three months of the year 533 does 
 not look as if the indictm.ent were true. On the contrary 
 there is evidence that, for some years before that date, the 
 Vandals were barely holding their own against the 
 Moorish tribes behind them. 
 
 Would Gothia, if attacked, stand better than Vandalia? 
 At first it did not seem as if it would. The boy king 
 Athalaric died in 534, and Amalasuntha, though for long 
 secretly in correspondence with Constantinople, now in 
 despair turned to her cousin, the hated and treacherous 
 Theodahat, and offered to share her power with him. 
 Whether they were actually chosen queen and king is 
 doubtful, but they acted as joint rulers, though all the 
 while in secret opposition to each other. The lady was 
 prepared in the last resort to offer the whole of Italy to 
 Justinian, and, when she was murdered by Theodahat in 
 535, the emperor had an excellent excuse for the invasion 
 which he was preparing. The murderer himself then 
 made several secret and treacherous attempts at negotia- 
 tion. Justinian had been ciuilc willing to listen to the
 
 122 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 offers of both Theodahat and Amalasuntha, and continued 
 to amuse the former by negotiations till the last moment. 
 The year 534 had been employed by him partly in 
 unsuccessful attempts to pacify reconquered Africa, partly 
 in the reduction of Sardinia and Corsica, and also in a 
 mission to the Franks, who had causes of quarrel, religious 
 and other, with the Goths of Italy. Then, in 536, a force 
 of barely 8000 men was despatched under Belisarius to 
 Sicily as the best basis for an attack upon Italy. Sicily 
 was, in fact, at this time, as it had been in the days of the 
 Roman Republic, the granary from which Rome was fed. 
 Palermo alone stood a short siege, and the whole island 
 was in Greek hands by the end of the year. But when 
 Belisarius, who had already landed at Reggio, advanced 
 against Naples it was another story. There the good 
 government of Theodoric was remembered, and the 
 general had to sit down to a regular siege, the first of 
 many which were to mark this devastating war. 
 
 Theodahat could have put in motion for the relief of 
 Naples an army which, though we may safely dismiss the 
 enormous figures of Gothic armies given by Procopius 
 (such as '150,000 men'), must have vastly outnumbered 
 the Greeks ; but a considerable detachment of Goths had 
 been foolishly despatched to defend Dalmatia, against 
 which the emperor had sent a force by the land road. 
 Moreover, the Gothic king was a coward and a fool, hoping 
 at the time mainly to save his own neck and riches by 
 treasonable negotiations at Constantinople. After a 
 valiant defence the small garrison of Goths was obliged to 
 surrender Naples in September 536, and Belisarius at once 
 advanced by the Latin Way upon Rome. Then the 
 Gothic army mutinied, deposed and slew the wretched 
 Theodahat, and chose a valiant wooden-headed soldier, 
 VVitiges, for king. He, poor stupid fellow, must needs fall 
 back upon Ravenna ; perhaps in order to prepare against 
 an expected invasion of Franks ; perhaps in order to get 
 treasure to pay his soldiers ; perhaps in order to legitimise 
 his throne by forcing the last survivor of the Amal race, 
 Matasuntha, daughter of Amalasuntha, to marry him.
 
 BELISARIUS IN ROME 123 
 
 But the result was that he gave away the old capital of the 
 world to Belisarius, who entered it unopposed, and at the 
 invitation of the Pope, at the end of the year. 
 
 The attitude of the Senatns Populusqne Ronianus was a 
 curious one. On the one side stood the open Catholic 
 sympathies of the entire Italian priesthood and people, 
 which were nowhere stronger than at Rome ; on the other, 
 the city's ancient jealousy of Constantinople and the 
 ' Greeks.' Belisarius might be at the head of a Catholic 
 crusade, but he certainly also represented Constantinople 
 triumphant. One of the surest tests of the general's true 
 greatness is the fact that, within a few weeks, he had 
 conciliated the inhabitants of the city to such an extent 
 that some of them were actually induced to fight in their 
 own defence. Witiges, however, seemed quite unconscious 
 that he, for his part, represented anything but a large body 
 of Gothic fighting men ; and we may presume that he and 
 Gothia fell because they failed to see that they were really 
 standing for an independent Italy. Quite possibly they 
 dreaded the Franks even more than they dreaded the Greeks. 
 
 But, in March 537, Witiges advanced with an enormous 
 army to subject the walls of Aurelian to their first real test 
 of siege — for a year and nine days. Belisarius, though he 
 had now only 5000 men with him, had carefully repaired 
 these walls and had stored the city with Sicilian corn. If 
 his 5000 were too few to man the defences, the Goths were 
 also too few to blockade very strictly the whole of the 
 twelve-mile circuit of wall. But they did form great 
 camps, entrenched with earthworks, opposite the principal 
 gates ; and, when they placed another camp at Portus 
 (Porto Romano), on the right bank at Tiber-mouth, 
 although Ostia still remained in the hands of the defenders, 
 the city soon began to experience famine. As for siege- 
 craft, nothing could possibly be clumsier than that of the 
 Goths. Of archery, and indeed of the use of any missile 
 weapons, they seem to have been wholly ignorant. At 
 first we read of battering-rams and also of huge wooden 
 towers on wheels, filled with men and painfully drawn 
 forward towards the walls ; but Belisarius' Huns shot the
 
 124 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 oxen which drew them, and left the towers sticking in the 
 mud just out of reach of the walls. After that the besiegers 
 could only throw away men in frantic attempts to storm. 
 One terrible resource was indeed open to them : they broke 
 down the noble aqueducts, and reduced the city to drink 
 from the muddy Tiber and from such springs as existed 
 inside. But this destruction, the traces of which we can 
 still see in the gaunt remains of the arches of the Aqua 
 Claudia, stretching like broken festoons of stone across the 
 Campagna, turned also against the destroyers, for the water 
 simply poured on to the plain and rendered many of their 
 camping-grounds pestiferous swamps. The famous malarial 
 mosquito took up his abode therein, and there, though the 
 swamps have dried, he remains until this day. 
 
 On the other hand, in conducting the defence Belisarius 
 shone as perhaps never man shone. His main weapon 
 was the balista or huge catapult, worked by leverage, throw- 
 ing bolts which went clean through an armoured man. 
 His sorties were fierce, and always unexpected. He 
 enrolled the unwilling Romans as a sort of auxiliary 
 militia — not that he expected them to fight, but they made 
 a sort of show on the walls. Treason was the thing to be 
 most feared from them, so he changed their posts inces- 
 santly, changed also every fortnight the locks and keys of 
 the great gates. His light horsemen scoured the Campagna 
 under the very noses of the Goths ; trusty footmen prowled 
 round inside the walls with lyme-dogs on the scent for 
 traitors within. The useless mouths were sent away before 
 the worst pinch of starvation was felt, and the Goths, either 
 mercifully or stupidly, let them go ; most of them found 
 refuge in Sicily or Southern Italy, or died of starvation on 
 the way ; the depopulation of Rome was one of the neces- 
 sary results of the long siege. Once Belisarius received a 
 small reinforcement of 1600 troops from the coast, hardly 
 enough, one would suppose, to repair the waste of war. 
 Once a truce for three months was concluded, but it was very 
 ill observed on both sides. But by the end of 537 consider- 
 able reinforcements from Constantinople began to land in 
 the southern ports of Italy, and some of these advanced
 
 RETREAT OE THE GOTHS 125 
 
 far enough to harry the besiegers in their camps outside 
 Rome. At last some Greek troops having seized Rimini, 
 the next big harbour to the south of Ravenna, VVitiges 
 was obh'gcd to draw olT from the great siege for the defence 
 of his capital (March 538); Bclisarius fell upon his rear- 
 guard and inflicted severe loss upon it as it crossed the 
 Tiber in its retreat. When we come to sum up the results 
 of the siege of Rome wc shall sec that, on the one side, the 
 flower of the Gothic nation had perished of fever, pestilence, 
 and famine in the attack ; on the other side most of the 
 precious memorials of antiquity, including perhaps the 
 great Ulpian Library in Trajan's forum, had been destroyed 
 in the defence. The Cai/ipagna was utterly ruined, and is 
 only painfully recovering at the present day. 
 
 The next act in the drama is startling, and, in our 
 present dearth of information, almost inexplicable. Just- 
 inian must already have begun to suspect the loyalty of his 
 victorious general, and, so far as we know, entirely without 
 reason, unless we can find such reason in the essentially 
 Machiavellian mind of a great statesman, reflecting, in the 
 secret chamber of his palace at Constantinople, on the natural 
 badness of mankind. Perhaps the emperor argued thus : 
 ' This man has with him a very large contingent of soldiers 
 who have now served him through three great wars, and 
 been gorged with plunder and riches through his liberality ; 
 what more likely than an attempt on his part to seize the 
 Crown of Italy?' As we shall see in the sequel, the Goths 
 thought and even suggested the same, but the loyalty of 
 Beli.sarius was proof against the suggestion. But, for 
 whatever reason, the commanders of the reinforcements 
 which the emperor now sent to Italy came with orders 
 authorising them to disobey and even to overrule Belis- 
 arius. Among them was a man, at present of no military 
 experience, but destined one day to prove himself a 
 soldier of the first class — Narses the treasurer, a little 
 shrivelled man already advanced in years, and an 
 eunuch. 
 
 The Goths, as they retreated northwards, seem to have 
 garrisoned many cities in Central Italy, to have sent to ask
 
 126 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 help from the Franks, and also to have sent an embassy to 
 stir up Chosroes, king of Persia. Much discussion took 
 place, therefore, among the Greek commanders as to what 
 their next move should be, and on the whole the opinion 
 of all seems to'ihavc been hostile to Belisarius. That 
 general had undoubtedly made one strategical mistake ; 
 he had sent a considerable force far to the North to 
 attempt the relief of the city of Milan, which was already 
 being besieged by a Gothic army. Franks, or rather 
 Burgundian ^ dependents of the Franks, were aiding the 
 Goths in the siege, and Belisarius was anxious to hasten to 
 its relief. But Narses said, ' No, let us first relieve our new 
 and far more important conquest of Rimini,' which was 
 also enduring a Gothic siege. Probably Narses was right ; 
 Belisarius gave way, and Rimini was relieved. But Milan 
 fell, was plundered, and saw its citizens massacred ; and 
 the mere scent of such plunder was enough to bring across 
 the Alps King Theudebert the Frank, with an enormous 
 horde, which swept North Italy from end to end, slaying 
 and plundering Goth and Greek with perfect impartiality, 
 and then, wasted with pestilence, melting back over the 
 Alps again. No one could say that the Franks had not 
 contributed their share towards the ruin of Italy. All this, 
 together with renewed trouble from Persia, inclined the 
 emperor towards a truce with the Goths when his conquest 
 of Italy was but half accomplished ; Narses was recalled in 
 anger, and Belisarius, who had meanwhile been steadily 
 winning towns in the central provinces, received orders of 
 recall just when he found himself in a position to blockade 
 the main Gothic force within the walls of Ravenna. The 
 'strategy' of 538, 539 sounds to us very much confused, 
 and even haphazard ; but we must try to think of the 
 Greek general as in possession of a small but very mobile 
 force, resolved to avoid pitched battles with an unwieldy 
 and immobile enemy, and himself an absolute master 
 of all siege-craft whether of attack or defence. We must 
 
 'The kingdom of Burgundy had been extinguished by the Franks 
 in 534, and its territories were now ruled by a Frankish king ; vide 
 infra, p. 176.
 
 VICTORIES OF BKLISARIUS 127 
 
 also add that the army which could move the faster had 
 the better chance of avoiding starvation. 
 
 At some stage in his blockade of Ravenna, Belisarius 
 received a strange offer from within the city — the crown of 
 Italy for himself It was perhaps not so strange after all. 
 The Goths were divided between their fears of Franks and 
 of Greeks ; the genius of Belisarius, and the valour of his 
 cataphracts (who would be almost certain to follow him) 
 might once more restore the Gothic nation, at least to the 
 condition of the armed peace of Theodoric's reign. Nor, 
 in view of the history of the last two centuries, would there 
 be anything very extraordinary in such a man making 
 himself king or even Citsar. The man, however, was too 
 loyal to the Empire to accept the offer, yet not too 
 honourable to make use of it in order to get Ravenna. 
 He pretended to agree, marched in through the opened 
 gates, and took prisoners King VVitiges and his whole 
 army. The king and the vast treasures of Theodoric's 
 palace were shipped off to Constantinople, and thither 
 early in 540, Belisarius also returned. 
 
 Thus, in seven years, Africa, the Mediterranean islands, 
 and Italy up to the Po, had been reconquered for the 
 Empire, and Gothia appeared to be almost as much 
 blotted out of the roll of nations as Vandalia. But there 
 were two serious factors in the situation. In the first 
 place, it was an utterly ruined Italy that came back under 
 the wings of the Empire ; in the second place, some pre- 
 carious hold on what is now Lombardy was kept by a Goth 
 called Hildibald, ruling at Pavia, although all the northern 
 provinces of the land had been tossed to be worried by 
 Franks and Burgundians, with a very fair prospect of even 
 worse barbarians (whom we shall soon have to consider), 
 called Avars, coming in from the north-east. If the 
 Goths were to go under for good, it would be more 
 probably in favour of one of these new sets of barbarian 
 invaders than of the distant power of Constantinople, 
 whose interests were soon to become more trul)- Oriental 
 than European, 
 
 The most immediately dangerous of these powers was
 
 128 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 that of the Franks. Right down to the end of the sixth 
 century they took every possible opportunity of raiding 
 Italy. Theodoric, we have seen, had thoroughly realised 
 the danger from them, and his attitude towards them had 
 been that of a strongly armed policeman, protecting other 
 tribes north and west of the Alps against them. After 
 Theodoric's death, and their conquests in Thuringia and 
 Burgundy, Justinian had realised the danger also ; but, 
 while showing himself feverishly anxious to keep them off 
 the Balkan Peninsula, he had been quite ready to use them 
 against the Goths. Witiges, for his part, had bribed them 
 with Provence, and hoped for their help against the Greeks. 
 They had made treaties with both, and observed neither 
 of them. Theudebert, the East-Frankish king, 534-548, 
 had been the protagonist so far ; he had absorbed Alamans 
 and Bavarians, and carried his arms through Rhaetia into 
 Noricum ; he had designs on Illyria, and perhaps on more 
 besides. He had even coined gold, which was a distinct 
 challenge to the Imperial idea. When the first Gothic 
 war ended in 540, a good deal of North Italy was left in 
 Frankish hands. And at that very time the Persians were 
 bursting the Euphrates barrier in force, and wasting Syria, 
 where they soon afterwards took Antioch. Belisarius had 
 to be sent against them. 
 
 Meanwhile, was Italy contented under the Imperial 
 regime ? She was not. The Byzantine, if Catholic, 
 tax-gatherer seemed to her a worse scourge than the Arian 
 Gothic king. And so the few undefeated Goths remaining 
 in the North began to perceive that their cause was not 
 wholly hopeless. After one or two abortive attempts at 
 kings, they chose a real hero called Totila (or Baduila, as 
 the name is given on his coinage), in 541. He was a 
 strange figure in such an age ; some have seen in him a 
 foreshadow of the chivalrous knight of crusading days. 
 Certainly, though an Arian, he was a devout Christian ; 
 certainly, also, he was merciful and generous to the 
 vanquished as few then were. But, when he raised his 
 flag in the North, he was barely able to collect an army of 
 5000 Goths, and most of the strong towns were in Greek
 
 TOTILA, KING OF ITALY 129 
 
 hands. The Greek garrisons drew together and attacked 
 him at Verona ; he beat them back (541), and in the next 
 year advanced southwards, growing in strength as he went, 
 and taking city after city in a manner very different from 
 the blundering Witiges. He even collected a little fleet, 
 with which he took Naples and threatened Otranto. 
 
 A fearful plague at Constantinople, of which Justinian 
 himself nearly died, prevented any help being sent to Italy 
 in 542 ; but, in the next year, a fresh peace was purchased 
 with Persia, and Bclisarius was ungraciously told that he 
 must go and subdue this Goth at his own expense ! No 
 doubt he had accumulated immense private wealth, though 
 never enough to enable him to raise sufficient men for 
 such a task. But his loyalty was proof against all mistrust, 
 ungraciousness, and neglect ; and for five years he struggled 
 on with totally inadequate means, flying to and fro by sea 
 from Otranto to Ravenna, to Durazzo (in Epirus), to Porto 
 at the mouth of the Tiber ; from Porto he vainly 
 endeavoured to despatch provisions to Rome, which city 
 Totila blockaded with a very large force throughout the 
 year 546. Bessas, a renegade Goth, commanded the walls 
 with a bare 3000 men, and sat utterly inactive inside 
 them; the sufferings of the few people left in Rome were 
 awful. When Totila finally entered at the end of the 
 year, he threatened to destroy the city, and did actually 
 destroy part of the walls ; when he retired he took with 
 him, perhaps out of sheer pity, all the remaining inhabitants. 
 For six weeks Rome was as Babylon, ' an habitation of 
 dragons and a court for owls ; the wild beasts of the 
 desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, 
 and the satyr shall cry to his fellow.' ^ Belisarius, who 
 soon reoccupied it, could not stay long, though he hastily 
 rebuilt the broken wall. The next two years were spent 
 in endless skirmishes up and down Southern Italy with no 
 decisive result. In 548, Belisarius in despair threw up 
 his unsupported command and returned to Constantinople. 
 He there became Captain of the Guard, but his military 
 career was at an end. Although once, when a tribe of 
 ^ Isaiah x.xxiv. 14. 
 
 I
 
 130 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 wandering Huns penetrated to within a few miles of the 
 capital, he was called upon to improvise a defence and did 
 so successfully (S59), and although once he was accused of 
 conspiracy and acquitted after a short disgrace, he seems 
 on the whole to have lived at peace and in the enjoyment 
 of riches until his death a few months before Justinian's 
 (565). The well-known story of his blindness and poverty 
 is a fiction of the eleventh century. 
 
 Totila, relieved of his great antagonist, speedily 
 mastered Sicily and the whole of Italy, with the exception 
 of the two ports of Ravenna and Ancona ; ^ he even took 
 the Ionian Islands and some coast places in Epirus. 
 He made efforts to conciliate the Franks which were 
 rudely rebuffed. Then he offered to Justinian, as one 
 king to another, a firm alliance and the service of his 
 Gothic lances in the field. But Justinian, though his 
 fortunes seemed at a low ebb, and though he had lost his 
 valiant empress in 548, was not the man to give up a plan, 
 and he now sent in 551 his nephew Germanus with a large 
 army by the old land road towards Italy. Perhaps he had 
 only been waiting for some years till he had collected 
 treasure enough to pay an adequate force. Germanus had 
 married the widow of Witiges, whom we may remember as 
 the granddaughter of Theodoric, and perhaps expected to 
 find in Italy Goths who would rally to him as a quasi-heir 
 of their hero king. But he died at Sardica (Sophia) on his 
 march, and his place was taken by the eunuch Narses 
 (552). 
 
 Narses was popular, merciful, and now thoroughly 
 trusted by the emperor ; he was also extraordinarily 
 liberal to his soldiers, and somewhat shameless in his 
 appeals to their cupidity. We have no Procopius to guide 
 us in the story of his campaign, but it was evidently a swift 
 and successful one. His army was much larger than 
 either army of Belisarius had been ; it consisted of the same 
 heterogeneous elements — Huns, Herules, Gepids — and 
 had besides a large contingent of a people of whom we 
 
 ' We must, perhaps, also except some Northern fortresses left in 
 Frankish hands, but we do not know the details.
 
 NARSES OVERTHROWS THE GOTHS 131 
 
 shall soon hear too much, the Lombards. The Franks, 
 ever on the alert, recommenced their sub-alpine raids, and 
 Totila offered to Justinian everything but the mainland of 
 Italy in order to purchase peace, but the Emperor turned 
 a deaf ear. The first contest, a fierce sea-fight in the 
 Adriatic, ended in a victory for the Greeks and in the 
 liberation of Ancona and Ravenna from blockades which 
 the Goths had begun. Then Narses pressed on against 
 Totila down the Flaminian Way towards Rome. At some 
 spot, called Tagina:, in the Apennine passes, probably 
 either Scheggia or Sassoferrato, one of the very few pitched 
 battles of these wars was fought. Narses, either from 
 suspicion as to the fidelity of his barbarians or owing to 
 the hilly nature of the ground, dismounted some of his 
 cavalry ; it was to the bow that he trusted, and the bow 
 won a complete victory. The Gothic king fell either in 
 the field or the flight. A few survivors reached Pavia and 
 chose Teias for king, and he, with a hoard of treasure, 
 marched southwards and made a last stand at Cumae, but 
 also in vain. Rome surrendered to a short siege, the fifth 
 that it had endured since 537, and the Gothic nation fell 
 with it, this time for good. The mercy and generosity of 
 the old Greek general no doubt won over many Goths to 
 take service under him ; and, when he had defeated, in 
 553, a fierce raid of two Frankish or Alamannic chiefs near 
 Capua, Italy began to settle down to such peace as a 
 ruined land can enjoy. 
 
 Narses remained its ' Patrician,' and for twelve years 
 ruled it mercifully and wisely from Ravenna ; the old 
 forms of Roman government, prefects, amionce, curia;, 
 even occasionally the shadow of a senate, gleam fitfully at 
 us through the growing darkness ; and over all broods the 
 shadow of the tax-gatherer. I have made no attempt to 
 picture the misery of the peninsula during these recent 
 wars, for words would fail to describe it, and might be 
 untrue after all. But a state of things which had left Rome 
 empty of human beings for six weeks must have been 
 pretty bad. The only indication of the coming age is to 
 be found in the growing zeal for the monastic life ; the end
 
 133 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 of the world seemed very near, and St Benedict and his 
 fellows thought that the main duty of man was to prepare 
 for it ; but they saw also that the miseries of the present 
 life might be mitigated by the life of prayer and toil, both 
 manual and mental. Hermit (or solitary) retreat from the 
 world had been well known, even in the West, long before ; 
 St Benedict's glory is that he rejected this in favour of a 
 retreat enjoyed in common. His ' Rule,' of poverty, chas- 
 tity, obedience, and community of life,^ spread rapidly 
 over the whole of the West during the next hundred years ; 
 and, when a great pope arose in the person of Gregory I. 
 and grasped this monastic ideal as the highest of Christian 
 ideals, the Benedictine monks became the stoutest 
 champions of the Papacy against kings and bishops alike,- 
 Thus England and Germany, which were to be Christian- 
 ised in the next two centuries, received Papalism and 
 Monasticism as two of the most integral parts of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 The fall of the Vandal and Gothic nations can hardly 
 be dismissed without some reflection. Why when attacked 
 by such exceedingly weak forces, sent from such a distant 
 base as Constantinople, did they crumble so easily? Was 
 it that they had lost all their energy and vitality in the 
 luxurious South ? Was it that they were incapable of 
 subordination, and babies at the arts of war and diplomacy 
 when confronted by such masters of these arts as 
 Belisarius, N arses and Justinian ? Was it merely that, as 
 Arians, they had failed to conciliate their Catholic subjects, 
 and utterly failed, as the Franks in Gaul had not failed, to 
 grow into one people with them ? Or was it, indeed, that 
 both they themselves and their subjects were unable to 
 shake off the awe of the Mother-Empire, the Romani 
 
 1 This is the common summary of it. We search in vain for any 
 such expressions in the Rule of St Benedict itself. Dom Gasquet, 
 in his Preface to Montalembert's Monks of the West, sums it up as 
 based upon 'Obedience, Reformation of Manners, Stability.' 
 
 - We must remember that the Rule of St Benedict never contem- 
 plated that the monks as a whole would take holy orders ; monk and 
 priest are at first sharply contrasted, although it was held desirable 
 that one or two of the brethren in each monastery should be ordained.
 
 THE POLICY OF JUSTINIAN 133 
 
 nominis umbra ? It seems that each of these causes 
 contributed something to the success of the Roman 
 emperor. 
 
 When we come to the further question whether the 
 Imperial power could be maintained in the newly re- 
 conquered lands, we can sec that Justinian would certainly 
 do his best to maintain it. Italy was no sooner his than 
 he sent his fleets to Spain and tackled the Visigoths who 
 had been sending help to Totila. The Visigothic royal 
 power was already weak, and a class of powerful nobles 
 was already making itself hereditary. Hence insurrections 
 and wars of succession to the throne, in which one party 
 would be apt to rely on Imperial aid. Justinian's general, 
 Liberius, took many of the Spanish coast fortresses between 
 554 and 565, and even penetrated inland as far as Cordova. 
 Indeed the last ' Roman ' (or rather Greek) garrisons 
 were not expelled from Spain till the year 624 ; and 
 by that time Spain had long been a Catholic state. For 
 Italy the emperor issued in 554 a great edict, in which he 
 recognised all the laws of Theodoric, Amalasuntha, and 
 even Theodahat, but treated those of VVitiges and Totila 
 as of none effect because these kings were ' usurpers.' ^ 
 He reverted to the system of the older empire, and com- 
 bined military and civil governorships in the same hands 
 He catholicised Arian churches everywhere, and built at 
 Ravenna the glorious octagon of San Vitale. He kept 
 a firm hand on the Church — the popes indeed said too 
 firm a hand — and no pope would have ventured to play 
 in his time the part that Gregory the Great was soon 
 to play. Whether there was or was not in the later sixth 
 century a permanent Byzantine governor in Rome, other 
 than the prefect of the city, is a moot point. In the seventh 
 century wc occasionally find such a person, and he lives 
 perhaps in a corner of the Palatine House ; sometimes he is 
 * The Cof^iis Juris of Justinian was intended to apply to the 
 whole empire ; but north of the Alps it got no footing until a much 
 later date. In Italy the Pandects seem never to have been studied 
 until the rise of new schools of law in the twelfth century ; but the 
 Code of 534 and the later legislation of Justinian were epitomised 
 into shorter forms and remained the basis of Italian law.
 
 134 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 called Dux or Duke, and sometimes Magister Militum ; 
 he is then generally in conflict with a strong pope or 
 bullying a weak one. 
 
 These activities of Justinian were not confined to Italy. 
 Even in the worst of times he had poured out money like 
 water on the fortification of his frontiers, on all of which 
 he undertook work which recalled the days of Aurelian 
 and Probus. Palmyra was strengthened against the 
 * Saracens,' who were the scourge of Syria for centuries 
 before Mahomet ; Dara (which Anastasius had built to 
 replace Nisibis), Constantina (an outwork of Edessa), 
 Circesium and Callinicum ^ (at the passages of the 
 Euphrates), Theodosiopolis in Armenia — all these against 
 the Persians ; even Armenia again looked like a Roman 
 province. Far away in the Crimea the old Greek cities 
 were rewalled against wandering Huns. The whole 
 Danube frontier was patched up again, although one fears 
 that this must have been too late, for Avars and Slavs 
 had already got into Pannonia and Moesia, if not further 
 south still. But their undesirable activities were curbed 
 by a thorough rewalling of the Balkan cities, and Hellas 
 was protected by a great defence-work at the very spot 
 where Leonidas had died. If the Fates had only 
 
 Of those three hundred granted three 
 To make a new Thermopylae, 
 
 Greece might have escaped the Slavonic deluge. The 
 long wall of Anastasius north of Constantinople received 
 additions, though the actual walls of the city itself as they 
 stand to-day are not the work of Justinian, but probably 
 date from the reign of Theodosius 1 1., if not of Constantine I. 
 Time would fail to tell of the roads, bridges, and aque- 
 ducts, of the thousand churches that Justinian built ; even 
 distant Africa was rechurched as well as fortified. But 
 it was men and not walls that the Empire needed, and, 
 alas ! men were lacking. Though the New Rome is 
 supposed to have possessed a million of inhabitants in 
 the weeks in which the Old Rome stood without one, 
 
 ^ On the site of the former Nicephorium.
 
 JUSTINIAN AND THE CHURCH 135 
 
 these inhabitants could hardly any longer be called even 
 by courtesy Roman. In the sixth century the adminis- 
 trators and the administration of the Empire became 
 definitely Greek. If the language of Hellas had been 
 utterly forgotten in the West, that of Italy was equally 
 forgotten in the East, and the Greek which took its place 
 in common use was no longer Hellenic but ' Romaic,' 
 the immediate ancestor of the ' modern Greek ' of the 
 present day, in which men call a horse an unreasonable 
 beast (aXoyov). The population which learned to speak 
 this language was the most mixed in the world ; perhaps 
 the Jewish was almost the predominant, as it was the 
 richest element in it, but every species of Asiatic barbarian 
 swaggered in the streets and yelled in the arena. 
 Commercial activity was no doubt great ; trade with the 
 Far East was still open via the Red Sea and also via 
 the Caspian, although the long wars with Persia must 
 have pressed hardly on the old direct trade route across 
 Euphrates and so to the Persian Gulf. It was Justinian 
 who first imported silkworms from China, and established 
 the manufacture of silk on European soil. 
 
 I said above that even in Italy the emperor kept a 
 firm hold on the Church. He did even more than that, 
 for he actually prevailed in a theological contest against 
 it. An attempt to treat the theological disputes of the 
 sixth century from the point of sober reason is difficult, 
 mainly because they would be almost comic did not they 
 seem to us so frightfully profane. And yet it is necessary 
 to speak of them, because their effect upon later history 
 was so great. Orthodox as Justinian was and learned 
 as he was, he had the passion of his age and country 
 for theological hair-splittings, and the fact that he at last 
 gave way to this passion, when he might have compromised 
 and remained master both of East and West, is perhaps 
 rather to his credit as a man. You will remember that 
 the origin of the trouble from 480 to 518 between the 
 churches of the East and that of Rome was not only the 
 Monophysite heresy itself, but also the determination of 
 the popes to condemn the memory of the Patriarch Acacius
 
 136 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 who had tolerated it. For a long while the Eastern 
 patriarchs had resisted this; they were willing enough 
 to treat drastically any live heretics they could catch, 
 but they resented the idea of persecuting the memory 
 of those who had not been declared heretics during their 
 lifetime. A philosopher, could such a person have breathed 
 in such an atmosphere, might have pronounced the latter 
 the less harmful pastime of the two ; but there were no 
 philosophers left. Pope after pope declared that nothing 
 short of the eternal torment of Acacius would satisfy 
 him, and at last the Eastern Church reluctantly gave way ; 
 to the flames no doubt the soul of Acacius obediently 
 went, wherever it had been waiting since his death.^ 
 
 Here stepped in the emperor's own unfortunate penchant 
 for the finer shades of theological distinction. If Acacius 
 had been a heretic, it seemed to him, after a long course of 
 reading, so had three other learned theologians (whose 
 names do not matter to us). He set his Imperial teeth 
 and said they must be damned. Quite unconnected with 
 this at first was his determination to be master of the 
 Papacy, and to force upon Rome whom he pleased as 
 bishop, Vigilius in 537 and Pelagius in 555. Each may 
 have bought his Papacy by promising to follow Justinian's 
 lead in theological matters, but we have no proof that it 
 was so. But, once in possession of the Roman See, a pope 
 drank in resistance to Constantinople from the very air 
 which breathed around the Lateran palace. When, there- 
 fore, Vigilius was told that he must anathematise the un- 
 fortunate Three, against whose souls the emperor had 
 resolved to proceed, he at first refused. He was a poor 
 shuffling creature quite unfit for his post ; he foolishly 
 obeyed a peremptory summons to Constantinople, and 
 there for six years he leaned now to one side and now to 
 the other in the matter of these Three ; once he was seen 
 clinging to the pillars of a church altar with his hands, 
 
 1 The doctrine of purgatory, which would have provided a possible 
 answer to this question, had not yet been invented ; traces of it may 
 perhaps be found in earlier centuries, but it owes its fuller develop- 
 ment to the monastic visions of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh.
 
 CONCLUSION ON JUSTINIAN 137 
 
 while the Imperial Guards pulled him by the legs (551); 
 and by this treatment of a pope the emperor seriously 
 imperilled his new-gotten hold on Western Europe. In 
 553 a General Council was called at Constantinople, which 
 declared itself to be the fifth of the great General Coun- 
 cils, and hoped to lay at rest for good all questions which 
 divided or might ever divide East from West. Vigilius 
 refused to preside in this council, was anathematised by it, 
 retracted his opposition, retracted his retractation, and was 
 sent to Sicily, where he died. His successor Pelagius also 
 shuffled on the same points, though he took care to keep 
 his body out of the Imperial clutch. But he gave way 
 enough to satisfy Justinian, and made the condemnation 
 of the Three part of the orthodox creed of Catholic 
 Christendom. It is one of the very few instances in history 
 before the Reformation in which the State ever triumphed 
 over the Church — and, oddly enough, the triumph was 
 attained by a State, as it seems to us, thoroughly in the 
 wrong over a Church in the right ; by a State outbigoting 
 and outanathematising the Church of Rome itself. In one 
 corner of Italy, and that no unimportant one, the great 
 diocese of Aquileia, whose See after the Hunnish sack had 
 been removed to Grado, the bishops long refused to receive 
 the decrees of Pope Pelagius, and even went into schism 
 on the matter. 
 
 After all, our final judgment on Justinian and his reign 
 must be conditioned by the view which we take of his 
 financial administration. Had he or had he not drained 
 Southern Europe of its resources? Most historians take 
 the view that he had done so. It is therefore with great 
 diffidence that I venture to suggest to my readers one or 
 two considerations on the other side. In the first place the 
 cost of his Western wars, though they lasted twenty years, 
 may have been very much overestimated. His armies were 
 very small and very ill-paid ; brutally but honestly he told 
 Belisarius in his second campaign against the Goths that 
 the State would contribute nothing to it, and apparently he 
 kept his word. Moreover, the amount of hoarded treasure 
 taken from Vandals and Goths, of which the Government
 
 138 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 must at least have got some share, was enormous; the 
 part played by hoarded treasure in any unsettled state of 
 a once rich society is sure to be great, and was then very 
 great ; we find Frank kings fighting each other for no other 
 object than to lay hands on each other's ' treasure ' ; armies 
 move about accompanied by van-loads of 'treasure.' In 
 the second place it is very difficult for men to realise that 
 for good and orderly government they must pay, and pay 
 heavily. It is better to pay very heavily indeed than to 
 be skinned alive by pirates ; but most nations fail to 
 realise this even to-day. The old Roman E!mpire crumbled 
 to pieces because men would not, or said they could not 
 pay. In the fifth century they did not pay — whether they 
 could or no, is another matter — and the results were Alaric, 
 Attila, and Genseric. The success, such as it was, of the 
 small weak kingdoms of the Middle Ages rested on the 
 fact that there was no direct taxation in them at all. 
 Machiavelli, right as usual in his estimate of motives, 
 said ' men forget the death of their fathers, but not the loss 
 of their patrimony.' Before I condemned Justinian as an 
 exorbitant tax-gatherer, I should want to know the 
 incidence per head of the peoples he ruled, of the amount 
 he levied ; and this we have no means whatever of 
 ascertaining. 
 
 If, however, you asked me whether the conquest of Italy 
 was in itself a wise policy, I should unhesitatingly say no. 
 Such a shrewd statesman ought, even if he destroyed the 
 Vandals, to have made a firm alliance with the Goths and 
 strengthened them by every means in his power ; he ought 
 to have considered them as the best counterpoise against 
 the Franks, and both Frank and Goth as bulwarks of 
 Western civilisation against Avars and Slavs. He ought 
 to have spent every penny he raised in driving the latter 
 unspeakable ruffians behind the Danube, or exterminating 
 them for ever. Even Chosroes and his Persians were 
 gentlemen compared to the human deluge which was going 
 to sweep over the Balkans during the next hundred years. 
 
 Whatever may be our judgment on Justinian, it is 
 clear that, the instant he was dead in 565, his people re-
 
 JUSTIN II. 139 
 
 fused to bear the strain of his taxes for an hour, and that 
 there was no one to take up his task of making them bear 
 it. His successor was his nephew Justin 1 1., already married 
 to a niece of Theodora, a virago who governed him 
 absolutely. Justin was well received in the palace, but, at 
 his first entry into the circus, an universal yell arose for the 
 liberation of the prisoners and the mitigation of the taxes of 
 the late Government. A similar cry seems to have been 
 raised in Jerusalem on the death of King Solomon ; and 
 it may not be altogether fanciful to draw a parallel 
 between Justinian and the famous King of the Jews, who 
 also (perhaps) strained the resources of his kingdom 
 beyond what they could bear, and whose power crumbled 
 before a popular outcry the instant he was dead.^ Justin 
 gave way at once, and his weak compliance really profited 
 as little as Rehoboam's firm refusal to comply, for all the 
 external enemies of the Empire sprang upon it at once, 
 the Persian the first. The Persian war continued through 
 the next three reigns, brought the Asiatics at last to the 
 shores of the Bosphorus, and fatally weakened the Greek 
 chance of resisting the still more terrible Mahometans. 
 At once also the disturbances in the Balkan lands, long 
 averted by the gold and diplomacy of Justinian, broke out 
 and assumed fearful proportions. 
 
 Anything like a satisfactory solution of that Balkan 
 problem was beyond the power of the Empire of the sixth 
 and following centuries. Three separate races, all in a 
 very barbarous condition, were already tossing and goring 
 each other in the provinces which lay to the south of the 
 Danube. There were (i) the Avars, a Turanian stock 
 akin to the Huns;'^ (2) the Lombards, a very old German 
 stock, whom Tacitus mentions as lying in his time between 
 
 * History has generally been written by champions of revolts (when 
 these revolts have been successful), and has been coloured by their 
 prejudices ; it has often occurred to me that if we had an account of 
 the first year of the reign of Rehoboam from some loyalist who had 
 served that king's father faithfully, we might be inclined to take a 
 different view of the Revolution which split the kingdom of David. 
 
 - Paul the Deacon, the Lombard historian, writing at the end of 
 the eighth century, calls them the 'Avars or Huns.'
 
 I40 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 the Elbe and the Weser, but who had long been nomadic 
 on the banks of the Danube ; (3) the Slavs or Slavonians, 
 of Aryan race indeed but, then as now, vilest and least 
 civilisable of all Aryans. These last never acted as a tribe 
 or moved under any one leader or any tribal impulse ; 
 they were mere wandering robbers, attaching themselves, 
 now to one now to another of their more united neigh- 
 bours, and, in the frequent quarrels of these, often walking 
 off with the spoil. You could fight, or you could hire, 
 or you could allot lands or pay money to the tribe of 
 Lombards or the tribe of Avars, and, though they usually 
 broke faith with you, they at least did it as a tribe ; but 
 with Slavs you could do nothing ; when you touched them 
 they broke in pieces like the fragments in the kaleidoscope, 
 and then filtered in through every crack and cranny in 
 your defence-line. Worse, still, they Slavonicised other 
 peoples who had nominal dominion over them. In the 
 sixth and seventh centuries they slipped through, in an 
 infinite number of driblets, into Hellas itself; they took no 
 cities but they formed peasant communities in the open 
 country, and it is most probable that there is a large 
 element of Slavonic blood in the modern Greeks. 
 
 Justinian, who always contemplated the possibility of 
 an irruption of Franks to the south-east, had favoured and 
 paid both Avars and Lombards as possible counterpoises 
 to them. Both the latter tribes at his death seem to have 
 been dwelling, though in a most unsettled condition, in 
 Pannonia and Noricum, and perhaps occasionally poking 
 their noses across the Julian Alps. They were in perpetual 
 conflict with the Gepids, who had recently grabbed a good 
 deal of land on the river Save. When things got very bad. 
 the ' Roman ' population of these provinces used to take 
 shelter in the carefully walled towns. The Lombards had, 
 as we said, sent a contingent to help Narses against the 
 Goths ; but it behaved so badly that after his victory he had 
 to dismiss it from Italy with a strong escort. Now Justin, 
 being unable or unwilling to make his subjects pay for 
 being defended, was obliged to withdraw the annual 
 subsidies both from Lombards and Avars. The former at
 
 LOMBARDS INVADE ITALY 141 
 
 once flew in force at the Gcpids, polished them off in 567, 
 and then set their faces in the direction of Thrace. The 
 Avars followed suit, and wiped out the Imperial garrisons 
 on the Great Eastern Road ; and it looked for a moment 
 like a race between them for the plunder of the Imperial 
 capital. Then suddenly, we know not how, they came to 
 an agreement ; ' You Lombards shall evacuate the whole 
 of Pannonia and Noricum to us Avars, and you shall go to 
 Italy yourselves.' The Franks must have been in the 
 swim with them, or at least must have made no protest, 
 for the Lombard king, Alboin, had married a Prankish 
 princess. 
 
 Poor Italy was again to be the scene of a human 
 deluge. Narses, who as ' patrician ' was valiantly uphold- 
 ing the Roman name at Ravenna, was snubbed by, and 
 recalled to Constantinople, perhaps because he remon- 
 strated against the remission of taxation ; and of course 
 the story ran that he, in his rage, invited the Lombards to 
 Italy. There is no good evidence for this, and it is of 
 itself most unlikely. But he was utterly unsupported by 
 his government and died at Rome, without revisiting the 
 East, in 573. Italy was thus undefended and unprepared. 
 The story of the Lombard invasion has no adequate 
 contemporary historian, but it has a historian of Lombard 
 race, Paul the Deacon, who wrote two centuries later, after 
 the fall of his own people, a most spirited and delightful 
 history of them down to 744 ; a history that for life and 
 * go ' may almost be paralleled to Froissart's. Of course a 
 man who tells you that 375,000 Saracens were killed at 
 the battle of Poitiers is not to be trusted as to figures ; but, 
 then, neither is any mediaeval chronicler to be trusted. 
 Paul knew Italy and Gaul ^ well, and was for some time a 
 favourite at the Court of the great Frank sovereign, 
 Charlemagne. He ended his days at the monastery of 
 Monte Cassino, which the Lombards had first burned and 
 then, when they became pious, had restored. With the 
 partial exception of the Gothic historian Jordanes, Paul is 
 
 ' Paul used Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, as a source 
 for his account of the Franks, until that book ends with the year 591.
 
 142 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 the only writer who takes us back into the domain of 
 'Saga,' and tells of the sojourn of his heathen ancestors 
 on the Baltic shore, in the days when 
 
 Out of the morning land 
 Over the snow-drifts 
 Beautiful Freya came 
 Tripping to Scoring. 
 
 The Lombards were mighty strong men. Amalungus, 
 a seventh - century hero, once spitted a ' certain little 
 Greek ' on his spear, in one of the wars near Benevento, 
 lifted him wriggling from his saddle and raised him over his 
 own head, ' which terrified the Greek army so that it fled.' 
 Also King Cunincpert, when a boy, was able to lift a big 
 sheep by its wool and hold it out at arm's length, ' which,' 
 said his rival sadly, ' I could not do.' When and how the 
 Lombards were converted to the Arian form of Christi- 
 anity we cannot be sure. St Michael was their official 
 patron, though Paul admits that St John the Baptist also 
 did much for them. Paul, of course, in the deep Catholic 
 piety of Monte Cassino, calls an Arian ' a heathen.' 
 Certainly, when they now invaded Italy in 568, his people 
 slew priests and burned churches; but then, they had 
 auxiliaries with them from many other tribes, some of 
 whom may have been real heathens. Afterwards their 
 Arianism was not so stubborn as that of the Goths, for we 
 soon begin to hear of sporadic conversions of Lombards to 
 Catholicism. One important result of the Westward 
 march of this people must be noticed, namely, that with 
 them the last serious Teutonic stock left the Near East for 
 good, and so left the Balkan lands a prey to races incapable 
 of absorbing civilisation. It was not to be supposed that 
 the Avars would rest content with Pannonia and Noricum ; 
 they would soon push south-eastwards again, they and the 
 still more dreadful Bulgarians, of whom we now begin to 
 hear. And, even if the Avars could be beaten back, the 
 Slavs who accompanied them would be found remaining, 
 like the dirty silt left by a great tidal wave. But it is to 
 Italy that we must now again look.
 
 LOMBARDS INVADE ITALY 143 
 
 The Lombard army seems to have been small, but it 
 was swelled with contingents of Franks and Saxons. 
 Like the Goths, Alboin's men were born horsemen, and 
 fought with lance and sword and in heavy armour ; but, 
 unlike them, they had a race of hereditary nobility of 
 some sort, as well as a large stock of non-noble freemen. 
 The royal power was not nearly so strong as that of 
 Theodoric had been. The conquest was a much more 
 cruel one than the Gothic, each 'Duke' of the Lombards 
 plundering and slaying pretty much on his own account. 
 Many leading Italians were actually killed, many more 
 deprived of their property ; all were made to pay one-third 
 of their produce to some Lombard ' guest,' who was 
 apparently quartered on them.^ Yet, as in the case of 
 the Goths, it might be misleading to speak of any regular 
 settlement of the conquerors on the land of the conquered ; 
 there was certainly plenty of land-grabbing, but probably 
 no finality in it. As for defence of North Italy, there seems 
 to have been hardly any until Pavia was reached in 569, 
 and it is quite possible that the few remaining Goths 
 joined the Lombards. Padua and Cremona were not 
 taken for some years, the dates of the fall of Piacenza and 
 Mantua are doubtful, while Genoa, with the Ligurian 
 coast, held out almost till the middle of the seventh 
 century,'- Pavia stood a three years' siege, and, when 
 taken in the last year of King Alboin (572), became his 
 capital. While this long siege was going on, Lombard 
 arms penetrated far to the centre and south of Italy ; the 
 great strategical point on the Flaminian road, between 
 Rome and Ravenna, called Petra Pertusa, was mastered 
 by the Lombards ; but the gallant resistance of Perugia, 
 enabled another road to be kept open. Probably the 
 walls of most cities in the interior had been badly knocked 
 about in the Gothic wars and not rebuilt ; and, even where 
 
 ' I have purposely avoided stating that a similar arrangement was 
 made by the soldiers of Odoacer in 476, by the Gothic settlers in 
 Gaul (419) and Italy (492) because, though this is the 'received 
 view' and very probably true, there seems to me no actual proof of it. 
 
 '^ Professor Bury in his edition of Gibbon (v., 518) gives a list of 
 the probable dates of these conquests.
 
 144 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 walls were strong, hunger would compel the gates to be 
 opened. But the great coast fortresses were on the whole 
 safe. Naples the Lombards never took, and Ravenna only 
 on the eve of the extinction of their own power ; though 
 they did at least once take the port of Ravenna, called 
 Classis, they soon lost it again. 
 
 Their first siege of Rome was in 573, and there were 
 numerous other attacks on the city down to the middle 
 of the eighth century ; sometimes from the kings, some- 
 times from the almost independent dukes. The country 
 round Rome, which in the seventh century will be called 
 the * Duchy of Rome,' was wasted by Lombard fire and 
 sword ; but from the actual walls of the city the barbarians 
 were either repelled, or terrified away, or more often bought 
 off by gold supplied with noble liberality by the riches of 
 the bishop. Once, indeed, the emperor managed to send a 
 supply of corn up the Tiber, and occasionally we hear of 
 a Byzantine Duke or Magister Milituni conducting the 
 defence ; we even see the germs of a city militia manning 
 the walls. But on a whole the popes, and especially the 
 great Pope Gregory L (590-604) are the protagonists in 
 the defence, and increase their own power and influence 
 enormously thereby. Plague and famine stalked in the 
 train of Lombard armies ; and, as from the hands of the 
 rich Pope alone relief could come, so even plague and 
 famine helped to strengthen his power. Superstition 
 strengthened it too. The plague of Gregory's first year 
 of rule was heralded by an inundation of the Tiber, worse 
 than that described in Horace's second Ode ; for down the 
 river and through Rome came a multitude of serpents and 
 a dragon of astonishing size, and passed out to sea. And 
 when the plague was stayed, it was because St Michael 
 himself with a drawn sword in his hand came and stood 
 on the top of Hadrian's mausoleum. He stands there 
 still. 
 
 The weak point in the Lombards was that they would 
 not submit to central government. A futile king called 
 Cleph followed Alboin, and on Cleph's death there was an 
 interregnum of ten years ; some people speak of as many
 
 TIBERIUS II. AND MAURICE 145 
 
 as thirty-six independent dukes of the Lombards at one 
 time, and these often wasted their strength by fooh"sh raids 
 across the Western Alps, which had no effect but to found 
 an age-long feud with the Franks. 
 
 A strong Roman emperor would have turned this 
 
 state of things to good account. But Justin was quite 
 
 unable to succour Italy, for the Avars were eating the 
 
 Balkan Peninsula in large bites, and his Persian wars were 
 
 going badly; Dara had fallen. In 578 he died, having 
 
 ruined in thirteen years all Justinian's work, and his 
 
 successor, who bore the honoured name of Tiberius II., did 
 
 something to improve matters. Then in 582 came a hero 
 
 of old Roman family and character called Maurice who, 
 
 as general, had already begun to make head against the 
 
 Persians ; had Tiberius or Maurice succeeded Justinian 
 
 immediately there might have been real hope for the 
 
 Empire. It is to Maurice that the learned German 
 
 historian Dr Hartmann ^ attributes, perhaps on slender 
 
 evidence, a real attempt to organise the defence of such 
 
 parts of Italy as had not yet fallen to the Lombards. 
 
 Narses had been followed by a weak patrician called 
 
 Longinus, who had been shut up in Ravenna and 
 
 straitened by the capture of its port, Classis ; but the 
 
 Lombards lost Classis again under their next king, 
 
 Autharis (elected 584). The Pope cried aloud to Maurice 
 
 for help, but, even in crying, allowed the emperor to see how 
 
 ill Italians brooked the rule of Constantinople, especially 
 
 how ill Rome brooked being governed by deputy from 
 
 Ravenna. Maurice paid little head to these insinuations, 
 
 and sent a vigorous military governor called Smaragdus as 
 
 'exarch' to Ravenna. Africa was already under the rule 
 
 of an exarch, and henceforth till 750 the territory round 
 
 Ravenna is called an ' e.xarchate.' Certainly from this 
 
 time onwards we do find that, if there is a Byzantine 
 
 governor in any Italian province at all, his office is rather 
 
 military than civil ; and it may have been in this century, 
 
 and in consequence of such a change, that the last traces 
 
 of municipal self-government disappeared from the Italian 
 
 ^ Geschichte Italiens im Mittelalicr, ii. i. 125 sqq. 
 
 K
 
 146 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 cities. The question is an important one, and must be 
 more fully discussed at a later date ; for on the answer to 
 it will depend the possibility of affiliating the Italian 
 'Republics' of the later Middle Ages to the old Roman 
 miinicipia. 
 
 Smaragdus, indeed, recovered Classis from the Lom- 
 bards in 588, and did his very best to co-operate with the 
 Pope; but in 589 he was removed, and Romanus, who 
 was perhaps not so conciliatory, took his place. Maurice's 
 other step for the defence of Italy was not such a wise one, 
 for he endeavoured to buy Prankish help. The Frank 
 was, however, the most unsatisfactory of allies ; he took 
 your cash, he came, and then plundered your friends rather 
 than your foes. So did King Childebert, the East Frank, 
 in 585 ; bribed by Maurice to come in, he was again bribed 
 by Autharis to go out ; and no doubt he made a third 
 purse for himself out of the province of Venetia, which he 
 wasted. He came again in several successive years, but 
 in 588 suffered a heavy defeat from the Lombard king. 
 Paul the Deacon evidently regards Autharis as having 
 been a fine spirited fellow who, if he had lived longer, 
 would have done great things for the Lombard monarchy ; 
 during his six years' reign (he died in 590) he hammered 
 rebellious dukes, invading Franks, and such Roman cities 
 as resisted him, with some success ; as we have just seen, 
 he reduced the Ravennese governor to great straits. 
 Above all he married the good and beautiful Theodelinda, 
 a Bavarian princess, descended on her mother's side from 
 the Lombard kings ; and she, a Catholic and a protegee of 
 Gregory, soon to be Pope, began to tame her husband's 
 wild subjects. When Autharis died in 590 she carried her 
 crown to, or was carried off with her crown by a certain 
 Duke Agilulf, who reigned valiantly till 615. He too was 
 a terror to rebel dukes, and luckily for him the Franks 
 let him alone, for they were devouring each other in civil 
 war during his whole reign. 
 
 In that same year (590) Gregory I., the true founder 
 alike of the Papal monarchy and of the spiritual claims of 
 the Papacy, became Pope. Leo I., the greatest of his
 
 POPE GREGORY THE GREAT 147 
 
 predecessors, had no doubt pointed out the path, and had 
 played towards the Iluns much the same part that Gregory 
 played towards the Lombards, and even with more success. 
 But in the middle of the fifth century the Empire was a 
 more serious power, and the Papacy a much weaker power 
 than at the end of the sixth. In Leo's time, even in the 
 West, misery, superstition and terror did not wholly 
 dominate society ; in Gregory's they did, and he built 
 fearlessly on their foundations. 
 
 Gregory was born about 540, of noble Roman lineage, 
 though perhaps not of the Anician house as has been alleged, 
 and he died of gout, aggravated by his extreme asceticism, 
 at the age of sixty-four, having reigned at the Lateran only 
 for fourteen years. He had been prefect of the city during 
 the first Lombard siege, and had endeared himself to all 
 Romans by his generous use of his own private fortune. 
 Two years later he became a monk, and graduated in the 
 school of self-torment which the age regarded as the ideal 
 of holiness. He was the favourite of two successive popes, 
 and was ambassador at Constantinople from 579 to 585, 
 although how he got on in that capacity, considering that 
 he knew no Greek, does not appear. He regarded 
 Constantinople with the true old-fashioned hatred of the 
 Roman patrician ; and this hatred was aggravated by the 
 fact that a certain John {cdiW^d Jcjunator, 'the Faster'), 
 as ascetic as himself, became Patriarch of the Eastern 
 capital during his sojourn in it. This John was foolish 
 enough (' wicked enough,' said Gregory, ' a mere precursor 
 of Antichrist') to assume the title of ' Qicumenical 
 Patriarch' — which in plain English means 'Bishop of the 
 World ' — a title already borne by several previous patriarchs 
 but since dropped. In 590 the universal honour and love 
 of the Roman people carried Gregory to the Papal chair, 
 an elevation for which he professed to feel himself totally 
 unfitted ; that there had never lived a man more absolutely 
 fitted for it, no one knew better than Gregory, whose whole 
 life had been a preparation for it. As well in his boundless 
 charity to the poor, his wise and statesmanlike administra- 
 tion of his vast estates (whose income has been computed
 
 148 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 as even then over ^^300,000 a year), his missionary and 
 evangelical zeal, his utter fearlessness, his passion for 
 monasticism ; as well, alas also, in his gross superstition, 
 his vandalism towards classic art and learning, his infamous 
 behaviour towards the Emperor Maurice, and his spiritual 
 arrogance, he is the herald of the coming ages. 
 
 If we first consider his attitude towards the Lombards, 
 we shall see that it is inseparable from his attitude to the 
 emperor. From 590 to 595 Constantinople is in the most 
 imminent danger from the Avars, and Maurice is on the 
 defensive ; once the enemy gets as far as Thessalonica, 
 then gradually the tide turns, and by the end of the reign 
 the Avars are pushed back to and over the Danube. At 
 first Gregory is all smiles and flattery to Maurice, till he 
 sees how the Avar campaign will turn out ; but he keeps 
 up a running fire of complaint against the Exarch Romanus 
 (589-97), who is fighting valiantly against the Lombards, 
 From the first one fears that Gregory is dreaming of an 
 independent Italy, under his own spiritual hegemony, with 
 converted Lombards dancing to the Roman pipe. He 
 spares no pains to work upon his dear ' daughter,' as he 
 calls Queen Theodelinda, for this purpose, and even Agilulf 
 lets his son be baptised a Catholic. But, alas, Agilulf does 
 not desist, still less do the two independent Lombard 
 dukes, at Spoleto to the north and Benevento to the 
 south of Rome, desist from aggression. Their duchies 
 hold Rome as it were in a nut-cracker, and their rulers are 
 fond of giving a squeeze. There are other duchies in the 
 north at Friuli, Ivrea and Turin, all to some extent what 
 later history will call ' Marks ' or border defences against 
 some external foe, and all making for provincialism and 
 disunion in Italy. Only a slender strip of Imperial 
 territory runs between Rome and Ravenna ; if Perugia 
 should fall (and it is often besieged) this will be cut. 
 Gregory in fact often feels himself to be between the devil 
 and the deep sea. The Catholic devil is indeed far away 
 at Constantinople, and his own regions are sulphurous 
 with Avars and Persians ; but if he were to recover 
 strength ? And then he has a Vice-devil at Ravenna, in
 
 GREGORY AND THE EMPEROR 149 
 
 the person of the exarch, who sends help to, or withholds 
 help from Rome according to some foolish ' plan of strategy ' 
 of his own. And all the while the deep sea of the Arian 
 Lombards is surging wave after wave over the roads of 
 Italy, and yet refusing to combine itself in one channel, 
 into which a pope might build out a mole of Catholic safety 
 — and perhaps of papal hegemony. Now it is the Duke 
 of Spoleto, now it is the king from l*avia that menaces 
 Rome itself; Gregory constantly has to provide soldiers 
 for the defence of outlying posts as well as for the city, and 
 to pay them out of the papal purse. Even for Naples he 
 once has to provide soldiers. ' Are not events,' he might 
 fairly argue, ' driving me to assume a position of sovereignty 
 in spite of my loyalty to the Empire ? ' Where defence 
 is concerned he has no scruples ; ' let no one in our name 
 or that of the Church,' he orders, ' excuse himself from 
 manning the walls of Terracina' (598). Yet he had just 
 been scolding Maurice fearfully for an edict which forbade 
 soldiers to shirk their duty by becoming monks. Gradually 
 his thoughts turn towards a peace with the Lombards, and 
 then his attitude to Maurice is, ' I could easily make peace 
 with them if it were not for that scoundrel of an exarch' 
 — who in fact was retaking a lot of posts on the Flaminian 
 Way. The pope does conclude a separate peace with the 
 Duke of Spoleto in 592 ; Maurice is naturally very angry, 
 and orders Romanus to break it, for Ravenna, alas, is 
 more important to the Empire than Rome. In his scold- 
 ing, Maurice had unfortunately called Gregory a fool 
 {fatitus ) ; it was the last straw to the proud Roman, 
 who never forgave it. 
 
 Romanus, however, died in 598, and the next Exarch 
 Callinicus deserved the name fatuns for himself For 
 though he got on better with Gregory, and allowed the 
 latter to mediate a regular peace between himself and 
 Agilulf (599), he wantonly broke it two years afterwards, 
 and brought on all the Lombard trouble again. The 
 peace of 599, however, began to mark an epoch ; the 
 Empire therein gave up all hope of conquering the 
 Lombards, and recognised that they had come to stay in
 
 I50 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 Italy ; the policy of Justinian was over for good. It was 
 a great and deserved triumph for Gregory, and might have 
 led to a reconciliation with Maurice, but for that imperti- 
 nent title of ' Oecumenical Patriarch ' being openly flaunted 
 by the Faster John at Constantinople, Gregory in 595 
 insisted that it must be given up, and Maurice, who by 
 this time ought, as a statesman, to have measured the 
 strength of his adversary better, refused to coerce John ; 
 and so the breach widened yearly. Gregory did not know 
 that in less than a century (682) his own Roman successors 
 would lay themselves open to his denunciation (' precursors 
 of Antichrist') by pretensions even more lofty than John's. 
 
 So when the crash came at Constantinople there was 
 no one who sang more jubilantly than the Pope of Rome. 
 In 601 the victorious army of Constantinople, which had 
 been ordered to stay in winter quarters on the Danube to 
 guard against a return of the Avars, mutinied, marched 
 back to the capital under the lead of a vulgar Cappadocian 
 colonel called Phocas, threw itself into the arms of the 
 turbulent ' Green Faction ' of the arena, deposed Maurice, 
 and hailed Phocas as emperor (602). A perfect carnival of 
 bloodshed was inaugurated by this monster, Maurice and 
 all his family being among the first victims. Phocas went 
 on to conclude a shameful peace with the Avars, allowing 
 them to settle where they pleased and to rob as they 
 pleased, and another with the Lombards. He would have 
 done the same with the Persians ; but the latter preferred 
 to remain at war, and, for twenty years to come, spread 
 all over the Roman East, for half that time almost 
 unchecked. But as a set-off to all this, the pious, glorious, 
 and ever august Phocas at once compelled the new patriarch 
 to renounce the offending title ; and Gregory, in return, lay 
 down and licked his bloodstained boots with the most 
 loathsome flattery. 
 
 The year 602 is therefore a mighty epoch in the history 
 of the world. A slender hold is kept by the Empire, which 
 still calls itself Roman, on the exarchate of Ravenna, the 
 * Duchy' of Rome, and some ports in Southern Italy ; but 
 for the rest, as nineteenth-century patriots used to sing,
 
 GREGORY'S MISSIONARY ZEAL 151 
 
 Italia fara da sc. How she will fare depends less upon 
 herself than upon the now practically independent Papacy. 
 And, on the whole, the rest of the Western children of the 
 Roman Empire will ' fare of themselves ' also. 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from Gregory the diplomatist and 
 schemer, and to remember that this same Gregory was also 
 the man who made the beautiful Roman liturgy what it is 
 to-day, who introduced the simple and beautiful Gregorian 
 chants to churches, who cared incessantly for the outcast 
 and the fallen, who re-started on the estates of the Church 
 the practices of husbandry, stock-raising, and horse-breed- 
 ing, who scrutinised his rent-rolls continually, and fell like a 
 thunderbolt on all unjust or harsh stewards. The arm of 
 St Peter, when wielded by a Gregory, was mighty enough 
 to afford shelter to any landowner who would become a 
 tenant of the Church, and many men must have been only 
 too glad to surrender such freedom as Gothic, Greek and 
 Lombard wars had left them, in order to enjoy that pro- 
 tection. Again it is pleasant to see Gregory's zeal for the 
 conversion of the English race ; it was he who, as we all 
 know, despatched St Augustine to the King of Kent. It 
 was Gregory too who, before he became pope, had set on 
 foot the conversion of the Arian Visigoths, and their King 
 Reccared to Catholicism, and whose careful supervision of 
 the Church in Spain gave it such power in the centuries 
 to come ; it was Gregory, who, together with Queen 
 Theodclinda, incessantly worked for the conversion of the 
 Lombards and really began it. As for the Catholic Franks 
 he was rather less successful in his attempts to introduce 
 order and moral life into their wild and turbulent realm, 
 which was yet so full of promise for the future. Whatever 
 he was not, he was unquestioned Patriarch of the West ; 
 the first ' Pope ' in the sense in which that title, hitherto 
 occasionally given to other bishops, clave from henceforth 
 only to the occupant of the Roman See. But a man must 
 not be too far ahead of his age if he is to lead it success- 
 fully ; Gregory was steeped and soaked in relic-worship, in 
 belief that (childish and profane) ' miracles ' were being 
 worked every day and all round him, even when ihey
 
 152 THE EMPIRE NOT DEAD YET 
 
 were obviously plagiarised from many of the miracles 
 recorded in the Old Testament. Though he could write 
 very vigorous and very fairly classical Latin, he openly said 
 that it was ridiculous for a good Christian to care about the 
 niceties of grammar.^ There is no contemporary evidence 
 for the twelfth-century story of his having burned the 
 Palatine Library, which moreover was unquestionably the 
 property of the emperor, and was probably removed to 
 Constantinople, unless, as is quite possible, it had been 
 destroyed in the Gothic wars ; but we may well believe 
 that he would have been profoundly indifferent at, or even 
 rejoiced over the destruction of what he would have called 
 ' heathen trash.' There is even less evidence for the story, 
 over which pious monks gloated in the fourteenth century, 
 that he mutilated the few ancient statues left in Rome ; 
 some of these statues had indeed been hurled upon the 
 assailant Goths as missiles during the sieges. 
 
 ^ It would be difficult to overestimate the influence on the 
 Mediaeval Church of Gregory's writings, such as the Regula 
 Pastoralis, the Dialogues (one of the ' good books ' which our Alfred 
 had translated into Anglo-Saxon), the Morals, and the Homilies. It 
 was he, more than anyone else, who taught reverence for the 'letter' 
 of the Scriptures, and taught also that each 'letter' should be inter- 
 preted allegorically.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER V 
 
 The Time covered is very routjhly the sixth and seventh centuries. 
 
 The Subject is an examination of the conditions of life in Gaul (or 
 France), Spain, and Italy during- these centuries, under the new 
 kingships of the Merovingian Franks, Visigoths, and Lombards 
 respectively. The kingdom of the Burgundians disappears in 
 534, and is merged in that of the Franks, who, beginning from 
 Northern Gaul in the fifth century, perpetually fight the Visi- 
 goths for Southern Gaul, and at last confine them to Spain and 
 to a narrow strip of Gaul on the Mediterranean. These Franks 
 are strong Catholics ; most of their neighbours remain Arians, 
 which gives them an excuse for fighting them. There are also 
 fierce civil wars between the various Frank sovereigns ; but the 
 Merovingian race rapidly wears itself out, and all power passes 
 into the hands of a succession of ' Mayors of the Palace,' out of 
 whom will come, in the eighth century, the next race of Frankish 
 kings, the Caroling. Meanwhile in Spain the Gothic kings, who 
 remain Arians till 586, do, with some exceptions, steadily lose 
 power to their great nobles ; in the seventh century their 
 Church is fiercely Catholic. Very little is known of the last 
 Christian-Gothic kings of Spain, who are overthrown by the 
 Moors, 711. In Italy, of which only the seventh century history 
 is here treated, the popes are weak, and are in continual conflict 
 with the Lombard kings and dukes, most of whom are Arians 
 almost till the end of the seventh century ; the popes are also in 
 conflict with the 'Roman' emperors at Constantinople, and with 
 their deputies, the 'Exarchs' of Ravenna. 
 
 The principal Actors are : — 
 
 (i) The race of the Merovingian Frankish kings from 
 
 CLOVIS, 481-511. 
 
 He divides his kingdom among his four Son?, of whom 
 
 CLOTHAIR I., 
 
 reunites it all, 548, and dies 561. 
 
 He again divides kingdom between several sons, 
 
 but the only two of importance are 
 
 Continued on next page. 
 158
 
 154 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER V 
 
 CLOTH AIR \.—ConlinueiL 
 
 SIGEI3RRT, dies 575. CHILPERIC, dies 584. 
 
 Marries Brunhilda Marries Fredegonda 
 
 (who dies 613). (who dies 597). 
 
 I 
 Theiidebert, CLOTH AIR IF., 
 
 King of East Franks reunites whole kingdom, 
 
 (5.H-S48), 613, 
 
 is grandson of Clovis and dies 628. 
 
 by another son. | 
 
 DAGOBERT I., 
 
 rules whole kingdom, 
 
 and dies 638. 
 
 After him the names of the very numerous kings do not matter ; 
 
 they have no power, and the last of them is 
 
 CHILDERIC III., 
 
 deposed by Pippin in 751. 
 
 (2) The only important kings of the Visigoths in Spain and 
 Southern Gaul during this period are : — 
 
 ALARIC II., 485-507, who marries a daughter of Thecdoric the 
 
 Ostrogoth, and is killed by Clovis. 
 ATHANAGILD, 554-567. 
 LEOVIGILD, 56S-586. who destroys the Suevic kingdom in Spain, 
 
 and fixes his capital at Toledo instead of Toulouse. 
 RECCARED L, 586-601, who turns Catholic, 
 KINDASWINTHA, 641-652. 
 WITIZA, or perhaps RODERICK, who is overihrown by the 
 
 Moors in 71 1. 
 
 (3) The only important kings of the Lombards in this period 
 
 are : — 
 
 ALBOIX, 561-573, conquers N. Italy, 568. 
 
 AUTHARiS, 584-590. 
 
 AGILULF. 590-615. 
 
 ROTHARIS, 636-652. 
 
 GRIMOALD, 662-671. 
 
 LIUTPRAND, 713-744. See also Table to Chapter VI. 
 
 (4) For the rulers of Constantinople in the seventh century, who are 
 mentioned in this chapter, see Table to Chapter VI.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 Facies non omnibus una, 
 Nee di versa tamen — 
 
 I SHOULD like to be able to finish Ovid's line and to say 
 that the aspect of the new nations was ' such as sisters 
 should have,' but few of us would like our sisters to have 
 the manners or the morals of the seventh century, 
 which is for Western Europe perhaps the darkest and 
 dreariest of all ages since the beginning of recorded history. 
 There are no good chroniclers between the death of 
 Gregory of Tours at the end of the sixth, and the appear- 
 ance of Paul the Deacon at the end of the eighth century. 
 There are no great popes in the seventh century, and no 
 really great emperors ; but their absence does not make the 
 relations between Rome and Constantinople any more 
 friendly, while every attempt at religious peace, every 
 via media devised by the Eastern theologians, is con- 
 temptuously rejected as a fresh ' heresy ' by the Western 
 Church. Visigothic Spain has indeed turned Catholic, 
 and Lombard Italy is gradually turning ; when it has 
 turned Arianism will be as good as dead. But Italy is as 
 far off from union as ever; the triple pretensions of pope, 
 emperor, and Lombard king are mutually incompatible. 
 Spain is indeed the happier for her religious peace, and 
 gets thereby a racial union earlier than any child of Rome 
 except Gaul ; but there are other causes at work to weaken 
 her, which we shall have to discuss later. In Britain the 
 strife of the conquerors inter se has succeeded to the 
 destruction of the relics of Roman civilisation ; but the 
 conversion to Christianity has begun and proceeds rapidly, 
 
 15B
 
 156 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 and the north of England, at least, seems to be better off 
 than any other part of the old Empire. There is life and 
 there is literature in Northumbria, and still more in totally 
 un-Roman Ireland and lona, when, except in Italy,^ there 
 is none to speak of further South. Gaul, at the first 
 glance, seems to be the worst off of all; its history is one 
 long tangle of civil war, godlessness and rapine. 
 
 And, suddenly, on a Christendom thus divided and 
 self-destructive, there bursts from the deserts of Arabia 
 the armed message of Islam. How can it be met and 
 answered ? 
 
 Before we proceed to discuss that message and the 
 answer of Christendom to it, we must try to discover what 
 was the condition of the populations, both in town and 
 country, of the several nations which were taking shape in 
 the West ; what Roman institutions survived, what took 
 the place of those that perished. In Gaul and Gaul alone 
 it is possible for us to learn something of this ; but perhaps 
 we may conjecture that in Spain and Italy the conditions 
 of life were not wholly dissimilar to those in Gaul. I shall 
 ask you therefore for a time rather to forget chronology 
 and the names of kings, and to take a peep into Gaul at the 
 close of the sixth century as shown to us in the History 
 of Gregory of Tours. It is there that we shall best 
 discover how much is old and how much is new, what is 
 barbarised Roman, what is the strength of willing-to-be- 
 Romanised barbarism. Gaul, whether we call it Gaul, 
 Frankland or France, is a good country to study, for in no 
 country has the continuity of life been so unbroken. No 
 country has so few internal barriers ; no country is now so 
 homogeneous, yet none has so readily absorbed external 
 elements of civilisation, from South, from North, and above 
 all from East ; it has been well pointed out that all the 
 continent is France's ' hinterland.' And on every 
 
 ^ In many of the Italian cities it seems probable that the municipal 
 schools never wholly ceased from teaching throughout the Dark Ages ; 
 to these secular schools were added, in the sixth century, that of Monte 
 Cassino and other monasteries. Probably Rome itself was worse off 
 than any other city in this respect.
 
 THE FRANKS IN GAUL 157 
 
 element she has absorbed she has stamped her own very 
 ancient hall-mark ; the typical Frenchman is still that 
 precocious fellow le Gaulois^ and France is the most pre- 
 cocious country of Europe in its people as in its climate. 
 
 Now the Frank conquerors of Northern Gaul — and 
 Clovis the first of them — had this advantage over other 
 Teutonic colonists of the Empire, that their Catholicism 
 enabled them simply to step into the place of the Roman 
 governors, and that their Gallo-Roman subjects saw no 
 difficulty in accepting them as such ; this, as we learned 
 above, was not the case in those parts of Gaul which were 
 conquered by Burgundians or by Visigoths. From the 
 very first the Frank kings were thoroughly accepted by 
 the all-powerful bishops, and this meant much to them. It 
 seems probable that, at the conversion to Christianity, the 
 bishop in each Gallic civitas had stepped into the place 
 of the official defensor civitatis, and also had replaced the 
 flanien (official priest) as ' head of society.' As the Roman 
 ctiricB and tribunals died out, or changed their shapes 
 
 into something poor and strange, 
 
 the bishops would begin to act as administrators and 
 judges. These were the men to teach their barbarian 
 masters how to work a kingdom after the Roman model, 
 or what they could remember of it. In the fifth and sixth 
 centuries the bishops were far more administrators than 
 they were theologians ; which was a great change since 
 the fourth century, when St Martin had preached and 
 Hilary of Poitiers had fought the theological battle for 
 Athanasius against the Emperor Constantius. And so 
 the bishops became the principal courtiers and advisers 
 of the new kings. 
 
 The fact that Theodoric had driven the Franks back 
 from Southern Gaul was another important advantage ; it 
 led them to consolidate their power and unite their peoples 
 in the North. The frequent divisions of the Frankish 
 kingdom made far less difference to this consolidation 
 than you would suppose ; none of the divisions were really 
 permanent, though that into Neustria (the West) and
 
 158 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 Austrasia (the East, often reaching far into Germany), 
 tended to be so. But there were as frequent reunions of 
 the whole under one sovereign, who would then at once 
 take up the task of conquering southwards or eastwards. 
 Such was the case with Clothair I. in the sixth, and 
 Clothair II. and Dagobert I. in the seventh century. We 
 can even see early traces of Paris as a capital city ; no 
 doubt it owed its riches to its being such a good centre for 
 the exchange of goods by water ; once (567) it is reckoned 
 too important a place to be allotted to any one of three 
 partitioners of the kingdom ; and each king gets a district 
 in it and a special church to keep up. But Tours is the 
 ' Holy Place ' ; for it contains the tomb of the blessed St 
 Martin, in his great basilica, built in 472 and restored by 
 Bishop Gregory (the chronicler) a hundred years later.^ 
 St Martin was a real man, of Pannonian birth, who had 
 served in the Roman army, preached over all Central Gaul, 
 and died in 397. Later kings of France^ reckoned ' Abbot 
 of St Martin at Tours ' among their proudest titles. The 
 devotion of the immediate descendants of Clovis to St 
 Martin, and to the Church in general, was boundless, and 
 quite independent of their very remarkable set of morals. 
 Geographically also Tours was of great importance, a meet- 
 ing-place of many roads, the starting-point for that journey 
 to the south (through the gap of Poitiers) which led the 
 speech of Northern France, the Langue d'oil, to prevail 
 over that of Southern Gaul, the Langtie doc. It was this 
 pilgrims' road which, as leading to the shrine of Santiago 
 di Compostella, got the name of the CJiemin de Saint 
 Jacques. 
 
 It is not often that one has the history of a country 
 written by one of its leading nobles and ecclesiastical 
 statesmen, but this is the case with Bishop Gregory's 
 Historia Francoriun. Families like his, of Gallo-Roman 
 descent, seem to have had an almost hereditary right to 
 the episcopate, as they had had to the civil posts under 
 
 ^ Gregory modelled his Church on that of the Holy Sepulchre at 
 Jerusalem, with the Saint's tomb in the centre of a large rotunda., so 
 that pilgrims could have easy access to it.
 
 GREGORY OF TOURS 159 
 
 the Empire. His grandfather, a contemporary of Clovis, 
 had been ' Count,' i.e., administrator, of the civitas of 
 Autun for forty years before he became Bishop of Langres 
 in 486, and ended, as many of these bishops did, by 
 becoming a sort of second-class saint. The tenth-century 
 chronicler of Rheims, ?""lodoard, speaks of our author 
 himself as ' Saint Gregory of Tours.' ^ Gregory himself held 
 the See of Tours from 573 till his death in 594, and closed 
 his chronicle only a year or two before his death. His 
 real value lies, not in the wars and the kings whom he 
 describes, but in the sidelights which he gives us on the 
 society of his day. His ignorance and credulity are 
 amazing ; but his insight is also great and shrewd. If he 
 writes ' rustic ' Latin, it is, as he says, because he wants 
 to be read He is no theologian, which in the age of 
 monophysite controversy is a blessing. 
 
 Yet he is a churchman of churchmen. A nything short 
 of the complete independence of the Church seems dreadful 
 to him ; though he is sadly obliged to admit that the 
 pious Frank kings too often attacked, deprived, banished, 
 and even mishandled his fellow-bishops. Even for himself 
 the help of St Martin once had to be called in against the 
 unscrupulous Count Leudastes. Of Justinian's Code he 
 has never heard, but he knows that of Theodosius, and 
 presumably believes it to be in force in Gaul.- He says 
 that an educated man should know Virgil and arithmetic ; 
 but, when he quotes Virgil, he totally misunderstands the 
 allusion. As for his credulity a few specimens must 
 suffice, but I think they illustrate the age pretty 
 thoroughly. Thus : — 
 
 An Arian lady having attempted to poison her mother 
 in sacramental wine, Gregory remarks that, had it been 
 a Catholic Sacrament, it would not have hurt the recipient 
 however deadly the poison.'^ 
 
 ' Flodoard, Historia Remensis., iii., 50. 
 
 - Though he mentions many Frankish customs, he never tells us 
 that such were law for the Franks, while Roman law was administered 
 to Gallo- Romans ; yet such we must presume to have been the case. 
 
 •' Hist. Franc, iii., 31.
 
 i6o THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 The Spanish heretics, he says, kept their Easter at a 
 different time from us Catholics ; but the miraculous springs, 
 which arc well known to fill certain fonts on the day before 
 Easter, kept our date even in Spain. ^ 
 
 King Gundobald of Burgundy, having heard that a 
 certain Eastern king won all his battles because he had 
 the thumb of St Sergius inserted into his own right arm, 
 sent everywhere to get relics of this martyr, and at last 
 learned that a Syrian, living at Bordeaux, had got a bone 
 of him but would not sell it. Gundobald thereon sent his 
 general Mummolus (a well-known person who played 
 a leading part in sixth-century history) to steal it. 
 Mummolus sent a deacon up a ladder at the Syrian's 
 house while the Syrian was away, and the deacon found a 
 box, in which sure enough was a finger bone of the 
 blessed St Sergius ; he let it down by a cord to Mummolus 
 who (perhaps thinking it too large to be inserted whole in 
 the king's arm) began to split it into fragments, which at 
 once disappeared of their own accord, the Martyr not liking 
 that such a man as Mummolus should touch his bones.- 
 
 There was, however, one abbot in Gaul who was at 
 least a man of sense : a certain novice (' he is still alive so 
 I will not mention his name,' says Gregory) was set to 
 watch a heap of newly threshed wheat. '^ The other monks 
 were all in the fields. The heavens became dark with 
 clouds and, not being able to get the wheat under cover in 
 time, the novice prayed against the storm. Sure enough, 
 the rain fell all around but spared the heap of corn. The 
 brethren arrived just in time to see the miracle which the 
 novice had wrought with his prayers ; but the abbot waited 
 till he had finished, and then had him triced up and soundly 
 flogged, with additional fasting to follow ; for, said he, ' My 
 son, it is necessary to humble ourselves before the Lord, 
 and not to exult too much in our own miracles and 
 virtues.' ^ 
 
 Gregory himself is quite aware that miracle-workers 
 
 "^ Hist. Frafic, v., 17. -Ibid., vii., 31. 
 
 ^ Qucere, against rats and mice.'' if so, where was the monastery 
 cat ? ■* Hist. Franc, iv., 24.
 
 OTHER AUTHORITIES FOR GAUL i6i 
 
 can be frauds : a certain Desiderius from Bordeaux came to 
 Tours while the bishop was away, and pretended to be 
 a medical missionary, specially commissioned by St Peter 
 and St Paul. He got hold of paralytic people and 
 wrenched their joints about with much violence [? massage] ; 
 'and he did cure some, though he killed more. He 
 admitted himself to be inferior as a healer to St Martin, 
 but as good as the apostles. No doubt he was a necro- 
 mancer and the Devil helped him ; but my people found 
 him out and drove him away.' ^ 
 
 The instances above given are extreme cases and in a 
 credulous age ; but such of my readers as are not familiar 
 with mediaeval chroniclers may need to be reminded, first 
 that a like, though not such an extreme credulity was 
 common to all of them at least down to the thirteenth 
 century ; and, secondly, that it is on the statements of men 
 who could believe and record such things that almost all 
 our knowledge of the Dark Ages rests. For the sixth and 
 early seventh centuries we have, besides Gregory, his con- 
 temporary the Court poet Venantius Fortunatus (530-600), 
 who not only wrote pleasant little verses and a long poem 
 in praise of the blessed St Martin, but also two of the most 
 splendid of Christian hymns, Pange Lingua and Vexilla 
 Regis. We have a bad Burgundian writer, who is often 
 wrongly called Fredegarius, and who carries the story 
 down to 642 ; and we have a great many Lives of Saints. 
 These last at this early date are often contemporary with 
 the events they describe ; for there were not in the Dark 
 Ages any of the formal processes of canonisation or the 
 long years of waiting, which the twelfth- and thirteenth- 
 century Church deemed necessary to establish saintship. 
 A man's own disciple, or a monk of his monastery would 
 simply write his late abbot, or bishop, or brother-monk, 
 into saintship, by recounting the miracles of which he had 
 perhaps been an eyewitness ; this became a great source 
 of profit to the abbey which the saint had owned in the 
 flesh and which owned him in the tomb. One of the best 
 
 ' f/isf. I- rune, ix., 6.
 
 i62 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 of all the Lives is that of the Irish monk St Columbanus, 
 who travelled over all the Prankish realms, founded the 
 great monastery of Luxeuil on the edge of the Vosges 
 mountains, and then wandered off to Italy to catholicise 
 the Lombards, dying at his own foundation of Bobbio 
 in 615. 
 
 Besides these sources we have a few edicts extant of 
 the ' first race,' the Merovingian Frankish kings, and 'Capitu- 
 laries ' (or sets of edicts) of their Carolingian successors ; we 
 have the old barbarian laws and customs, some of which I 
 have already mentioned, such as the Lex Salica, written 
 down in the reign of Clovis, and the Lex Ripiiaria ; we have 
 the attempts at codification such as the Lex Rouiana 
 BufgundionuDi (about 517), Lex Roinana Visigotlwrutn 
 ('Breviary of Alaric II.,' the earliest of all, 506); these 
 last arc codes intended for the ' Roman ' subjects of the 
 new kings. We have some ' Acts ' of the occasional 
 Church councils, and, finally, we have a great many 
 charters and grants of land to individuals or churches. 
 All this material is in Latin, and some of it may have 
 been written by men of Frankish descent. What we have 
 not got is any written record at all of the old Frankish 
 language, although that probably continued to be spoken 
 both east and west of the Rhine for at least two 
 centuries. 
 
 From such materials as this it is not impossible to 
 construct some sort of picture of the Gaul or ' Frankland ' 
 of the Dark Ages, and it will not greatly matter whether 
 the kingdom in question is the united realm of the Cloth- 
 airs or Dagobert, or one of the separate lesser kingdoms, 
 into which Gaul between the Rhine and the ocean was 
 oftener broken up. As for ' Germany,' when and so far 
 as its Bavarians, Alamans, Thuringians, Frisians, Saxons 
 were dependent on an East Frankish king who ruled at 
 Metz, it was generally governed by tribal ' dukes ' in vassal- 
 age to that king, and it was still heathen and unorganised ; 
 we must not read the ideas of the eighth and ninth century 
 into the Germany of the sixth and seventh. 
 
 Well now, in this Gaul of the sixth and seventh, we can
 
 MEROVINGIAN KINGSHIP 163 
 
 dimly trace certain remains of Roman institutions, and wc 
 can see them all going steadily down hill ; losing their grip 
 on the people or being transformed into a feudal shape. 
 Clovis or Clothair I. will perhaps be obeyed as a Roman 
 magistrate ; their descendants towards the end of the 
 seventh century will be obeyed only by those who have 
 got attached to them by some personal or semi-feudal tic. 
 For instance, there is a monarchy and it is hereditary and 
 absolute. But the king will normally divide it at his death 
 among his sons, as if it were not a monarchy at all but an 
 estate in land. There is no trace of election ; if a king 
 leave no heir, the next strongest king will grab his estate. 
 ' Raising on the shield ' is the formal proclamation or 
 installation of the king, to whom all take the old Roman 
 oath of allegiance ; he in return does not yet take, as later 
 medi;eval kings took, an oath of protection or good govern- 
 ment to his subjects. There is no 'contract' between 
 king and people. 
 
 This king undoubtedly owns the old Roman rem fisci, 
 i.e., the Royal domain within his realm ; it is his main 
 source of wealth, and is divided into fundi (farms, estates), 
 just as every landowner's property is divided. It is culti- 
 vated by families of slaves or families of serfs (////, loots) ^ 
 of whom a register is kept ; each family has its iiiausus 
 or casata, a strip of land sufficient for its support. The 
 liti are reckoned as freemen, and will be obliged to serve 
 in the army ; but they are not really free, for they cannot 
 quit their i/iajisns any more than the slaves. Rut then 
 neither can they be removed.- All such persons will be 
 in the royal iniind (here is a Prankish word at last), and 
 will enjoy a special protection, with immunity from such 
 'justice' as the king metes out to his other subjects. 
 
 ' Probably successors of the lesser coloni ; the latter word is 
 not found in Frankish Gaul. 
 
 - At least not in theory ; but Gregory tells us how King Chilperic, 
 wishing to give his daughter, who was to make a grand marriage 
 in Spain, a worthy following, uprooted whole families from his domain 
 and sent them with her. They wept and howled, and most of them 
 deserted on the southward journey. French people always love their 
 own soil and hate expatriation.
 
 i64 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 Besides his domain, the king has, or ought to have the 
 old Roman land tax {tributiDii) paid, whether in kind or 
 in cash we do not know, by all free landowners. It ought 
 to be collected by the curiales if there were any left 
 to collect it ; it ought to be reassessed every fifteen years ; 
 yet we have no evidence of this happening at all. But, 
 from the very first, the all-powerful Church set itself, not 
 only against paying any taxes for its own ever-increasing 
 lands, but against the whole principle of taxes. To tax 
 the Church was 'to rob God and his poor,' as Bishop 
 Injuriosus explained to King Clothair; 'if you persist 
 God will take away your kingdom ' ; and Clothair was 
 so much irritated that he ' left the bishop without even 
 saying good-bye,' but subsequently abandoned his infamous 
 project.^ In Gregory's book such and such a king ' repents 
 of his taxes ' — not of his murders or his adulteries. There 
 is this to be said for the clerical view of the matter : — 
 to a Chilperic or a Childebert taxes meant only so much 
 treasure to be heaped up and squandered in riot, not 
 stuff to be expended for the benefit or defence of his 
 subjects. In short 'taxation is robbery'; the idea was 
 thoroughly familiar to much later centuries, and is by no 
 means dead to-day. Church after church, then, got 
 charters remitting all claim to tributum, and laymen 
 followed suit. When the king gave one of his friends 
 a grant of a piece of royal domain he got no taxes out 
 of it, whatever else he may have got, for ' royal domain 
 had never paid.' Probably by the end of the seventh 
 century tributinn had ceased to produce anything at all, 
 and so the crown got poorer and poorer ; and a poor 
 crown is a weak crown. 
 
 We must next consider our Frankish king's army. 
 Before all things he is a man of war. Normally he fights 
 Lombards or Visigoths or Germans ; often also his own 
 relations, whose lands or wives or cash he covets. Some 
 of his Franks of course enjoy the actual fighting, but 
 the wars are not people's wars at all, they really are 
 
 ' Hist. Franc, iv., 2.
 
 MEROVINGIAN ARMS AND LAWS 165 
 
 wars of the ' bold bad king,' such as ^^ood Radicals still 
 believe all wars to bc.^ Clevis probabl)' took over the 
 Gallo-Roman arm)', such as it was, officered it with the 
 (lite of his Franks, and tried to enforce the normal supply 
 of recruits from the Roman landowners ; detachments 
 would be quartered and billeted upon particular cities. 
 Hut in a very few years we find that all distinction of 
 race has vanished, and military service is enforced on all 
 freemen alike; the king calls out the 'counties' nearest 
 the scene of the war, and out the population of each 
 civitas, under its count, has to go, untrained, unfed, unpaid, 
 undisciplined, and hence obliged to subsist upon pillage ; 
 one vast, glorious, fighting muddle. F"rom the middle 
 of the sixth century the use of cavalry and of defensive 
 armour has come in, but probably only for the few ; it is 
 the huge infantry column that still wins Prankish battles 
 down to Carolingian times. Among the bravest fighters 
 the king will choose a personal following for himself, 
 his ' antrustions,' to whom he will probably give lands, 
 and in whom, in the eighth century, we .shall find the 
 germ of an hereditary nobility. 
 
 Now when he has occasion to do justice or to legislate, 
 it will be these same personal followers whom he will 
 consult, and in Latin, he will call them his grandes, his 
 fidelcs, his opfiniates, his doviestici. Among such, if we 
 could peep into his rude palace, we .should probabl)' find 
 several Roman bishops, who will show him how to draft 
 a law. The Codex of Theodosius ' and subsequent amend- 
 ing acts ' are still in force, and Latinised Prankish words 
 will always be creeping into the edicts which amend it. 
 What we never can see is to what extent the Salian 
 and Ripuarian laws of the Pranks were in force side b)- 
 side with the Code, and whether there were separate 
 tribunals to administer them ; but it is clear that in the 
 cases of Prankish suitors certain of their customs were 
 observed, e.g.^ the non-inheritance of land by females, 
 
 ' 'Qu'est que c'est que revent les rois? C'est de la guerre. 
 Qu'est que c'est que revent les peuples ? C'est de I.1 paix' (\'ictor 
 Hugo). Was ever such nonsense written ?
 
 i66 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 the necessit)' of witnesses to transfers of land/ and, worse 
 still, the principle of money payments for crime (a) to the 
 injured party (/>) to the Crown (t) to the presiding judge. 
 Now Roman law had steadily whittled away from itself 
 all ideas of 'self-help' against an injury; it had dis- 
 tinguished accurately between crimes against the State 
 and wrongs against an individual. Breach of contract 
 was a wrong, for which the State could make the breaker 
 pay damages; murder was a crime, for which it would 
 kill him. No barbarian law could grasp this apparently 
 simple distinction ; it always conceived a ' redemption- 
 price' for crime. At first the injured party might refuse 
 to receive the price and insist on the death of the injurer ; 
 at first, too, the price was so high that death was an 
 easier alternative; fifty pounds- was almost the lowest 
 %vej-gild going. Rut were these ivergilds enforced ? 
 Here stepped in something equally unknown to Roman 
 law, a set of men called rachwiburgi^ or later scabhii 
 (in French echevins). These were apparently either 
 ' doomsmen ' who found the judgment of the court, or 
 assessors, who made some sort of bargain between the 
 murderer and the relatives of the murdered man ; in the 
 latter capacity they would know what was a fair payment, 
 and a fair date for payment. They would perhaps accept 
 securities for payment or seize goods to the amount due, 
 or, if the criminal had no friends and no goods, w^ould 
 ' leave him for execution.' In civil suits they acted as 
 witnesses. It is very difficult to see who or what sort 
 of men would sit beside the count as rnchiviburgi ; 
 perhaps just the 'important persons' of the district 
 wherein he was holding his court. Do not think of them 
 in the least as a 'jury'; a jury had quite a different 
 origin, but it is easy to see how the later mediaeval idea 
 of a jury would affiliate itself to them. 
 
 • Including children, who are to be slapped and have their ears 
 twisted, that they may remember in after years what they have 
 witnessed. 
 
 - I.e.^ one hundred golden solidi (shilHngs), each containing forty 
 silver denarii (pennies), and variously estimated at from 8s. 6d. to los. 
 per solidus. Seventy-two solidi=^. ' pound of gold.'
 
 MEROVINGIAN JUSTICE 167 
 
 The kings obviously favoured the whole system of 
 compensation for crimes ; not because they were merciful, 
 for they were not, but because they got a share of the fine 
 paid. One can imagine Chilpcric the Wicked saying : 
 * You bishops have taken away my taxes, and are rapidly 
 squeezing the remains of my domain into your own purse : 
 you might at least allow me the benefit of the criminal 
 propensities of my subjects.' The Church was only too 
 willing to agree; in the first place the king's 'justice' 
 was probably so bad, so arbitrary, so bloody, that any 
 regulation of it seemed good. In the second place many 
 bishops acted as judges, and, though there was as yet no 
 ' canon law ' against it, it was a very early belief that 
 no churchman could lawfully pronounce a death-sentence. 
 And, thirdly, superstition stepped in also ; the right of 
 ' sanctuary ' for guilty as well as for innocent must be 
 maintained ; the murderer who clutches St Martin's altar 
 rails, even with gory hands, must be scathless. Finally, 
 as all judges, lay and clerical, counts, vicars, hundred-men 
 or what you will, were unpaid, they too must have 
 encouraged composition for crimes instead of death ; they 
 saved the cost of an execution, and probably pocketed a 
 bribe, and at last this bribe becomes customary as 'one- 
 third of the fine to the judge.' 
 
 In other respects, also, the procedure in the courts of 
 Prankish Gaul drifts away from the Roman model, of 
 which, however, it retains one thing, the detestable use of 
 torture to extract evidence. Into it has crept the wholly 
 barbaric idea of an ' appeal to the judgment of God,' to 
 some sort of ordeal. Perhaps it was an ordeal of single 
 combat between accuser and accused ; perhaps it was some 
 weird process like holding a piece of red-hot iron or 
 plunging the hand into boiling water (which iron or water 
 won't burn or boil you if you are innocent). Perhaps it is 
 the oath of twelve of your friends, in a set form of words, 
 to the effect that they believe you a true man ; this is a 
 far less absurd ordeal, but it is an ordeal, and a difficult 
 one into the bargain. Barbarous and pagan as such ordeals 
 were, the Church encouraged them, and solemnly blessed
 
 i68 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 the iron or conjured demons from the vv^ater. Both the 
 duel and the oath are mentioned by Gregory, apparently 
 without astonishment. 
 
 Now these laws and justice were administered, and 
 these forms followed, both in the King's own court and in 
 those of his agents in the provinces. His own is held in 
 his rude Palatitivi or palace, for, being a successor of 
 Augustus, each barbarian king calls his house after the 
 House whose melancholy ruins are crumbling on the 
 Palatine Hill. He or some deputy will preside over this 
 court, and over all his ' counts ' and officials he is sole 
 judge : also over bishops, though they are very apt to 
 appeal to the pope, as yet with little success. Prob- 
 ably when the king did dare to lay hands on a bishop 
 they were strong and irregular hands that he laid. This 
 court will consist of those same grandcs^ optimates.fideles^ 
 domestici, duces, comites of whom we have already had a 
 glimpse, besides some whose functions may have been 
 more specialised, such as chamberlains, cupbearers, 
 treasurers, chancellors, referendaries, constables, marshals. 
 Some of these are clearly to be affiliated to the officials of 
 old Rome ; others not so clearly. There is a Comes 
 Palatii, who keeps the whole unwieldy machine in some 
 sort of order ; he is distinctly of Roman origin ; in the 
 seventh century his office will be fused with that of the 
 head steward, and we shall call him ' Mayor of the Palace' 
 and shall find kings trembling at him ; from being at first 
 a sort of rude ' chief justice of the king's bench,' he 
 develops into a Vizier, and a Vizier with a bowstring. 
 ' A real despot,' says Montesquieu, ' must have a Vizier.' 
 
 Besides this royal court at the palace, we shall find, or 
 ought to find in each of the hundred and twelve civitntes 
 of old Gaul, one or more district courts called Malli, 
 administered by a comes or count, whom the later Roman 
 law had known well. The provinces, as centres of 
 administration, are gone, and it is the civitas that stands 
 out as the largest administrative division of the country. 
 Much more vaguely each civitas seems to have been 
 divided into hundreds, each with a presiding officer called
 
 THE COUNT 169 
 
 vicarius or ceiiteiiarius ; but all these names are used so 
 loosely and so sporadically that it is often difficult to 
 distinguish between civitas^ conntn(?is, pagus, centena. 
 Germany when it comes to be organised at all, under 
 the next race of Frank kings, is divided into gnue, 
 grafscJiaftcn, and hundreds. And when in the ninth 
 century the comes in Gaul and the graf^ in Germany begin 
 to make their offices hereditary, each in his district, these 
 districts will be called ' Counties.' 
 
 By whatever names we call the officials and their 
 districts on either side of the Rhine, the ta.sk of the 
 officials will be very like that of the Engli.sh .sheriffs in the 
 twelfth century. The count will collect taxes and royal 
 rents, he will lead the local force to battle, he will do 
 justice in the local court ; and no doubt he will make a 
 handsome thing out of it all. He enjoys a right to 
 hospitalitas (which English law will call purveyance and 
 French law droit de gttc). His zvergi/d is enormous 
 because he is i-tce regis. The vial/us, in which he will sit 
 to do justice, will often be held in the vestibule of a church, 
 for a basilica had been a Roman law-court before it was a 
 church at all ; and often the local bishop will sit beside 
 him. Another person, of whom one begins to hear, but at 
 first more vaguely, is a dux, or duke whom the Franks 
 probably called herctoga, /ler.zog, i.e., leader of army. He 
 too was known to the latest Roman law, and he is going 
 to be a bigger and a more military man than the count, 
 but at present he is less permanent and there are fewer of 
 his kind. There never was any regular gradation, like 
 ' ten Counts = one Duke ' or ' ten Counties = one Duch)'.' 
 Finally there were occasionall)' special royal and roving 
 commissions of inissi or legati, sent round by the Crown, 
 perhaps to make known special royal edicts, perhaps to 
 .screw some more cash out of the country. The Carolingian 
 kings will make much more use of these than the 
 Merovingians. 
 
 These then are about all the ' Institutions ' we can 
 discover in sixth and seventh-century Gaul. Emphatically 
 ' Gerefa = steward — graf=^ count.
 
 I70 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 there is not as yet any parliament, any general assembly 
 of freemen. Tacitus had spoken of such an assembly as 
 existing among the Germans of the first century ; but, if 
 he was not drawing on his imagination altogether, it had 
 entirely disappeared before the sixth. So with the 
 provincial assemblies of old Roman Gaul ; though 
 lionorius mentions them in an edict of the early fifth 
 century, they are dead ; and the old curice or town councils 
 are likewise as dead as Julius C.xsar. But, towards the 
 end of the seventh century, we begin to see that the king's 
 court at his palace has become a larger body and a more 
 regularly sitting body than it had been. The name 
 conventus is applied to it, and, early in the eighth, this 
 becomes a customary meeting of all the great men of the 
 realm, and is held at a fixed period (early spring). All 
 bishops will come to it, and all duces and coniites^ all big 
 officials and all the king's pr\w?i\.&Jideles. These men will 
 bring their followers with them, either for protection or 
 for show. The thing will become a review of troops plus 
 an armed parliament, in which edicts will be issued and 
 justice administered. It will be a centre of disorder and 
 an occasion of revolt for great men ; but it also will put a 
 strong ' constitutional ' check upon monarchy. And one 
 of the things which its members will eventually claim is 
 that their offices shall be hereditary, and shall be annexed 
 to the tenure of their hereditary estates. 
 
 Then we shall have something more than the germ of 
 an aristocracy; we shall have a feudal aristocracy itself; 
 the ' nobility of service ' will be gone. After the death 
 of Dagobert I. the Crown got weaker, and the palace 
 officials began to dispute the king's will. There was a long 
 series of minorities, during which the mayors of the 
 palace virtually ruled and were nominated or elected by 
 the other officials of the palace ; the king when he came 
 of age did not dare to remove them, more often they 
 dared to remove him, occasionally shore his long locks 
 and made him into a monk. Then there would be civil 
 war between one mayor and another, instead of between 
 one king and another, and each mayor would have a lot of
 
 THE MEROVINGIAN CHURCH 171 
 
 dukes and counts at his back. Out of all this grim 
 turmoil arose in mid-eighth century the 'second race' of 
 French kini^^s, the Cart)linf^ians. 
 
 As for the Church of Gaul, it was no doubt better, 
 though perhaps not much better than the State, and it 
 seems to have been more turbulent, less spiritual, and worse 
 organised than in any other of the new kingdoms. No doubt 
 like the Church in any other part of the old Empire it 
 professed to ' live Roman Law,' but it certainly welcomed 
 some modifications of that law. In the sixth and seventh 
 centuries the popes could do nothing with it ; even 
 Gregory the Great failed to reform it. If he had read 
 the chronicle of his namesake of Tours, he would have been 
 horrified to hear that Bishop Priscus of Lyons had a wife 
 and blasphemed his saintly predecessor, that Cautinus of 
 Clermont was a drunkard, buried one of his priests alive 
 and favoured Jews ; that another bishop was ' fonder of 
 making the barbarians drunk than of succouring the poor,' 
 and so on. He would also have strongly disapproved of 
 the use of the royal power at episcopal elections ; bishops 
 were, indeed, still elected by the 'clergy and people' of 
 the diocese, but they were supposed to be confirmed by the 
 king before they were consecrated or installed. The 
 clergy were always trying to reverse the process, and get 
 their man consecrated at once, so as to cut off the chance 
 of a royal refusal to confirm him ; and they were often 
 successful. One gets an impression of the immense power 
 of the bishops ; King Chilpcric was not far wrong when he 
 said ' there are no kings in this country except the 
 bishops.' 
 
 We shall not find archbishops till the end of the 
 seventh century. In the fourth, some sort of primacy 
 had been attributed to the Bishop of Aries, just as in 
 Spain to the Bishop of Toledo, and in Northern Italy 
 to those of Aquileia and Milan. But, from Pope Gregory's 
 days, the See of Rome was steadily overshadowing all 
 local patriarchates. There ought to be a bishop to each 
 Gallic civitas, but there was nothing like that number as 
 yet. There is a kind of lesser prelate called a cJiorepiscopns
 
 172 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 or suffragan, and he lingers on in places till the ninth or 
 tenth century but his duties are vague. Vague too in Gaul 
 is the division into the seven orders (bishop, priest, deacon, 
 sub-deacon, exorcist, reader, porter) of the Church, but 
 deacons certainly abounded, and it is of them that we hear 
 most. There is also a masterful person called an arch- 
 deacon, who exercises jurisdiction over the clergy and is 
 already unpopular, though he has not yet arrived at his 
 twelfth-century eminence, when a learned philosopher 
 could propound, as the subject of a disputation, 'whether it 
 is possible for an archdeacon to be saved.' 
 
 There are monasteries in Gaul even before St Benedict ; 
 they are usually the foundations of pious laymen and are 
 as yet completely dependent on the bishops. There was 
 even a collection of the precepts of the Eastern monks, by 
 one Cassianus in use in the West as early as 430. Lerins 
 was founded in the fifth century : Luxeuil at the end of the 
 sixth by St Columbanus, and Luxeuil remained the spiritual 
 capital of Christendom-north-of-the-Alps until it was 
 superseded by Cluny in the tenth, and Citeaux in the 
 twelfth century.^ Sainte-Claude in the Jura was a very 
 early foundation with a splendid history. There were also 
 nunneries ; Gregory mentions a terrible scandal in one, 
 recently the home of the saintly Princess Radegunda, at 
 Poitiers ; the abbess starved her nuns and was an immoral 
 person ; the matter got quite beyond episcopal control, and 
 even a royal commission failed to restore peace. 
 
 The bishops, both good and bad, were very active and 
 were for ever travelling, the good ones to attend Church 
 councils, the bad ones to solicit favours at court or commit 
 very unepiscopal crimes. The calling of Church councils 
 was the king's business, and their ' Acts ' required royal 
 
 * The great importance of the Burgundian abbeys lies in the 
 fact that they were on one of the best roads to Rome from Northern 
 Europe, and also on the main road from Southern Germany to 
 France. What Lyons had been to Roman Gaul, these abbeys were 
 to be to the France of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; along 
 that great road from Marseilles to the Channel was to travel half the 
 commerce of Western Europe, past the great fairs or markets of 
 Beaucaire, Lyons, Troyes, Paris and Bruges.
 
 RURAL SOCIETY 173 
 
 confirmation down to the latest days of the old French 
 monarchy. Simony was rife all over Gaul, probably all 
 over Western Europe ; even the good bishops usually had 
 to bribe the king in order to get their sees. Heathenism 
 died hard in outlying districts ; near Coblentz Gregory 
 met a deacon called VVulflac, who for years had been 
 preaching to the heathen before he could prevail on them 
 to destroy a statue of Diana, and had even stood on a 
 pillar for a long time ' in imitation of the blessed 
 Simeon of Antioch ; but some bishops made me come 
 down and overthrew my pillar,' said he sadly. There 
 were immense numbers of Jews in Gaul, as indeed there 
 were all over the old Empire ; the Bishop of Clermont 
 once baptised over five hundred at once 'without any 
 compulsion ' : those who refused went to Marseilles, out of 
 the frying-pan into the fire, for they were there all 
 baptised by force.^ 
 
 When we come to look at the humbler strata of rural 
 society, we shall find that the manorial system of the 
 later Middle Ages has already struck deep root, that its 
 roots were, in fact, in the soil before the fall of Ancient 
 Rome. There were plenty of extra-legal customs in the 
 Empire which gradually got legal sanction, and some 
 which never got it at all but yet prevailed. Among these 
 was the old relation of 'patron' and 'client.' The 
 necessities of life in the fifth and sixth centuries led to 
 something like a revival of this relation between great men 
 and small men. If the State can't protect you, you must 
 turn to the nearest great man who can. The villages of 
 fair France have, in nine cases out of ten, arisen on the 
 estate of some Gallo-Roman landowner (who perhaps in 
 his turn has succeeded to some Celtic chief and been 
 succeeded by some F^rank soldier). Each such estate 
 {fundus, agcr, pmdiuin, villa, curtis) is inscribed on the 
 old tax-roll by the name of the owner who held it when 
 that roll was first made. Owners change, the name docs 
 not. Attigny is the property of Altinus in the third 
 
 * See the Letters of Tope (Iregory I., 41;. If there were no com- 
 pulsion at Clermont why did these poor Jews leave it ?
 
 174 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 century, of lialto the Erank in the sixth, of King Charles 
 the Great in the eighth, and remains a taxable unit, 
 however often it may be sold or divided, so long as 
 trihution is paid at all. As barbarism deepens and 
 communications become difficult, its owner comes to live 
 upon it in semifeudal isolation ; he parcels out its land to 
 clients, ////, liberti, servi. Little freehold enclaves may 
 remain for a century or two within it, whose owners are 
 not clients of Balto, but they are more and more cut off and 
 helpless if they don't take service under him. Before, in the 
 eighth century, it passes to the Crown (say by marriage, 
 bequest, or confiscation), the small freemen have been 
 ' levelled down,' and the slaves ' levelled up,' although the 
 generic name of villeins or villani for all is of somewhat 
 later date. All will owe certain services or rents in kind 
 to the " lord of the manor," and custom will have fixed 
 these services and rents at a rate not too high to be paid, 
 but needing unremitting agricultural toil of the payer. 
 There is continual manumission of slaves, for the Church, 
 though she owns slaves herself, encourages it ; but 
 there is continual recruiting of the servile class also, 
 by capture in war, by purchase from pirates, by 
 judicial sentences. The slave has a man-price if he is 
 slain, but it is paid to his master. He may not be sold 
 to a pagan, nor to a Jew, nor out of the country ; the 
 Church protects his marriage and his family life, it 
 excommunicates the lord who illtreats him, and is very 
 apt to offer him an asylum if he runs away. Some slaves 
 will probably have no land or fixed casata allotted to them ; 
 but a wise landowner will find that it pays him best to 
 allot to all, no doubt in smaller pieces than to litiis or 
 libertus. A litns may hold thirty or forty acres, which may 
 comprise arable, vineyard, pasture, and rights of common ; 
 his rent may be paid either in kind or in labour on the 
 lord's fields. 
 
 All this has a very ' feudal ' aspect, and ' feudalism ' 
 is no doubt deeply rooted in rural life before it reaches up 
 and grips the relation between the king and the great 
 landowners. Man comes to depend un man for his bread
 
 INCIPIENT FEUDALISM 175 
 
 and his freedom, soon also for his protection from other 
 men. Balto of Attigny has perhaps bought from King 
 Dagobert a charter, exempting his estate from taxation 
 and from the justice of the local court. A bishop or a 
 monastery (and the Church cultivates her estates on the 
 same manorial plan) will be certain to possess such a 
 charter. So Balto or the abbot judges and polices his own 
 estate, takes the fines for his men's crimes, and perhaps 
 even hangs them. In theory the people of Gaul are still 
 supposed to be under Roman law ; in reality they are 
 under the nearest great landowner. And, on the whole, 
 it was better for them to be so. Before the end of the 
 seventh century every guarantee of Roman citizenship 
 was gone, and justice had become a mere matter of profit 
 to the king or his agents. Three weary centuries of 
 land-grabbing and man-.stealing have left the patronage 
 of the great the sole refuge of those who wish for 
 protection. There is no fun in Civis Ronianus sutn^ when 
 there is no Rome left to protect you ; you had better 
 (supposing you are not a Jew), 'commend yourself to 
 the Bishop of Clermont. Soon we shall see that even the 
 king himself will be obeyed not because he is the king, but 
 only because he has immense numbers of people in his 
 intDid, his protection, and that he will be obeyed only by 
 those who are in such mund. Personal ties will have 
 supplanted political allegiance. Then the kings will give 
 estates, and hereditary estates, to their ' fideles ' on 
 condition of service in future wars, simp)}- because they 
 cannot otherwise get served at all. And feudalism will 
 then be full-blown. 
 
 That there were villages not upon any great man's 
 estate is pretty certain ; there may have been associations 
 of small free landowners for mutual protection and help 
 in agriculture, which grew into villages and towns ; and 
 also, at all places of river - ford or mountain -crossing, 
 such villages would be sure to spring up, even on ' no- 
 man's land ' ; but in time all such must pass either under 
 manorial or royal protection. 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length on the conditions of Gaul
 
 176 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 ill transition, partly because we have some sources of 
 knowledge for them, which we lack for those of Spain 
 and Italy, partly because the history of France is such a 
 much greater one than that of any other child of the 
 Roman Empire.^ Italy was a ruin at the end of the sixth 
 century ; Spain, as far as wc know anything of her, was 
 doing her best to ruin herself even before she was 
 conquered by the 'Moors' in 711. Moreover, we may 
 fairly guess that, wherever in Italy or Spain there was 
 partial exemption from ruin, life, both urban and rural, 
 and the shapes assumed by ' Government,' were not 
 wholly unlike that which I have tried to describe as 
 existing in Gaul. In Eastern Europe all civilisation was 
 dying at the hands of the Slavs. Germany was not yet 
 born ; if she cannot be called a child, she will be a grand- 
 child of Rome, for the womb of Frankish Gaul is already 
 heavy with her. Gaul herself will, indeed, suffer badly 
 in the ninth century at the hands of the northern pirates ; 
 but she will not be ruined, and her civilisation will always 
 remain more Roman than that of any other European 
 nation. 
 
 Now I do not suppose that my readers will care to 
 learn much about the chronology, the pedigrees, or the 
 crimes of the Merovingian kings of Gaul, from Clovis to 
 that Childeric III. who was deposed in favour of Pippin 
 the Caroling in 751, nor about the frequent divisions into 
 kingdoms of Metz, Soissons, Orleans, of Austrasia, Neustria 
 and Burgundy. No geographical reason can be alleged for 
 these divisions, and no reason for the occasional reunions 
 of the whole except that these last usually mean that, for the 
 moment, all descendants of Clovis except one have been 
 killed. The royal race of the Burgundians is finally 
 extinguished in 534 and their territory ruled by a Frankish 
 king, sometimes in union with Neustria or Austrasia, 
 sometimes not. A strip of Southern Gaul remains under 
 Visigothic kings of Spain right into the eighth century, 
 and Aquitaine is always a land apart, which will give the 
 
 ^ This book will purposely avoid the history of one of the greatest 
 of the children — our own country.
 
 TIIK MEROVINGIAN KINGS 177 
 
 Carolingians endless trouble. The basis of the population 
 of Aquitaine was not Celtic at all but Iberian, or Basque 
 (/>., non- Aryan), although it had been quite as much 
 Romanised as Provence had been. Brittany also gives 
 trouble, and there are Prankish wars against it from the 
 end of the fifth till the eighth century ; it has been largely 
 repeoplcd by real Britons ' flying from the heathen Saxons 
 in the fifth and sixth ; but the Brittany of the Dark Ages 
 always means Western Brittany only ; the Breton cities 
 of Nantes and Rcnnes are then both in ' Gaul,' We shall 
 find under Charles the Great an official called a ' Warden 
 of the Breton March.' 
 
 The most famous incident in the history of the Mero- 
 vingian Franks is the long rivalry of thirty years between 
 two queens, the Prankish slave-girl Predegonda of Neustria 
 and the Visigothic princess Brunhilda of Austrasia and 
 Burgundy. It is one long tale of atrocious murders, murders 
 of sons, of brothers, and of wives, ending in 613 when old 
 Brunhilda is tied to the tail of a wild horse and dragged to 
 death by order of Clothair 1 1. The most interesting person 
 is Predegonda's husband Chilperic, murdered in 584. 
 Gregory knew him well and disliked him extremely. Amaz- 
 ing to say, he was a man of some learning and wrote verses, 
 ' though these conformed to no rules of prosody or metre.' 
 He wanted, like the Emperor Claudius before him, to 
 introduce some Greek letters to the Latin alphabet ; in 
 fact he ordered all the books in his kingdom to be re- 
 written in his new spelling. Also he had some startling 
 views on theology, for he wished to abolish the distinction 
 of Persons in the Trinity, and simply to say ' God.' 
 Gregory quoted Hilary and Eusebius against him, but he 
 seemed to regard these long-dead saints as his personal 
 enemies. Pinally he was told plainly that, whatever else 
 he did, he must not meddle with theology ; the bishops 
 evidently regarded these tastes of his as those of a 
 dangerous lunatic, who would be better employed in 
 murdering his relatives. But he did plenty of that too, 
 
 • Hence perhaps the legend of the Forest of Broceliande in the 
 Arthurian story ; that lies in Central Brittany. 
 
 M
 
 178 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 and he even annulled the wills of men who made large 
 bequests to the Church.^ 
 
 Theudebert (534-548) is perhaps another king worth 
 remembering ; we have already seen him prosecuting 
 his conquests in Italy in Justinian's time, and driven back 
 by the plague ; he is a man of some importance because 
 he thoroughly vindicates Prankish power in south-west 
 Germany, coins gold, and evidently frightens Justinian 
 with tall talk about pushing on towards the south-east of 
 Europe. As the sixth century goes on we begin to hear 
 of Bavarians, Thuringians, and Saxons, all more or less 
 hostile to, but often beaten by the East Prankish kings ; 
 we also hear of Slavonic tribes coming from the Vistula 
 or the Oder towards the Elbe and the Upper Main. The 
 death of Clothair I. (also a valiant conqueror) in 561 led to 
 a fresh partition and to the wars of Predegonda and 
 Brunhilda which I have just mentioned ; these to some 
 extent arrested the growth of the Frank power as a whole, 
 though there were continual frontier raids and wars 
 between the Burgundian-Pranks and the newly arrived 
 Lombards in the West Alpine region. That same Mum- 
 molus, who stole for his king the finger-bone of St Sergius, 
 was the hero of several of these wars ; it is perhaps worth 
 noticing, in consideration of what was coming, that at the 
 end of the sixth century the Pope several times invoked 
 Prank aid against Lombards, and that the good Catholic 
 Pranks responded readily to his call ; but this was not to 
 be the case in the seventh century. 
 
 During the civil wars of 561-614 the power of the 
 grandcs seems to have increased very much, and a fore- 
 shadow of much future history may be seen in an edict of 
 Clothair II., who became sole king of the Pranks when he 
 had murdered Brunhilda (613). It is evident that this 
 edict is wrung from him, for he ' decrees ' (or rather, in 
 reality, promises) that counts shall only be chosen to 
 administer districts of which they are natives, and that the 
 Crown will not confiscate the lands of those who die 
 intestate, nor compel widows and girls of their grandes to 
 • Gregory V., 32.
 
 RISE OF THE CAROLINGS 179 
 
 marry against their will. This last promise reminds us of 
 our own Magna Charta, and this edict of 614 has some- 
 times been called a charter. But to whom arc the 
 promises made ? Not to any ' hereditary aristocracy,' for 
 there is no definite aristocracy in existence ; but just to the 
 grandes and other officers of the Palatiuni who want to 
 become an hereditary aristocracy. 
 
 To Clothair II. succeeded Dagobert I. (628-638) as sole 
 king : externally he has a great show of power ; he is 
 sometimes treated as the typical Merovingian king ; his 
 territory stretches from Elbe to Atlantic, and he not only 
 interferes in Spanish politics, but is an ally of the Emperor 
 HeracHus, and in that capacity fights and beats Slavs 
 and Avars far on his Eastern frontier, without neglecting 
 to subdue the usual rebellions in Aquitaine and Brittany. 
 But his grandes are growing strong, and in his last years 
 force him to cede his Eastern dominions to his son. After 
 Dagobert's death it does not matter what the king is 
 called ; the real power is in the hands of the Mayor of the 
 Palace, and there is generally a Mayor of Neustria and a 
 Mayor of Austrasia, and sometimes also a Mayor of 
 Burgundy. 
 
 Among the grandes who had been instrumental in the 
 destruction of Brunhilda, and in wringing the edict of 614 
 from Clothair II., were a certain Arnulf and a certain 
 Pippin. Arnulf who, according to his family 'tree' had 
 married into a Roman senatorial house from Narbonne, 
 had graduated as Duke and as I^ishop of Mctz before he 
 became Saint Arnulf. Pippin became Austrasian Mayor 
 in 622 ; the son of Arnulf married the daughter of Pippin, 
 and we must keep our eyes on the offspring of that 
 marriage. Pippin's own son Grimoald afterwards became 
 Mayor of Neustria, and actually tried to get Jiis son chosen 
 king in Austrasia. Ikit the P^ranks were not yet prepared 
 to abandon the race of Clovis, and both (jrimoald and his 
 son were killed, and the families of Pippin and St Arnulf 
 got a bad set-back for some years. Not long after the 
 overthrow of a terrible ruffian called Ebroin, Pippin II., 
 grandson both of St Arnulf and Pippin I., became
 
 i8o THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 Austrasian Mayor in 68 1, and beat the Neustrians in fafr 
 fight six years later. He hammered heathen Frisians on 
 the Lower Rhine and beyond it, he hammered Alamans 
 on the Main ; and so completely did he act as if he were 
 the real ruler of the Franks that he nominated a little boy 
 of six to be Mayor of Neustria. Like all of his house, 
 except his famous son Charles Martel, he was devoted to 
 the Church ; he encouraged missionary preaching in 
 heathen Frisia and Central Germany, and, where he could, 
 he protected the missionaries with the sword. When he 
 died in 714 we find that, like a regular king, he had left a 
 hoard of ' treasure,' for which there was a family squabble 
 developing into a sort of civil war. Victorious from that 
 war emerged the most vigorous of his three sons Charles, 
 soon to be called Charles Martel, ' the hammer.' It was 
 a bad time for good Catholics to squabble, for the Moors 
 were at that moment crossing the Pyrenees ! 
 
 Before we inquire what the children of the sun and the 
 desert were doing among the snows of the Pyrenees, we 
 must look back for a few moments to the earlier fortunes 
 of Spain and Italy. Very little is discoverable about either 
 of them. Spain, once a rich and flourishing Roman 
 province, especially abounding in mineral wealth, has 
 always suffered from its internal mountain barriers ; it is 
 a table-land cut up, without plan or symmetry, by high and 
 arid ranges, and the only real plain is that of the Ebro on 
 the north-east.^ The extreme south is really a bit of Africa, 
 the date-palm ripens there, and monkeys may be seen 
 scrambling about on the rock of Gibraltar. The east has 
 
 * The Pyrenees are really a worse barrier than the Alps, partly 
 because their main slope is the other way (steep to climb from the 
 north), but more because the passes are mainly at the eastern and 
 western extremities. No doubt there are more passes than geography 
 books would have us believe, but there are long stretches without 
 them, and this accounts for the long independence of little isolated 
 cantons of shepherd folk far up among the rocks, one of which survives 
 to-day as the 'Republic of Andorra.' Counties like Barcelona and 
 Beam owed their importance to their guardianship of the passes, 
 just as King Cottius in the days of Augustus, and the Savoyards in 
 later history owed theirs to their use of snow-shovels on the great 
 Alpine highways.
 
 VISIGOTHIC KINGS IN SPAIN i8i 
 
 a climate like that of Italy ; the west, like that of Ireland. 
 The racial base was ' Iberian,' whatever that may mean ; 
 but the close connection with Africa must always have led 
 to immigration from, as well as emigration to that continent. 
 No doubt the Vandal wave of the early fifth century may 
 have left a silt in Spain, and the Suevic wave had even left 
 a little Suevic kingdom in Gallicia and North-west 
 Portugal (strangely enough its kings early became 
 Catholics); but the Visigoths, few as they were, had since 
 the middle of the fifth century far outnumbered all other 
 Teutonic races in Spain ; and the Visigothic kings, who 
 reigned at Toulouse and afterwards at Toledo, seem, at first, 
 in spite of their Arianism, to have got on well with their 
 Hispano-Roman subjects. The Lex Romana Visigothoruvi, 
 composed in Aquitaine in 506, did much to unify the 
 Goths and Spaniards, and was followed by a scries of 
 codes called Leges Visigothoriini in the seventh century. 
 The Origi?ies of Bishop Isidore of Seville (early seventh), 
 the greatest compendium of ancient literature made in the 
 West during the Dark Ages, was addressed to Roman and 
 Goth alike. And, up to the arrival of the Franks, it had 
 looked as if the Visigothic power was going to be dominant 
 in Gaul as well as in Spain. 
 
 But the conquest of the Visigoth Alaric II., by Clovis 
 in 507, embittered the Arianism of the Goths as well as 
 drove them back almost to the Pyrenees ; with the Franks 
 the Visigoths never ceased to fight for the southern strip 
 of Gaul till their monarchy fell for good. The wars of 
 Catholic Ju.stinian against Arian Goths in Italy, gave the 
 Spanish brethren of the latter a strong feeling of the 
 .solidarity of the Gothic race, and in the middle of the 
 sixth century their king Theudis sent help to Totila ; he 
 was even inclined to cross the straits and to tackle the 
 recently re-Romanised province of Africa en fevers. But 
 Justinian retaliated on them ; after the final fall of the 
 Ostrogothic kingdom he sent his general Liberius to Spain 
 (554), conquered many of the coast towns including Cadiz, 
 and even penetrated to Cordova, while his fleets sailed 
 round the peninsula and appeared in the Garonne.
 
 i82 THE nf:w nations 
 
 No doubt the Greeks were aided by rebellious Visigoths 
 as well as by Catholic provincials, for the Visigoths seem to 
 have established an hereditary aristocracy, of immense 
 power and turbulence, much earlier than the Franks. 
 Lcovigild, who moved the capital from Toulouse and 
 reigned at Toledo from 567 to 5 86, had almost as much 
 trouble with his own rebels as he had with the invaders. But 
 he triumphed over both, and put to the sword all the Greek 
 garrisons which he took, although the last of these were 
 not actually expelled till 624. Leovigild also extinguished 
 the small Suevic kingdom for good ; the name of the city 
 of Vittoria does not commemorate the triumph of Arthur, 
 afterwards Duke of Wellington, over the French in 181 3, 
 but that of Leovigild over the Sueves. The same king 
 commenced a fierce persecution of the Catholics, and even 
 put his own son to death for that faith. But another son, 
 his successor Reccared, at once accepted Catholicism, and 
 seems to have had no difficulty in persuading his Goths to 
 do likewise ; he was Pope Gregory's darling convert. The 
 Council of Toledo (589 or 590) is the birthday of that too 
 vigorous Spanish orthodoxy, that alliance of Church and 
 State, which survived the Moorish conquest and found its 
 highest exponent in Philip II. Goth and Spaniard rapidly 
 became one people, and signalised their union by a long 
 series of glorious persecutions of the Jews. 
 
 Yet the turbulence of the nobles was not in the least 
 restrained by these changes and went from worse to worse. 
 The terrible old king Kindaswintha, who began his ten 
 years' reign (642-652) at the age of seventy-nine, had to 
 direct all his cruel energies against his over-mighty 
 subjects, whom he put to death by the score with a zeal 
 worthy of an Ameer of Afghanistan. One reason of their 
 turbulence was that the stream of Teutonic blood in Spain 
 was a comparatively thin one ; the peninsula is vast and 
 Goths and Sueves were few, so those of them who became 
 powerful became very powerful. They drove their Hispano- 
 Roman tenants to follow them to their civil battles in large 
 disorderly hosts ; small free landholders were extinct in 
 Spain much sooner than in the neighbouring kingdoms.
 
 LOMBARD KINGS IN ITALY 183 
 
 During the last half century of Christian rule shadowy 
 king succeeded shadowy king, more often by election, 
 usurpation, or murder than by hereditary right. Of one 
 of these Wamba, who tried to vindicate royal power and 
 enrol the once free peasants in his army (thereby offending 
 their lords, who needed them for other purposes), the story 
 is told that in 680 he was caught, after too good a dinner, 
 was tonsured and woke up in a monastery. When he 
 protested, he was told that it was ' only one of his delusions 
 that he had ever been king, he had always been a monk.' 
 The hero of the exploit whose name was Earwig became 
 king in his stead, but he too ended by dying in a monastery. 
 Hardly do we know who was the last king of old Christian 
 Spain ; some say it was Witiza, some say it was Roderic. 
 l^ut whoever he was, he and his kingdom were extinguished 
 at a blow by the Moorish invaders in 711. 
 
 When we turn to Italy the story of the seventh century 
 is not quite so unknown ; though we must not put credence 
 in all the statements of the lives of the popes in the Liber 
 Pontificalis, that work becomes much more full about this 
 date. And we have the Lombard deacon, Paul, as a 
 highly intelligent writer on the period. Yet we can hardly 
 call him a guide, for his national sympathies pull him one 
 way and his religious prejudices another. He writes, 
 moreover, towards the end of the eighth century, but he 
 undoubtedly used an earlier history of the Lombards, and 
 he had very good means of knowing what he was writing 
 about There are besides a great number of papal letters 
 and documents surviving. 
 
 Much of the papal history is of course concerned with 
 the relations between Rome and Constantinople, and with 
 those between Rome and Ravenna, where the exarchate 
 dragged on an ever-shrinking existence, always threatened 
 both by Pope and Lombard until the middle of the eighth 
 century. On these points I shall have more to sa)' when I 
 come to make the Papacy the pivot of a later chapter. Of 
 the internal history of Italy itself our authorities tell us 
 next to nothing ; the darkness actually increases more at 
 the centre of world-history, ' Konic which was once the
 
 i84 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 Capital of the World ' as Paul the deacon calls it, than at the 
 extremities. The great monastery of Saint Benedict at 
 Monte Cassino, sacked by the Lombards at their first 
 invasion, was empty for over a hundred years until it was 
 restored in the reign of Liutprand in the eighth century. 
 The things we really want to know most no one tells us, e.g. 
 whether there was a Byzantine governor in Rome itself; 
 if so what were his relations with the Pope ; did he live 
 in a corner of the crumbling Palatine house ? Did the 
 Lombards, after they had settled down, get on well or ill 
 with the Italian provincials? Even the best of Lombard 
 laws, and there are some good ones, only once mention 
 • Romans ' (a single sentence speaks of a ' Roman female 
 slave'); but this viay\it. interpreted to mean that they ignored 
 all distinction of race. And it is quite clear that the Italians 
 themselves must have ' lived ' Roman law. Did the towns 
 retain any trace of curies or self-government ? No answer 
 can be given. We begin to hear of a ' Duchy of Rome,' 
 which is more than what we now call the Roman Campagna^ 
 and reaches to the Liris (Garigliano) ; we ought therefore 
 to presume the regular existence of a dux or duke to 
 govern it, but it is little more than a presumption, for we 
 seldom meet him in the flesh. We also hear of a Duchy of 
 Naples ; the Greeks did certainly hold on to fragments of 
 this, though always at war with the Lombard dukes of 
 Benevento for it, right down to the tenth century. The 
 Venetian lagoons in the north are also under a duke and 
 altogether escape the Lombards, as they will afterwards 
 escape the Franks. A slender strip of territory, alv/ays 
 terribly at the mercy of the Lombard Duke of Spoleto, 
 connects Rome and Ravenna and also escapes them. The 
 Genoese riviera, with Genoa as its capital, escapes them till 
 about 640. Perhaps there were some Byzantine officials 
 of a military kind in these districts, and perhaps these 
 began to form the germs of such ' feudal ' aristocracy as 
 afterwards came to exist in Italy ; we do hear vaguely of 
 ' tribunes,' and these may have been nominated either by 
 the exarch at Ravenna or directly by the emperor. 
 Certainly in Rome itself we shall soon begin to see the
 
 THE LOMBARD KINGS AND THE POPES 185 
 
 ^erms of a new aristocracy, who will perhaps become the 
 famous 'barons' of the tenth and followinj^ centuries; 
 they have their ' towers ' on the Campagna, and their 
 houses (perhaps fortified) in the city as well. As to their 
 origin or descent, we can only guess that they may have 
 been Byzantine officials, nephews or relatives of popes, or 
 military officers ; that in any single case they were the 
 issue of old senatorial families, is extremely unlikely. Of 
 one thing only we can feel sure, that all great men, 
 whether of Lombard, Greek or Latin extraction, strove to 
 make their offices, their property, and their titles hereditary, 
 and that they usually succeeded in doing so ; property and 
 authority became one and the same thing. Result : all 
 small proprietors must have sought the protection of some 
 great man, and feudal relations must have come in every- 
 where. 
 
 The popes of the seventh century, hardly one of whose 
 names is worth remembering, still need and get confirma- 
 tion from the emperor, who towards the end of that 
 century delegates the job to the exarch. They are oftener 
 Greek than Roman by descent, and this alone proves that 
 Constantinople had a good deal to say to their nomination. 
 But, like other bishops, they are still supposed to be 
 chosen by the 'clergy and people'^ of their city; and 
 these clergy and people are, as yet, ready to rally to them 
 whenever they are bullied by emperor or Lombard. More 
 and more, ever since Gregory the Great, Rome is getting 
 to look to the popes as sovereigns. 
 
 The Lombard Court of Pavia was not really as hostile 
 to the Papacy as the popes believed or pretended to 
 believe it to be ; but it had no conception of the ultimate 
 end for which the popes were working. It had, I think, 
 under Agilulf, who died in 615, under Queen Theodelinda, 
 who acted as regent till 626, under Rotharis (636-652), 
 Grimoald (662-671), above all under Liutprand, the best 
 and greatest of the Lombard kings (713-744), the natural 
 
 * Clerus, Ordo, aiqtte Popidus is the correct expression, ordo 
 standing no doubt for the curialis ordo, and naturally, when the curia 
 
 had K<"'"P> coni'n^f to mean tlie 'nobles,' surli as liiey were.
 
 i86 THE NEW NATIONS 
 
 and laudable ambition to create a Lombardo- Italian nation 
 with Rome as capital. The enemies of whom it took 
 account were the Greeks of Constantinople and their 
 exarch at Ravenna, and the Avars on the north-cast. But 
 it very naturally failed to conceive that the l^ishop of Rome 
 was ever likely to be its rival for temporal sovereignty in 
 Italy ; it would have needed superhuman insight, even for 
 Liutprand, who lived almost till the papal claim was made, 
 to have divined this. 
 
 It was not obstinate Arianism on the part of the 
 Lombards which prompted the popes to hate them so 
 much ; most of these kings were Arians up to 653 — none 
 actively after that. Theodelinda had been a most devout 
 Catholic. Rotharis, though an Arian, was quite favourable 
 to Catholics, and published in Latin in 643 a code of laws 
 on which Grimoald, who himself leaned to Catholicism, 
 improved twenty-five years later. Grimoald's code might 
 perhaps have proved to be a basis for the union of Latin 
 and Lombard peoples.^ Traces of intellectual interest 
 begin to appear at his court ; perhaps germs of the so- 
 called Lombard architecture, generally believed to be 
 much later, may be discovered before the middle of the 
 eighth century, though we cannot say for certain in what 
 style Theodelinda's basilica at Monza was first built. The 
 monastery of Bobbio, in the heart of the Lombard 
 Apennines, was a centre of Catholic propaganda, and does 
 not seem to have been disturbed ; in short, there is no 
 evidence that the Lombard Arians were, in the seventh 
 century, persecutors at all.'-^ Liutprand in the eighth was 
 the devoutest of Catholics and, indeed, it was his Catholic- 
 ism and his reverence for the ' Holy Father ' that again 
 and again spoilt his game. He was very nearly King of 
 Italy ; he was the right man to become King of Italy and 
 
 Ms it fanciful to reflect that one of the best of the heroes of the 
 Italian risorgimento bore the same name as King Grimoald's son, 
 Garibald? 
 
 - It is difficult to say when the Lombard tongue finally gave way 
 to the rustic Latin which was becoming Italian ; Lombard was spoken 
 in the time of Paul the Deacon.
 
 THE LOMBARD KINGS AND THE POPES 187 
 
 to make Italy a nation. Hut, by his time, the popes had 
 thoroughly grasi^cd the principle that there should be no 
 King of Italy. They would play off against him their out- 
 worn allegiance to the Empire (which at the very moment 
 they were uttcrl\' refusing to obey). They would threaten 
 him with hell-fire, they would call in the Franks against 
 him — but he should not be allowed to be a national 
 sovereign. 
 
 I do not say these kings, with the exception of 
 Liutprand, were not barbarians, for they were exceedingly 
 fierce ones ; I only say that the popes prevented them 
 from being anything better. The throne of Pavia was 
 oftener filled by usurpation following on murder than by 
 hereditary succession. The great dukes, especially those 
 of Spoleto and Bcnevento, were at perpetual war with 
 their nominal sovereigns. From the death of Grimoald, 
 himself an usurper, to the accession of Liutprand was one 
 long period of civil war and anarchy. Bui Liutprand was 
 a great restorer, a great pacificator and a very considerable 
 legislator. We shall meet him again after we have con- 
 sidered the events of the seventh century in the Nearer 
 East.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Time covered is roughly from 6o3, the deposition of Maurice at 
 Constantinople, to 768, the accession of Charlemagne as King of 
 the Franks. 
 
 The chief Events described are — (i) The last struggle between 
 Persia and the Roman Empire, 602-628. (2) The rise of 
 Mahomet and the consequent impact of the Arabs upon the 
 Persian and Roman Empires ; the history of the early caliphate 
 from the death of Mahomet in 634 till its split into two centres 
 at Bagdad and Cordova in 750 (see Argument to Chapter VII.). 
 (3) The steady Orientalising of the Eastern half of the Roman 
 Empire ; the loss of Syria, Africa, and much of Asia Minor to 
 the Arabs ; the imminent danger of the Balkan provinces from 
 Bulgarians and Avars ; the gradual loss of imperial hold on Italy 
 to the popes, to the Lombard kings, and finally to the Franks ; 
 yet the strengthening of what remained of the Empire. (4) The 
 struggle in Italy between the popes and Lombards, which leads 
 to the calling in of the Franks in 754, and the consequent fall 
 of the Lombard kingdom. (5) The growing weakness of the 
 Merovingian kings of the Franks, ending with the substitution 
 of the Caroling race as kings in 751. (6) The weakness of the 
 Papacy in the seventh century, followed by its increasing strength 
 under Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen II. 
 in the eighth ; the monothelite controversy between the West 
 and East in the seventh century, followed by the iconoclastic 
 controversy in the eighth ; all preparing for the separation of the 
 Eastern and Western Churches. (8) The fall of Christian Spain 
 before the Moors in 711 ; the danger in which France was 
 until the battle of Poitiers in 732. (8) The Christianisation of 
 Germany in the eighth century by missionaries working hand in 
 hand with the Caroling rulers of the Franks ; the organisation of 
 the German Church ; the growth of monasticism and superstition. 
 
 180
 
 IQO ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER VI 
 
 The chief Actors in these events are : — 
 
 (i) The Heraclian dynasty in Constantinople, beginning with 
 
 HERACLIUS I., 610-641. 
 
 I 
 CONSTANTINE III., died 641. 
 
 I 
 CONSTANS II., died 668, 
 
 I 
 
 CONSTANTINE IV., THE 
 
 BEARDED, died 685. 
 
 I 
 
 JUSTINIAN II., THE NOSE-CUT, LEONTIUS, 
 
 deposed 695, restored 705, succeeded on Justinian's deposition, 
 
 died 711. 695-698, 
 
 Then anarchy and shadow emperors was succeeded by 
 
 till the Isaurian dynasty begins TIBERIUS III. (or IV.), 
 
 with 698-705. 
 LEO III., 717-741. 
 See Table in Chapter Vil. 
 
 (2) Of the later Lombard kings in Italy, the only important ones 
 in this period are : — 
 
 LIUTPRAND, 713-744. 
 
 ASTULPH, 749-756. 
 
 DESIDERIUS, 756, deposed 774, the last Lombard King. 
 
 (3) The Prankish * Mayors of the Palace,' who became kings of 
 the Franks, 751. 
 
 ST ARNULF, PIPPIN I., 
 
 died 641, died 639. 
 
 ,1 
 
 their Grandson, 
 
 PIPPIN II., 
 
 died 714. 
 
 I 
 
 CHARLES MARTEL, 
 
 died 741. 
 
 CARLOMAN, PIPPIN, THE SHORT, Grifo. 
 
 became a Monk, King of the Franks, 751, 
 
 747. died 768. 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE, Carloman, 
 
 See Table, Chapter VII. died 771.
 
 PRANKISH 'MAYORS OF THE PALACK' 191 
 
 (4) Mahomet and his relations and successors, thus : — 
 
 There is a common Korcishite ancestry for 
 
 \ 
 
 I 
 
 Ommiah, 
 from whom descend the 
 Ommiad caliphs ; of whom 
 
 the most important arc : 
 MOAVIAH I., 661-680, 
 ABDUL MELIK, 685-705, 
 WELID I., 705-715, 
 ME R VAN II., 744-749. 
 Their seat of govern- 
 ment was at Damascus, 
 till they were overthrown 
 by the Abbassids ; their 
 last descendant escaped 
 to Spain, and established 
 himself at Cordova, 
 where one of his de- 
 scendant?, 
 
 ABDRRRAIIMAN 111., 
 took title of caliph, 929. 
 
 Ilashim, 
 from whom descend 
 
 I 
 Ahlallah 
 
 I 
 
 MAHOMET, 570-632, 
 
 who married 
 
 Ayesha, 
 
 daughter of 
 
 ABIJ-BRKR, 632-634, 
 
 and also 
 
 Hafsa. daughter of 
 
 OMAR I., 634-644. 
 
 Mahomet's three 
 
 daughters 
 
 Abbas, 
 from whom descends 
 
 ABUL ABBAS, 
 first Abbassid Caliph, 
 
 749-754. 
 
 whose son moved seat 
 
 of go\ernment to 
 
 Bagdad in 762. 
 
 From this line came 
 
 IIAROn.N AL 
 
 RASCniD, 
 
 786-809. 
 
 Fatima Two others 
 
 married successively 
 
 ALT, married 
 
 656-661. OTIIMAN I., 
 
 I 644-656. 
 
 From Ali 
 
 came 
 
 descendants 
 
 whom the 
 
 Shiites 
 
 revere. 
 
 The first four caliphs ruled from Medina and Mecca, but Ali also ruled 
 at Kufa. 
 
 See also notes on pp. 206, 207.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 HujUS in adventum jam nunc et Caspia regna 
 Responsis horrent divum et M^otia tellus, 
 Et septemgemini turbant trepida ostia Nili. 
 
 You will remember that, a few pages back, I referred to 
 certain ' Moors ' as crossing the Pyrenees at the beginning 
 of the eighth century. Who were the Moors,^ and what 
 business had they in those mountains? To understand 
 this we must begin by shifting the centre of the story 
 to Constantinople a century before. 
 
 In describing Justinian's reign I told you how certain 
 Greek philosophers had bethought themselves for a moment 
 of taking refuge in Persia. Persia was, in fact, not an 
 unnatural place for exiles who suffered from Constanti- 
 nopolitan orthodoxy. Heretics were suffering equally 
 and contemporaneously with philosophers, and, in the 
 conflict between heresy and orthodoxy, there had not 
 been wanting temptations to weak-kneed Christians to 
 apostatise outright to the Persian creed. This apostasy 
 had gone some length in provinces like Syria, and may 
 account for the ease with which their populations after- 
 
 ' It is difficult to know when to write 'Moors,' when 'Saracens' 
 or 'Arabs.' As the Arab conquest spread westwards and northwards 
 and absorbed many races with great rapidity, the bulk of Moslem 
 fighting men probably soon ceased to be of Arab descent. In Spain 
 one generally calls them 'Moors'; in Italy and the Mediterranean, 
 'Saracens'; in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, at first 'Arabs,' then 
 ' Saracens.' The Latin word Afaurus, Greek MaCpos, of uncertain 
 derivation, meant in the sixth and seventh centuries an inhabitant 
 of Mauritania, i.e., N.W, Africa. 
 
 192
 
 LAST ATTACK OF THE PERSIANS 193 
 
 wards accepted Islam. At least a bishop, who, like 
 Nestorius, had refused to call the Blessed Virgin ' Mother 
 of God,' might be fairly safe beyond the Euphrates. At 
 Edessa, still nominally within the Roman Empire, 
 ' Nestorians ' were strong in the sixth century, and passed 
 some shade of Greek culture on to the Persian kingdom 
 of Chosroes Nushirvan. The 'Great King' was not 
 wholly averse to the Nestorians, and their belief trickled, 
 in thin rivulets it is true and much corrupted, over parts 
 of Asia, even into India and China. 
 
 For Persia under the Sassanid dynasty, if it was 
 generally in conflict with the Roman Empire, was also 
 ever seeking to follow the path of Alexander towards the 
 rising sun. Out of this might almost spring the germs 
 of an agreement between the Roman emperor and the 
 Great King; the latter might say, 'I cannot swallow 
 India if you keep on bothering me on the Euphrates,' and 
 the former might reply, ' Well, my present designs are 
 on what you would call the Far West,' i.e., the Mediter- 
 ranean countries. It never quite came to this, but some 
 idea of the kind probably prompted the Emperor Maurice 
 to interfere in 591 in a Persian civil war, and to put 
 a Chosroes II. on the throne of Ctesiphon with the help 
 of a ' Roman ' army ; oddly enough a patriarch of the 
 Nestorian Church in Persia seems to have been a mediator 
 in the business. Therefore, when Maurice fell in 602, 
 Chosroes II. set out to avenge his friend on the tyrant 
 Phocas. 
 
 This was the beginning of a fearful impact of the 
 Persians on the Roman Empire. All the outlying 
 provinces were quickly overrun, for Phocas was as supine 
 and as incompetent as he was bloody, and, by the }-car 
 608, some Persian troops were actually ga/.ing at the 
 dome of Saint-Sophia from the sands of Chalcedon. At 
 Carthage ruled, in the name of the Empire, Heraclius the 
 Exarch of Africa, and he now prepared to liberate the 
 capital from Phocas and the Persians alike. He sent two 
 expeditions, one by land through Egypt, which quickly 
 cut off the corn supply from Constantinople, and one by 
 
 N
 
 T94 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 sea under his son, Heraclius the younger, to the Bosphorus. 
 The latter won an easy victory, for the capital was bare 
 of troops, and young Ilcraclius slew Phocas in 6io. He 
 was at once acclaimed emperor, and ought, if he had been 
 in force enough, to have proceeded to tackle the Persians. 
 
 But these, aided by ' Saracen ' hordes from the edge 
 of the Syrian desert, were in full career of victory. They 
 took Damascus in 613 ; they took Jerusalem with the Holy 
 Sepulchre and the True Cross ; they passed on to Egypt 
 and occupied Alexandria in 615, while in Asia Minor 
 another and larger Persian host had, for the second time, 
 penetrated to Chalcedon. Only a few isolated Greek 
 garrisons were holding out when, on the European side, 
 the Avars joined in the terrible game, swept into Thrace 
 and beleaguered the long wall of Anastasius. The last 
 vestige of Romano-Greek civilisation was trembling in 
 the balance, and the new emperor appeared to be as 
 powerless as Phocas himself. In despair he seems at 
 first to have contemplated the transference of the seat of 
 the Empire to Carthage, a step from which the shades of 
 Dido and /Eneas might alike have warned him. He was 
 a nervous, high-strung creature, full of mystical and religious 
 feelings, and subject to swift impulses of courage and panic 
 And so, while the capital still held out (for neither of its 
 barbarous enemies had any siege-craft at all, nor was there 
 any regular siege) we find that, in 620, he had bribed 
 the Avars to retire and was busy raising a new army. 
 Two years later he slipped across the Bosphorus, and 
 began a career of victory in the rear of the Persians ; he 
 penetrated through Armenia into the northern provinces 
 of Persia, and, in the fiery spirit of a crusader, destroyed 
 the temples of the fire-worshippers. 
 
 In 626 Chosroes made fresh treaties with Avars, 
 Bulgars and Slavs, and set on foot a great double siege 
 of Constantinople. Heraclius repeated his exploit of 
 622, landing his troops at Trebizond on the Eastern 
 Euxine. He could trust his Greek fleet to keep the 
 narrow Bosphorus, and, though the Avars had got through 
 the long wall, he could trust the walls of Constantine to
 
 VICTORIES OF HERACLIUS 195 
 
 protect the city itself. In fact, after starving for a month 
 in front of these walls, the Avars were obliged to retreat. 
 Meanwhile the gallant emperor had called to his aid 
 the wild tribes of the Caucasus, among them a tribe called 
 the TURKS, ^ and with them had again raided far into 
 Persian territory. The strange allies pressed on by way 
 of Nineveh to Dastagerd, a great palace and treasure- 
 place of Chosroes, which was utterly destroyed at the end 
 of 627. Still the main Persian army remained fronting 
 Constantinople at Chalccdon, and might long have 
 continued to do so, but for the discovery which its 
 commander made that his king intended to supersede 
 and probably kill him ; thereupon, in wrath, he gave 
 his king's whole cause away, concluded a peace with 
 the Constantinopolitan regency, and marched off East 
 with his whole force. Civil war in Persia followed, and 
 Chosroes was killed in 628. HeracHus may well have 
 ascribed his delivery, as he did, to the direct interference 
 of Heaven.- At the peace which followed he recovered 
 the True Cross and restored it with much pomp to the 
 Church at Jerusalem ; he recovered also all his provinces. 
 But the result of the wars had been that all the Near 
 East, on both sides of the Euphrates, had been drained 
 and wasted and ruined at the most critical moment in 
 its history. In wretched civil wars the Sassanid dynasty 
 flickered on for three more years, and in 632-6 fell for 
 ever before the Arab scimitar. 
 
 The Arabian Peninsula has been described as an island 
 between the desert and the sea, and, in fact, the northern 
 desert cuts it off almost entirely from contact with 
 
 ' Probably 'Chazars' of the Volga districts. 
 
 - He ascribed it to the Virgin Mary, who had hardly been an 
 ohiect of 7i>orsAt/> at all Ijefore the sixth century. Many saints were 
 worshipped before the Virgin, but always in some local cult, as at 
 the place of their martyrdom. St Mary of course obtained an infinite 
 number of local cults and local names, Init her real cult was to be 
 the universal one as 'Mother of God.' This has led some people to 
 ascribe her worship to Circek superstition, which welcomed her as 
 a returned Denietcr, others to trace it to Teutonic origin, as if she 
 were the Christianibcd Frcya or even Nerlhus(thc Teutonic Demclcr).
 
 196 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 Western civilisation except by way of the Red Sea. Over 
 that desert have roamed for countless generations untamed 
 tribes of ' Saracens,' as the ' Bedouins ' wander to-day. 
 But the southern cities of the Peninsula did a great trade 
 across the Red Sea, and some trade with the Far East, for 
 the Arabs were, before all things, natural merchants. 
 They believed themselves to be Semitic in origin — 
 children of Ishmael or of Esau, but it is clear that African, 
 and especially Ethiopian elements have largely leavened 
 the pure-bred Arab population. In the sixth century they 
 were mainly heathens, worshipping, among countless other 
 idols, a sacred stone which (as Mahomet afterwards said) 
 the Angel Gabriel had brought from heaven ; it had been 
 white when brought, but the sins of the people had 
 blackened it. It was kept in a temple at Mecca called 
 the Kaaba ; but Mecca was quite a recent foundation, 
 and of the earlier situation of the Black Stone nothing 
 is known.^ Gradually the Kaaba had been filled with 
 other idols, and so it had become the great centre of 
 Arab pilgrimage, and Mecca the most important of Arab 
 cities. 
 
 This was all to the profit of the ruling families or clans 
 of Mecca, especially of the clan of the Koreish, who had 
 the hereditary guardianship of the Kaaba. There was no 
 king, and the ' government,' such as it was, was purely an 
 aristocratic one. Among the aristocracy there was a good 
 deal of culture and poetry of a kind, tempered by fierce 
 blood feuds between clan and clan ; you cut your enemy's 
 throat and made a song on him either before or afterwards. 
 Among these same clans there lingered also something 
 more than a mere tradition of One God, Allah, the 
 Creator of all things. Jewish influence had largely con- 
 tributed to keep this alive — for, where w^as trade, there 
 were Jews — and to both Abraham and Moses as prophets 
 homage of a kind was paid. Christianity of a very 
 
 ' There were other Black Stones in history ; the priest-emperor 
 Elagabalus (218-221) had worshipped one at Emesa, and when he 
 assumed the purple he brought it to Rome and built a temple for it 
 on the Palatine.
 
 ARABIA AND ITS PROPHET 197 
 
 corruiJt species had also penetrated, either through the 
 desert or across the Red Sea. 
 
 Mahomet the son of Abdallah ' was horn in 570 or 571 
 at Mecca, of the ' Ilashimite' branch of the Koreishite 
 clan. His ancestors had ijrown rich by providing for 
 pilgrims who came to pray at the Black Stone, to which 
 idol his own father had once been very nearly sacrificed. 
 Young Isaac, in the Bible story, was redeemed for a 
 single ram ; it cost a hundred camels to redeem young 
 Abdallah. But a family feud and other ill luck had left 
 Mahomet in early youth an orphan and very poor ; the 
 leading Koreishites had become his enemies. A distant 
 relative, a rich widow called Kadishah made him her 
 steward and married him. Me soon rcjse to importance as 
 a man of integrity, and was famed for his gentleness 
 of character. All around him he saw, among the 
 ' intellectuals,' symptoms of di.scontent with the growth of 
 idol worship ; ' this,' said thoughtful men, ' is not the 
 faith of Abraham.' And it is evident that, before he 
 commenced prophet, Mahomet was already a pure mono- 
 theist. He was nervous, and given to ' ecstasies ' ; used 
 to go into 'retreats' and commune with his own soul in 
 the hills. He may have read - Christian or perhaps 
 Gnostic books ; many such were current, and some of 
 their readers already recognised Our Saviour as a third 
 great prophet. There were also prophetic books, said to 
 be due to angelic inspiration, handed about. Finall)' in 
 Cio Mahomet believed that he had received from the 
 Angel Gabriel a direct commission as a prophet. From 
 this time began the secret dictation to his friends (he could 
 
 ' It is, I think, admitted that no extant lives of the prophet can 
 with certainty be referred to a date earlier than the beginning of the 
 ninth century of our era, although these are no doubt based on much 
 earlier material. Arabia was essentially a land of traditions and of 
 the oral telling of tales, and Arabic the language of metaphor and 
 poetry. Under such conditions, how can we be sure of any of the 
 facts in the early history of Islam? We can, in most places, only 
 follow the received version of that history. (See Bury's Gibbon, v., 512.) 
 
 - Or perhaps have listened to their reading ; the prophet's ability 
 to read is doubtful ; certainly he was ill-educated.
 
 198 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 not write himself) of the ' Koran' ('thing read ' or 'thing 
 recited '). This is a collection of isolated sentences or 
 chapters, issued to his disciples according to the circum- 
 stances in which the prophet found himself; thus, if at one 
 time it enjoins mercy to non-believers, at another time it 
 commands to slay. There was no authoritative text of it 
 until the middle of the seventh century, when one was 
 issued by the fourth caliph, Othman. 
 
 At first Mahomet only conceived that he had a national 
 mission, to purge the Kaaba and all Arabia of idol 
 worship; indeed, to the end of his life, it may be 
 considered doubtful whether he really wished to extend 
 his power beyond the bounds of Arabian nationality. If 
 he in later years sent threatening messages to Greeks 
 and Persians, it may have meant merely that he believed 
 their officials to be harbouring Arab rebels against his 
 authority. But, as far as his own country was concerned, 
 there was a political ideal, side by side with the religious 
 ideal, from the first ; he meant to be master of Arabia in 
 the name of a mandate from on high. The first 
 ' believers ' (' Mussulman ' = believer) were members of 
 his own household ; the next were his nearer friends. 
 His father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, afterwards first caliph, was 
 the first to preach the mission openly. Hostility, railing 
 and persecution at once followed, especially from his own 
 clan of the Koreish, who feared the loss of their privileges 
 at the Kaaba. But adhesions followed also, and religious 
 factions began to appear in the fighting clans of Mecca. 
 In 6i6 there passed to his side the bravest and fiercest of 
 the aristocracy, Omar, afterwards second caliph. 
 
 The New Faith, if indeed there was anything new in 
 pure monotheism, had by this time got the name of 
 ' Islam,' i.e., abandonment to the Will of God. It was 
 simple in the extreme : — Allah is almighty ; He rewards 
 and punishes in a material Heaven and Hell of eternity. 
 Mahomet is the Prophet of God, superseding all others, for 
 there have been others, Abraham, Moses and Jesus ; there 
 is a hierarchy of angels, good, fallen and bad ; there are 
 demons or spirits all round us called 'djins,' 'afreets'
 
 THE FAITH OF ISLAM 199 
 
 (fairies). The only ritual is prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrim- 
 age, except when a jcluid (holy war) is proclaimed, when 
 fighting is a ritual. The Decalogue of the Old Testament 
 is in force. Mahomet in fact borrows several ideas from 
 the old Jewish scriptures, but more, especially the swift 
 entry to Paradise for true believers, from the Talmud. His 
 God is a King not a Father ; He is a tribal God, the Jahweh 
 of the Old Testament writers in His very worst mood. 
 Much also is borrowed, besides the inferiority of women, 
 from old heathenism, for the afreets and the like are only the 
 old idols of the Arab race ; something from Christianit)', 
 e.g., mercy towards slaves, the doctrine of brotherhood and of 
 equality of all (believers) in the sight of God ; but, in 
 detail, more from the Apocryphal Gospels than from the 
 New Testament. But above all the New Faith was built 
 so as to appeal to the best and worst instincts of the Arab 
 races, their simplicity, their patriotism, their lust for fight- 
 ing and for women. Islam has of course been much 
 glossed and corrupted in places ; but, probably because 
 there has been no priesthood, its groundwork has hardly 
 been shifted at all. If rationalistic explanations have 
 sometimes crept in, they have always been liable to be 
 overset by a revival of pure Islam, and the iinauvn 
 (teachers or holy men) who date from the caliphate of 
 Omar, have been singularly free from new doctrines. 
 
 At first belief in Allah and himself was all Mahomet 
 asked ; ^ and this the magic of his personality rapidly 
 obtained. ' God would fight for his own,' and the Prophet 
 was ready to face all odds and all prejudice. As the 
 prejudice of Mecca seemed for the moment invincible, he 
 began to think of appealing for support to some other 
 Arabian city. At Yatreb (later called Medina) the 
 citizens had heard from the Jews that a Messiah was near, 
 and began to inquire if Mahomet were he. Meetings 
 were held with Yatrebitcs, and, by an agreement of a very 
 prosaic nature, the latter definitely undertook the protec- 
 
 ' ' My child, when the angels ask thee who thou art,' he says to 
 his dying son, 'thus shalt thou answer: — "God is my God, the 
 Prophet of God was my Father, and my faith was Islam."'
 
 200 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 tion of the prophet and his friends without committing 
 themselves to complete belief. Mecca looked upon this 
 agreement as a declaration of war, and all the 
 'Mahometans' in it streamed away to Medina — the 
 Prophet and two faithful friends the last of all — in fear of 
 their lives, and by devious paths. His favourite wife 
 Ayesha^ used in after years to tell the story of this 
 'Hegira'^: — 'I had never seen my father, Abu Bekr, 
 weep before ; but he wept tears of joy when my husband 
 asked him to be one of his companions in the flight.' 
 
 It was the 20th September 622, and the Prophet was 
 in his fifty-second or fifty-third year. 
 
 Even in Medina believers were at first few, of whom 
 perhaps not a hundred were exiles from Mecca ; but they 
 built a mosque and recognised the Prophet not only as the 
 Prophet but as supreme judge and captain of all believers. 
 The sovereignty of one man, uniting in his own person 
 supreme power in Church and State, was thus of the 
 essence of Islam. For some five years from the Hegira 
 little progress was made ; there was civil war between 
 Mecca and Medina, and blood was shed upon both sides. 
 In the course of this the Prophet, though not dis- 
 playing much courage himself, put forward the leading 
 principle of the Faith, that all who fall for Islam go 
 straight to Paradise. He had been most anxious to win 
 over the Jews, and many of the leaves of the Koran 
 preach toleration both to them and to Christians ; but 
 when the Jews of Medina got tired of him (and he was by 
 no means their idea of a Messiah), his attitude towards 
 them changed, and, indeed, power and fighting were 
 rapidly changing his character for the worse. In 627 the 
 Meccans took the offensive and appeared in some force 
 before Medina ; but Mahomet put on a bold front, and 
 entrenched his few followers outside the town so strongly 
 ' Kadishah had died in 619. The Prophet had some thirteen 
 enumerated wives in all, and endless other connections with women. 
 
 - The 'era' of the Hegira was established by Caliph Omar in 
 637 or 638. It was upon the same day 1248 years afterwards that the 
 Italian troops entered Rome and put an end to the temporal 
 sovereignty of the Pope.
 
 DEATH OF MAHOMET 201 
 
 that the enemy thought it prudent to retire. This was the 
 first great victory. It converted all Medina except the 
 Jews, and on the Jews the Prophet took a bloody 
 vengeance. Moreover the ' sign from heaven ' of this 
 victory made the Mcccans waver, and more and more of 
 the aristocracy joined him each month. In 628 he went 
 with 2000 armed followers to Mecca, performed his 
 pilgriinagc and returned safe. In 630 with five times that 
 number he entered the capital as Lord and Master, 
 destroyed all the idols in the Kaaba except the Black 
 Stone, abolished all the privileges of the aristocracy, and 
 proclaimed that all Mussulmans were brothers. He did 
 not abolish slavery or the social side of the clan-system, 
 but henceforth the absence of any hereditary aristocracy is 
 one of the most marked characteristics of Mohammedan 
 countries. The Prophet held no court, but lived with the 
 utmost simplicity and freed all his own slaves. 
 
 Two }'cars, and two only of autocracy were granted to 
 Mahomet, and it is impossible to say what his further 
 intentions may have been. Arabia itself was by no means 
 united in his favour ; there may have been places in it 
 which had hardly heard his message, l^o Greeks, 
 Persians, and Abyssinians he had sent missionaries pro- 
 claiming his prophetship and demanding the surrender of 
 rebels — perhaps also demanding acceptance of himself, but 
 neither the Emperor nor the Great King had paid any 
 attention to them. Some sort of armed conflict with the 
 Greeks had happened before 632, and Islam had not been 
 victorious. And when in that year the Prophet died the 
 death of all men, and was not visibly rapt away to Heaven 
 in a whirlwind, there was not only an instant revolt of 
 many Arab tribes, but a very large crop of False Prophets ; 
 Islam was almost wrecked before it was well launched. 
 Obviously it was for someone to claim to be Mahomet's 
 successor, though he had nominated none. 
 
 Several claims were in fact at once put forward, both 
 among the ' Companions ' of the Hegira and among those 
 who had protected him at Medina. If heredity were to be 
 reckoned, AH, the husband of his daughter Fatima, had
 
 202 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 the best claim. Hut both Abu llckr and Omar were his 
 fathers-in-law, and each commanded more voices than AH ; 
 according to one story it came to a courtesy-strife between 
 them, each seeking to prefer the other. Finally Abu- 
 Bekr was elected, and took the title of ' Caliph ' (Lieu- 
 tenant of the Prophet of God). He reigned for but two 
 years at Medina (632-4), and needed all his time and 
 firmne.ss to put down the revolts in Arabia, against which 
 he took ruthless vengeance. He saw too that a foreign 
 war of conquest was the safest means of appealing to Arab 
 pride and greed, and he began wars with Persia and the 
 Roman Empire at once. With Persia this history will 
 have little more to do ; its connection with the Roman 
 Empire or any of its children is at an end. It was quickly 
 overrun, though the Persians fought bravely, and in it were 
 founded the first great military colonies of the New Faith. 
 Trade followed the flag, and the opening of the great 
 trade-route to the Persian Gulf benefited not only the Arab 
 merchants, but all European markets as well. Eastwards 
 the prospects of Islam seemed illimitable. 
 
 Westwards for the first century they seemed hardly 
 less. Omar succeeded as caliph at Medina in 634, a man of 
 perfect integrity and simplicity, and a born leader of men. 
 His greatest effort was at once directed against the Roman 
 province of Syria. Four armies were set in the field, and 
 a Greek force was annihilated near Gaza ; then, by the 
 ' pilgrims' ' road (east of the Dead Sea), the Moslem 
 pressed on towards Damascus. Once they were driven 
 back for Heraclius was not wholly unprepared, but in 635 
 they came again. Syria was quite ready ; the native 
 Syrian had always been too lazy, too low in the human 
 scale to benefit by Graeco-Roman civilisation ; while the 
 really intelligent population, the Jews, had been far more 
 persecuted from Constantinople than ever they were likely 
 to be from Mecca. Rostra, the .southern outpost of Syria 
 fell, and then 
 
 the rose-red city half as old as time 
 
 was the first great conquest of Islam. There was no 
 massacre and no persecution. Churches were to be spared
 
 MAHOMETAN CONQUEST OF SYRIA 203 
 
 — indeed for eighty years St John's at Damascus was 
 shared as a place of worship between C'hristian and Moslem. 
 Tribute was to be paid and a poll tax on every Christian — 
 not so heavy, thought some Christians, as the Roman land- 
 tax. Omar's simple plan, which contributed much to sustain 
 the advance of his people, was to give four-fifths of all booty 
 to the army which won the battle, and to pay the other fifth 
 into the treasury, which then distributed it, in endowments 
 or pensions, to the 'Companions' of the Hegira and other 
 Arab warriors. 
 
 Heraclius was not the man to submit without a struggle, 
 and he gathered a large force at Antioch, which was 
 entirely defeated at Gadara. From Damascus, southwards 
 towards Palestine and eastwards towards the Euphrates, 
 the Arab warriors carried all before them. The Greek 
 governor, after a valiant fight outside the walls of Jerusa- 
 lem, fled to Egypt, and the Holy City, True Cross and all, 
 was surrendered by its j)atriarch to the caliph in person 
 (636). Antioch followed in 638, and the taking of Ca.'sarea 
 completed the conquest of Syria. By what tactics or 
 strategy, if any at all, the early victories of Islam were won, 
 we have no means of knowing. The Byzantine army, 
 though not yet nearly as good as it was to be a century or 
 two later, still preserved the defensive armour, the discipline, 
 and the tactics of Rome. Both Maurice and Heraclius 
 had been soldiers of merit, and Maurice especially was a 
 military reformer, who thought and wrote on strategical 
 problems. But those who remember the impact of the 
 Dervishes of the Soudan on British squares in Eg}'pt at 
 the end of the nineteenth century, will wonder the less at 
 the success which the pure fanaticism of the Arabs of the 
 seventh century obtained. When the only thing to be 
 done, to win the everlasting and very material joys of 
 their Paradise, was to kill and be killed by their enemy, 
 they went and did it. They charged in clouds of light 
 horsemen on centre and on wings and they counted no 
 odds, however great, against them. 
 
 It was more than unfortunate that, in addition to the 
 recent Persian war, the dominions of the emperor had
 
 204 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 been suffering from a new and acute attack of religious 
 frenzy. Heraclius had been trying over again the hopeless 
 task of Zeno and Anastasius, the reconciliation of those who 
 held that Christ had one nature with those who held that 
 He had two. The formula was invented that in Him 
 had been two natures, but only one OeXrjfia, euepyeia (will 
 or ' energy '). Hence the new heresy — for a heresy in 
 Western eyes it at once became — was called the ' Mono- 
 thelite.' The ' Ecthesis,' or explanation in which 
 the emperor put forward his new doctrine, was even 
 received by Pope Honorius, though rejected everywhere 
 else in the West. This pope's memory was subsequently 
 condemned for the reception, a fact which has induced 
 sceptics to question the doctrine of the infallibility of popes. 
 Heraclius was for other reasons unpopular at Rome, for he 
 had once told his exarch to seize the treasure of the 
 Lateran Palace and to ship it to Constantinople, to provide 
 for the defences of that city. He had family troubles too ; 
 he married his own wicked niece, and tried to prefer her 
 children (by Roman law illegitimate), for the succession, to 
 his own son by an earlier marriage. He died in 641, and 
 his eldest son Constantine III. died in the same year. His 
 grandson, Constans II., was recognised by one party and 
 held Chalcedon, while the wicked niece's son Heracleon 
 held Constantinople. P>om the death of Heraclius to. the 
 accession of Leo III. in 717 the Eastern portion of the 
 Roman Empire seemed to be going wholly to pieces, 
 except during the useful reign of Constantine IV. (668- 
 85). A human deluge of Bulgarians swept over Thrace, 
 and even besieged Thessalonica twice. 
 
 And in 641 the fierce Moslem warrior Amru was 
 conquering Egypt, somewhat against the will of Caliph 
 Omar who at least peremptorily stopped him from going 
 on to Roman Africa. Egypt was treated in a more bloody 
 and ruthless fashion than Syria. Alexandria capitulated 
 in 641 and, being too near the sea, gave place as a capital 
 to Amru's new foundation of Cairo. Egypt swarmed with 
 heretics, who, on the whole, preferred the contemptuous 
 toleration of the Moslem to the persecutions of the Ortho-
 
 STRUGGLE FOR THE CALIPHATE 205 
 
 dox Church ; to the fellaheen it mattered little that their 
 corn was now exported to Mecca instead of Constanti- 
 nople ; and Amru at least re-dug Trajan's canal from 
 the Nile to Klysma on the Red Sea. 
 
 And so we have nearly reached the middle of the 
 seventh century. A boy of eleven, Constans H., is on the 
 East-Roman throne, Heracleon and his mother having 
 come to a bad and rapid end, Lombard dukes and kings, 
 weak popes and weaker exarchs are struggling in Italy. 
 The last great Merovingian King of the Franks, Dagobert, 
 is just dead. The Gothic kings in Spain are striving 
 desperately with their own rebel nobles. The whole riches 
 of Persia, Syria and Egypt are in the hands of the warlike 
 ' Emirs ' or viceroys, who are extending the Empire of Islam. 
 One of these rules at Damascus, builds a fleet at the Syrian 
 Tripoli, takes Cyprus, and will soon (652) take Rhodes; 
 his advanced guards have penetrated Armenia on the 
 north and the Isaurian highlands in the south-west of Asia 
 Minor. Another of them rules at Cairo and has designs on 
 Roman Africa. If Omar had lived ten more years, 
 Constantinople might have had to stand a siege worse than 
 that laid by the Avars and Persians. But the great caliph 
 was murdered by a slave in 644, and the first of many 
 contests for the headship of Islam began. 
 
 It was a contest between AH and Othman, both sons- 
 in-law of Mahomet, and ended in a long civil war. 
 Othman, a quiet peaceable person, was the candidate of 
 the Koreishites of Mecca, AH the candidate of the warlike 
 ' Companions ' of the Prophet. Othman was successful 
 and ruled for twelve troubled years, till in 656 he was 
 murdered by the friends of AH. AH then ruled as caliph, 
 but the Prophet's widow, Ayesha, who still lived, was jealous 
 of him, and prolonged the contest by means of the Emir of 
 Damascus, Moaviah. This struggle already foreshadowed 
 the division into an Eastern and a Western caliphate. The 
 Koreishite aristocracy as a whole had only accepted the 
 Prophet perforce, and represented distinctly the worldly 
 and political element in Moslem society ; Moaviah's own 
 ancestor Ommiah had been among the early enemies of
 
 2o6 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 the Prophet. AH, on the other hand, though now grown 
 fat and mild, had been a Hegira-man pure and simple, a 
 man of Holy War' and Faith.^ 
 
 In the course of the contest, which lasted till All's 
 murder in 66 1, we meet the first recognition by any 
 Mussulman of the supremacy of the Roman Empire, for 
 Moaviah at Damascus, wishing to have his hands free 
 for civil war, agreed not only to give up all aggressions to 
 the north-west but also to pay tribute to the Emperor 
 Constans. This man, a grim, silent creature, took the 
 tribute and took also a practical view of the situation. 
 Without disclosing his ulterior designs, if indeed he had 
 any, he went on a tour of inspection to Southern Italy 
 with a small fleet and army in 66 1, Perhaps he was con- 
 sidering the question of removing the seat of government 
 to Sicily, or to some southern Italian port — to Rome itself? 
 He might recover Italy from the Lombards, Egypt from 
 the Emir? At least he might provide for the defence of 
 Carthage and Roman Africa? In the course of his tour 
 he visited Rome and spent twelve days there. It fluttered 
 the gentle breast of the pope not a little to have to entertain 
 his lawful sovereign in the city which had hardly seen an 
 emperor since Honorius. Inter alia Constans stripped the 
 bronze roof of the Pantheon and carried its tiles with him 
 to Sicily. Of warlike deeds he did little, and a mere 
 Lombard duke had small difficulty in defending Benevento 
 against him. In Sicily he spent the remainder of his life, 
 and there in 668 a slave knocked him on the head with a 
 soap-dish in his bath. His schemes, whatever they were, 
 died with him ; it would be interesting to learn what his 
 thoughts may have been. In Constantinople his son 
 
 ' It is the party of Ali who, under the name of Shiites, have 
 maintained till our own days the one serious schism in Islam, 
 The Persian Mahometans are 'Shiites 'to-day, all other Moslems being 
 * Sunnites.' The last descendants of Ali and Fatima {i.c.^ the race of 
 Mahomet) died out late in the ninth century, and the true Shiite 
 believes that the latest of them will one day ' come again.' Several 
 minor Mahometan dynasties in Africa and Asia at different times 
 have been Shiite, rejecting both the Ommiad and Abbassid caliphs, 
 and, it is needless to say, rejecting with equal fervour the Ottomans.
 
 THE GREEK ElRl': 207 
 
 Constantinc IV, (' Pogonatus,' the bearded) succeeded to the 
 throne. 
 
 Meanwhile Moaviah's scruples had ended with the end 
 
 of the civil war at Ali's death. He was recognised as 
 
 caliph, though by no means without grudging : his 
 
 successors, fourteen in number, are the ' Ommiad ' caliphs, 
 
 who ruled at Damascus till 749.' Descendants of AH 
 
 lived for two centuries; but the active opposition to the 
 
 Ommiads was kept up by the family of Abbas, uncle of 
 
 the Prophet ; these men preached steadily that the Ommiads 
 
 were never quite ' true believers,' and finally, with that cry, 
 
 overthrew them in 749. True believers or not, it was in 
 
 Moaviah's caliphate that a Moslem fleet first appeared in 
 
 the neighbourhood of Constantinople. In 671, and for 
 
 seven successive years, such a fleet appeared, although no 
 
 regular siege of the Imperial capital followed. There was 
 
 some fighting in the Sea of Marmora, oftener off the 
 
 southern and western coasts of Asia Minor. But on the 
 
 whole the Greeks had the victory, for they drove off their 
 
 enemy with the celebrated ' Greek fire,' irvp OaXdaa-iov, 
 
 which they squirted through squirts or tubes {oia twv 
 
 cn<p(i)vwv). The Latin chronicler of the tenth century, 
 
 Liutprand, calls these tubes 'the argument ' which threw 
 
 the fire, and says the Greek vessels were equipped with 
 
 them not only on the bows but on the stern and on both 
 
 sides as well. But he adds that it would be difficult 
 
 {incoininodian) to use it except in calm weather.- There 
 
 are probably now chemists who would tell us either what 
 
 the composition of this destructive substance was, or that 
 
 it could never have existed at all, but I have not read their 
 
 works;-' its contemporaries assert it to have been a missile 
 
 ' The four orthodox caliphs are Abu I'.ekr (632) ; Omar (634); 
 Othman (644) ; All (656) ; all nominally ruling from Medina and 
 Mecca, though Ali had really retired to Kufa on the Euphrates. 
 Then follow the fourteen Ommiads from Moaviah to Mervan II. (661- 
 749), ruling from Damascus. - Liutprand, Antapodosis, v., 15. 
 
 ^ Professor Bury (Gibbon, vol. vi., 9, 10, 540) decides for more than 
 one kind of fire, and believes it (on the authority of a (ireck treatise of 
 the ninth century, preserved in a Latin translation, and quoted in 
 WoW.\\ Jiistoirc tic la C/timic, 1842) to have been propelled by true
 
 2o8 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 fire which could not be quenched by water. The Emperor 
 Constantine IV. was a vah'ant man and a clever man ; he 
 pacified popes, beat back Bulgars and Slavs, and divided 
 what was left of his empire into military districts called 
 Oefxara or Themes, few in number at first, but increasing 
 in time to seventeen in Asia and ten in Europe. Each 
 had a permanent local garrison, and each contributed a 
 quota of troops to the Imperial army. 
 
 With this change, the last vestige of the Roman 
 provincial and municipal organisation of Asia Minor 
 vanished, and all became Gra:co-Asiatic. Justinian's code 
 indeed remained in force, but even before his own death 
 its author had realised that it had been written in an alien 
 language, and had begun to issue his new edicts in Greek. 
 Early in the eighth century the code itself was superseded 
 by a new jurisprudence enunciated in the Ecloga of 
 Leo III. ('the Isaurian'), which was professedly based 
 upon Christian principles. A new kind of patriotism sprang 
 up in the ' Greek Empire,' as we may now begin definitely 
 to call it. The change had been long in preparation ; the 
 campaigns of Maurice and Heraclius had been the first 
 symptoms of it. The mercenaries, allies, or fcederati of 
 Justinian's time steadily disappeared from the army. The 
 main reliance was placed on Asiatic provincials, especially 
 those from the highlands of Cappadocia, Armenia and 
 Isauria ; and, alone of the European soldiers, the Thracians 
 remained useful. Whenever these troops were well led 
 they held their own against the Moslem ' Saracens ' ^ on 
 the frontiers of Asia Minor. In the main their battles 
 were those of cavalry against cavalry ; and the Byzantine 
 ' heavies ' at least led the Saracens to adopt defensive 
 armour of fine ring-mail, for the manufacture of which 
 Damascus soon became famous. 
 
 Few or no troops could, however, be spared to defend 
 gunpowder. He believes that inflammable oils were so propelled, 
 and concludes that the Greeks 'just fell short of revolutionising 
 warfare by failing to apply their propelling power to leaden missiles.' 
 
 ' This name as a generic one for Moslem armies in Hither Asia, 
 just as ' Moors' is a generic name for them in Western Europe, dates 
 from the end of the seventh century.
 
 PROGRESS OF ISLAM 209 
 
 Roman Africa, and the turn of that unhappy province was 
 soon to come. The Arab camel-riders were well fitted to 
 traverse the sands which separate Kgypt from Cyrene and 
 Gyrene again from the Carthaginian Peninsula. No 
 records remain of the final fate of Cyrene ; but in the year 
 in which I write (19 10- 11) the ruins of that great colony 
 are being for the first time explored, and we may hope to 
 hear of great discoveries there. Kairouan, or Kirwan ' the 
 Holy,' was founded in the hinterland of Africa, as an Arab 
 military colony in 670. The onward march of Islam was 
 again interrupted in 680, on the death of Moaviah, by a 
 fresh strife for the caliphate, although Moaviah's son Yezid 
 had been recognised as successor in his father's lifetime. 
 But when Constantine IV. died in 685, the throne of 
 Constantinople passed to a very different man, his son 
 Justinian II. Justinian alternately blandished and 
 quarrelled with the caliphs at Damascus, who accordingly 
 used him as he deserved ; he tried also to blandish the 
 savage Bulgars and Slavs, and to raise from them a private 
 army, which should be independent of the national con- 
 tingents from the themes. The result was that the new 
 Caliph Abdul Melik attacked Asia Minor in 692 and 
 Armenia was lost. His own capital then rose against 
 Justinian (who had proved himself at home a monster of 
 cruelty), cut off half his nose, and sent him to exile on the 
 northern shore of the Black Sea. 
 
 Good as it was to get rid of such a ruffian, civil disputes 
 were certain to weaken the resisting power of the Empire, 
 and the revolution happened just when Abdul Melik had 
 crushed a rival caliph, conquered Mecca, and taken up 
 again the twice deferred attack on Africa (692). Africa 
 had indeed never recovered from Justinian's wars. There 
 were few Roman ' institutions ' to overthrow either there 
 or in Syria or Egypt ; the government had long been 
 merely a taxing machine. We have seen the Vandals in 
 the last years of their rule, barely able to hold off" the 
 savage Berber tribes of the Aures Mountains, and since 
 the Roman reconquest, the inroads of these tribes had pro- 
 gressed apace. Nearly all the Western Province (Mauritania 
 
 O
 
 2IO ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 Tingitana, />., Tangicrs and district) had relapsed to 
 barbarism ; and now practically no resistance at all was 
 made to the Arabs. Once in 697 a Greek fleet won back 
 Carthage for a few months ; but the caliph sent a stronger 
 fleet the next year and drove the Christians away. The 
 Berbers indeed gave the new conquerors some trouble ; 
 a queen called Kahina arose among them in Numidia and 
 defeated a great Moslem army, but as she also warred 
 against all traces of Roman civilisation and based her 
 resistance on primitive humanity, the relics of the Roman 
 population were actually obliged to help the Moslem against 
 her. When she was beaten, her people readily accepted 
 Islam and, though often in revolt, became one of its best 
 right hands ; they were a warlike race, originally of 
 European descent, but brutaliscd by centuries of warfare 
 with civilisations superior to their own, Phoenician, Roman, 
 Vandal, Arab. 
 
 My readers, each according to his temperament, 
 comparative or contrastive, may compare or contrast 
 the history of the conquests of Islam with that of the 
 conquests of Rome. No doubt, just in the same way as 
 Rome, when she extended her arms and her laws to the 
 four airts of heaven, gradually ceased to be altogether 
 Roman, so now the Arabs, as they drove in under Islam 
 tribes more savage than themselves, barbarised their own 
 habits, their warfare, their religion ; Saracen had been worse 
 than Arab, Berber was to be worse than Saracen, Turk than 
 Berber. Rome, however, had taken more centuries to mature 
 than Islam had taken lustres ; Rome began with the 
 sword, but after the sword had a peace and a law to give 
 you ; Islam had only the sword, and when it had fleshed 
 its sword on you, could only tell you to go and flesh yours 
 on someone else. But it was an amazingly sharp sword ; 
 within fifty-two years from the Hegira the caliphate had 
 reached its furthest Eastern limits (the Indus and the 
 Oxus) ; it was a little slower in the West, but within 
 a hundred and ten years from the Hegira it was already 
 shrinking in Gaul ; while its northern limit, the Caspian 
 Sea, took only seventy-eight years to reach. Yet, having
 
 MOORISH INVASION OF SPAIN 211 
 
 no institutions, no temporal and very questionable spiritual 
 blessings to confer upon the conquered, it soon lost all con- 
 trol over its far-flung line. Emir after Emir had to be created 
 to rule the newly won provinces, and Emirs soon came to 
 snap their fingers at the distant caliph. For conquered 
 Africa a new Emir had now to be appointed, and he, whose 
 name was Musa, pushed rapidly on from Carthage towards 
 Tangier and the setting sun. He built a fleet, which began 
 by raiding Sicily and Sardinia and taking the Balearic Isles; 
 Spain was already in danger when the eighth century opened. 
 I have said above that we hardly know who was the 
 last Gothic king of old Christian Spain ; he may have been 
 called VVitiza or he may have been called Roderick. The 
 ' received ' story of the Moslem conquest comes to us from 
 Arab sources of the ninth and later centuries and presents 
 great difficulties.^ Two almost contemporary Spanish 
 chroniclers tell a very different tale, yet one so meagre as 
 to be almost unintelligible. But it is probably true that at 
 Ceuta on the African coast, opposite Gibraltar, there was 
 a Christian garrison, which was holding out when the Emir 
 Musa took Tangier early in the eighth century. This may 
 have been held by Greeks {i.e., Roman-African provincials), 
 or it may have been held by a Gothic count called Julian. 
 This Julian may have desired a private revenge against a 
 king of Spain (whose name may have been Roderick) and 
 may have therefore ' invited the Moors ' ; but how often 
 have we not had to question similar stories of the invitation 
 of barbarians, into Italy by Ilonoria, by Eudoxia, by 
 Narses, into Africa by Boniface ? Another view is that 
 the whole invasion was engineered by the Jews, who, 
 cruelly persecuted by the Gothic bishops, were to be found 
 in all the Spanish cities. There is good reason to 
 believe that Judaism was the creed of many of the Berbers 
 in Africa before the arrival of the Moslem. More certainly 
 there would be, before the year 711, both commercial 
 
 ' A wholesale destruction of Arabic literature was ordered by the 
 Catholic sovereigns who drove out the Moors at the end of the 
 fifteenth century ; Cardinal Ximenes is believed to have destroyed 
 eighty thousand volumes at Granada alone.
 
 212 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 intercourse and raids as well, between Africa and Spain 
 across the narrow Straits. In that year at any rate one 
 Tarik, a dependent of Musa, and perhaps a Berber by 
 birth, suddenly appears as giving his name to the Rock of 
 Gibraltar (Jebel-Tarik), mastering the garrison of Cordova, 
 and beating in fair fight a great Gothic army at Xeres,^ a 
 place whose name a Spaniard pronounces ' Heraith ' and 
 an Englishman ' Sherry.' 
 
 Cordova and several of the Southern cities made gallant 
 defence, but Toledo, the capital, seems to have been 
 deserted by the Christian population, and the Jews 
 welcomed Tarik when he appeared before the walls. Of 
 any resistance in the North-East hardly even a legend 
 remains, and in 712 Musa appeared, to scold Tarik and to 
 take over the great conquest. Arab tradition has a 
 charming story of how he himself in his old age, and after 
 being disgraced at the court of Damascus, spoke of his 
 own career. The caliph cross-examined him as to the 
 qualities of the various nations with whom he had fought. 
 He said he could not remember all their names, for they 
 were so many ; but of the Greeks he had a poor opinion ; 
 'they were lions within their castles, eagles on their 
 horses, women on their ships. If they see an opportunity 
 they seize it, but if the day turns against them they are 
 goats in ascending their mountains, so swift-footed in flight 
 that they can hardly see the land they tread. . . . The 
 Berbers are, of all foreign nations, most like to us Arabs 
 in impetuosity, strength, endurance, military science and 
 generosity, but the most treacherous people on earth. 
 . . . The people of Ishban (Spain) are luxurious and dis- 
 solute lords, but they are knights who do not turn their 
 faces from the enemy. . . . The Franks, oh Commander 
 of the Faithful, have numbers, resources, strength and 
 valour. . . . Among all the nations with whom I have 
 fought there are men of honour and probity, there are also 
 traitors and knaves ; we met them all, each man according 
 to his temper.' ' 
 
 ' Xeres is only two leagues distant from Cadiz. 
 
 - So Gayangos, Hist, of Mahommedan Dynasties in Spain^
 
 THE MOORS CROSS THE PYRENEES 213 
 
 It is clear that in Spain Musa repressed all resistance 
 ruthlessly, but gave good terms where none was made. In 
 fifteen months all the peninsula except its north-western 
 corner was at his feet. No doubt it suited Musa to be 
 quick, for we find the caliph suspecting his loyalty, even 
 as Justinian had suspected the loyalty of Bclisarius. The 
 Gothic ' treasure,' which perhaps was the thing on which 
 Musa set most value, was despatched on camels to 
 Damascus. Even at this day there are still a few wild 
 camels roaming in the delta of the Guadalquivir ; were 
 they left by the Moors or were they imported to Spain at 
 some later date ? No new Emirate was created in Moorish 
 Spain, but ' Valis,' or lieutenants of Musa, ruled first at 
 Seville then at Cordova. Toleration for Christians was 
 granted everywhere in return for tribute. Such unsubdued 
 Goths as there were betook themselves to the Asturias 
 Mountains in the North-VVest ; there is a tradition that 
 this exodus was led by the Archbishop of Toledo in person. 
 It is most improbable that the Moors ever made any 
 attempt to follow them up there. There was better 
 plunder, they thought, across the Pyrenees, and over they 
 went. The southern coast of Gaul was quickly overrun, 
 and Narbonne fell in 720. Duke Eudo (Hugh) of Aquit- 
 aine beat them back from the walls of Toulouse, but they 
 passed on north, and, in 725, reached and destroyed the old 
 Roman capital of central Gaul, Autun. That, as we shall 
 see, was destined to be their limit, though, after beating 
 Eudo on the Dordogne, they again advanced in 732 towards 
 the Loire, no doubt with designs on the rich shrine of the 
 blessed St Martin at Tours. Thus in the West the fate 
 of Christendom was trembling in the balance. 
 
 It was equally trembling in the East. There is gore of 
 a more than usually Byzantine type to be waded through 
 before we reach the crisis there. Leontius, who succeeded 
 the banished Justinian, was deposed in C98 ; his successor, 
 Tiberius III., fought bravely in Asia Minor, and even got 
 into Syria. But in 705 the exiled Justinian II., who had 
 
 I. Appx. Ixxxviii., quoting an anonymous Arab MS. of the twelfth 
 century.
 
 214 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 meanwhile got a false nose of gold in the place of the one 
 his subjects had cut off, and had been making friends with 
 Turks on the Volga and with Bulgars, was brought back 
 by an army of the latter savages and reseated on the 
 Byzantine throne. He then put most of his leading 
 subjects to various forms of grizzly death, put out the eyes 
 of his Patriarch (observe the harmonious working of Church 
 and State at Constantinople), and went on till 711 ; when- 
 ever he blew his gold nose it was the signal for an execu- 
 tion. He was followed by several unimportant shadows of 
 emperors during the next six years. Meanwhile Caliph 
 Welid I., whose domains now stretched from the Indus to 
 the Atlantic, had begun a great triple advance on Constan- 
 tinople, by sea, by Tyana the key of the Southern road, 
 and by Heraclea-of-Pontus the key of the Northern road. 
 
 The imminence of the danger called to the Greek 
 throne a hero and saviour in the person of Leo III., called 
 ' the Isaurian,' really perhaps a Cilician or a Syrian by 
 birth. He was an old soldier of Justinian II., and had 
 fought valiantly against the Moslem. For a wonder he 
 ascended the throne in 717 without bloodshed and did not 
 put even his predecessor to death. The debt that civilisa- 
 tion owes to him is greater even than that which it owes to 
 Heraclius. The siege of Constantinople began at once, 
 both by land and sea, and lasted for a year. Maslama the 
 Arab leader contrived to get across the Straits and to 
 beleaguer the city walls. But the strange medley of races 
 that lived within those walls seems to have been always 
 capable of being galvanised for their defence. The Greek 
 fire ran blazing over the hostile galleys. The Thracian 
 winter agreed ill with the children of the sun and desert. 
 In August 718 Maslama drew his starved and shattered 
 remnants away. 
 
 The hero who saved Christianity and civilisation has 
 never got his deserts for the simple reason that his 
 subsequent career did not please the churchmen who 
 wrote history.^ Leo the ' Isaurian ' was also Leo the 
 
 ^ So much was this the case that, though Leo and his son 
 Constantine V. made a serious attempt to bring the jurisprudence
 
 LEO III. AND CH!\RLES M ARTEL 215 
 
 'Iconoclast' (image-breaker). He and his successor em- 
 barked on a much needed crusade against the gross super- 
 stitions of the age, especially against the worship of ' sacred ' 
 pictures and wonder-working images ; incidentally also 
 against pilgrimages, relic-worship, and other ' works of 
 supererogation.' In fact they anticipated the Reformation, 
 in an age which desired nothing so little as to be reformed. 
 It is probable that this puritanism or rationalism, call it 
 which you will, of Leo's was derived from contact with 
 the Arabs, whose simple creed was true to the very letter 
 of the Second Commandment. We shall see some of 
 the details and results of the Iconoclastic movement later 
 on ; for the present we can only note that it was an un- 
 fortunate time to begin it, for it undoubtedly divided 
 Christendom in the face of militant Islam. Between 
 ^2"] and 732 Islam was again overrunning much of Asia 
 Minor, and if we want Christian comfort against it, we 
 must turn back to the story of Gaul. 
 
 There we long ago left Charles Martel, in the very 
 year of Leo's accession, master as yet only of Austrasia, 
 but beginning to make his power felt in Neustria also. 
 The shadowy Merovingian king, Chilperic III., had fled 
 south of the Loire, and was living on Duke Eudo of 
 Aquitaine. In 720 Charles was preparing to cross the 
 Loire to catch his king, when Eudo, threatened by the 
 Moorish invasion, thought it prudent to hand over his 
 royal guest to Charles. In getting possession of him, 
 Charles, as ' Mayor of the Palace,' got all power over 
 Neustria ; he may in return have sent Eudo help against 
 the Moors, but if so, we hear nothing of it. And it is 
 certain that, for the next twelve years, Charles left 
 
 of tlie Empire into harmony with the ecclesiastical views on marriage 
 and on the suljstitution of mutilation for death as the penalty for 
 crime, though they abolished serfdom and did much to mitigate 
 the hardships of the poor, these laws did not last more than a century 
 and a half. Basil the 'Macedonian' who came to the Eastern 
 throne in 867 restored the jurisprudence of Justinian, though not in 
 its entirety yet in its main features, with applause ; and this can only 
 be attributed to the rancorous hatred borne by the ecclesiastics to the 
 memory of the idol-breakinj^ emperors.
 
 2i6 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 Southern Gaul entirely to its fate, and turned his whole 
 attention to his own Eastern frontier. On that frontier, 
 and within Neustria and Austrasia at least, if not in the 
 old kingdom of Burgundy, he was all-powerful. The 
 grandes and fideles were his grandes and fideles ; he 
 nominated bishops and deposed bishops ; he even gave 
 their lands to his warriors on condition of future military 
 service. One might almost call such gifts by the 
 later feudal name of beneficia. Indifference to the 
 advance of the Moors was a very strange attitude for 
 Charles to take ; we cannot attribute it to a deliberate 
 foresight that his own power was not yet sufficiently 
 consolidated to cope with Islam, or that the conversion 
 of heathen Germany was the more important task ; still 
 less can we plead papal orders, for, of all his race, Charles 
 alone cared nothing for popes. We must rather suppose, 
 either that he expected Eudo to make a good fight for 
 it on his own legs, or that he quite undervalued the 
 Moorish danger. 
 
 Anyhow from 720 to 732, and indeed till his death in 741, 
 Charles was mainly interested in supporting with the Frank 
 sword the advance of the Irish, Scottish and Anglo-Saxon 
 missionaries in the moorlands of Frisia, the forests of 
 Westphalia and Central Germany. The first missionary 
 impulse in these regions had perhaps been felt when 
 Gregory the Great recommended to Queen Brunhilda the 
 men whom he was sending to convert the English, At the 
 same period we have St Columbanus preaching to Franks 
 and Lombards, and his companion St Gallus tarrying behind 
 him in the ruins of the Roman city of Brigantia, on the 
 Lake of Constanz, and founding hard by the monastery that 
 bears his name, ' Saint-Gall.' Next there is the mission 
 of St Amandus to the Frisians in the middle of the 
 seventh century ; a little later St Rupert preaches far into 
 and even beyond Bavaria and founds Salzburg^ as a 
 bishropric. But, as for Frankish bishops themselves 
 
 ' In the wonderful rock fortress which towers above that city 
 there is a charming representation of St Rupert with a salt-box in 
 his hand — the wealth of the region resting mainly upon its salt mines.
 
 FIRST MISSIONS TO GERMANY 217 
 
 becoming or sending out missionaries, such a task was 
 not to their taste at all ; the Prankish Church was absorbed 
 in secular business, and the I^Vank kings seemed to be 
 totally indifferent. Thus, if ever anyone else had preached 
 to Frisians, Saxons, Thuringians, Hessians, Alamans, 
 either these had paid no attention or had lapsed into 
 heathenism.' In the former province of Rhaetia there may 
 have been a few survivals of old Roman Christianity. 
 
 Now, however, a mighty impulse was at hand, Willi- 
 brod the Englishman, who founded the bishopric of 
 Utrecht in 690 and continued to preach in Frisia till his 
 death in 739, being the pioneer. But Willibrod was soon 
 to be entirely eclipsed by another Englishman, Winfrith 
 or Boniface, acting under the direct patronage of the great 
 Pope Gregory II. and of Charles Martel. His missionary 
 activity, from his first visit to Frisia in 716 to his martyr- 
 dom there in 756, covers forty years. His first visit to 
 Rome was in 718. Pippin had no doubt protected his 
 beginnings ; Charles, generally in warfare with the savage 
 Frisians, at once saw in him a valuable ally. When 
 Boniface, whom Gregory II. had consecrated as missionary 
 bishop without a see in 722, hewed down the 'holy oak' 
 of the Hessians near Fritzlar, the bold deed must have 
 been done under the <egis of Charles Martel. Ten 
 years later Gregory III. created Boniface an archbishop 
 with power to carve out dioceses, consecrate bishops and 
 be supreme over the infant German Church. This new 
 power was not wholly pleasing to such German bishroprics 
 as already existed, ^.^., Salzburg,- but all soon submitted, 
 and we have the rapid foundation of sees at Erfurt, 
 Eichstadt, Wijrzburg, Strassburg, Constanz, Augsburg, 
 Regensburg, Freisingen, Passau ; above all of the great 
 abbey of Fulda, the first abbey to be exempt from 
 episcopal jurisdiction. Remember that ev'ery one of these 
 foundations, besides being a lamp in a dark forest of 
 
 ' One must always remember that Germany was still a land of 
 dense forests separating tribe from tribe. 
 
 - If, indeed, that had not been overthrown by Avars or some 
 other heathens.
 
 2i8 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 heathenism, was a buttress of the civil power of the 
 Frank ruler. If in the South of Europe the faith at its 
 first appearance had been to some extent in conflict with 
 culture, to the Northern nations it came as the handmaid 
 of culture ; it necessitated for all who would set it forth 
 a Latin education. The conversion of Southern and West- 
 central Germany was almost as rapid as that of England 
 had been ; and, as the impulse to it came either primarily 
 or secondarily from the Papacy (whose claims to supremacy 
 were now fully formulated), both Germany and England 
 accepted that supremacy, together with monasticism, 
 image-worship, relic-worship, and the duty of pilgrimages, 
 as essentials of the Christian faith. Thus Rome had made 
 a mighty stride. 
 
 So had the Prankish power. There was no possible 
 Christian rival to it in Germany. One sturdy set of 
 heathen tribes, the Saxons, were as yet proof against the 
 Word, and were for the present untouched by the sword 
 also, but their turn for submission to both would come. 
 Meanwhile, before the end of his life Charles Martel 
 had chased his old Frisian friends right into their islands, 
 at the mouths of Scheldt and Rhine, always hurling 
 missionary after missionary at their heads. 
 
 And he had done other work for Christendom too. 
 Eudo of Aquitaine had been a treacherous fellow, and had 
 even dabbled in Hispano-Moorish politics; there were 
 plenty of disputes and civil wars between the Va/is in the 
 Spanish Peninsula tempting him to interfere. But, 
 when a great Moslem army under Abderrahman drove 
 his Aquitanian troops before it, and advanced towards 
 the gap of Poitiers, on the road to Tours, there was only 
 one person on whom Eudo could call for help, and that 
 was Charles. It was nearly three hundred years since 
 Aetius had been called from Italy to face a similar danger 
 in Central Gaul ; and the October Sunday battle of 732 
 near Poitiers (perhaps at Chatellerault) was a victory 
 for civilisation only of less importance than Aetius' defeat 
 of Attila. The Franks, we are told, stood ' like a wall of 
 ice,' and hewed Moorish heads in twain down to the
 
 VICTORIES OF CHARLES M ARTEL 219 
 
 breast-bone. It is in tiiis battle that Paul the Deacon tells 
 us that 375,000 Saracens were slain. Charles won a 
 complete victory, and those Moors who were left alive 
 rolled back to the Pyrenees. 
 
 In 735 they came again and took Aries and Avignon ; 
 Charles retook both, though he failed to tear from them 
 Narbonne, which was saved by their ships ; for the old 
 Roman city, now high and dry, seems to have retained 
 some sort of harbour till the fourteenth century. When 
 Charles died a tiny strip of the southern coast was 
 all that the Moslem held north of the Pyrenees ; Eudo's 
 sons continued to hold Aquitaine and to give trouble 
 to the sons of Charles. Though still only mayor of 
 the palace, Charles acted entirely as if he were king 
 of all the Franks. He beat down with a strong hand 
 the turbulent bishops, who in some cases were actually 
 trying to make their sees hereditary ; he deposed and set 
 up in Church and State whom he would, and, as I said 
 above, he did not in the least scruple to give Church lands 
 to laymen, to appoint faithful lay vassals to hold bishoprics. 
 And when the Pope, as we .shall soon see, asked him to 
 come into Italy and fight the Lombards for him, he 
 utterly refused. The Lombards were his very good 
 friends. 
 
 It was, however, a great misfortune for Christendom 
 that these three great Christian powers, Charles, Leo and 
 the pope, could not combine against Islam. They might 
 have done so if to the old doctrinal quarrels, monophysite 
 and monothelite, had not now been added a new one about 
 the worship of the ' holy images.' The seventh-century 
 popes, as I have told you, were singularly undistinguished 
 ' servants of the servants of God.' ^ The political antagonism 
 between Rome and Constantinople was always there, and 
 it had been sharpened by Heraclius' declaration in favour 
 of Our Saviour's 'one will.' Pope Honorius had, indeed, 
 accepted this, but all his successors utterl\' repudiated it. 
 One of them, Pope Theodore, had the pleasure of wel- 
 coming to Rome a patriarch of Constantinople who came 
 
 ' This title was first taken with proud humiUty by Gregory I.
 
 220 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 to do penance for having believed it.^ Constans II. vainly 
 tried to stifle discussion, and dreamed of a 'Type' which 
 should reconcile East and West ; Pope Martin feathered a 
 council which declared the ' Type ' to be nothing better 
 than sheer heresy. Thereon, Constans sent his exarch to 
 seize Martin dead or alive ; and Martin died a genuine 
 martyr-in-will, in a Crimean exile (655). Constantine IV. 
 went round the other way, renounced and condemned, 
 in a great Eastern council in 680, the monothelite heresy. 
 At the end of the century the popes died with such great, 
 and even suspicious celerity, that the Imperial confirmation 
 of their office seldom reached them in time. In 687 the 
 exarch, to whom the task of confirmation was now turned 
 over, tried to interfere in a disputed papal election, and 
 found to his surprise that not only the Roman citizens 
 had taken up arms to defend their candidate, but that the 
 troops of Ravenna would not follow him to the field. It 
 was a real national move of Italy against the East, and 
 was the more remarkable from the fact that the favourite 
 candidate of the Roman people, Sergius, was himself of 
 Greek origin. From this time the allegiance even of the city 
 of Ravenna to the emperor was extremely shaky ; in the 
 last year of Justinian's reign (710) it rose in revolt against 
 him, and was cruelly handled in consequence. With the 
 popes, however, this monster tried to keep friendly, and 
 he received Pope Constantine as an honoured guest in 710. 
 In the Pope's train there came to Constantinople another 
 man, perhaps of Greek extraction but utterly Roman 
 heart, who in 715 became Pope Gregory II. 
 
 With him, at his accession in 717, the Emperor Leo 
 III., who was no monothelite, was perfectly friendly, and 
 their good relations continued for nine years. It was indeed 
 an age of darkness, that opening of the eighth century. 
 Learning and letters were at their lowest ebb. The 
 feeble flame, which the great eighth-century popes kept 
 alight before the totally imaginary tombs of St Peter 
 
 ' But when the patriarch returned to his own See he recanted his 
 recantation, and was at once, and with horrid emphasis, excommuni- 
 cated at Rome.
 
 PILGRIMAGES TO ROME 221 
 
 and St Paul, was fed by the grossest superstition. To 
 that flame, which they believed could burn away their 
 considerable sins, the eyes of all Western Europeans 
 were more and more directed. For the real holy places 
 of the Christian faith, 
 
 Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
 Which seven hundred years ago were nailed 
 For our advantage on the bitter cross, 
 
 were now far more difficult to reach, being in the power 
 of the infidel, although pilgrimages to Palestine never 
 quite ceased until the days of the Ottoman Turks. Rome 
 no doubt gained enormously by the comparative dangers 
 of the journey to Jerusalem. Anglo-Saxon kings were 
 among its earliest and most zealous pilgrims ; Cadwalla of 
 VVessex in 688 is the first known instance ; such men 
 came not empty-handed, laid down their crowns and died 
 as monks in Holy Rome. So close was the intercourse 
 between Rome and England that our own Bede, who 
 never left his Northumbrian monastery, was able to 
 incorporate in the book he was writing in 724, the first 
 part of the life of the reigning Pope from the Liber 
 Pontificalis. What the pilgrims saw and heard was the 
 worship of the Virgin and the Saints, which was rapidly 
 superseding that of the Trinity ; redit et Virgo. They 
 saw heathen temples everywhere being stripped of roof 
 and pillar to build Christian churches ; even in the darkest 
 seventh century, church building never stopped. When, 
 a century before this, the Pantheon had been consecrated, 
 eighteen (some say twenty-eight) cartloads of bones were 
 transported to it from the catacombs. These pilgrims 
 saw in their^ imagination not Roniam aurcavi but Rojiiam 
 viartyrum sanguine rubeavi. They saw the coming in of 
 the crucifix as an actual object of worship ; a fifth-century 
 pilgrim would nowhere have seen, even in a picture, any 
 representation of Christ on the Cross, but always in glory 
 above it. 
 
 The puritan hero who sat on the throne of the East 
 thought foul scorn of such means of grace. Good Christian 
 as he was, he saw that this image- and relic-worship.
 
 222 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 more than anything else, gave point to the taunt of 
 idolatry levelled at Christians by the Mussulman and the 
 Jew. The Jews, already often in high favour with the 
 caliphs at Damascus, had persuaded their masters to 
 insist on the exclusion of images and pictures from the 
 churches of the Syrian and Egyptian Christians. Thus, 
 when Leo's Edict of 725 insisted on a like measure 
 throughout the Roman Empire, it was not wholly 
 unexpected. His own patriarch Germanus was opposed to 
 the measure ; ' only a general council,' he said, ' could 
 make such an order.' But the East as a whole might 
 probably have agreed in the long run. The entire West 
 was utterly hostile, from the first rumour of the thing. As 
 for Pope Gregory he did not even propose to consult a 
 council ; he refused obedience and denounced anyone who 
 should obey. But Leo was not more puritan than he was 
 imperialist and despotic ; he ' meant to be obeyed.' 
 Unfortunately eighth-century human nature was too much 
 for him. Thereupon he began a course of regrettable 
 persecution, and Southern Italy was soon full of devout 
 idolaters flying from Greece and Asia. Leo ordered his 
 exarch to seize, banish, or even kill Gregory (at least so 
 said Gregory) who knew, however, that the exarch was 
 powerless, and that he had Italy and all the West upon 
 his own side. The next emperor, Constantine V., to 
 whom the rancour of the churchmen gave a foul nickname, 
 was to be even more iconoclast, and much more cruel than 
 his father. He would root out monkery as well as idolatry, 
 and he issued edicts compelling monks and nuns to marry 
 (not even Henry VIII. went this length); but this is 
 anticipating events. 
 
 The attitude of Gregory II. was, throughout, most 
 statesmanlike, and well calculated to enlist the sympathy of 
 Europe. Certain very violent letters to the emperor have 
 been attributed to him, and even so good a historian as 
 Gregorovius accepts them as genuine ; but the better 
 opinion is that they are forgerie.s. The Pope had no need 
 of such weapons. The powerful Lombard king 
 Liutprand, although qua Lombard equally hostile to pope
 
 GREGORY II. AND GREGORY 111. 
 
 -i-j 
 
 and exarch, was qua churchman enthusiastically devoted 
 to the hoh' images. If Gregory had chosen to 'play for 
 his own hand ' he could have rent for ever, and with 
 applause, the slender tie that bound Rome to Constanti- 
 nople. But he utterly rejected all such suggestions. There 
 should be resolute refusal to obey the Imperial commands, 
 but there should be no usurpation of Imperial power on the 
 part of Liutprand or anyone else, and no breach of allegiance. 
 At least no such breach should come from him, Gregory ; 
 though no doubt he was pleased when Ravenna rose in 
 revolt and slew its exarch. He was not so much pleased 
 when Liutprand sacked and destroyed Classis, occupied 
 the city of Ravenna and all the Pentapolis, and advanced 
 towards Rome itself in 729. Gregory at once boldly 
 warned the audacious Lombard to retire, for ' Rome 
 belongs to the emperor'; and even terrified him into 
 surrendering Ravenna again to the Greeks. We do not 
 know what arguments he used, but they must have been 
 wholly spiritual ones. 
 
 This great pope died in 731, and his successor 
 Gregory III. was a Syrian by birth. Leo was seriously 
 intending to reduce Italy by force after the method of 
 Justinian ; he was also thinking of a General Council, but 
 the two plans would not fit well together. The Pope 
 meanwhile called an Italian Council in Rome, and 
 excommunicated the iconoclasts /;/ specie, but apj^arently 
 without naming Leo. Leo, while preparing his fleet, 
 confiscated all the papal estates in Sicily. When one 
 reflects that the Saracens had already been plundering 
 both Sicily and Sardinia, and that Abderrahman was 
 at this very moment marching towards the Loire, it is 
 difficult to feel altogether pleased with the iconoclast 
 emperor. Fortune, however, was against him ; his fleet 
 suffered a complete shipwreck, and it is small blame to 
 Gregory III. that, in 739, he turned to the victorious 
 Frank, Charles Martcl, sent to him the keys of St Peter's 
 tomb (we now begin to hear of these weapons as a mark 
 of sovereignty in Rome), and, in short, offered to transfer 
 the dominion of the city from the Greeks to the PVanks.
 
 224 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 It is small blame I say to Gregory ; but it is surely a 
 matter for the highest praise to Charles that he refused 
 the offer. He had, however, a powerful reason for refusal. 
 He knew too well why the pope wanted him ; it was not 
 as a protector ac^ainst the Greeks, but against the 
 Lombards. Now for more than a century his people and 
 the Lombards had been friends. Any assumption of 
 Frank power in Italy, any single Frank soldier sent over 
 the Alps would be a challenge, not so much to the dim, 
 distant and comparatively powerless iconoclast at Con- 
 stantinople, but to Charles' own good friend Liutprand at 
 Pavia ; Liutprand, who at the very time was sending 
 Lombard troops to help Charles against the Saracens in 
 Southern Gaul. If Charles needed any persuasion to take 
 this view of the situation, it is highly probable that Boni- 
 face was the persuader ; ' Your work,' he may well have 
 said to Charles, ' and mine lie here, on the right bank of 
 the Rhine not on the Tiber.' Deeply as the great English 
 missionary was pledged to be the servant of the Roman 
 See, he could not afford to let his hammer-friend entangle 
 himself in Italian politics. The popes then must for the 
 present look out for themselves, whether against emperor 
 or Lombard king. And so matters stood, and so Liut- 
 prand, getting the better of his spiritual fears, was 
 advancing again towards Rome, when in 741 Charles 
 Martel, Gregory HI., and the Emperor Leo all died. 
 
 In Gaul there was at once a danger lest Charles' death 
 should be followed by a break-up of his dominions. He 
 left three sons, Carloman, Pippin, Grifo, and a troublesome 
 widow. Any family strife between these might easily lead 
 to a restoration of the helpless but still living Merovingians. 
 But the ' great men ' among the Franks, call them nobles 
 or call them merely army-leaders, would not admit Grifo, 
 who was an unsatisfactory person, to any share of 
 territory or power, and accordingly the ' Empire ' of 
 Charles was more or less equally divided between Pippin 
 and Carloman. It is true that the newly incorporated bits, 
 Aquitaine and Southern and Western Germany, began to 
 move at once, and it cost some stubborn fighting to
 
 CARLOMAN AND PIPPIN 225 
 
 repress them ; but the two brothers acted in good accord 
 and stifled the insurrections one after the other. The 
 Bavarians gave most trouble, for the heathen Saxons 
 joined their Duke, and even more heathen Wends and 
 Slavs, far away on the Elbe ; that best of popes, Zacharias, 
 was for a moment on the Bavarian side, and sent to the 
 Prankish camp on the river Lech in 743, a legate who in 
 the name of St Peter forbade a battle. The PVank brothers 
 received the legate courteously, let him see them beat the 
 Bavarians, and then explained to him that either he or 
 St Peter must have made a mistake, lioniface upheld the 
 same view, which the pope ended by accepting. Zacharias 
 in fact had his hands very full of Liutprand in Italy, as we 
 shall presently see. 
 
 Carloman was the elder of the two Frank brothers, 
 and, as he had ruled in Austrasia, he had more to do with 
 Boniface than had Pippin. It was he who called in 742-3 
 the first two synods of the German Church, to confirm the 
 power of Boniface and his new foundations. At the second 
 of these two synods it was decided to regularise the 
 position of Church and State by taking a hapless 
 Merovingian, called Childeric III., out of a monastery and 
 putting him up as nominal king again ; for seven years 
 there had been no king at all. Pippin cordially agreed, 
 and held a council in Neustria the next year to confirm 
 the same. The settlement of the Western Prankish Church 
 was a more difficult task. Until the death of Charles 
 Martel in 741, there had been no synod called for eighty 
 years, but now such meetings began to be held frequently. 
 The rude Frank bishops had to obey, and came to the 
 synod with a very ill grace. Boniface fixed his see at 
 Mainz ; he claimed supremacy west of Rhine also, and 
 was going to enforce obedience to the customs of the 
 Church as understood by himself and the pope. 
 
 In the middle of these activities Carloman in 747 was 
 suddenly attacked with the malady of the age, threw up 
 his civil duties, and hurried to Italy to become a monk. 
 After a few shifts of place he settled at Monte Cassino. 
 He left a son Drogo to Pippin's care, but claimed for him 
 
 i-
 
 226 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 no share of territory or government. IMppin, the less 
 impulsive and the more far-seeing of the brothers, 
 accepted the charge of the whole of the Prankish Empire. 
 He made one mistake, for he liberated the turbulent 
 Grifo (who had been confined in a castle), and had to pay 
 for his mercy in a long series of insurrections. It was the 
 difficulties which Grifo caused him, now flying to heathen 
 Saxony, now to Bavaria, now to Aquitaine, which 
 prompted Pippin to ask himself in 749 the questions, 
 'What am I ? am I king? if not, why not?' Probably 
 Boniface had for some time been asking himself the same 
 question concerning Pippin. At any rate, it was Boni- 
 face's friend the Bishop of Wiirzburg and Pippin's friend 
 the Abbot of Saint-Denis who were now sent to Rome to 
 consult Zacharias on the matter. These emissaries put it 
 to the pope almost as a doctrinal question ' Ought not he 
 who rules to be acknowledged as ruler ? ' and Zacharias, 
 without, we may well believe, any thought of ultimate 
 advantage for the papacy in his head, replied ' He ought.' 
 
 But it was a mighty step for the apostolic authority of 
 St Peter. If Gaul had always been the eldest child of the 
 Roman Empire, this would make the King of the Franks 
 the eldest son of the Roman Church. Pippin accepted the 
 ruling, and, together with his Queen Bertrada, was 
 solemnly anointed if not also crowned by Boniface at 
 Soissons in 751. Crowning by a bishop was a thing long 
 known in the East ; ^ some barbarian kings, e.g., the Visi- 
 goths, knew it too, although the Merovings had never 
 known it. But the anointing after the old Jewish fashion 
 was quite new to Christendom, and in such a superstitious 
 ac»-e was of enormous importance. The race of St Arnulf 
 was hallowed by it. Pippin himself had scruples ; he had 
 sworn fealty to the Meroving Childeric, who of course had 
 now to be deposed and go to a monkery. So in the next 
 year he asked the new pope, Stephen II., to 'absolve him 
 from his oath ' — another new idea, another feather in the 
 
 ' Leo I. is the first certain instance, in 457. It is doubtful whether 
 an actual crown was used for a Frankish king before the coronation 
 of Charles the Great at Rome in Soo.
 
 I'll'lMX, KIXG OV Tin-: FRANKS 227 
 
 papal cap. There remained only the question of Carloman 
 and his son Drogo. Whether the pope would or would 
 not support Pippin against any eventual claim of his 
 brother and his nephew, would depend very much upon 
 what Pippin would do for the pope. 
 
 We are now approaching the most critical point in the 
 Dark Ages. We must therefore try and clear our minds 
 of theories and modern ideas, and must look the facts, so 
 far as we know them, fully in the face. Unfortunately we 
 know the facts very imperfectly. 
 
 Everyone must admit that, by this date 750, Justinian's 
 reconquest of Italy has been proved to be a failure. East 
 and West have pulled apart beyond any possibility of 
 reunion. For a century and a half the claims of the emperors 
 to any control of the popes have been fitful, tyrannical and 
 ineffectual. Equally so have been their claims to rule 
 Italy from Ravenna. The exarchate is on its very last 
 legs ; hardly do we know the name of the last exarch.^ 
 A feeble hold on the extreme south, on Naples and on 
 Sicily the emperor may keep; these districts had always 
 been more Greek than Italian ; but the life of Italy is not 
 in her heel, her toe or her instep. 
 
 Yet these claims, civil and ecclesiastical, have been 
 enough to spoil the chances of the Lombards, who might 
 otherwise have built up a national Italy. Either incurable 
 stupidity or else extreme malignity of Fortune dogs the 
 steps of these people ; first it is their Arianism, then their 
 undoubted cruelty, always their want of union, that spoils 
 their game. The first of these makeweights was in 750 
 long forgotten, and probably the second also ; but even 
 the great Liutprand has been unable to get over the third. 
 Though he can reduce to submission a Duke of Spoleto or 
 of Benevento, he can never move his people to one impulse. 
 Moreover a Lombard king is always horribly afraid of the 
 very thing he wants to do — to take Rome ; ' I dare not ' 
 always waits upon ' I would.' It is an aggravated case of 
 Ronuxni noniinis umbra, and this fear is exploited with full 
 
 ' Oddly enough the name ' Romagna ' stuck to the last province of 
 Northern Italy that had been actively governed from Constantinople.
 
 228 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 consciousness by the great popes of the eighth century, 
 especially by the two Gregories, by Zacharias, and his 
 immediate successors. Not only can they wield all the 
 terrors of the next world, but they can also invoke against 
 Pavia at least the name of Constantinople, if not the troops 
 of Ravenna and Naples ; and they can also nearly always 
 play off the Southern Lombard dukes against the Northern 
 Lombard king. These popes will also be supported by the 
 Roman ' People.' Rome is again full of self-conscious- 
 ness ; it has a militia, it has nobles of a sort, it has a very 
 powerful and clerically-minded rabble, it elects its own 
 bishop, occasionally even deposes and maltreats him. 
 Rome appears at times like a naughty child, in whose 
 hands are several very dangerous fireworks, ready to go 
 off and kill all the beholders if anyone tries to take them 
 away. 
 
 Roughly speaking that has been the situation for a 
 century past; and it has gone on worsening, until the 
 emperor has almost ceased to interest himself in Italy at 
 all, the Arabs affording, indeed, quite enough food for his 
 reflections. If the last ties should be cut — and in 750 they 
 are almost gone — Rome and Pavia will be left face to face. 
 Liutprand had supported Gregory II. against Leo the 
 Image-breaker, but in Gregory III.'s time he had again 
 been hostile, and his rebel dukes had been received and 
 comforted in Rome. Then came Zacharias, who had 
 completely got round the pious king. Zacharias had 
 given up the cause of the Duke of Benevento and allowed 
 Liutprand to master his duchy. He had gone in person 
 to the royal camp at Interamna (now Terni), brought 
 the king into a condition of perfect tameness, entertained 
 him at dinner, and received a few cities as donations from 
 him. Liutprand is supposed to have said that no dinner 
 had ever cost him so much. When he continued to fight 
 the exarch, Zacharias again visited him (at Pavia in 743) 
 and induced him to restore nearly all the Ravennese 
 territory he had taken. Liutprand died in 744, and his 
 successor Rachis was equally tameable, and, indeed, soon 
 joined Carloman in his monastery.
 
 PIPPIN'S BARGAIN WITH THE POPE 229 
 
 But the next Lombard king, Astulph, was a blundering 
 hothead, sick of diplomatic popes, and burning for a little 
 honest plunder. In 750 he fell upon the exarchate, took 
 Ravenna with all the Pentapolis, and advanced along the 
 Flaminian way towards Rome, demanding, like any Arab, 
 submission, tribute, poll-tax. Stephen II. (some call him 
 Stephen III. for he succeeded a Stephen who only reigned 
 three days) had just become Pope ; he cried for help to the 
 Emperor Constantino V., the fiercest 'of the iconoclasts. 
 Constantino, whose hands were full of a caliph, hardly 
 cared to send answer, much less help, to the image- 
 worshippers ; he had just obtained, at the Council of 
 Constantinople (753), the sanction of over three hundred 
 bishops of the East to the policy of the destruction of 
 images. On the receipt of the news of this council the 
 ' nobles and people of Rome ' took the momentous step of 
 appealing to Pippin, King of the Franks. 
 
 The mystery of the whole thing is why Astulph did not 
 persevere and seize Rome long before the appeal could 
 be made ; why he ever allowed Stephen's messengers 
 to pass through his territory. In the present state of 
 historical knowledge no satisfactory answer can be given 
 to these questions. To Pippin Stephen was quite able to 
 say : — * St Peter anointed you, now show your gratitude ; 
 if you do so, you need be under no anxiety about any 
 future claims of your brother and your nephew.' What he 
 openly said was ' Please invite me to your court.' Pippin 
 was delighted, and sent a worthy, but not an armed escort 
 for the pope. Stephen started in October 753, and, with 
 great daring, visited Astulph in Pavia, extracted from 
 him a promise not to hinder his journey, and, in January 
 754, was met by Pippin's elder son Charles (afterwards 
 Charlemagne) and led by him into Pippin's presence at 
 Ponthion-sur-Marnc. With ashes on his head and every 
 outward sign of humility, the pope knelt to the king; but 
 he rose from his knees victor in one of the greatest 
 diplomatic games ever played in the world. A bargain 
 was at once struck ; the King of the P'ranks will defend St 
 Peter with the sword against all and sundr}', but especially
 
 330 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 against the unspeakable Lombards. St Peter, for his part, 
 will nominate the king ' patrician ' of Rome, and will 
 confirm the sovereignty over the Franks to him and his 
 house for ever. 
 
 Subsequent history teaches us that by this bargain the 
 Pope alone was the gainer, that the Franks, and all other 
 German races who followed in their footsteps, lost very 
 heavily by it, though perhaps not more heavily than the 
 Italian people. Pippin was no student of the philosophy 
 of history, but even he ought to have seen the dangers of 
 an intervention which his wise father had refused. He had 
 quite enough to do in Gaul and Germany, for he had Moors 
 in the south-west and Saxons in the north-east to fight. 
 It is quite clear that many of his counsellors both lay and 
 clerical did see the danger ; Eginhard, the biographer of 
 Charlemagne, says they even spoke of deserting Pippin. 
 To make this more plain Carloman, who had already been 
 for seven years a monk, suddenly reappeared at his 
 brother's court and protested energetically against the 
 whole business ; he had the encouragement of the aged 
 Boniface who was all against it,^ and the encouragement 
 of his own abbot of Monte Cassino. It must have been 
 quite a dramatic scene ; but the pope, the king, and the 
 papal party at court were equal to the situation, and to 
 Carloman there was the obvious answer ' O naughty monk 
 to break your regula I Get you to a safer monkery ' ; 
 so poor Carloman was shut up at Vienne where he quickly 
 died (755). Boniface, for his part, found but one thing left 
 to do in a world which seemed to be forgetting its duties; 
 there were a few of his old Frisian friends, either left or 
 relapsed heathens ; so he sought out the most dangerous 
 place he could find among them and was martyred, with 
 seven companions, near Utrecht in the year 756. 
 
 Meanwhile the bargain had been ratified in the most 
 solemn fashion. The pope reanointed not only Pippin 
 but his two sons as kings of the Franks, and pronounced 
 
 ' Boniface was an old friend of the Lombards since the days of 
 Liutprand ; there is a tradition at Mainz that he spoke to Pope 
 Stephen very bluntly on the subject of the new policy.
 
 TIIK FRANKS INVADE ITALY 231 
 
 anathema on anyone who should ever help any other 
 family to the Prankish throne, lie named them all three 
 'patricians of Rome' (a sheer usurpation of the Imperial 
 power), and annexed to that office the duty of defending 
 the Holy City and the tombs of the two apostles at all 
 times and against all comers. And Pippin in return spoke 
 most severely to Astulph. That foolish person mocked at 
 the scolding, and yet omitted to seize defenceless Rome, 
 and so Pippin had to give up his duties toward his Moorish 
 and Saxon neighbours and hasten to do the pope's bidding 
 in Italy. 
 
 In effect, what Pippin said to Astulph was this: — 'You 
 must give up certain specified places in the Exarchate and 
 the Pentapolis, and all places you have occupied in the 
 Duchy of Rome. I will pay you a large sum if you do 
 this.' To whom were these places to be given up ? 
 Formally, perhaps, by a document drawn up before Pippin 
 left Gaul, to the Empire; in reality to the pope. In 
 what capacity ? as to a landowner, or a patron ? To this 
 question neither Pippin nor his son Charlemagne ever 
 seems to have found the right answer. The outward and 
 visible sign of the surrender was to be the delivery of the 
 keys of all the cities in question, these keys to be placed 
 upon St Peter's tomb. The popes could hardly be blamed 
 if they construed this to be a mark of full sovereignty (in 
 Roman Law dominiuni). The P>ank kings seem to have 
 regarded it rather as mark of posscssio, in the shape of 
 rents and profits. 
 
 Astulph, for the moment, was going to fight rather than 
 yield either dominion or possession. In the autumn of 
 754 the P"ranks were over the Alps, via Saint-Jean-de- 
 Maurienne, and seized Susa. The Lombards fought 
 bravely, were beaten and fled to Pavia. There their 
 king promised complete surrender and tribute, and Pippin, 
 who considered that he had now satisfied St Peter, left 
 Italy without advancing to Rome. But when the Franks 
 had got back to Gaul, and the pope demanded his keys, 
 Astulph refused to give them, hurried to Rome in 755, 
 wasted all the Canipagna, sacked such of the catacombs as
 
 232 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 lay outside its walls (in order to provide himself with relics 
 of martyrs), and burned all the houses round St Peter's. 
 It looks as if the walls of Aurelian must really have been 
 both defensible and well defended, for the Lombards lay 
 for fifty-five days outside them before Stephen thought it 
 necessary to send for Frankish aid. When he did send, 
 St Peter himself wrote and signed the letter, and was 
 almost as angry with Pippin for having treated with 
 Astulph as with Astulph for having deceived Pippin. 
 The Franks obediently took the field again in 756, and the 
 story of two years before was repeated. A second 
 'donation,' actually specifying Ravenna and twenty-one 
 other towns in the Exarchate and Pentapolis, was made to 
 St Peter. A second treaty with Astulph with even 
 more promises, including the surrender of one-third of the 
 Lombard ' treasure,' was concluded. At its negotiation 
 we find a much-belated ambassador of the emperor, who 
 argued with some reason that the exarchate was neither 
 Astulph's to withhold. Pippin's to give, nor Stephen's to 
 receive. His arguments were politely ignored, and the 
 Abbot of Saint - Denis actually went to Ravenna and 
 brought its keys to the pope. 
 
 In truth we do not know exactly what was comprised 
 in this or in several subsequent donations, made by 
 successive Teutonic sovereigns to the Roman See ; the 
 original documents of the eighth century have dis- 
 appeared. The popes at various times interpreted them 
 variously ; sometimes they claimed distant places like 
 Venetia, Corsica, even Naples. We must always re- 
 member that some of the richest estates of the See had 
 lain in Sicily, and that these had now been confiscated 
 by Leo the Iconoclast ; also that many estates on the 
 mainland, which had once been papal, had probably been 
 seized by the Lombards, either in their first onrush or 
 later ; we have seen Liutprand paying for his dinner by 
 giving up some of these to Pope Zacharias. But in no 
 cases had the older papal property been anything but an 
 estate {possessid) ; the sovereignty {iioi)iiniu7)i) had always 
 been deemed to reside in the emperor. And the result
 
 LAST YEARS OI- PIPPIN 233 
 
 of the donations was, in the end, to give to the jjopes 
 both dojiiininvi and posscssio of much of Central Italy, 
 to found for them a temporal principality, which 
 lasted till 1870. That such temporal power was of any 
 conceivable use to the Church or the world is to me 
 unthinkable, while to Italy it spelt mere ruin and 
 incessant foreign invasion. 
 
 The Galilean Church certainly benefited, not by the 
 bargain but by the close connection with Rome which 
 resulted therefrom. Pippin continued the work of 
 Boniface by setting his own ecclesiastical house in order, 
 and papal legates came regularly to Gallican Church 
 councils, to Verneuil (755), to Compicgne (757). Papal 
 decretals were laid before these synods and declared to 
 be binding on all clergy. Archbishoprics were created, 
 and their spheres delimited. The turbulent bishops of 
 Charles Martel's days, who had done nought bishoplike, 
 were now a thing of the past, although the Church failed 
 to recover all the lands which that excellent ruler had 
 taken from it for the defence of the realm. When Waifer, 
 Duke of Aquitaine, proceeded to tax and administer the 
 estates of the Southern bishops, Pippin, the obedient son 
 of the Church, had to go South and beat him to his knees, 
 and to spend five years in the task (761-6), By the 
 latter year the Prankish power had reached the Garonne, 
 and Waifer only held out on the shore of the Atlantic. 
 So by serving the Church the Frank king benefited the 
 State. The Moors too were steadily beaten back ; Nismes 
 had fallen even before Pippin's first Italian job, and it was 
 in the siege that the great Roman amphitheatre of the 
 city was reduced to a ruin. In 759 came the crowning 
 triumph of the recapture of Narbonne. In all the 
 countries which had once obeyed the Visigoths, Pippin 
 prudently left Romano-Gothic law in force; the South 
 therefore remained distinct in custom even under Frank 
 suzerainty. One might say that the Germans are right 
 to-day when they call France ' Frankreich ' ; for it is the 
 old kingdom of the Franks with Southern Gaul tacked on 
 to it. Pippin's last work was to hold in 767 a synod,
 
 334 ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM 
 
 which fully endorsed the papal doctrine that it is our duty 
 to adore the holy images. In Italy there had been no 
 further trouble. Astulph was killed in the hunting field 
 in 756, and a Lombard noble, called Desiderius, was by 
 Pippin's favour elected king at Pavia. Stephen also 
 patronised him ; and Desiderius solemnly swore to 
 surrender all the cities of the 'donations' to St Peter, 
 and probably did surrender the keys of most of them. 
 The astute pope died in 757, and was succeeded by his 
 own brother Paul I., who reigned for ten years. Before 
 Paul's death the attitude of Desiderius had grown less 
 satisfactory.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Time covered is, roughly, the reign of Charlemagne, 768-814. 
 
 The chief Events dcscriljed are — (i) The split of Islam into 
 an Eastern and Western Caliphate, called respectively the 
 'Abbassid' and the ' Ommiad,' with the two centres of 
 Bagdad and Cordova. (2) The steady orientalising of the 
 government of the Empire at Constantinople ; the struggle 
 between the image-breaking and image-worshipping parties 
 there ; and the accident of there being no emperor, but only a 
 reigning empress, in the year 800. (3) The career of Charle- 
 magne as warrior, lawgiver and civiliser, culminating in his 
 coronatin as Emperor at Rome in the year 800; this is the 
 foundation of the 'Holy Roman Empire,' but the relations of the 
 ' Eastern ' Empire to this new ' Western ' one are never defined. 
 (4) The growing pretensions of the Papacy, which in after years 
 will claim to dispose of this new Imperial Crown of the West. 
 
 The chief Actors are : — 
 
 (1) CIIARLEM.AGNE, 
 
 Joint-King of the Franks, from 768, with his brother, Carjoman, 
 
 till Carloman's death in 771 ; 
 
 Sole King after that ; Emperor, 800-814 ; ^'cd 814. 
 
 (2) The emperors, who reigned at Constantinople. (See also 
 Table in Chapter VI.). 
 
 LEO III., 
 the Iconoclast, died 74I. 
 
 CONSTANTINE V., 
 
 died 775. 
 
 I 
 LEO IV., married IRENE, 
 
 died 780. 
 
 deposed 802 ; 
 died 803. 
 
 CONSTANTINE VL, 
 
 blinded and deposed, 7<j7. 
 
 NICEPHORUS L, 
 Emperor, 802 ; died 81 1. 
 
 STAUR.ACIUS, 
 811-812. 
 
 Procopi.i, married MICHAEL 
 
 R HANG ABES, 
 812-813. 
 
 286
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 His honour and the greatness of his name 
 Shall be, and make new nations. 
 
 The period which we have now to consider will have for 
 its central point the growth and consolidation of the 
 Prankish power in the hands of the hero who has given 
 his name to the Carolingian Age and to many things 
 besides. Larger and larger will Charlemagne loom on 
 the canvas, and, happily, he is one of those figures to 
 whom time and research have rather added glories than 
 not. But we must also keep our eyes occasionally 
 directed to the Near East, lest we should wholly neglect 
 the effect of the fortunes of the caliphate and the 
 'Roman' Empire at Constantinople on the course of 
 affairs in the West. 
 
 The middle of the eighth century was as great an 
 epoch in the history of Islam as of Christendom. Civil 
 strife in the Moslem world led to the setting up of rival 
 caliphates, as far asunder ecclesiastically, and with centres 
 twice as far asunder geographically, as Rome was from 
 Constantinople. The Ommiad caliphs at Damascus had 
 always been suspected persons to the more strict professors 
 of Islam at Mecca and wherever the old party of Ali was 
 strong ; the Iniaums or ' holy men ' everywhere inclined 
 to the latter party. Moaviah, the first Ommiad caliph 
 had, however, been a man of real talent, and had done his 
 best to give some sort of unity to his empire, to which each 
 new province had been added on different terms and after 
 a different set of capitulations. His object was to disturb 
 
 288
 
 ABBASSIDS AND OMMIADS 237 
 
 the conquered peoples as little as possible in all the 
 relations of law, trade and private life, although he 
 appointed kadis (judges) in each province, who adminis- 
 tered a certain sort of primitive equity. At Damascus, 
 except for the use of the now classical Arabic language, 
 the government was probably not unlike that of 
 Constantinople. Caliph Abdul-Melik did indeed coin 
 new gold (which seems to have offended Justinian II.) 
 and built many mosques ; it was he who built the 
 so-called Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, one of the 
 loveliest erections on earth. A person looking at that 
 mosque and forgetting its surroundings might think he 
 was in Ravenna ; it is not Eastern or Arab at all, but pure 
 Byzantine-Greek, like Saint-Sophia at Constantinople. So 
 it is with Welid I.'s great Mosque at Damascus ; Greek 
 architects no doubt built both. Every conquering 
 government puts on something of the complexion of those 
 it conquers or displaces, and the thin stream of Arab 
 blood probably changed far less than we suppose the 
 habits and ideas of Syrian, Egyptian or Spaniard. 
 Welid's schools at Damascus, while teaching Moslem 
 theology, no doubt absorbed many ideas from the 
 Christian schools on whose endowments they were raised. 
 In trade the Arabs trod in the old routes of their Greek 
 predecessors, and added their own. There were, it is 
 true, reactionary caliphs even among the Ommiads, and 
 the revolution that was to overthrow their line arose 
 wholly from a reaction. But reaction did not endure, and 
 the new Abbassid caliphate was soon to be as worldly and 
 as political as the Ommiad. 
 
 I have told you that the descendants of Abbas had 
 always looked askance at the government of Damascus, 
 and, when the vigorous Mervan II. seized the throne in 
 744, their discontent increased. The first insurrection 
 broke out far eastward at Merv, and a caliph of Abbassid 
 descent was proclaimed in Persia. The movement spread 
 rapidly westwards. Mervan fought bravely and was 
 killed in Egypt in 749. A massacre of all the Ommiads 
 but one followed, and that one, Abderrahman, after
 
 238 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 niatvcllous adventures, turned up in Spain in 755, and 
 finally succeeded in establishing himself at Cordova.^ 
 
 Meanwhile the Abbassids moved, in 762, the seat of 
 government from Damascus to the new foundation 
 of Bagdad on the Tigris, not far from the old Sassanid 
 capital of Ctesiphon. Bagdad became a great centre of 
 trade and of Arab culture, which in fact reproduced many 
 of the conditions of the old Persian kingdom.- 
 
 If the caliphate, owing to its geographical position 
 and political circumstances, thus put on the ordinary 
 trappings of the older monarchies of the Near East, the 
 rulers of Constantinople pursued a not wholly dissimilar 
 course. If at the death of Constantine IV. (685) the 
 Empire is Gr^eco-Asiatic, a century later it is definitely 
 ' Eastern.' The recent losses of territory, though they 
 meant a heavy loss of revenue, led to a real strengthening 
 of what remained. Though Bulgars and Slavs still 
 roamed over the European provinces, and Arabs from 
 Syria thundered at the back door, they made no sub- 
 stantial conquests for a long time to come. Leo III. had 
 gained immortal honour by his defensive ; his son 
 
 1 There his posterity reigned, at first only as emirs or 'sultans' 
 until, in 929, Aloderrahman III. took the title of caliph. His direct 
 line came to an end in 103 1, and Moslem Spain was then divided 
 among several dynasties for half a century. In 1086 an African race, 
 the Almoravids, succeeded in uniting again nearly all of the Peninsula 
 which the Christians had not reconquered ; it was a later dynasty, 
 the Nasrids, who were finally driven from Granada by Ferdinand 
 the Catholic in 1492. 
 
 '■^ Thirty-six successive Abbassid caliphs reigned there for five 
 hundred years, until in 1258 the Mongols drove them out ; they fled 
 to Egypt and lingered on at Cairo, with no power but the title 
 of caliph, until 15 17, when the Ottoman Turk Selim I. conquered 
 Egypt and called himself caliph. Africa was early independent 
 of either caliphate; the dynasty of the 'Fatimites' got hold of 
 Kairouan in 903, transferred itself to Cairo in 972 and came to an end 
 there in 1171. Islam, in fact, displayed a perpetual tendency to 
 break up into local groups and sects based more upon dynastic than 
 religious differences. False prophets ('Mahdis') abounded. None 
 of the dynasties mentioned in this and the preceding note are in any 
 sense ' Children of the Roman Empire,' but we shall occasionally rub 
 against them in treating of the fortunes of the children.
 
 THE P:MPRESS IRENE 239 
 
 Constanlinc V. (741-75) wa.s a cruel tyrant to imagc- 
 worshippcrs, but a most efficient guardian of his frontiers. 
 After putting clown an insurrection at home, he had, as 
 we saw above, held a solemn council in 753, and forced 
 his own iconoclastic views on the Eastern Church. He 
 then took the offensive, both to the North and the East, 
 beat Bulgars and Slavs on the Danube, and refortified 
 his frontier against them ; beat the Abbassids in Armenia 
 and took from them Erzeroum and Theodosiopolis, while 
 his fleet defended Sicily from Moslem attacks which had 
 already begun there. He died in 775 a thoroughly 
 victorious man. Leo IV. his son died in 780, leaving 
 an ambitious widow Irene as regent for her young son 
 Constantine VI. Irene was prepared for anything and 
 everything if she could keep power for herself; and the 
 worshippers of images were evidently the popular party. 
 Thus, when the great Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid pressed 
 upon her Eastern frontiers, she made a shameful peace 
 with him and paid tribute, in order to have her hands 
 free at home. For the same reason she sent an embassy 
 to the new King of the Franks, whom we shall soon 
 know as Charlemagne, offering him her alliance and 
 asking for his daughter for her son. Before such a 
 proposal could be seriously entertained, she had to come 
 again into line with the Western Church over the question 
 of images ; so she got a carefully packed synod at Nica^a 
 in 787 to reverse the decrees of 753 and restore idolatry. 
 Papal legates were even invited to this synod, so one 
 cannot say that the tie between the churches was wholly 
 broken. But, meanwhile, her son was growing to manhood 
 and growling against his mother and her eunuchs, who 
 kept him wholly in the shade and banished all his 
 favourites. In 790 he tried a coup d'etat against her party 
 with some temporary success, but allowed her to retain 
 a co-regency with himself He had wars, now unsuccessful, 
 now successful, both with Arabs and Bulgars ; he had 
 insurrections, which both he and his mother repressed 
 with great cruelty. Clerical influences were all for the 
 mother, military influences for the son. After much
 
 240 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 strife the clergy egged on Irene to depose Constantine, 
 and in 797 he was seized, fearfully handled and blinded 
 by his mother's order. He lived in prison, perhaps till 822, 
 and Irene reigned alone till 802. Thus in the fateful year 
 800 tJiae ivas no Roman Emperor^ and we shall soon see the 
 result of this on Western opinion and Western events, 
 to which we must now turn. 
 
 If one could think of the Franks more wholly as 
 the chosen champions of Christendom, one might feel 
 rather happier about the origin of their power. It was 
 in that light that later legend represented their great 
 hero Charlemagne. No doubt in Gaul, the necessity 
 of fighting Moors led to the extension of Frank power, 
 and the Gothicised provinces of Gaul submitted readily 
 to the Franks from fear of the Moors. The easy surrender 
 by the Greeks of all claims on North Italy may be attri- 
 buted to a similar cause, the perennial danger of the 
 Eastern capital from Islam. But the popes, even the 
 best of them, seem to have been singularly blind to the 
 fact that Italy was almost equally in danger, and their 
 inveterate hostility to the Lombards undoubtedly weakened 
 Italy in the face of Moslem attacks. Nor does any one, 
 except Charlemagne and, for a few years, his son Louis I., 
 seem to have interested himself in the fortunes of once- 
 Christian Spain. And I fear we shall find reason to 
 complain that Charlemagne himself was extremely 
 ' political ' in his attitude towards Islam as a whole. 
 
 It rarely happened, in the Dark Ages, that three 
 successive generations of rulers of any state could be 
 called great men ; but it was undoubtedly true of Charles 
 Martel, Pippin, and Charles (Charlemagne), son of Pippin. 
 They must have been very able men indeed, to conciliate 
 and keep in their fidelity such a wild people as the Franks 
 of the seventh and eighth centuries, to become both the 
 inheritors of the old Roman regime and the leaders of 
 the new feudal aristocracy. It also rarely happened in 
 those days that an illuminating and sober biography of 
 one such man was written by one of his friends and 
 contemporaries ; but this was true of Eginhard's Life of
 
 YOUTH OF CHARLEMAGNE 24J 
 
 Charlemagne. In estimating the value of this book, some- 
 thing must perhaps be allowed for the fact that Eginhard 
 had been educated with the king's own children and owed 
 everything to him, that he had become his secretary and 
 chaplain, and was constantly at his side during his old age. 
 Upon King Pippin's death in 768 the usual division 
 of territory was made between his sons Charles and 
 Carloman, both of whom as boys had been hallowed by 
 Pope Stephen ; to Charles went Austrasia and most of 
 Neustria ; to Carloman went Burgundy, Alamannia and 
 Provence which commanded the passes into Italy. Both 
 were hailed as kings in 768; could they work together? 
 Would any unity of policy be possible ? Neither Germany, 
 nor Rome (of which, remember, they were 'patricians'), 
 nor Aquitaine was quiet, and the first task of Charles 
 was to subdue a rising in Aquitaine. Before this was 
 accomplished events in Rome were leading to jealousy 
 between the royal brothers. One supposes that the Roman 
 ' nobles ' were beginning to look upon the chair of St 
 Peter as an extremely desirable seat, now that to its 
 spiritual authority had been added so much temporal 
 power. Anyhow, on the death of Paul I. in 'j6'j, there 
 was a fierce scramble for that chair, and we become aware 
 what a wild barbarous place ' Rome, which was formerly 
 the capital of the world,' had become. There was 
 apparently a Greek party, a Lombard party, and a Frank 
 party among the rude captains of the city militia. One 
 lot of these ruffians chose a layman called Constantine 
 for pope, rushed him hastily through the minor orders 
 of the Church, and got him successfully consecrated. 
 Another lot set up one Philip, apparently with Lombard 
 favour, while a third party chose an old friend of the late 
 pope and called him Stephen III. Stephen triumphed, and 
 appealed to Charles and Carloman for support against 
 the Lombards. Charles, the elder brother, sent twelve 
 grave Frank ecclesiastics ; the Lombard king Dcsiderius, 
 who was nearer the spot, came with a Lombard army. 
 Carloman also seems to have had emissaries in Rome 
 who were perhaps already jealous of the friends of Charles ; 
 
 Q
 
 242 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 these made an alliance with the Lombard party in order 
 to dominate Stephen. Carloman and Desiderius arranged 
 that there should be a triple marriage between the 
 Lombard and Frank royal houses ; Charles for a moment 
 consented, and actually received a Lombard princess 
 to wife; Carloman married another. But Charles soon 
 saw that he had made a mistake, sent back the lady, and 
 threw his weight into the scale of Stephen. He was pre- 
 paring to invade Italy and perhaps to fight his own brother 
 for it when, most luckily, Carloman died (771). Carloman's 
 widow went to live at Pavia, and looked upon King 
 Desiderius as her protector. This boded ill for the re- 
 mains of the Lombard power, although Stephen was 
 released, from Lombard and Frank alike, by death in 772, 
 
 But, for the time, Charles (not yet Me Magne' or 'the 
 Great ') was able to begin with a clear conscience his 
 thirty-year-long contest with his heathen neighbours the 
 Saxons. We must clear our minds of the notion of 
 ' Saxony ' as it appears on a modern map. The Saxony 
 of those days had as its main artery the Weser, not the 
 Elbe ; the Elbe was almost its eastern frontier ; west- 
 wards the Saxon race filled all Westphalia up to the North 
 Sea, and almost reached the lower Rhine, where it merged 
 into the kindred Frisian. Bede, writing of these Saxons 
 half a century before Charles took them in hand, recognises 
 their kinship to our own people, and calls them ' Old 
 Saxons ' : he says they have no king but many ' satraps ' 
 — for Bede will be classical where he can ; a later English 
 chronicler would honestly have written, in more bar- 
 barous but more intelligible Latin, alderiimnnos. Modern 
 Saxony was then occupied by Wends, Obotrites, Slavs, 
 ' in sheepskins and primaeval filth.' North both of 
 Saxons and Wends, between the Eider and the Lower 
 Elbe, lay Danes, of whom one day we shall hear too much. 
 These Saxons were the most conservative heathens you 
 can imagine. They had sanctuaries and groves, and their 
 idol was a horse's head, to which they sacrificed live men. 
 As early as 755 Pippin had had dealings of no peaceful 
 nature with them, and he had once carried his arms to the
 
 THE SAXON WARS 243 
 
 VVeser. It would be infinitely wearisome to recapitulate 
 the details of Charles' wars in the same region. 
 
 These wars usuall}' began with a solemn assembly of 
 bishops and gnmdcs at Aachen, or at Worms, Ingelhcim, 
 or some other Rhenish city. This would be followed 
 by an issue of the ban or herchan (army call) to the 
 Prankish warriors of Austrasia or Neustria or both ; then 
 came a march to the Weser, or even to the Elbe, often with 
 hard fighting through the thick forests, then an assembly 
 of the leaders of the vanquished Saxons, who would 
 promise submission, give hostages, and allow themselves to 
 be baptised. Missionaries should be allowed to preach 
 freely, and tribute should be paid. ' Groves ' were hewn 
 down and demons exorcised. Then Charles would go home 
 to the Rhine, and perhaps be called away over the Alps or 
 Pyrenees, and, directly he was gone, the Saxons would 
 throw off their new faith and their new fealty at once. 
 ' Death or baptism ' was a convenient formula, but it was 
 a difficult one to enforce in Westphalian forests. More 
 than once, as years went on, Charles was able to hold a 
 ' Diet ' (day of assembly) in the heart of Saxony, and to 
 compel the Saxon 'satraps' to attend it; but the very 
 men who had attended it would often be 'out' again 
 before his rearguard had recrossed the Rhine. Once at 
 least (it was just after Charles' one military failure in 
 Spain) the Saxons retaliated, and wasted the whole Rhine 
 valley up to Coblenz. It was all very well to map out 
 districts, called gaue, to create dioceses, to appoint counts 
 to rule the gaue, and bishops to rule the dioceses, to decree 
 the penalty of death against those who ate flesh in Lent;^ 
 but Wittikind, who gradually comes to the front as the 
 Saxon hero, can generally fly to the heathen Danes who 
 do not keep Lent at all. Charles' ' Capitularies,' i.e., his 
 administrative regulations (often miscalled laws), published 
 nearly every year, arc full of stern enactments against 
 those who perform human sacrifices to devils. Whereas 
 in his other dominions he recognises composition and 
 payment of wergild as atonement for killing a man 
 ' Tliis is uclually found in the Capitulary of the year 781.
 
 244 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 (Capitulary of 802), for the Saxons rape, murder, sacrilege, 
 witchcraft and treason are to be visited with the penalty 
 of death. Even he who refuses to have his baby baptised 
 within its first year is to be heavily fined. Good authority 
 states that the pious King of the Franks once beheaded at 
 Verdcn 4500 Saxons in a single day, in revenge for one of 
 their outbreaks; it is difficult to believe it, for it is at the 
 rate of three a minute even in a day of twenty-four hours. 
 And in other circumstances Charles was not cruel. We 
 must also remember that it was the battle of civilisation 
 that he was fighting against much more cruel men. When 
 Wittikind was at last caught and baptised at Attigny, 
 Charles was his sponsor, and the worst of the Saxon 
 trouble was over ; ^ but local resistance never died out, and 
 was nourished by the wilder non-German tribes to the 
 east of the river Elbe. 
 
 Meanwhile Charles was also busy in Italy. The 
 pontificate of Stephen III. was short ; he died in 772 and a 
 Roman noble, Hadrian I., one of the greatest popes in 
 history, was elected. He was a red hot anti-Lombard, 
 trained at the feet of Stephen II., but a more honest and 
 more honourable man than he. Desiderius, if he had not 
 behaved well to Paul, had behaved worse to Stephen III., 
 and was now again clawing at that district of Ravenna and 
 Pentapolis which we ought no longer to call the exarchate ; 
 he covered his aggressions by declaring that he was acting 
 in the interest of the little sons of the deceased Carloman. 
 Hadrian at once turned to Charles ; it is significant that 
 his messengers had to go by sea : — ' Come, you Franks,' 
 wrote the pope, ' and stop this Lombard.' The story of 
 Pippin and Astulph was repeated, with some variations, 
 in 771. 
 
 Charles started from Geneva and came in two divisions, 
 by the Great Saint-Bernard and by the Mont-Cenis ; 
 Desiderius made brave defence of Pavia and Verona ; 
 
 * Charles can claim to have founded at least eight new bishoprics 
 in North Germany, on the very ground where he tamed the Saxons 
 and even while he was taming them, to wit Hildesheim, Halberstadt, 
 Minden, Munster, Osnabruck, Paderborn, Bremen and Verden.
 
 CHARLEMAGNE VISITS ROME, 774 245 
 
 Charles at tlic latter town got hold of his little nephews, 
 left Pavia blockaded, and passed on to keep the Easter of 
 774 in the 'Holy City.' No doubt he duly venerated 
 what he was told to venerate, and knelt where other 
 pilgrims had knelt. But on this and subsequent visits he 
 brought to Rome a curiosity more intelligent than had yet 
 been brought by any pilgrim. Charles was thoroughly 
 imbued, and every year he lived he became more imbued 
 with the desire, which to a lesser extent had been th t of 
 Theodoric the Goth, of rescuing from oblivion such J.ag- 
 ments of antiquity as remained. Legends were grow ing 
 up every day concerning the statues, temples, church. 's, 
 palaces, and sites of Rome. The result of Charles' visits 
 was the compilation, by an anonymous monk of the 
 abbey of Einsiedln in Germany, of the first guide book 
 to the city, subsequently expanded into the GrapJiia 
 Aureoi RomcB and the Mirabilia Urbis Rotncs, both of 
 which may probably be assigned to the twelfth century. 
 These books take the city street by street, and tell the 
 mediaeval pilgrim where he is to look for what. Of course 
 they are largely concerned with ridiculous and profane 
 relics,^ but they also record ancient inscriptions. It was 
 the Northern nations who taught the ignorant mediaeval 
 Romans to know their own city, just as to-day it is the 
 
 ^ The following list of relics is still inscribed in the cloisters of the 
 Lateran : — the wooden altar on which the early Roman bishops 
 celebrated the mass ; the actual table used at the Last Supper ; 
 two phials of blood and water from Christ's side ; a part of His 
 cradle ; His seamless coat ; His purple robe ; the napkin that was 
 about His head ; the towel with which He wiped His disciples' feet ; 
 part of the five barley loaves ; part of the ashes and blood of John 
 Baptist ; his raiment of camel's hair ; part of the chain of St John 
 Evangelist ; the shears with which his hair was cut off; the Ark of 
 the Covenant, with the two tables of the Law ; the golden censer of 
 incense ; an urn of gold full of manna ; some of the shew-bread. 
 Mediicval visitors also mention the golden mice and golden emerods ; 
 the heads of SS. Peter, Paul, Zacharias, Agnes, Euphemia ; part of the 
 actual bread that Christ consecrated at the Last Supper ; a picture of 
 Him painted by St Luke, if not by God Himself; two brazen pillars 
 from Solomon's temple which sweat annually (9th day of month of 
 Abib). ScG Mirabilia Urbis Roma, edited by F. M. Nichols, 1889.
 
 246 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 Northern nations who would save the monuments of that 
 city from the greed and municipal vanity of their equally 
 ignorant and far less reverent descendants. 
 
 While his grim Franks sat outside Pavia, Charles at 
 Rome contracted a close alliance with the Pope. That he 
 confirmed in some shape some 'donation* of Italian 
 territory of his father Pippin is certain ; but both the terms 
 and the limits of it are unknown, and there is no evidence 
 for them, except in the Life of Hadrian in the Liber Poiiti- 
 ficalis, and in the interpretation put upon them by later 
 popes. In the 'Life' there are extravagant statements 
 about the gift of Venetia, Corsica, Spoleto, Benevento, 
 besides the Duchy of Rome, the whole Exarchate and 
 Pentapolis. Much of this territory neither Charles nor any 
 other Frank ever touched, much less conquered. If the 
 donation of 774 had reached anything like these limits, 
 there would have been no need of subsequent donations or 
 promises of donation, such as we find Charles to have 
 made in 778 and 787. In the course of his correspondence 
 with Charles, Hadrian in 778 made the first reference to a 
 document which afterwards became famous, no less than 
 a reputed donation of the whole sovereignty of Italy by 
 Constantine the Great to St Sylvester.^ The great French 
 historian, M. Duchesne, is inclined to date this document 
 some twenty-five years earlier, i.e., in the pontificate of 
 Stephen II. ; Professor Bury prefers to date it in Paul I.'s 
 reicrn.- It seems to have produced very little effect upon 
 
 1 It may be read in Latin in the appendix to Mr Bryce's Holy 
 Roman Empire, or, in Mr Henderson's translation, in his Select His- 
 torical Documents of the Middle Ages, p. 319 sqq. 
 
 ^ Little use was made of this donation by the popes till the 
 middle of the eleventh century, when it became one of the main 
 weapons in their armoury ; but it was embodied whole in the False 
 Decretals (which became a much more potent weapon) in the middle of 
 the ninth century. Hincmar knew of it, and so did Gerbert ; and both 
 evidently disbelieved in its authenticity. An ingenious attempt to 
 explain away the significance and the shameless nature of this forgery 
 is made by Mr A. J. Carlyle, Hist, of Medicev. Political Theory, vol. 
 i., p. 287 sqq., but fails to carry conviction. It was finally exploded 
 and shown to be a forgery by Laurentius Valla, one of the pioneers of 
 the Italian Revival of Learning in the fifteenth century.
 
 END OF LOMBARD KINGDOM 247 
 
 Charles' active liberality, for in 781 \vc find the Pope quite 
 pleased with getting hold of the Sabine district, east of 
 Rome u[j to the Apennines, and a piece of the Tuscan 
 Maremma includintj Populonia ; in 7S7 Charles expressly 
 promised Hadrian ' Lombard Tuscany,' i.e.^ a district 
 including Viterbo, Orvieto, etc., up to the Lago di Bolsena, 
 and on the south Arpino and a strip of the Duchy of 
 Benevento, including Capua and Teano, etc. ; these places 
 the pope probably got. It would be a mistake to say that 
 Hadrian entirely ceased asking for more; but in his later 
 years at any rate, he seems to have realised that it was of 
 no use to ask for too much. 
 
 The truth is that, as Charles came to realise his power 
 and to receive the submission of Italian provinces (to get 
 which St Peter had certainly helped him) he found it more 
 convenient to keep them, douiiiiiuin and posscssio alike, for 
 himself. Even of Ravenna, which had been undoubtedly 
 included in the donation of Pippin, and whose keys Stephen 
 had held in his hands, Hadrian never seems to have got 
 hold ; he tried to do so, but had a long contest first with 
 its archbishop and then with Charles himself; and, when 
 Hadrian openly said ' at least then give me Spoleto,' 
 Charles replied with a firm negative, and kept Prankish 
 garrisons in most of the important places of Northern and 
 Central Italy. 
 
 On his way back from this first visit to Rome, Charles 
 received the surrender of Pavia, extinguished Desiderius 
 in a monastery, and was crowned himself as King of the 
 Lombards. One of the sons of Desiderius, called Adelchis, 
 escaped to Constantinople and continued to give trouble 
 for some )'ears. Tributary Lombard dukes were allowed 
 to retain part of the duchies of Benevento and Spoleto, 
 and probably the wilder spirits among the Northern 
 Lombards took refuge at the court of the former of these 
 dukes ; the tamer ones proved excellent warriors in Charles' 
 great mixed hosts. 
 
 In 778 (we must look for him in Saxony in the inter- 
 vening years) Charles thought of turning his arms against 
 the Moslem in Spain. There was a civil war going on
 
 24S CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 there between the ]^a/is, and a Spanish partisan of the 
 Abbassid Caliph of liagdad came to Charles at Paderborn, 
 in Saxon Westphalia, to get help from him against the 
 Ommiads in Spain. The Abbassid caliph was already 
 Charles' friend. Mark how political the relations between 
 warring faiths have become. A Frankish king may have 
 reason to suspect that a Greek emperor is likely to renew 
 his designs on Italy (say on Ravenna, and let the Greek 
 be Constantine V,, not dead till 775). The Frank therefore 
 receives in a friendly manner (say in 77"^) an embassy 
 from the caliph, who is likely to be able to give trouble to 
 this Greek emperor in Asia Minor. The caliph will be 
 only too pleased if the Frank can hurt his Ommiad rival 
 in far-away Spain. Thus the interests of united Christen- 
 dom and united Islam gave way to the territorial interests 
 of the respective champions of these faiths. And if the 
 court of Aachen enters into amicable relations with Bagdad 
 against Cordova and Constantinople, it will not be long 
 before Constantinople seeks to comfort Cordova against 
 Bagdad and Aachen. And so, in 77S, Charles, in two 
 divisions, crossed the Pyrenees and appeared in the valley 
 of the Ebro before the old Roman walls of Caesaraugusta, 
 which has been so charmingly corrupted into Saragossa. 
 Had he been victorious and driven the Moslem from Spain, 
 what an epoch in Western history ! But he had to be 
 content with taking a few small places and a great many 
 hostages from the local Vali. On his retreat he destroyed 
 the fortifications of Pampeluna in the mountains, and 
 suffered that reverse to his rearguard, which has become 
 immortal from the legend of how 
 
 Roland brave and Olivier 
 And every paladin and peer 
 In Roncesvalles died. 
 
 Whether they were Saracens or merely Gascon or Basque 
 mountaineers who fell upon Count Roland, Warden of the 
 Breton March, and his baggage train, is not quite certain, 
 Eginhard, who knows nothing of the embroidery of the 
 legend, says they were Gascons.
 
 THE ACTIVITY OF CHARLEMAGNE 249 
 
 Charles returned from his Spanish failure to find not 
 nnerely that Saxony was up, but that his whole Eastern 
 frontier was kicking, that Southern Italy was aflame too ; 
 the Greeks of Naples were pressing on Roman territory 
 from the South, the Duke of Benevento had joined them, 
 and Adelchis, son of the last Lombard king, was expected 
 to come and head the rising. ' With the exception of St 
 Peter,' wrote Hadrian to Charles, ' my hope is only in 
 you.' Such a king as Charles can have known little rest ; 
 he might well have called it, as a later German warrior, 
 Frederick the Great, did, 'a dog of a life' (only Frederick 
 put it even more strongly) ; the distances to cover were so 
 enormous, the roads must have been so bad. A Capitulary 
 issued at Pavia at the end of 780 speaks of great famine 
 in Italy, and of men selling themselves and their families 
 as slaves for hunger ; such contracts are contrary to public 
 policy, and Charles thereby annuls them. He was in Rome 
 at Easter (781), and again six years later. Whenever he 
 showed his soldiers in Italy, resistance melted away, and 
 he never pressed hardly on a defeated Christian foe. The 
 stiffest of all his Italian rebels were the dukes of Bene- 
 vento, Grimoald and Arichis, for they could always turn for 
 help to the Neapolitan and Sicilian Greeks ; yet Arichis 
 held the duchy for nineteen years before his death in 806, 
 in spite of his frequent rebellions and apparently with 
 Charles' consent. 
 
 The East German question was more serious. Of all 
 the German duchies which dated back to late Merovingian 
 times, Bavaria was the best rooted. It had a dynasty, the 
 sons of one Agilulf, of some pretensions. It was a refuge 
 for Saxons and for rebellious Lombards. True, it was 
 Christian, and so Charles could always employ against 
 its Duke Tassilo the weapon of papal excommunication, 
 which of course was of no use against the Saxons. But 
 Tassilo's wife was a daughter of the ex-King of the 
 Lombards, and Tassilo rebelled, perhaps at her instigation, 
 again and again. The last time was in 788, and then, 
 in full assembly at Ingelheim, he was condemned to death 
 as an incorrigible rogue, respited and made a monk.
 
 250 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 Charles then proceeded to divide Bavaria into counties or 
 {^aiie on the usual model. It was his campaigns in 
 Bavaria which first brought Charles to consider the 
 great river Danube. On the middle reaches of that 
 river the Avars were again making themselves a nuisance 
 from their fortified camp or ' Ring,' in the country which 
 Eginhard still classically calls Pannonia. Tassilo had 
 apparently hoped for help from these savages, but in vain. 
 Hence in 791 Charles advanced down the Danube with 
 the deliberate intention of planting Christian-German 
 colonies or 'marks' in what is now Austria. He took 
 with him contingents of all his subject German tribes, 
 even of Frisians and Saxons barely redeemed from horse- 
 head-worship and human sacrifice ; especially he took 
 Lombard cavalry. Like Napoleon after him he marched 
 on both banks of the river, and had a fleet of boats to keep 
 touch between his wings. It was on this campaign that he 
 wrote to his third (or ? fourth) wife, Fastrada, ' dear wife 
 pray for us and, if your health will allow you, fast for us.' 
 
 The Avars melted from before his face, and the 
 Lombard horsemen chased them as they melted, and 
 stormed their Ring. The plunder was enormous, it 
 probably comprised the loot of the Balkan cities for the 
 last two centuries. 'Before this,' says Eginhard, 'the 
 Franks were a poor nation ; now they became very rich.' 
 Indeed the capture of this treasure is said to have seriously 
 increased the scanty currency of Europe and, as a result, 
 to have sent up prices everywhere ! It was a simple 
 age, in which the distinction between fixed capital and 
 circulating capital was ill-understood. The territorial fruit 
 of the conquest of the Avars was the subsequent plantation 
 of the ' Mark ' of Austria and the Duchy of Carinthia as 
 outworks against Bulgars and Slavs. To the north of 
 the Danube lay a people called the Czechs, of Slavonic 
 blood and speech, entrenched in their diamond-shaped 
 Bohemia, whose sides were all mountains ; unfortunately, 
 all German efforts to dislodge them, then and since, have 
 failed. Northwards again, Obotrites, Letts, Wends, Serbs, 
 and other nameless horrors reached up to the Baltic.
 
 FIRST APPEARANCE OF DANES 251 
 
 Luckily for Charles and civilisation, these were usually 
 tearing each other in pieces (perhaps with neolithic 
 weapons) too much to invade Christian Germany often. 
 Fortresses were built, before the end of the reign, at 
 several points on the rivers Elbe and Saale ; north-east 
 of these rivers chaos began and stretched to the frontiers 
 of China. It was on the lower Elbe that Charles began 
 first to hear in earnest of the Danes,^ and he never ceased 
 hearing of them till the end of his life ; now they are 
 plundering in Frisia (810); now they are receiving and 
 comforting Saxon rebels; now 'king' Godfrey ^ boasts 
 that he will come with all his army and visit Charles at 
 Aachen ; ' idle talk,' says Eginhard, ' but some really 
 believed it.' Before Eginhard died in 840, he probably 
 knew that there was more than idle talk in it. At the 
 end of his life Charles, at any rate, was awake to the 
 danger ; he visited the coasts of the North Sea and the 
 Channel, and built defensive works at their ports ; he kept 
 
 * Gregory of Tours once mentions a Danish king plundering on 
 the Channel coasts and being beaten off by Theudebert (iii., 3). 
 
 ^ There are no regular Kings of Denmark before Gorm the Old 
 (899-936) ; but local tradition ascribes to this Godfrey about the year 
 809 the amazing piece of fortification known as the Danework, running 
 from the Schlei to HoUingstedt north of the Eider ; there it ends 
 in impossible swamps and marshes, which in the ninth century were 
 probably submerged. The Rhenish chronicler, Regino of Priim (died 
 915), is so far as I know the earliest writer to support this view ; but it 
 seems a little unlikely that a barbarian, who lived by raiding south- 
 wards, should have thought of protecting his country against invasion 
 from the south by a vast earthen mound nearly twelve miles long. 
 Gorm the Old and his Queen Thyra, a Christian, strengthened this 
 wall with stones, and built or rebuilt the gate in it, ever since called 
 the 'Thyrenberg' ; Regino, however, knows of a single gate. Walde- 
 mar the Great continued it in the twelfth century, and the Regent 
 Margaret Sprenghest added a piece of her own in the thirteenth. 
 There are other adjoining bits of fortification called the ' Kohgraben,' 
 perhaps best ascribed to Harold Bluetooth (936-986), and ' Oldenburg,' 
 of which the origin is still a puzzle. But the interest of the whole 
 thing is very great, and indeed unique, for it is, I believe, the only 
 piece of fortification dating from the Dark Ages which has con- 
 tinued to be used in warfare till our own days. It was hotly 
 defended in the war of 1864.
 
 252 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 river boats and patrolled the coasts against Danish pirates, 
 as his boats already patrolled the estuaries of the French 
 and Italian Riviera against Moslem pirates. But there is no 
 evidence that he ever possessed a fleet, or any sea-going 
 ships in the proper sense of the words. 
 
 As we approach the great event of the year 800, the 
 first real terminus to which the weary reader has to 
 accompany me, we sec how much the Prankish monarchy, 
 like the caliphate, is founded on a union of Church and State. 
 True, for the Franks, the union is temporary and non- 
 fundamental, and is liable to be violently interrupted, 
 whereas the caliph can really say, like Louis XIV., 
 ' I am the State,' and, like Pius IX., ' I am the Church.' 
 But under Charles, who was by no means a blind pietist, 
 and who, if not the least unlearned king of the Dark Ages, 
 did more to promote learning than all the others, Church 
 and State really did run together as yoke-fellows, and 
 drew with reasonably even pull at the plough of 
 civilisation. The canons put forward by the early popes, 
 of which there was a collection dating from the sixth 
 century, were treated as laws by the Frankish State, 
 and a ' Diet ' at Aachen received them as such. This did 
 not prevent Charles from treating Church lands as part 
 of his dominions and making them bear their share of 
 duties to the State. Several very strict injunctions to the 
 clergy show that these were, as yet, by no means of 
 apostolical virtue : — ' You abbots are to live among your 
 monks ; you are to keep the very letter of your monastic 
 regula, and the very letter of the Church law, as well as 
 the precepts of the Gospel ; you are to be very careful 
 whom you ordain ; you are not to keep dogs or hawks, or 
 to go hunting ; you are not to be drunkards, fornicators, 
 or worse — we hear evil tales of you on such matters.' 
 Charles undoubtedly made and deposed both bishops and 
 abbots at his pleasure. 
 
 The great schools which Charles set up, primarily for 
 the education of the clergy, were meant for the laity as 
 well, and laymen occasionally taught and were taught 
 in them. The remnants of Latin antiquity were studied
 
 A PRIMITIVE RENAISSANCE 253 
 
 and zealously copied in these schools ; if they were not 
 wholly understood, they were at least saved for Europe. 
 In the seventh and eighth centuries, until Charles took 
 the schools in hand, Latin had only been studied because 
 it was the language of the Church ; quotations from the 
 classics only survived in the dull grammars and compendia 
 into which the scanty knowledge that survived was 
 compressed. The manuscripts, however, were there, on 
 the shelves of many monastic libraries ; from Charles'" time 
 they began to be read and, still better, copied and multiplied. 
 Translations into the vernacular tongues begin soon after 
 his time. Eginhard can quote Cicero and imitate Suetonius ; 
 Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, in the intervals of administer- 
 ing Church and State, can write elegiacs of a kind. 
 Charles can dictate Latin epigrams of his own composition. 
 He liked to say his prayers in Latin. Though he could 
 never pronounce it, he could understand Greek ; this 
 statement of Eginhard's does, it is true, rather take 
 away one's breath, but Greek had been taught in the 
 school of York at the end of the seventh century, and the 
 curriculum of the school of Aachen was directly modelled 
 on that of York. F'ulda, Saint-Gall, Reichenau in Germany, 
 old Corbey on the Somme, were the most flourishing schools 
 after Aachen. Charles could never learn to write, though 
 he worked very hard at it and even kept his copy-book 
 under his pillow, and tried to form his letters in his 
 wakeful night hours (he was a very light sleeper), but in 
 vain. Moreover — if only this had survived ! — he had the 
 old songs of the Prankish language written out, and even 
 began a Prankish grammar. 
 
 His zeal for Church services was great. A ' letter 
 to his people ' is extant, in which he says he has ordered 
 a careful recension of the Liturgy and also of the manu- 
 scripts of the Bible, which had been corrupted by ignorant 
 copyists. With the aid of Paul the Lombard Deacon, 
 he prepared new lectionaries ; Paul was set down to 
 read the Catholic Pathers, and to make from their 
 works a floyilcgiu))i of pieces suitable to be read in 
 Church. We do not hear of Charles as a ijreat builder
 
 254 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 of churches, but, as Aachen was his darling city, so the 
 great church at Aachen is the best memorial of him. It 
 was designed to be the Saint-Sophia of the West ; its style 
 is Byzantine, but the hands were those of a Frank architect. 
 It was at once a palace-chapel and a royal burying-place, 
 the parent of many ' royal ' cathedrals. Other favourite 
 residences of Charles were Frankfort on the Main and 
 Attigny, but above all Ingelheim on an island in the 
 Rhine a little below Mainz. 
 
 In fact, we may say that this great man not only 
 fostered but actually ordered a sort of first 'Renaissance' 
 or new-birth of learning. He and his courtiers delighted 
 to write Latin epigrams to each other, and adopted 
 classical nicknames for each other. It was this Renaissance 
 which attracted Paul the Deacon from the far-off monastery 
 of Monte Cassino ; he came first to Metz to write epitaphs 
 for the royal tombs, and spent some four years altogether 
 at various places in ' Frank-land.' It was this also which 
 attracted a far greater scholar, the Englishman Alcuin, 
 who had the traditions of the school of York. Through 
 Alcuin's hands until his death in 804 passed most of 
 Charles' diplomatic correspondence with popes, caliphs, 
 and Greek emperors. Alcuin's letters go far beyond the 
 contemporary standard of clerical learning ; he had read 
 Pliny, and was deeply interested in astronomical problems. 
 At Aachen there was even some beginning of discussion 
 of high theological problems, such as would naturally arise 
 in any real Renaissance ; but for this Charles was hardly 
 prepared, and he stifled it lest it should lead to the 
 growth of heresy. Indeed in the next century we do 
 find all over the land of the Franks a very considerable 
 amount of theological discussion, which probably owed 
 its origin to the stimulus given to learning by Charles. All 
 such discussion was unpleasing to a Rome sunk in ignor- 
 ance and temporal greed. But Alcuin was able to get 
 both king and bishops to protest against one new piece of 
 Roman theology; at Irene's Council of Nicaea (j^?) the 
 adoration of the holy images had been made compulsory, 
 and papal legates who were present had joyfully agreed
 
 CHARLEMAGNE AND THE POPE 255 
 
 to this; but Hadrian was obliged to be content with 
 alloiviug the Franks to adore idols without compelling 
 them to do so. 
 
 As regards the relations with the Papacy, brought 
 about by the Frank king's new territorial power in Italy, 
 it is clear that Alcuin quite understood the position, and 
 probably gave Charles the advice on which he finally 
 acted in the year 800. The harmony between pope and 
 king may occasionally have been threatened, but it was 
 never interrupted in the twenty-one years of the rule 
 of Hadrian, who died in 795. Few popes have ever got 
 on so well with a great temporal overlord. Charles wept 
 for his death. Hadrian had been a most zealous steward of 
 Church property, both new and old, and the Papacy soon 
 became again nearly as rich as it had been before Leo 
 confiscated its Sicilian estates. A new danger was how- 
 ever arising, that from the Saracen pirates, who plundered 
 all the Italian coasts and finished off what the wars of 
 Justinian had left of the old Roman harbours, Ostia 
 and Portus ; Centumcellae {Civita Vecchid) did not replace 
 them as the principal port till the tenth century, but 
 to defend the harbours the Roman militia was constantly 
 in requisition. That militia was henceforth not so papal 
 in its sympathies as it had been in the seventh century. 
 No doubt its leaders had a good deal to say at papal 
 elections; once or twice, e.g., in the reign of Paul I., 
 the name Sointus has reappeared, and apparently 
 means the new nobles or leaders of this militia. It is 
 possible that a similar process was taking place in other 
 Italian cities, and that the germs of municipal self-govern- 
 ment would in time arise out of this. 
 
 Hadrian was succeeded by Leo III., to whom 
 the early letters of Charles {i.e., of Alcuin) issue an 
 ominous warning against the sin of simon)'. It is 
 conjecturable that Leo had bribed his way to the chair, 
 but we have absolutely no proof thereof But he had 
 certainly no support from Constantinople, and was likely 
 to find no friend but Charles, towards whom his tone is, 
 from the first, far more humble than that of Hadrian had
 
 256 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 been. The fickle Romans soon began to take advantage 
 of the weakness of their Prince-bishop, and the nephews 
 of the late pope headed a vigorous opposition. Of what 
 they accused Leo we cannot be sure but it was a serious 
 accusation ; adultery and perjury are both mentioned, 
 yet there was no attempt to set up any anti-pope. In 
 799 Leo was attacked, while making a procession through 
 the streets, thrown down and left for dead. According 
 to one story his eyes and tongue were cut out and after- 
 wards miraculously restored to him ; at any rate he could 
 both see and speak a year later. He was picked up by 
 his friends, was hidden, and was at last able to escape 
 from Rome ; naturally he fled to the court of Charles, 
 who received him well and kept him as guest for several 
 months. His enemies calmly aw^aited the verdict of the 
 King of the Franks, which they would hardly have done if 
 they had not felt that they had some case. 
 
 This put the king of the PVanks in a very awkward 
 situation. A task was thrust upon him, and apparently 
 thrust with the good-will of both plaintiff and defendant, 
 of sitting in judgment on the highest spiritual power in 
 Christendom. ' What ! ' he may have said to himself, ' am 
 I then a sort of Emperor of the West?' Alcuin seems 
 to have felt his way towards such a solution. * The pope,' 
 he said, ' can be tried by no authority at this moment 
 existing in the world ; there is a defect of such authority, 
 for, look you, the emperor at Constantinople has recently 
 been treated by his mother much as the pope has been 
 treated at Rome, and tJicrc is at this movicnt actually 
 no Roman eviperor. Your Majesty must decide what 
 to do, and your decision should be given at Rome.' 
 Clearly this had but one meaning — the elevation of 
 Charles to the throne of Augustus. If that could be done 
 he, as lord of all the world, might pronounce judgment 
 in this difficult case. Leo had already been sent back to 
 Rome with sufficient escort (November 799) ; he had been 
 well received, and, after a preliminary examination, his 
 enemies were sent off north. Charles followed Leo in state, 
 and spent two months in Rome at the end of the year 800.
 
 CAROLUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR 257 
 
 He held a great meeting in St Peter's of his whole court, 
 Frank, Lombard and Italian, and, in the presence of this 
 court, Leo cleared himself of the (to us unknown) accusa- 
 tions by the ordeal of a solemn oath taken on the Gospels. 
 Then, according to the received version of the story, on 
 Christmas Day Leo surprised Charles by placing on his 
 head the crown of the Roman Empire, while the basilica 
 of St Peter rang with shouts of 'Carolus Augustus 
 Imperator.' 
 
 ' Had I known what the pope was going to do, I 
 wouldn't have come to Church,' says Charles, in Eginhard's 
 Life. This is capable of two interpretations. It seems 
 impossible to believe that Charles was surprised into taking 
 the Empire ; the question was probably debated long before 
 he crossed the Alps, and all must have been prepared for 
 this solution of it. If Charles used the words, what he 
 probably meant was either * I should like to have had an 
 official coronation, with all details properly arranged ' ; or 
 ' I don't like the idea of the pope putting in any claim to 
 give me or anyone else the crown of Augustus.' For it is 
 quite clear that this gift, and this power to give, is what 
 later popes successfully read into the story. The extremity 
 of their claim is expressed in the Roman couplet of a 
 later century — 
 
 Rex venit ante fores, jurans prius urbis honores, 
 Post homo fit Papae^ suinit quo daiite coronam ; 
 
 (' he becomes the vassal of the pope, and takes the crown 
 as his gift.')^ Other persons also in the ensuing centuries 
 conceived themselves entitled to a voice in the elevation 
 and even the election of an emperor of the West ; in Italy 
 the ' Roman people,' in Germany the heads of the great 
 duchies. As for the former, some dreamer would arise at 
 intervals and call upon the Roman ' senate and people ' 
 to act as their namesakes had acted when they conferred 
 the magistracies of the Republic on Augustus twenty-seven 
 years before Christ's birth ; such dreamer was usually in 
 
 ' Traditionally this couplet was inscribed by Pope Innocent II. 
 under a picture of the Emperor Lothair II. 
 
 R
 
 2s8 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 opposition to the pope and usually came to a bad end. 
 The claim of the German dukes was more serious for it 
 rested on real fact, the fact, namely, that without their 
 help no German king could come to Italy to get himself 
 crowned emperor ; and from their claims those of the seven 
 'electors' were ultimately derived. 
 
 However great the importance of these claims was 
 going to be, it is quite clear that the actual date of this 
 foundation of the ' Holy Roman Empire ' (which lasted, 
 on diplomatic parchments at least, for a thousand and six 
 years) was an accidental date, conditioned, first, by the 
 question whether a pope could be tried, and, secondly, by 
 the actual five years' vacancy of the throne of Constanti- 
 nople. As Emperor, Charles at once condemned the 
 pope's late accusers to death, respited and banished them. 
 
 As to the further question, whether Charles was right 
 to make himself emperor, we ought not to expect him to 
 foresee all the consequences. He was a brave, good man, 
 who hated anarchy and felt himself both called and equal 
 to the task of crushing it. Here was anarchy, and the 
 prospect of more, at the old centre, the most venerable 
 spot of the Western world. It was clearly Charles' business 
 to put himself in the best possible position for crushing 
 the hydra. 
 
 Many learned treatises have been written about the 
 Holy Roman Empire, with the intention of explaining 
 both what it was believed to be and what it actually was. 
 We must, however, beware of reading any ' theory ' about 
 it into the minds of the men of 800 A.D. Vagueness of 
 thought, looseness of political concept, were the rule then 
 even more than now ; even Alcuin's mind was probably 
 very hazy on the subject. In speaking of the matter, 
 Alcuin would have claimed that his master was the suc- 
 cessor of Augustus and of Constantine ; but then he knew 
 little of the power those sovereigns had actually wielded. 
 It is plain that in becoming 'Emperor' Charles did not 
 become ruler of any territory which he had not ruled 
 before. Ruler of most of Northern and Central Italy he 
 had been since the overthrow of Desiderius in 774 ; ruler
 
 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 259 
 
 of Spain south of the Ebro he never was ; still less was he 
 ruler of the African, Asiatic, or Britannic provinces of the 
 old Roman Empire. On the other hand, he was ruler of 
 much of Germany, which had been quite outside the 
 sphere of the real Rome. Perhaps the best thing we can 
 say is that the ' Roman Empire' had now become more a 
 spiritual concept than anything else. 
 
 On his domestic position as King of the P^ranks the 
 crown of Augustus had little influence ; a new oath 
 of allegiance was indeed devised, which perhaps made 
 him a little more holy in the eyes of his churchmen, but 
 that was all. Charles himself was as absolute as any 
 Merovingian king had been, but that was because he was 
 a good, wise, well-beloved, and very strong man ; into the 
 future he did not pry, and he did not even make any 
 arrangements for the transmission of the Imperial power 
 on his own death. A lesser successor would gain from his 
 Imperial crown no serious addition of authority over the 
 already strong feudal aristocracy of Franks, Germans, 
 Lombards. 
 
 P'eudal aristocracy was the waxing force, kingship the 
 waning force. Roman law was everywhere giving way 
 before feudal and Frankish custom. Even Charles in his 
 capitularies, issued almost every year in his armed 
 assemblies or diets of great people, did not abolish tribal 
 custom, did not attempt to introduce any one system of 
 law, although in his general edicts he occasionally over- 
 rode customs hitherto deemed sacred. His capitularies, 
 though they may occasionally make additions to law, are 
 really far more administrative regulations than laws in the 
 true sense of the word. A man's * law ' was a thing he 
 inherited, of which he could not divest himself; he 'lived 
 his law,' z>., as I have said below, he walked about encom- 
 passed by an invisible envelope of his law.^ In Italy, Roman 
 law and Lombard custom were all jumbled up ; Roman law 
 gave way there perhaps more slowly than elsewhere, but it 
 gave way a little. In Gaul the old division into civitatcs 
 faded before that into duchies and counties ; in Germany the 
 1 Vide in/r., p. 283, note.
 
 26o CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 grafschaften and gatie represented on the whole old tribal 
 divisions of the peoples. Officials were nearly always chosen 
 from natives of the districts they administered and in which 
 they owned lands, and so were on the high road to become 
 territorial and feudal aristocracy. The missi were, indeed, 
 a great feature of Charles' government, and a force distinctly 
 contrary to this tendenc)', and their activity continued for 
 some half-century after his death ; they were either lay or 
 clerical, more often clerical. They travelled at the expense 
 of the province they visited, and their duties included 
 a review of the whole administration, financial, judicial, 
 military and religious. They had to make known all new 
 laws and edicts, to receive oaths of allegiance, to raise 
 rents from royal domain, to hear appeals from the justice 
 of the courts, to recruit for the army, to inquire into the 
 behaviour of the clergy in ritual and morals. In fact one 
 might say that they were the one real sign, annually patent 
 to all men, of the existence of a central government. And 
 one suspects that, as royalty rapidly grew weaker in the 
 reigns of Charles' son and grandsons, the task of the missi 
 grew more and more hopeless. 
 
 As a leader of a great warlike nation or set of nations, 
 and as military reformer, Charles should occupy a very 
 considerable place in history. His military measures, so 
 far as they may be traced in his capitularies, start from 
 the principle that service in the field was still incumbent 
 on all freemen, under a very heavy fine for non-attendance. 
 But, as this was apparently impossible to enforce, his army 
 was really raised on the plan that each group of small 
 landowners should join together to provide one fully armed 
 man. Every three or every four mansi (may an English 
 historian say ' hides of land ? ' ^) shall join together to 
 provide such a soldier. There is no pay for any man (but 
 no doubt plenty of booty), and each has to bring with him 
 his own arms, armour, and three months' victuals. Plunder 
 of friends is strictly forbidden, and transport is carefully 
 organised. The proportion of cavalry to infantry increases 
 
 1 The Frankish unit was, however, smaller than the English. (See 
 Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century^ Chapter I.)
 
 ARMY OF CHARLEMAGNE 261 
 
 steadily ; war is therefore becoming more expensive ; the 
 cavalry are to carry lance, long and short sword, bow and 
 arrows. Defensive armour is also increasing, and includes 
 helm, shield and mail shirt. The clergy are not exempt 
 from the duty of supplying soldiers for their lands. Strict 
 edicts forbid the export of arms and armour to any foreign 
 country. Other edicts regulate which province is liable 
 to be called out by the hereban for any particular war, 
 always on the principle that the nearest fights the nearest. 
 There is much said about siege-trains, and these apparently 
 include pontoons or movable bridges of some sort for 
 crossing rivers. Charles built a great bridge across the 
 Rhine at Mainz, the superstructure of wood, the piers of 
 stone ; but it was burned towards the end of his reign. It 
 was a great performance in such an age to build a bridge 
 fourteen hundred feet long. Charles was also great on 
 entrenchments and entrenching tools, on ' burgs ' or forti- 
 fications — probably of earthen mounds and wood — and on 
 road-making. As for desertion it is equivalent to he^-esliz, 
 which is equivalent to treason, and the penalty is death. 
 Any soldier who gets drunk is to be confined to water for 
 the rest of the campaign ; it is even a criminal offence to 
 offer a fellow-soldier a drink. 
 
 What, however, did the hierarchy of officials at Con- 
 stantinople and the self-styled Empress Irene think of the 
 elevation of this Frank ? Very little indeed. They seem 
 to have been neither surprised nor displeased, certainly 
 not, as we should have expected them to be, shocked. 
 Perhaps they reflected that, ever since his conquest of 
 Desiderius, Charles had acted as if he were complete 
 sovereign of all Italy north of the Garigliano ; perhaps 
 they were pleased that the new Augustus showed little 
 disposition to conquer Sicily or even Naples. No one in 
 the West seems to have suggested that he should make 
 any attempt to follow the first Augustus in vindicating the 
 right of Rome to rule the East as well as the West ; and no 
 one in the East seems to have doubted that there would 
 soon again be a ' real ' emperor at the real seat of Govern- 
 ment — Constantinople. Thus we might almost say that
 
 262 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 Constantinople hardly took Charles' new claim and title 
 seriously. Charles' relations with the Eastern Government 
 may be emphatically described as mild. It is not likely to 
 be true that he offered marriage to the murderous Irene, 
 although a respectable Greek historian, Theophanes, asserts 
 that he did so. An embassy from him was actually in 
 Constantinople when Irene and her eunuchs were hurled 
 from power in 802, and Nicephorus, an iconoclast, seized the 
 throne. The change was not to the mind of Carolus 
 Augustus ; though the new Eastern emperor fought Arabs 
 and Bulgars valiantly, his fleet also took sailing exercise in 
 the Adriatic, where, if anywhere in Italy, the sympathies 
 of the coast population were again inclining to be Greek. 
 In Charles' later years there was a sort of struggle between 
 the two empires for the lordship of those islands and lagunes 
 which were one day to be Venice. Embassies came to 
 Aachen from the Archbishop of Grado and the ' tribunes ' 
 of the Venetians. Once Charles appointed a duke for 
 those parts ; but the Greek fleet was on the spot, and the 
 duke had to turn his coat and call himself, in Greek, a 
 spatJiai'. Charles was angry, and sent his second son, 
 Pippin, to avenge this, and the result was that, in order to 
 escape Pippin, the Venetians moved from their earlier 
 situations on the mouth of the Brenta, which were perhaps 
 still accessible from the mainland, and laid the keel of their 
 great city on the Rialto. In 811 Nicephorus was killed in 
 battle, and his iconoclastic friends were severely handled 
 when Michael Rhangabes, the candidate of the Church, 
 became Emperor of the East. Michael sought the friend- 
 ship of Charles and the pope, and even gave to the former 
 the distinctively Imperial title of /Sao-iXei'? ; but his reign 
 was short and was fully occupied with a Bulgarian war. On 
 the Danube, indeed, there might have been occasions of 
 quarrel between the two empires had not a thick wedge of 
 heathen savages lain between their spheres of influence. 
 And on matters ecclesiastical they were not likely to 
 quarrel as long as both worshipped stocks and stones. 
 
 More interesting, because of the legends that have 
 grown up from it, but not really of more effect on history
 
 AACHEN AND BAGDAD 263 
 
 is the attitude of Charles to the Caliph of Bagdad. If 
 anything could have tempted him to an Eastern policy, it 
 would have been the sedulous friendship of Caliph Haroun- 
 al-Rashid. It was with Haroun's approval that the Patriarch 
 of Jerusalem in 799 sent gifts to Charles, and sent in the 
 next year the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. Alcuin, indeed, 
 thought that this implied some actual Prankish sovereignty 
 over the most sacred of sites ; and the terms in which an 
 embassy from Haroun himself spoke in 807 seemed to 
 suggest the same idea. Haroun was very careful to protect 
 Frank pilgrims to Jerusalem, and a hospice was built for 
 them there. The Moslem had nothing to fear from such 
 persons, for the Greek and Latin monks already nourished 
 a holy abhorrence of each other, and the few Latins who 
 made the difficult journey to Jerusalem were more ill- 
 treated by their Greek fellow-Christians than by the 
 Arabs. Among the gifts which Haroun sent to Charles 
 (802) was an elephant, the first perhaps which had been 
 seen in the West since the fifth century, the only elephant, 
 says Eginhard, which Haroun himself possessed. This 
 dear beast, whose name was Aboulabbas, had a keeper 
 called Isaac the Jew ; Charles was imprudent enough to 
 take it with him campaigning against the Danes in 810, 
 and it died in consequence. 
 
 The emperor's last military task was to s«nd over the 
 Pyrenees a set of expeditions more successful than that of 
 778, The Moors in 793 had actually raided as far north 
 as Narbonne, had rolled over a Frank army at Toulouse, 
 and recrossed the mountains laden with booty. We then 
 become aware of a hardy little Christian kingdom in 
 the Asturias Mountains, under an Alfonso II., who was 
 already driving wedges of Christian soldiers into Gallicia. 
 To help him, and to avenge the Moslem raid of two years 
 before, Charles had in 795 sent one of his sons Ludwig 
 (or Louis or Chlodwig or Clovis), afterwards ' Louis the 
 Pious,' who began to conquer southwards towards the 
 Ebro, and so to found the Spanish ' Mark ' or ' March.' 
 Perpetual civil war between Va/is helped such expeditions ; 
 rebel Moslems were always coming to Aachen to ask for
 
 264 CHARLES THE GREAT 
 
 help. In So I, after bloody fighting, Barcelona was taken, 
 and young Louis was the first Christian prince to re-enter 
 in triumph a city won back from the infidel. By 812 the 
 Spanish March was in a fair way to be organised as a 
 province of Charles' Empire ; it included the valley of the 
 Ebro, and was in close alliance with the old Spanish 
 Christians, the name of whose capital, Oviedo (Sheeptown) 
 suggests their pastoral simplicity of habits. In 809 Caliph 
 Haroun of Bagdad died, and the ensuing strife for the 
 caliphate suggested to the Ommiads of Cordova the hope 
 of once more becoming the leaders of Islam ; the Mediter- 
 ranean was red with Moslem blood shed by Moslem sailors. 
 Christendom gained by this strife, and the Balearic isles 
 were temporarily recovered from the Moors. 
 
 Charles died in 814, in the seventy-fifth year of his 
 life and the forty-seventh year of his reign. To measure 
 his greatness by any such standards as those of antiquity, 
 of the later Middle Ages, or of modern times, is impossible. 
 Of his own Dark Ages he is, with the exception of our 
 own Alfred, the solitary figure that attains true greatness. 
 He had none of the chances of Augustus, of Trajan, of 
 Constantine, or of Justinian ; not even those of William the 
 Conqueror. He had to make his Renaissance, his civilisation, 
 almost to make his Europe. Our Europe owes an un- 
 bounded debt to this strong, brave man. He gave it a 
 breathing space between two periods of anarchy. He set it 
 an ideal. He cleared the ground for the development of 
 civilisation, on slightly new lines it is true, but still on lines 
 that ran far back into the Roman Empire. He began the 
 reconciliation of the Romance and the Teutonic elements 
 of culture ; he laid deep and strong foundations for 
 Christian Germany ; he started afresh the energies of 
 Christian Spain. Pious and deeply devoted as he was to 
 Holy Church, he yet knew well how to keep popes and 
 churchmen in their proper place, and actually kept them 
 there. 
 
 In person Charles was not the majestic figure which 
 looks gravely down upon us from the place of honour on 
 the walls of the Kaiser-Saal at Frankfort, for he seems to
 
 CHARACTER OF CHARLEMAGNE 265 
 
 have been beardless, red-faced and fat. Eginhard says, 
 he was tall, ' seven feet high,' but, as he adds ' not 
 exceeding the just measure of man,' we think that 
 Eginhard's ' feet ' were not ours. All evidence, indeed, 
 goes to show that men in the Middle and Dark Ages were 
 smaller than they are in our da\s ; and a seven-foot man 
 can now earn a very fair living in a show. Anyhow 
 Charles was a great athlete, and a mighty hunter in the 
 Ardennes and Vosges ^ forests. It is pleasant to picture 
 him going a-hunting, surrounded by his family, especially, 
 like a patriarchal Irish squire, by a large troupe of unmarried 
 daughters. He was also fond of swimming in the warm 
 baths at Aachen, and delighted in swimming-parties with 
 a crowd of his friends. He liked giving audiences while 
 he was dressing in the morning ; perhaps this was the 
 origin of the French king's lev^e. He was very abstemious 
 in his drink, but always hungry and a great eater of meat, 
 plain ' roast and boiled.' He hated doctors, but was fond 
 of prescribing for himself. 
 
 ' These great forests probably then stretched from the sources of 
 the Saune to the Meuse and were full of wild cattle and elk ; perhaps 
 even the aurochs survived there into Caroling times.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Time covered is, roughly, the ninth century. 
 
 The most important Events are — (i) The raids of the Scandinavian 
 Vikings on the coasts of Gaul and Germany, which are fore- 
 shadowed even before the death of Charlemagne and last well 
 into the tenth century. (2) The raids of the Saracens upon Italy, 
 beginning about 827 m Sicily, and going on well into the tenth 
 century. (3) The appearance at the end of the century of a new 
 set of raiders from the East, the Hungarians. All these raids 
 were made worse by- — (4) The civil wars between the son and 
 grandsons of Charlemagne, beginning about 830 ; it is these 
 wars which contribute most to the establishment of separate 
 kingdoms in France and Germany. Then (5) there is the grow- 
 ing weakness of the Imperial power in Italy, until the Imperial 
 crown looks as if it were almost a gift of the Pop«. (6) The 
 growing pretensions of the Papacy, marked especially by the 
 reign of Nicholas I. (858-867), and the publication of the 'false 
 decretals ' ; the Frankish Church especially struggles against these 
 pretensions. 
 
 The chief Actors are : — 
 
 (i) The Carolingian family. 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE, 
 King of the Franks, 768 ; Emperor, 800-814. 
 
 I \ i 
 
 Charles, Pippin, King of Italy, LOUIS I., the Pious, 
 
 dies 811. dies 810. Louis I. of France, 
 
 I Louis I. of Empire, 
 
 Bernard, dies 818. dies 840. 
 
 Continued on next page. 
 
 207
 
 268 
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER VIII 
 
 I 
 
 LOTHAIR, 
 
 Lothair 1. of Empire, 
 
 gets 'Middle Kingdom,' 
 
 called Lorraine, in 843, 
 
 dies 855. 
 
 LOUIS I., the Pious — Continued. 
 I 
 
 Pippin, 
 dies 838. 
 
 LOUIS II., Lothair II., 
 of Empire, in Lorraine, 
 holds only Italy, dies 869. 
 dies 875. 
 
 .1 
 Gisela. 
 
 Berenger I., 
 
 King of Italy, 
 
 Emperor, 915, 
 
 dies 924. 
 
 Gisela. 
 
 Berengarll., Carloman, 
 King of Italy, invited to 
 
 LOUIS, THE 
 GERMAN, 
 
 'King of East 
 
 Franks,' 833, 
 
 dies 876. 
 
 CHARLES, 
 THE BALD, 
 
 Charles II. 
 
 of France, 
 
 Charles II. 
 
 of Empire, 
 
 ' King of West 
 
 Franks,' 841, 
 
 Emperor, 876, 
 
 dies 877. 
 
 Bertha. 
 
 Hugh Guy 
 
 of Provence, Margrave 
 
 'King of Italy,' of Tuscany, 
 dies 947. 
 
 dies 966. 
 
 Adalbert. 
 
 a bastard 
 I 
 
 Louis, 
 the 
 
 take Young, 
 Imperial dies 882. 
 Crown, 
 but does 
 not get it, 
 dies 880. 
 
 CHARLES, LOUIS 
 THE FAT, II., of 
 Charles III. 
 of Empire, 
 reigns in 
 Germany 
 from 880, 
 Emperor, 881, 
 reigns in France 
 from 885 ; last who 
 united all three, 
 dies 888. 
 
 France, 
 
 'the 
 Stam- 
 merer,' 
 
 dies 
 
 879. 
 
 Lothair, King of Italy, 
 
 dies 950, 
 
 married to Adelaide 
 
 (daughter of Rudolf II. 
 
 of Burgundy), 
 
 who afterwards marries 
 
 Otto I. of Germany 
 
 and Empire. 
 
 ARNULF, 
 
 King of Germany, 
 
 888, 
 
 Emperor, 896, 
 
 dies 899. 
 
 LOUIS, THE 
 
 CHILD, 
 
 dies 911, 
 
 last Caroling King 
 
 of Germany. 
 
 LOUIS III., Carloman, 
 of France, dies 884. 
 dies 882. 
 
 CHARLES, 
 
 THE 
 
 SIMPLE, 
 
 Charles III. 
 
 of France. 
 
 (See Table, 
 
 Chapter IX.) 
 
 (2) The very puzzling rulers in Upper and Lower ' Burgundy ' 
 (the later Franche-Comte, Dauphind, and Provence). 
 Upper BuRCUNnv. Lower Burgundy. 
 
 Conrad I. 
 
 Boso, 
 
 Lothair II. of Lorraine, 
 
 (?) married 
 
 a daughter 
 
 dies 887, 
 
 dies 869. 
 
 of Louis the Pious. 
 
 marries a 
 
 (See last Table.) 
 
 1 
 
 
 daughter of 
 
 1 
 
 Conrad II. 
 1 
 
 Emperor Louis II. 
 
 1 
 LOUIS, 
 
 Bertha. 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 Hugh of Provence, 
 
 Rudolf I., dies 911. 
 
 Adelaide. 
 
 Louis III. of 
 
 who seizes 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 Empire, 
 
 Lower Burgundy 
 
 Rudolf II., adds 
 
 RaoUI., King of 
 
 Emperor, 901, 
 
 (see last Table), 
 
 Lower Burgundy, 
 
 France, 923-936. 
 
 blinded, 905, 
 
 surrenders it, 930, 
 
 getting it from Hugh 
 
 
 dies 928. 
 
 and becomes 
 
 of Provence, King of 
 
 
 
 King of Italy, 
 
 Italy, 930 or 933, 
 
 
 
 dies 947. 
 
 dies 937. 
 
 
 
 
 
 CONRAD 
 
 in. 
 
 Adelaide. 
 
 
 1 . 
 
 
 (See last Table.) 
 
 Continued on next page.
 
 RULERS IN 'BURGUNDY' 269 
 
 United BURGUHDY—Continuee/. 
 
 Conrad III., 
 dies 993. 
 
 Rudolf III., Bertha, Wife of Gisela, Wife of 
 
 died 1032. Robert II. of France. Henry, the Quarrelsome, 
 
 of Bavaria. 
 
 A'oie. — Guy Marprave of Spoleto, died 894, and his Son, Lambert, died 
 898, each of whom for a moment wore the Imperial Crown, were also 
 Carolings by distant female descent. 
 
 (3) A quite unimportant and brief dynasty in the 'Eastern Em- 
 pire' is the 'Phrygian' dynasty. 
 
 MICHAEL IL, 
 820-829. 
 
 I 
 
 THEOPHILUS, 
 
 829-842. 
 
 MICHAEL IIL, 
 842-867. 
 
 To them succeeded the Macedonian (or Armenian) dynasty with 
 BASIL I., 867-886. (See Table in Argument of Chapter IX.)
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 AUT nihil aut Cctsar vult dici Borgia. Quidni ? 
 Cum simul et Cassar possit et esse nihil. 
 
 If it is not wholly true to say that in the ninth and tenth 
 centuries the Children of the Roman Empire are still 
 clinging together, it is at least true to say that in their 
 better moods they feel that they ought to cling together. 
 They grope for their mother's apron strings, ragged and 
 worn as these have become ; they even try to weave her a 
 new apron and pretend it is the old one. There are really 
 only three children left to cling and grope, Italy, France 
 and Germany ; though the last was originally but a 
 grandchild, her circumstances have assured her a lot in 
 the inheritance. Spain and England, one day to find 
 their way back into the charmed circle, are as yet quite 
 cut off; Spain, indeed, is under the temporary influence 
 of an alien culture, the Arabic ; England is ' bedding the 
 plinth of the days to come ' all by herself or under the 
 Scandinavian hammer. Constantinople with all its tradi- 
 tions goes on claiming to be the seat of Empire, and 
 occasionally putting out a long if feeble paw into the 
 Western world, where it still possesses a territorial interest 
 in the heel and toe of Italy and, for a time, in Sicily, But 
 in reality, both in its strengths and weaknesses, it has 
 become definitely Eastern, and even Professor Bury will 
 now allow us to call its territory 'the Eastern Empire,' 
 though, when we meet its soldiers and ambassadors in 
 Western Europe, we shall more commonly speak of them 
 as ' Greeks.' 
 
 270
 
 OPENING OF NINTH CENTURY 271 
 
 The lands under Islam (Spain, Africa, Egypt, Syria, 
 Persia) retain here and there a substratum of Roman 
 civilisation ; but it is gettinj^ trodden deeper underground 
 every day, and only in Spain will it ever come to the 
 surface again. These lands are, moreover, torn with feuds 
 of their own, and the two caliphates of Bagdad and 
 Cordova are tending to break up into Emirates, almost 
 before the Western Caliphate is called by that name (929). 
 The developments and trials of Islam were not wholly 
 unlike those of Christianity. Each religion to some 
 extent sopped up the heathen cults which it met, and 
 took on the manners and ideas of the peoples whom it 
 conquered. Each from time to time was, on its mili- 
 tant and proselytising side, reinvigorated, Islam by the 
 Abbassids and, later on, by the Seljukian Turks, 
 Christendom by the Carolings and the Saxons in the 
 West, by the Isaurian and Macedonian Houses in the 
 East. Both faiths had real and earnest schools of learn- 
 ing, and the world owes something to the disputations 
 held, and to the treatises written at Bagdad and Cordova, 
 though far more to the remains of antiquity preserved by 
 the Christian monks. Each faith was exposed to hostile 
 barbarians on its northern and eastern frontiers ; what the 
 Danes, Slavs, Bulgars, Russians, and Hungarians were to 
 Christendom, the Tartar and Turkish tribes were to Islam ; 
 and each ultimately succeeded in incorporating these 
 enemies with itself. But Islam never gripped so deep 
 into the life of the races it absorbed as Christianity did ; 
 it changed their outlook on life far less ; it was more tolerant 
 of differences, less persevering as a mandate from on high, 
 more manifestly a conqueror of this world's goods. And 
 so peoples went much more to pieces under its rule ; 
 its lands worked out their destinies, if not untouched by 
 the remains of Greek and Roman thought, yet without 
 absorbing much of those remains into their political life. 
 
 But the three children within the fold have again, 
 in the year 800, got a rallying point at the ancient 
 capital, Rome. Except for a dismal period of anarchy 
 lasting thirty - eight years (924 - 962), there is always
 
 272 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 somebody in the West who calls himself 'Emperor' and 
 ' Augustus,' though he does not reign at Rome, indeed, 
 usually goes there only to receive the crown and then 
 scuttles back North again. The existence of this Imperial 
 name is the main thing which prevents each of the 
 children from setting up house separately for himself; 
 and it makes it impossible for us to say when Germany, 
 Italy and France became three nations. I should like to 
 say that something like this definitely happened in 987, 
 when Hugh Capet became King of France, if not much 
 earlier ; but then Hugh Capet makes the reader stare and 
 gasp by writing to Constantinople (of all places in the 
 world !) and assuring its ruler that he will not allow the 
 Germans to violate the frontiers of the ' Roman Empire ' ! 
 The truth is that, loosely as we think now about all 
 political conceptions, men in the Dark Ages thought still 
 more loosely. We must, therefore, in the present chapter, 
 try and think along two usually but not always parallel 
 lines. On one of these lines we must regard the three 
 children as an united family, threatened with dreadful 
 danger from without ; and on the other line we must trace 
 the process of their separation into three racial and 
 linguistic groups within the ' Western Empire.' We 
 shall not be able to keep the lines from occasionally 
 crossing each other. 
 
 The danger from without in the ninth and even in the 
 tenth century was very great. The Danes (using the 
 word generically for all ' Northmen ') and the Slavs, 
 both heathens, were capable of driving deep wedges of 
 heathenism into Germany and France, and actually drove 
 them. Before either of these dangers was over there came 
 a fresh wave of barbarism with the invasions of the 
 Hungarians, a race akin to the later Turks ; this 
 threatened all three children alike. And, in the South, 
 Islam had an excellent series of strategic points for 
 attacking both the Eastern and Western empires. In 
 nine years out of every ten some Moslem fleet was the 
 dominant power in the Western Mediterranean, and the 
 Moslem got hold not only of Crete (823) but of the greatest of
 
 CIVILISATION IN DANGER 273 
 
 all Mediterranean islands, Sicily. And so deep was the 
 hatred between Greek and Latin Christians, that we may 
 guess that neither Rome nor Constantinople would have 
 cared much if the other had fallen. Charles the Great had 
 had two Imperial capitals, Rome and Aachen ; and in the 
 middle of the ninth century Rome and Aachen were in 
 imminent danger at the very same time.^ Charles' 
 successors were quite unable to defend the whole Empire 
 at the same time, and were usually unable to defend even 
 the frontier which was in the greater danger. But some 
 of them tried their best to do so. 
 
 Looking forward along our other line of thought we 
 shall see that, though we cannot yet speak of separate 
 nations of France, Germany and Italy, Germany at least 
 is going to be a great nation. In the tenth century she 
 will begin what her historians call her Heldenzeit, her 
 ' heroic age.' Her rulers will, rightly or wrongly, claim 
 to be Charlemagne's successors (and Charlemagne had 
 been king in much of Germany), and will fight gallantly, 
 and on the whole with increasing success, the battle of 
 civilisation against Danes, Slavs and Hungarians. With 
 less success, though with equal devotion, they will take up a 
 task akin to Charlemagne's, that of rescuing, for Christen- 
 dom's sake, from the deepest degradation, the self- 
 styled head of Christendom, the pope. They will pursue 
 this task with romantic fidelity till they imperil the national 
 existence of Germany itself. 
 
 France on the other hand is going to behave 
 differently. Few sparks of heroism will as yet illumine 
 h\er, unless it be in the gallant year-long defence of Paris 
 against the Northmen in 885-6. Her kings are indeed 
 the successors of Charlemagne, and, in a kind of way, they 
 recognise throughout the ninth century their obligations 
 to fulfil his European tasks. But after that date Italy and 
 romance are to have no charms for them for many 
 
 ' In the year 846 the Saracens burnt and sacked the suburbs of 
 Rome, and between 845 and 851 the Northmen, who sacked Paris for 
 the first time in 845, raided far up Meuse and Rhine towards Aachen, 
 The latter was actually sacked in 88 1 or 882, 
 
 S
 
 274 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 centuries to come. Tlie degradation of the papacy will 
 suggest to French bishops mainly the idea of setting up a 
 national Church almost independent of Rome. The people 
 west of Rhine are between the hammer of the great 
 nobles (who grew out of the officials of Charlemagne's 
 Court) and the anvil of the dying monarchy of his 
 descendants. The traditions and duties of Charlemagne 
 will therefore gradually pass to the German kings, and 
 France will draw apart to work out her own destiny. 
 That destiny will keep her eyes fixed northwards and east- 
 wards for several centuries ; it is German, Scandinavian 
 and English attack that she will have to encounter, and 
 so her centre of power will be fixed at some point in the 
 North whence these attacks can best be watched. 
 
 Italy meanwhile can do nothing apart. The mere 
 existence of Rome, the mere legend of her past will 
 ensure for Italy only too active an interest on the part of 
 her northern neighbours. The surprising thing about her 
 history, in the period before us, is that she begins to take 
 on new life rather independently of her surroundings. If 
 one looks merely at her treatment by Saracens in the 
 ninth, Hungarians in the tenth century, by Greeks in the 
 South, by Franks and other Teutons in the North, by 
 unspeakably degraded popes in her centre, and by 
 turbulent persons of Lombard descent everywhere, one 
 wonders that the human race cared to survive or till her 
 fields. In the beginning of the reign of John X. it was 
 said that no pilgrim dared to approach the shrine of the 
 apostles for fear of Saracen brigands ; in the reign of 
 John XII., that no woman dared come for fear of the 
 pope himself, who kept a harem in the Lateran Palace. 
 Yet the scouts of the Hungarian invaders in 898 reported 
 that North Italy was a thickly peopled country full of 
 ' most fortified ' towns. When these barbarians burned 
 Pavia in 924, they burned forty-four churches and two 
 live bishops in it. And in the South a spirit of civic 
 independence is awake early in the ninth century ; 
 Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta, Bari, Capua, Salerno are cities 
 with fierce, stirring and intelligent seafaring populations
 
 THE LIFE OF ITALY 275 
 
 at a date when we can only say this with certainty of one 
 Northern community, Venice. The South had in fact 
 retained, from its long and late association with 
 Constantinople, a good deal of military valour as well as 
 of intelligence, while all had been dark in Rome and 
 north of Rome. These half Greek cities were, moreover, 
 the first to be exposed to Saracen attacks, and got 
 perhaps a considerable infusion of Saracen blood, 
 distinctly a fighting and adventurous blood. Again, the 
 fiercer of the Lombard nobles, rather than submit to the 
 Franks, had moved southwards and brought another 
 stream of fighting blood with them. No scruples of 
 religion restrained either nobles or cities from occasional 
 alliances with Saracens ; on one thing all were set, and 
 that was not to submit to the ' Western emperor,' 
 whether he were a Frank or a Saxon, a Provencal, or a 
 native Italian. Equally determined were the same nobles 
 and cities not to submit to the popes. Though some of 
 them professed Latin Christianity, the majority were 
 probably of the Greek Church. Southern Italy and Sicily 
 had been included in one 'Theme' and governed from 
 Syracuse by a Greek General (o-rpuri/yo?) ; and, when 
 Leo III. confiscated the Pope's Sicilian property in yif^^ 
 he confiscated whatever farms the pope had owned in 
 Southern Italy also. Nothing had contributed more 
 powerfully to the growing hostility between the two 
 churches than this confiscation, and the Southern princes 
 and cities made the fullest and most practical use of this 
 hostility, in order to maintain an independent position. 
 
 In Rome itself some civic consciousness can be 
 traced. I told you in the last chapter of the growing 
 dislike of the Roman aristocracy for the popes ; that is 
 going to develop and to become very fierce. P'iercer still 
 will be the hostility to the emperors (especially to the 
 strong and good ones), who from time to time visit Rome 
 either to vindicate a claim to the crown of Charlemagne, 
 or to cleanse the Augean stable of the papac}-. The onl)' 
 popes with whom the Roman nobles will occasionally get 
 on well are those who quite neglect their spiritual duties,
 
 276 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 who become mere fighting men, engaged in leading their 
 people either against the Saracens or against some neigh- 
 bouring prince or some neighbouring city, like Palastrina 
 or Tivoli, which is again becoming a rival to Rome, as 
 Prasneste and Tibur had been in the days of the 
 Volscians. But, though there will often be an Imperial 
 faction among the nobles, with no emperor at all will 
 Rome as a whole ever get on well ; although perhaps she 
 is not unwilling to admit that in theory there ought to be 
 an emperor. So we shall see at the end of the tenth 
 century the ridiculous spectacle of a crowned Augustus, 
 Lord of all the Western world if titles can make him so, 
 besieged in his own palace in the Capital of his World, or 
 engaged in a losing street fight with ' his Romans.' 
 
 Even beyond Rome some spirit of independ- 
 ence will spread northwards in Italy before the year 
 1000, though it will not bear much fruit before the 
 twelfth century. We shall find it most developed where 
 there is a powerful bishop. Such bishop is usually 
 supposed to be a missus, or agent of the Western 
 emperor ; at any rate he acts as such when no special 
 agent is sent, and none are sent at all after 885. From 
 absent emperors he will squeeze charters and feudal 
 rights for himself: he will collect tolls and dues; he can 
 use and perhaps does use them to repair the city walls. 
 In due time his citizens will squeeze somewhat similar 
 privileges out of him, and will become a powerful 
 'commune.' Thus on the whole we may conclude that 
 the Italian ' nationality ' was growing more precociously 
 than the French or German and more variously. 
 ' The Italians,' says the shrewd Bishop of Cremona, 
 Liutprand, himself of Lombard-Italian birth, ' like to 
 have two rulers at the same time so that the fear of the 
 one may keep the other weak.' The letters of the 
 Aquitanian Gerbert, even before he became pope as 
 Sylvester II. in 999, teem with allusions to the bad faith 
 and cowardice of the Italians. But the Italians were 
 going to be a very practical people ; their secular schools 
 were by no means dead ; even classical literature and
 
 ITALY AND THE EMPIRE 277 
 
 theology were to some extent studied in them, but before 
 all things the practical sciences of law and medicine. In 
 tenth-century Rome all art, even that of architecture, 
 was lost, though it revived in the North in the so-called 
 Lombard style. 
 
 The system of all three countries, France, Germany 
 and Italy rests upon the idea that there shall be an 
 emperor, and, at least in the ninth century, that he shall 
 be of Caroling blood. Even when he ceases to be of 
 Caroling blood, he ought to do as Charles did and to rule 
 as Charles ruled. The pope ought to crown him, and 
 at Rome, and Aachen ought to be his other capital. 
 
 He ought also to be ' King of Italy,' or one of his 
 sons ought to be so. This crown he ought to take at 
 Pavia, and it is really the old Lombard crown. He ought 
 to confirm the election of each pope, who ought not to 
 be consecrated without such confirmation. He ought to 
 keep one or more niissi or Imperial judges or adminis- 
 trators in Rome, with power in the last resort of over- 
 riding the papal tribunals. He ought to appoint counts 
 to govern the counties, into which Italy, like the rest 
 of the Empire, is supposed to be divided. Such at least 
 was the imaginary Carolingian constitution. In practice 
 it never worked at all. The whole tendency of the age 
 was to smelt the comparatively small counties into great 
 duchies or marks, and so we shall soon hear of ' Mark- 
 graves ' (Marquises) of Turin, Asti, Ivrea, Verona, Friuli, 
 Tuscany, Ancona ; and, further south, of great duchies 
 of Spoleto, Benevento, Salerno and Capua — all tending 
 to become hereditary, and usually working out their 
 salvation (or its reverse) in armed rebellion or mutual 
 civil war. 
 
 If there is not a direct Caroling to be found to wear 
 the Imperial crown, the popes will turn either to an 
 indirectly descended Caroling, or finally to quite a new 
 line, the Saxon (962). For, in defiance of both old and 
 new tradition, very soon after Charles the Great's death, 
 it is the popes who make emperors ; and they do so in 
 order to get help either against the Saracens or against
 
 278 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 their own nobles ; also their power to do so was almost 
 the only thing which kept them even nominally at the 
 head of Christendom ; for their private record, both as 
 bishops and men, was too often a futile or an atrocious 
 one. Much lamentation has been raised over the fact 
 that they did not create a native Italian dynasty, and 
 back it up with all their spiritual thunders ; but to do 
 that would have been to cut their own throats, both as 
 temporal sovereigns and independent bishops. We have 
 read also many laments over the ' foolish vanity ' of the 
 German kings in meddling with the Imperial crown at 
 all ; why, it is asked, did they not leave Italy alone and 
 keep their own turbulent people in order? But I say, 
 with the old German historians, that it was not vanity 
 at all that underlay the claims, and prompted the acts 
 of the Ottos and their successors down to the middle of 
 the thirteenth century ; rather it was a high sense of 
 duty to Christendom, whose unity they sought to preserve. 
 Charlemagne's Empire had been a 'Western Christian 
 Republic' under one Imperial head, a World Church-and- 
 State. Nationalities proved too strong for this ideal, but 
 surely as an ideal it was worth fighting for. And so after 
 this preface, we may pass to consider the ninth century 
 somewhat more in detail. 
 
 Charlemagne left but one surviving son, ' Louis I.' 
 of French history, who is also ' Louis I.' ^ in the succes- 
 sion to the Holy Roman Empire of the West. Louis was 
 thirty-six at his accession and had already been crowned 
 co-emperor. He was a man of some physical strength, 
 a mighty hunter, and of such pure and upright life that 
 he earned from historians the epithet of ' The Pious.' 
 He had sat at the feet of Benedict of Aquitaine (or 'of 
 Aniane '), who had been the interpreter of the monasticism 
 of St Benedict of Nursia to South-western Gaul. He was 
 well-educated, knew Latin thoroughly, and perhaps some 
 Greek ; he dearly loved the Church and would have 
 liked to love the churchmen, if these had not in his 
 
 1 Perhaps when he is in Germany we ought to call him Ludwig 
 I. ; but let us not be pedantic.
 
 LOUIS THE PIOUS 279 
 
 misfortunes treated him shamefully. He took great 
 pains to see that monks kept their regula, he provided 
 endowments for poor parish priests. But he was deeply 
 emotional in his religion, and too often at the mercy of 
 those who could play upon his emotions. He had already 
 three flourishing sons, who treated him even worse than 
 his bishops did. Through all his troubles and follies I 
 think we can distinguish a sort of dogged passivity ; he 
 allowed himself to be bullied (almost into a monastery) 
 and exhibited a pitiful spectacle ; but he clung tenaciously 
 to the idea that he was still emperor in spite of all they 
 could do to him, and died very fairly successful if not 
 triumphant. It is quite possible that he had in middle 
 life serious thoughts of becoming a monk ; but then, 
 monks were not allowed to hunt, and he couldn't give 
 up his favourite sport. 
 
 His court was full of learned men and of (presumably 
 wise) old administrators of Charlemagne. The most 
 famous of the former was Raban Maur, a pupil of Alcuin, 
 to whom in 822 Louis gave the Abbey of Fulda. Raban, 
 like Francis Bacon, took all knowledge to be his province 
 and wrote a famous book De Universo (' about every- 
 thing'). It was a simple age when all available know- 
 ledge could be compressed into one ponderous tome. 
 Raban was a stout Imperialist and died Archbishop of 
 Mainz in 856. Another somewhat later learned courtier 
 of Louis was Walafrid Strabo, who not only wrote a sort 
 of Nfc'/cL'ta, called De Visioiiihus Wettini, but also the first 
 mediaeval book on gardening. The swing which Charle- 
 magne had given to learning and independent thought 
 among his clergy produced also among the French bishops 
 at least two men daring enough to protest against many 
 of the favourite doctrines and practices of the Roman 
 Church, Claudius of Turin and Agobard of Lyons. Both 
 were deeply read in the theology of St Augustine, and 
 both condemned wholesale the worship of images and 
 relics, the use of the crucifix, the devotion to pilgrimages 
 and saints. Agobard was also quite sceptical as to the 
 merits of trial by ordeal, which the age called ' appeal
 
 28o CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 to the judgment of God.' As both Agobard and 
 Claudius were natives of Spain, it seems possible that 
 the proximity of Moslem theology, with its rigid puritan- 
 ism, may have influenced their youth. Such men handed 
 on the torch of independent thought to men like John 
 ' the Scot,' the most independent thinker of Europe 
 in the Dark Ages, to Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims 
 (845-82), and to Gerbert, who held the same see at 
 the end of the tenth century. Any self-respecting pope 
 in the fifteenth or sixteenth century would have been 
 obliged to burn John and Agobard, and would probably 
 have burned Hincmar or Gerbert. But then, as Luther said, 
 he would also have had to burn St Augustine and St Paul. 
 
 One supposes that a man like Agobard would not, in 
 the coming troubles, have turned a bitter enemy of Louis 
 wholly without excuse ; one feels almost sure that Wala, 
 Abbot of Corbey, a descendant of Charles Martel, a 
 thoroughly trained administrator of Charlemagne, had 
 also some good cause for his temporary appearance on 
 the same side. But the whole story of the reign is very 
 dark. One thing only is clear, that, throughout the 
 ninth and far into the tenth century, two principles were 
 struggling for the mastery among the Franks and other 
 Germanic tribes ; the idea of unity of the Empire, and the 
 idea of equal division of property among sons. If, as we 
 all wish to do in theory, we keep the whole of Charle- 
 magne's dominions in one hand, what is to become of 
 the deeply rooted principle of heredity? None of the 
 capitularies of Charlemagne had touched this question 
 as to the future ; but, inasmuch as during his life he had 
 given Aquitaine to one son to rule and Italy to another, 
 we may presume his views to have been in favour of equal 
 division. It so happened that all his legitimate sons 
 except Louis had died before him, yet to Bernard, son 
 of Pippin, he had confirmed Pippin's kingdom of Italy 
 in the last year of his own life ; Bernard, however, was 
 to be distinctly dependent on Louis. 
 
 Unity of a sort, then, was for a moment secured in 814 
 and Louis, coming from Aquitaine, was well received in
 
 UNITY VERSUS HEREDITY 281 
 
 Aachen. The new pope, Stephen IV., came to France 
 in 816 and crowned him afresh at Rheims ; Louis pros- 
 trated himself at the pope's feet, which was a thing 
 Charlemagne would never have done. Charlemagne, in 
 fact, would have said, ' I have not yet been asked, Holy 
 Father, to confirm your election.' Both Stephen and his 
 successor in the next year, Paschal I., took the papal chair 
 without waiting for any Imperial confirmation. Indeed, 
 the popes during the next ccntur)- seldom troubled them- 
 selves about this formality.' 
 
 No sooner, however, was unity thus secured, than 
 heredity thrust up its head. Bishop Agobard attributed 
 the origin of the event of 817 to Louis himself; it is more 
 likely that it originated with the ' great men,' the future 
 aristocracy of the Franks, both lay and clerical. Such 
 men would have more power if the Empire were not 
 wholly in the hands of one ruler. Anyhow in 817, 'after 
 much prayer and fasting,' Louis divided the administra- 
 tion of his Empire between his three sons, Lothair aged 
 nineteen, Pippin aged eleven, and Louis aged eight. That 
 is to say he divided both the immediate rents and profits 
 and the future succession after his own death between 
 these three. Into the geographical details of this and the 
 several subsequent partitions I don't propose to enter ; 
 they had little real racial meaning. The leading idea of 
 them was perhaps that the revenues of each son should be 
 about equal ; such delimitations as were made, generally 
 though not exclusively, followed the boundaries of the 
 dioceses and counties. Roughly speaking, with Aquitaine 
 would usually go Gascony, Septimania and the Spanish 
 Mark, with the duty of watching against Moslem both by 
 sea and land ; with Bavaria would go the Eastern Marks, 
 with the duty of watching and fighting the Slavs. A 
 
 • The whole question if the Western Empire ever made good in 
 practice the right to confirm the newly elected pope before his con- 
 secration, is well treated by Duchesne in his notes to the Liber 
 Pontificalis (see especially vol. ii., p. 83). The right to elect or even 
 to take part in the election was never claimed by an emperor even in 
 theory ; and so the nomination of popes by the Saxon emperors was 
 a manifest violation of the rights of the ' Roman clergy and people.'
 
 282 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 capitulary of 817 settled this first division, and it was 
 evidently considered a very solemn, and even a religious 
 act. Lothair was to be co-emperor with his father, and to 
 him was assigned the kingdom of Italy (with the task of 
 seeing that Roman nobles and popes behaved themselves 
 decently), and, on his father's death, he was to enjoy some 
 sort of supremacy over his brothers. If Lothair were to 
 die childless one of his two brothers was to be chosen 
 emperor. For his own life Louis was to be supreme over 
 all three. Pope Paschal I. sent a legate to the Diet which 
 made this arrangement, and the legate perhaps took back 
 with him to Rome a document called a ' Privilege' giving 
 most of Southern Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, in 
 full dominmin to St Peter ; giving also to the Romans 
 complete freedom of election to the papacy and removing 
 the need for Imperial confirmation. If this document is 
 genuine and not rather a forgery of the next century, it is 
 virtually an abdication of all Charlemagne's position. It 
 purports to be attested by Louis himself and his three sons ; 
 of whom it is unlikely that little Louis could attest. 
 
 Lothair and his father seem to have got on well for a 
 time. Both promoted the missionary work of Archbishop 
 Ebbo of Rheims and of St Anscharius in Denmark and 
 Sweden ; a Danish ' king' came to Mainz or to Ingelheim 
 and was baptised with many followers. An archbishopric 
 was founded at Hamburg, which in later years had to 
 retreat before the Danes to Bremen on the Weser. On 
 that river was founded a ' New ' Corbey, called after the 
 Abbey of Old Corbey on the Somme, and this became a 
 famous centre of light and learning in lately heathen 
 Saxony. Both Lothair and Louis interested themselves 
 also in the fortunes of the Spanish Christians, who were 
 now in good earnest rising against the Emir of Cordova. 
 I cannot discover that they sent substantial help ; and 
 yet a few thousand sturdy Franks might perhaps have 
 done much to win the whole peninsula back to Christendom, 
 for the little Christian communities in the North-western 
 mountains were gaining ground under Alfonso II., while 
 Toledo and Merida long held out in insurrection.
 
 THE SONS OF LOUIS THE PIOUS 283 
 
 In 819 Louis, who had lost his first wife, married the 
 beautiful and clever Judith, daughter of a Count Welf of 
 Bavaria. There had alrcad)' been a little trouble in Italy 
 where Bernard, whom Charlemagne had recognised as 
 under-king there, had been passed over in the family 
 arrangement of 817; he rebelled and was defeated, was 
 blinded and died. But in 823 the real trouble began with 
 the birth to Judith and Louis of a son, who was afterwards 
 to be Charles the Bald (' Charles II.' of France, ' Charles II.' 
 of the Empire). Judith, whom the monkish chroniclers 
 report as something worse than a minx, at least brought 
 up her son to a love of learning and learned men. Now it 
 was certainly in accordance with Frankish custom that 
 Charles should have a share in his father's inheritance. 
 But such a share could only come from a diminution of 
 the shares of one or all of his half-brother.s. Lothair, the 
 eldest, was apparently willing to agree to this ; but he, too, 
 had recently married a daughter of the powerful Count of 
 Tours, and perhaps we may best seek for the cause of civil 
 war in the rivalry of the two ladies, Judith and her step- 
 son's wife. 
 
 Lothair for the moment was busy in Ital)-, whither he 
 went to be crowned at Rome in 823. He took with him 
 Wala as his chief adviser. He held assizes at Rome very 
 much against the will of Pope Paschal ; on Paschal's death 
 Eugenius II. was elected pope, and the young emperor 
 imposed on him in 824 the ' Constitution of Lothair.' 
 This document fully establishes that popes need Imperial 
 confirmation (and this very much shakes one's faith in the 
 genuineness of the ' Privilege' of 817), makes the Romans 
 swear fealty to the emperor, asserts that the emperor is to 
 have the right to confirm the judges named by the pope, 
 and allows each Roman citizen to choose whether he will 
 ' live ' Roman, F'rankish, or Lombard law.^ Whether the 
 
 ' Here we have perhaps the first clear statement of the medireval 
 notion that law is personal not territorial, and that a man walks 
 about encompassed by an invisible envelope or atmosphere of his own 
 particular law. Agobard of Lyons writes that ' one may see five men 
 sitting together, each living under a separate system of law.' How 
 this tangle of separate systems of jurisprudence in one and the same
 
 284 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 * Constitution ' gave to the Romans any privilege as 
 against the pope we don't know ; certainly many years 
 passed without a civic insurrection at Rome such as had 
 been of almost yearly occurrence since 814. It would 
 have been a good thing both for Italy and the rest of the 
 Empire if Lothair and Wala had stayed south of the Alps. 
 For they came back to foment the trouble that was 
 already brewing at the court of Louis and Judith. In this 
 trouble the clergy were evidently the leaders, Agobard of 
 Lyons and Ebbo of Rheims at their head. The lay 
 nobles were divided ; but Louis had irritated some of them 
 by deposing two leading counts (one of them Lothair's 
 father-in-law) and putting all his trust in his godson, 
 Count Bernard of Septimania, whose business should have 
 been to watch the Spanish Mark against the Moors. 
 Bernard left his proper task and came to court, where he 
 at once became all powerful with the empress. He swore 
 that Baby Charles should soon have a fine strip of territory 
 out of the shares of his brothers ; probably he took the 
 lead of the royalists entirely into his own hands and was a 
 bad leader. Louis accordingly in 829, without consulting 
 his Diet, allotted to Charles a strip which took something 
 from Pippin and something from young Louis, and at the 
 same time ordered Lothair back to Italy. In the same 
 year the clergy, in full synod, threw down a deliberate chal- 
 lenge to the emperor, and indeed to all secular rulers, by 
 asserting that the power of the Church is above that of the 
 State, and that a king who does not reign in ' piety, justice, 
 and mercy' is a tyrant, and so on. It is difficult to see 
 the exact connection between the irritation of the clergy 
 and that of the young princes ; but evidently no one liked 
 
 territory worked in the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries is one of 
 the puzzles of the Dark Ages, and I have had already to confess that 
 I see no satisfactory solution of the puzzle. But as the races inter- 
 married, and all distinction between Roman (Gaul, Italian, or 
 Spaniard) and barbarian (Frank, Lombard, Goth) got obliterated, 
 some sort of mixed jurisprudence, based on 'the custom of the courts' 
 of each king in each kingdom, probably grew up ; and the basis of this 
 would be rather barbarised Roman law than Romanised barbarian 
 law.
 
 CIVIL WAR OF THE FRANKS 285 
 
 Bernard, and the clergy had the ear of the army leaders. 
 The result was that, in 830, Bernard fled back to Septi- 
 mania, Louis was obliged to give way, to send his wife to 
 a nunnery at Poitiers, and to replace in their offices the 
 counts whom he had deposed. It was a change of 
 ministry, but not quite a revolution. In the next two 
 years Louis got the upper hand again, recalled Judith 
 to court, and had an outward reconciliation with his sons. 
 
 This did not last long and a sort of civil war broke out 
 in 833. The details do not matter ; occasionally one of the 
 sons turns royalist, more often all three are in rebellion. 
 The most important, and one of the most curious events 
 is the fact that Pope Gregory IV. was brought in by 
 Lothair, nominally as a mediator, in reality to take 
 entirely the side of the rebels. I say it was curious, for 
 the very bishops who welcomed him were distinctly 
 nationalist and anti-papal in some respects, whereas 
 Louis' own attitude to the papacy had been one of great 
 subservience. P'or a moment, when Gregory appeared 
 between the two armies, Louis was firm and said : ' Holy 
 Father, why are you here ? I did not authorise you to 
 leave your bishopric ' ; but the mere name of the pope 
 was enough to seduce most of Louis' soldiers into the 
 rebel camp. This desertion of the emperor afterwards 
 got the name of the ' Field of Lies.' The bishops met in 
 synods at Colmar and Compiegne, declared Louis deposed 
 and Lothair sole emperor. Judith was banished to Italy. 
 Louis was left in a monastery at Soissons, and compelled 
 to do penance for sins which he can hardly have believed 
 himself to have committed. But he patiently refused to 
 become a monk. 
 
 The laity seem very soon to have woke up to the fact 
 that this solution of the problems of the Empire was most 
 undesirable. It was simply the triumph of a few great 
 bishops. Not even the pope was pleased when he had 
 returned to Italy. Wala thoroughly rallied to the royalist 
 cause, and, best of all, both the younger brothers refused 
 to recognise Lothair as sole emperor ; Lothair had over- 
 reached himself. So Pippin and young Louis took up
 
 286 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 arms for their father (834), and Louis, having been through 
 the form of an absolution, joined them in the field ; Judith, 
 too, returned and joined her husband. Lothair found 
 himself the dupe of a second ' Field of Lies,' for his 
 army deserted him and he had to retire to Italy. Louis 
 resumed full power and suspended though he dared not 
 depose Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims, who had inflicted 
 grievous humiliations on him. He was able in his last 
 years to reconcile himself with Lothair, to make large 
 settlements of territory on his youngest son Charles, and 
 to pass over altogether the sons of his second son Pippin, 
 who died in 838. Finally he was able to cut out of the 
 entail his third son Louis, and to make war upon him 
 when he resisted. Thus when the emperor died in 840, 
 it was with the intention of leaving all, more or less 
 equally, between Lothair and Charles. 
 
 Such a settlement was not in the least likely to be 
 permanent. Lothair and Louis were now in middle life 
 with growing-up sons, and Charles was a young man of 
 seventeen ; one supposes he was not yet Charles * the 
 Bald.' Lothair at once took up his father's claim for 
 ' unity of empire,' and at once the disruptive forces got 
 to work against him ; the two younger brothers, hitherto 
 bitter enemies, were quite prepared to join forces, Charles 
 basing his power on Northern France, Louis on Southern 
 Germany. From henceforth Louis is to be called for 
 distinction ' Louis the German.' Lothair might have 
 been strong enough to fight either of his brothers singly, 
 but not both at once. He had partisans on both sides of 
 the Rhine, and could always incite Aquitaine (already the 
 classic land of turbulent knights) and Brittany against 
 ' Francia,' as Northern Gaul was now beginning to be 
 called ; he could also incite the Saxons, who thoroughly 
 disliked the Bavarians and East Franks (shall we already 
 call them ' Franconians ' ?) led by Louis from the Danube 
 and the Main. Some churchmen but by no means all 
 were for Lothair; Ebbo of course was for him. His old 
 friend Gregory IV. was not favourable, for during his recent 
 stay in Italy Lothair had confiscated some papal farms.
 
 THE OATH OF STRASSBURG 287 
 
 Before the year was out Prankish armies were con- 
 fronting each other in civil war, and had shed blood on 
 both sides of the Rhine ; and at last a great battle took 
 place at Fontenay-cii-Puisaye near Auxcrre(84i). Lothair 
 fought desperately in the thickest of the fray but was 
 utterly beaten ; the bishops in his brothers' camp declared 
 it to be the judgment of God. Without accepting the 
 statement of the chronicle of Rcgino, Abbot of Priim 
 (died 915), that 40,000 Frank's fell, wc may well believe 
 that the flower of the old Frankish army was annihilated ; 
 with the Franks as one people it was all over. It was 
 this battle which was followed by the famous oath of 
 Strassburg (842), in which Charles (the West Frank) and 
 Louis the German (East Frank) swore, and made their 
 army leaders swear, to stand by each other. Louis, in 
 order to be understood of Charles' men, took the oath in 
 that Lingua Romana Rustica which was one day to become 
 'French'; and Charles for a corresponding reason swore 
 in a rude Teutonic speech which was the parent of 
 * German.' For, in truth, under all these partitions, 
 struggles, oaths and deceptions, two nations were 
 struggling to come to the birth. They could not yet 
 be born because over them both hung the Imperial idea 
 of unity, and between their respective centres lay a large 
 strip of territory where both languages were spoken. 
 
 After the oath the two brothers moved down the 
 Rhine with the intention of dividing the Empire between 
 themselves, or at least of confining Lothair to Italy. It 
 was perhaps then that for the first time they realised how 
 great the ravages of the Northmen, of which we shall soon 
 have to speak, had already been. The nominally Christian 
 'king' Harold of Denmark had fought upon Lothair's side 
 at Fontenay and had been loaded with favours, which of 
 course only tempted other non-Christian Danes to make 
 fresh descents on the northern coasts. Any long con- 
 tinuance of civil war would probably be merely to the 
 profit of these robbers, whom Lothair would not scruple to 
 call to his aid. Perhaps it was this reflection which led to 
 a meeting of all three brothers near Macon and to the
 
 288 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 Treaty of Verdun of August 843, which made a new and 
 triple partition of the whole Empire into three hereditary 
 strips. Lothair was to keep the title of emperor, and to 
 rule Italy and a narrow piece of territory from the Alps to 
 the North Sea. All east of this was to go to Louis, all 
 west of it to Charles. The eastern boundary of * Lotha- 
 ringia' (hence comes the later Duchy of 'Lorraine') was 
 to be the Alps from the head of the Adriatic to the Aar, 
 down the Aar to the Rhine, down the Rhine ^ to its last 
 westward turn, and then into the North Sea near the 
 mouth of the Ems. Its westward boundary was roughly 
 speaking Rhone, Saone, Meuse, Scheldt. Though perhaps 
 intended to follow the diocesan and county lines, it did 
 not do so neatly, for many great bishoprics had lands in 
 each division. And it left a terrible bone of contention 
 between the future France and the future Germany. 
 
 Lothair's capitals then are at Aachen, Pavia and Rome, 
 and his activity for the remainder of his life lies between 
 them. Louis rules at Regensburg, or at Frankfort, or at 
 Mainz, Charles at Laon or at Paris. They are far from 
 considering that they have made three separate kingdoms ; 
 nay, they agree to have frequent meetings for the ' common 
 working of the Empire.' They are all Franks, and all 
 * live Frankish law ' ; they all still believe themselves to 
 administer the county system of Charlemagne. All are 
 exposed to the common danger from the Northmen ; 
 Lothair in Italy is specially opposed also to the danger 
 from the Saracens. Let us consider for a few minutes 
 what this last danger was, and we shall in time be able 
 to trace a close parallel between it and the danger from 
 the Northmen. 
 
 The Saracens who raided Italy and occupied Sicily in 
 
 1 But to Louis were to be given the three great cities on the left 
 bank of the Rhine, Mainz, Worms, and Speyer, propter vini copiam. 
 Apparently there was no viticulture as yet east of Rhine, but Rhine- 
 wine was already famous. According to the beautiful legend told in 
 W. Hauffs Phantasien, Charlemagne brought the cuttings from the 
 hot soil of Spain and planted them round Ingelheim ; the cool soil of 
 the Rhine tempered their fiery juices into the liquid sunshine, which 
 Germans drink and sing of to-day.
 
 THE SARACENS RAID ITALY 289 
 
 the ninth century were not a manifestation of any 
 national or religious forward-movement of Islam, such as 
 the conquest of Spain had been. That forward-movement 
 was now somewhat exhausted, and Islam was engaged in 
 bitter civil wars. Rather they were the 'young bloods' 
 and roving spirits, driven out from the settled Arab and 
 Berber communities in Spain and Africa,^ perhaps from 
 the Levant also. The tenth-century Bishop Liutprand, 
 with his ridiculous classical affectation, is quite ready 
 to call them PcDii. In short they were professional 
 pirates, coming for plunder and slaves, but ready also to 
 settle and make new homes for themselves. A rebel 
 Greek in Sicily seems to have called in some of these to 
 help him to overthrow an exarch, who still governed 
 that island for the Eastern Empire (827) They took 
 Girgenti, and after a year's siege, Palermo (831). Before 
 840 they had mastered most of the island except Syracuse, 
 which held out till 878. Long before that they had 
 systematically begun to raid Southern Italy. A disputed 
 succession to the Duchy of Benevento first invited their 
 attention thither ; each claimant called them in and they 
 fought it out, Spanish Saracens for one, Africans for the other 
 duke. They beat a Byzantino- Venetian fleet in 840, and 
 took Bari in the next year. The popes were quite awake to 
 the danger; Gregory IV. built 'New Ostia' at Tiber- 
 mouth as a defence, as early as 828. Naples, always an 
 unabashed community, sent its soldiers to help the Sara- 
 cens to take Messina (843). Sergius II., who succeeded 
 Gregory in 844, quarrelled badly with Lothair, though 
 he agreed to crown Lothair's son ('Louis II.') as King 
 of Italy ; and the result was the great raid of 846, when the 
 pirates sailed up the Tiber, sacked and burned everything 
 outside the walls of Aurelian. These excluded, we must 
 remember, the whole Vatican quarter with the holiest of all 
 churches, St Peter's, and also the suburb of Saint-Paul- 
 without-the-Walls. The Vatican quarter held the ' School 
 of the Saxons,' who fought bravely and were slain in heaps. 
 The Cavipagna was pillaged as in the days of the Goths, and 
 
 ' Again notice Carthage as the home of pirates ; vide supra^ p. 85. 
 
 T
 
 290 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 only the great walls saved the city itself. At last, after a 
 failure at relief by Louis 1 1., a Margrave of Spolcto appeared 
 with some sort of troops and chased away the pirates. The 
 writer in the Liber Pontijicalis saw in this disaster a chastise- 
 ment for the sins of Pope Sergius, who was a wicked man. 
 It was the terror of these days which led the next 
 pope, Leo IV. (847-55), to repair the whole circuit of 
 the old walls, and to enclose within a new wall the 
 Vatican suburb, henceforth called ' Civitas Leonina.' 
 Lothair and Louis II. urged him on, and raised sub- 
 scriptions from all Western Christendom to help him. 
 Then the pope organised a great league of the Southern 
 cities and princes, even including Naples, collected a fleet, 
 promised Paradise to all who should fall in battle against the 
 infidels, and went himself to Tiber-mouth to bless the expe- 
 dition. Either a storm or a victory of this fleet overpowered 
 the pirates, and the good pope had the pleasure of seeing 
 Saracen captives carrying stones and hods for his new 
 wall. He also rebuilt Tortus and peopled it with fugitive 
 Corsicans. But neither Portus nor New Ostia held out 
 long ; Centumcellae was also burned, and rebuilt at the 
 beginning of the next age as ' Civita Vecchia.' Evi- 
 dently Central Italy had little rest from Saracens till far 
 into the tenth century. The south was even worse off. 
 From Bari, till its recapture in 869, they raided all 
 Apulia, from Taranto all the instep and toe of the 
 peninsula. Lothair was getting old; Louis II. did his 
 valiantest, but had no fleet to cope with the pirates. The 
 Greeks, to whom these parts nominally belonged, had 
 little will to help a Frank who, if victorious, would probably 
 annex their territory ; Constantinople and Venice both 
 had fleets, but each had much trade with Mahometan 
 countries, and did not want to provoke Islam to 2^ Jehad 
 which would upset this trade. It was in 828 that the 
 Venetian traders had smuggled the body of St Mark, 
 disguised as a bale of goods, out of Alexandria.^ Venice, 
 
 ' Body-snatching, in order to set up in a city a patron saint of 
 really first-class power, was a regular profession at this date. The 
 body of an Evangelist was, of course, worth many provinces.
 
 thp: raids of tiik Northmen 291 
 
 safe ill her la^iiiics feared ikj pirates either by land or 
 sea ; she was now the regular port of embarkation for the 
 East.i 
 
 I have said that a close parallel might be made (jut 
 between the Saracen raids in the Mediterranean, and 
 those of the Northmen, to whom we must now turn, on 
 the coast of the North Sea and the Channel. These also 
 were, as a rule, the young bloods of Denmark and perhaps 
 a few from Norway, men outlawed for their turbulence, 
 who freighted a ship and took to piracy. Like the 
 Saracens, they came at first for mere booty, and especially 
 for slaves — Irish 'thralls' crop up in many Sagas. Also 
 they came to steal arms and armour, although they 
 already knew how to make these better than the Franks 
 themselves. Like the Saracens, they were quite ready to 
 trade, if the place of their land-fall were too well defended 
 to be harried. And, like them, they ended by settling on 
 many of the coasts they had harried. 
 
 But one must not press the parallel too far. The 
 Northmen were, for the moment, infinitely more dreadful 
 enemies to Christendom than the Saracens, and they 
 were so just because they had developed, without any 
 Roman influence at all, a civilisation which was capable 
 of beating in the field that which the Franks had inherited 
 from Rome. They failed to make a full end of Franco- 
 Roman civilisation, partly because their warriors were so 
 few in number, their reserve of population so small, their 
 attacks made on such various and distant points at the 
 same time ; but, far more, because they were so quick 
 to adapt themselves to the better elements of that 
 civilisation, after they had apparently beaten it to its 
 knees. Their heathenism seems to have been by no 
 means so stubborn as that of Charlemagne's Saxons ; if 
 there is no other way out of an awkward place a body of 
 
 ' It is interesting to see that Bishop Liutprand in 949 took only 
 three weeks to make the journey from Venice to Constantinople ; this 
 was a great improvement on the slow voyages of the seventh century. 
 His journey from Pavia to Venice, most of it in a boat on the Po, was 
 performed in three days.
 
 292 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 Northmen is usually ready to accept baptism,' and almost 
 always ready to accept a good settlement with leave to 
 trade. So King Canute in 1017 chose to govern his 
 ' Scandinavian Empire ' from Winchester rather than 
 from Roeskilde or Trondhjem ; so Rollo wisely chose to 
 become a civilised French Duke and to live at Rouen 
 (913)- Of the origin of the strange and picturesque yet 
 simple civilisation of the Northmen we know nothing at 
 all. Learned men have sought in vain to connect the 
 nature-worship of the Norse Edda with Greek mythology 
 modified by Christian influence. The best light on old 
 Norse life may be gained by reading the Sagas, especially 
 those collected in Origines IslandiccBr No remains of 
 antiquity, nothing of the Dark Ages or the Middle 
 Ages, give such an insight into the everyday life of a 
 primitive people as these stories give. But the Sagas 
 are of little value for the history of the Viking in- 
 vasions in France and Germany, and they were nearly 
 all rehandled by Snorri Sturluson in Iceland in the 
 thirteenth century ; also they refer more especially to 
 the Norwegian than to the Danish voyages and fightings. 
 And, as there is no Danish historian before Saxo 
 Grammaticus, who died at the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, it is mainly on the chronicles written by those 
 who suffered from the Vikings that we have to depend. 
 Saxo, indeed, knows that his people raided (and he says 
 conquered) most of Europe, but then he thinks that it 
 happened many centuries earlier than the ninth ; he has 
 no idea that the Normans of his day are of Viking origin. 
 It was the missionaries from Ireland and lona who first 
 came in contact with the Vikings, perhaps in the Faroe or 
 Shetland Isles. In the middle of the eighth century if not 
 earlier, the fjords of Norway and Denmark began to pour 
 out a stream of clever and hardy sailors, half pirates, half 
 
 ' Instances have been quoted in which these heathens 'try the 
 gods all round,' including the God of the Christians, in order to win 
 success in battle. No doubt many Christian renegades and outlaws 
 took service with them. 
 
 2 By Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell, 2 vols., Oxford, 
 1905.
 
 THE VIKING AGE 293 
 
 traders, wholly explorers, in well-found vessels, more 
 capable than anything then afloat of long voyages on a 
 very boisterous ocean, but also of light draft and handy 
 for rowing up creeks and rivers. Their arms were the 
 long-handled axe, the sword, and the bow, their only 
 defence at first the tall pointed shield covering the whole 
 body. Very soon they learned to make ringmail superior 
 to anything in Central Europe. To make a strong camp 
 at their landing-place and leave a guard over their ships, 
 while the main body .swept far inland on stolen horses, 
 was the first principle of a Viking raid. They killed 
 Christian priests and monks, and burned Christian 
 churches, quite as much because they feared the priests' 
 ' magic,' as to get the gold and silver that was stored 
 in the churches. They were exceedingly skilful at 
 stratagem, surprise, and defence behind hastily built 
 walls of earth and wood. Soon they had learned and 
 improved on all the Roman siege-craft that survived in 
 Northern Europe. We are astonished to find, in the 
 account of the great siege of Paris (885-6), the same 
 machines of attack and defence (and these directly of 
 Roman descent) employed by both sides. A ship's crew 
 would perhaps contain as many as fifty Vikings ; eighty 
 was a ver)' large crew. On great occasions, as in the last 
 attacks on Wessex in the reign of Alfred, and again in the 
 reign of Ethelred II,, or at the siege of Paris in 886, very 
 large armies would gather to the fray ; but it is probable 
 that they gathered gradually, and that they obeyed no one 
 leader continuously. Each 'king' or jarl (earl) would 
 have his own following, and all the great commanders 
 would be deemed equals, though no doubt one tried 
 Viking might be elected to the command of all for a time. 
 We read in the Sagas of three classes of free warriors, 
 kings, jarls, and liolds ; the latter probably being the 
 ' peasant aristocracy ' of landowners.^ Between jarls and 
 kings it is not easy to see much distinction, except that 
 
 ' Bo)idi is also a free peasant landowner, though of lower rank 
 and less ivcri;;ild than Jiohl; we do not hear much of bottJir in the 
 fi>rhtin'r line.
 
 294 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 when a sea-king dies he is placed in full armour on a pyre 
 on the deck of his own ship, which is then burned on the 
 waves which he has ruled. By the head of Sleipnir ! that 
 was a royal way of going to one's gods. 
 
 Anything like certain dates for the commencement of 
 the Viking impact are impossible, but it clearly began by 
 falling upon the British Islands ; the occupation of the 
 Orkneys would be the first step to the conquest of Britain. 
 Before the eighth century was out the pirates had landed 
 on the coasts both of Northumbria and Wessex, had seized 
 Rathlin Isle at the north-east corner of Ireland, and 
 probably several of the Hebrides. Early in the ninth 
 century the monastery of lona had gone up in flames. 
 Probably this and all the subsequent Irish, Scottish, and 
 Hebridean raids, and perhaps not a few of those on 
 Northern England were begun rather by Norwegians than 
 by Danes from Denmark, whereas those on the Continent 
 were almost wholly Danish in origin ; yet oddly enough 
 the name ' Danes ' is always used by the English 
 chroniclers and that of Northmen (' Nordmanni') by the 
 Prankish. Perhaps it is a mere question of names ; the 
 warriors of each nation would fraternise with each other. 
 Rollo, the founder of Normandy, is claimed by the Icelandic 
 Saga-writer as a Norwegian, by the French chroniclers he 
 is believed to be a Dane of royal Danish blood. 
 
 Roughly speaking, we may distinguish two epochs of 
 the attack on the Prankish Empire, the first from about 
 835-66, the second from about 878 onwards ; during the 
 interval the largest armies of the Northmen were busy in 
 England. And, again roughly speaking, the attack on the 
 Prank Empire, 'Valland' as the Sagas call it, was a 
 quadruple one. Pirst, there was always a temptation to a 
 land-faring 'king' of Denmark to come out of his Jutish 
 peninsula, harry Saxony up to the Rhine, and send a fleet 
 up the Elbe at the same time ; he might be a Christian, as 
 was that Harold who helped Lothair at Pontenay, but that 
 would not wholly check his hostility. Secondly, there 
 would be a land-fall on the coasts of 'Prisia' {i.e., modern 
 Holland) by the river Ems and by the numerous branches
 
 EXTENT OE VIKING RAIDS 295 
 
 of the Rhine and Scheldt, with some island like Walchcren 
 for the Vikings' base. Thirdly, there was the entry by the 
 broad valley of the Seine — and the attacks there never 
 ceased till Normandy was a Scandinavian province. 
 Lastly, for the more adventurous, there was the Loire, 
 with the Isle of Noirmoutier for a base ; and he must have 
 been an exceedingly skilful navigator who first rowed up 
 through the shifting sandbanks of that great artery of 
 France. It was quite conceivable that a combination of 
 attacks by all three rivers, Rhine, Seine, and Loire, might 
 take place. Still further afield, though less likely to 
 combine with the northern raiders, were pirates who sailed 
 up the Garonne as far as Toulouse, and even the Rhone 
 (where, perhaps, they may have run athwart Spanish 
 Saracens, who sacked Marseilles in 838, Aries in 842), 
 and plundered the coasts of Italy.^ They attacked Spain 
 and burned Seville itself in 845. 
 
 It was in 841 that the two great abbeys on the Seine, 
 Jumieges and Saint-Wandrille, were first burned, and Rouen 
 first sacked ; obviously the civil war let the pirates in easily. 
 In 843 it was the turn of Nantes at Loire-mouth. In 845 
 the pirates were everywhere, though the Saxons fought 
 valiantly against them on the Elbe. The son and brothers 
 of the late Danish 'king' Harold relapsed to heathenism, 
 and devastated all Frisia up to the Waal ; Frisia had been 
 a flourishing country under Charles the Great, and it 
 hardly recovered from these raids before the thirteenth 
 century. Ragnar Lodbrog (' Reginald with the shaggy 
 breeches') sacked Paris in 845, as well as Toulouse, 
 Bordeaux, Nantes (for the second time), and Tours. 
 Perhaps it was upon this occasion that the body of the 
 blessed St Martin had to be removed to Auxerre, where 
 it subsequently performed a wondrous miracle.- Soon 
 
 ' Hasting the Dane sacked Pisa in 860. 
 
 ■^ A later edition of the Liber Pontijicalis records, under the reign 
 of Pope Stephen V., at the end of the ninth century, tliat while St 
 Martin was lying for safety's sake beside St Germain at Auxerre, 
 whither some of the Tours monks had accompanied him, certain 
 jealousies and even lawsuits arose between these monks and their 
 hosts (who worshipped, of course, tlicir own local saint, (".ermain)
 
 296 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 afterwards another detachment burned Ghent, Utrecht, 
 Antwerp, Nymwegen, Courtrai (851). Between that year 
 and 853 we may perhaps date the beginnings of the 
 actual settlement of Northmen in the valley of the lower 
 Seine, and we shortly hear of them sailing up the Marne, 
 sacking Paris for the second time (856), and then Orleans 
 and Meaux. 
 
 Of the three royal Caroling brothers who were con- 
 fronted with this frightful state of things, Louis the 
 German, on the whole, did best and Charles the Bald worst. 
 Lothair, during the twelve years which he lived after the 
 partition of Verdun, was, of course, much distracted by 
 the Saracen attacks on his Italy, though he seems to have 
 left his son, Louis II. (co-emperor, 850), to do the fighting. 
 He had also a long quarrel with his brother Charles, 
 because he wished to get his old friend Ebbo reinstated 
 in the Archbishopric of Rheims, while Charles supported 
 the new candidate, Hincmar, who definitely got the see in 
 845. The results of this quarrel dragged on for nearly 
 twenty years, because Hincmar refused to recognise the 
 bishops who had been ordained by Ebbo. Hincmar was 
 in many ways a very fine fellow, and a stout anti-papal 
 nationalist ; but laymen must always feel regret when the 
 strength of a Christian country, which is at death-grips 
 with two sets of heathen foes, is frittered away in clerical 
 disputes. Lothair and Charles were both too much' 
 inclined to buy the pirates off with ' Danegeld,' or with 
 permission to go and plunder ' somewhere else ' ; but 
 Lothair at least laboured steadily at the task of converting 
 them. It is illustrative of the age that he once wrote to 
 
 about the offerings that were laid on the two tombs. Each set 
 claimed these offerings, and each attributed the daily miracles 
 performed to its own saint. So, in order to settle the matter, they 
 took a live leper and put him to sleep for a night between the two 
 dead saints. In the morning the half of his body which was next St 
 Martin was healed of its leprosy. Next night they turned him round 
 the other way, and again St Martin's half was healed. But, so far as 
 St Germain was concerned, this was 'not on account of any weakness 
 {impoieniid) on his part, but because he wished to give honour to his 
 guest.' — Lib. Pontif.^ edn. Duchesne II., 226,
 
 THE FAT.SK DECRETALS 297 
 
 Leo IV. to send him some good bones of martyrs, which 
 would work real miracles and so convince the Danes of the 
 truth of the Christian faith. Lothair died in 855, leaving 
 the County of Provence to his youngest son Charles, the 
 rest of his kingdom north of the Alps to his second son 
 Lothair II., and Italy to his eldest and best son Louis II., 
 now sole emperor. This man's activity lay wholly in Italy 
 whither we must now follow him, leaving his uncles, Charles 
 the Bald and Louis the German, to deal with their 
 respective pirates as best they may. 
 
 Leo IV. died in the same year as Lothair, and it is not 
 true that his successor was Pope Joan, a learned English- 
 woman dressed as a man. Her legend was inserted, in 
 the thirteenth century, into an older Roman chronicle by 
 some humorist who wished to spite one of the great 
 popes of that date. In reality Benedict 1 1 1, reigned between 
 Leo and one of the greatest (in the papal sense) of all 
 popes, Nicholas I. (858-67). This man was the candidate 
 of the Emperor Louis II., who soon had reason to repent 
 of his choice. Nicholas was indeed altogether a child of 
 another age. His spiritual arrogance recalls that of 
 Gregory I. and foreshadow^s that of Gregory VII., without 
 showing a trace of the humanity or the wisdom in admin- 
 istration of the former of these bishops. Not Greek fleets, 
 not Frankish or Lombard armies were his weapons, but 
 the thunders of the lesser and greater anathema. And, 
 just at the right time, there appeared for his use the 
 amazing armoury of the ' False Decretals.' 
 
 They appeared in France, where the court of Charles 
 the Bald, migratory in the face of the assaults of the 
 Northmen as it must often have been, was yet the centre 
 of European culture and also of active theological disputa- 
 tion. Charles himself was a great lover of learning and a 
 collector of manuscripts. One remembers kindly the 
 shelter he gave to the most daring thinker of the Dark 
 Ages, John Scot Erigena, a Greek scholar, who, like others 
 before and after him, tried to reconcile Christian theology 
 with Platonism, or at least with Neo-Platonism. No 
 wonder Pope Nicholas objected to such a man and
 
 298 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 demanded his expulsion from France and Christendom. 
 Even for Hincmar John Scot was too much and had 
 to retire, if Wilh'am of Malmesbury may be believed, 
 to England at last. Now the dispute over the See of 
 Rheims, which I lately mentioned, led to some desire 
 being expressed for an authoritative collection of Church 
 law which should delimit the respective powers of popes, 
 archbishops, and bishops ; and, about the year 847, such a 
 collection was begun, at the request of the See of Mainz, 
 by a certain Benedict Levita, Benedict drew largely on 
 seventh-century Spanish sources, some of which had the 
 genuine authority of the great Bishop Isidore of Seville, 
 while some were forgeries long in use ; Benedict also 
 added some forgeries of his own. On this collection an 
 unknown forger very greatly improved by writing, about 
 the year 850-55, entirely out of his own head, a series of 
 some ninety letters, which he attributed to the earliest 
 bishops of Rome from St Clement to Damasus. With 
 some skill he 'covered up his tracks' by introducing 
 among these (i) the Epistle of Clement, which the Church 
 has always believed to be a genuine document of the first 
 century; (2) sentences unquestionably out of the works of 
 the real Bishop Isidore of Seville; (3) perfectly genuine 
 papal letters and acts of councils from the days of Pope 
 Damasus to those of Gregory II. 
 
 The whole collection is a shameless attempt to exalt 
 the See of St Peter at the expense of the other Metro- 
 politan sees, to declare that bishops can only be judged by 
 synods sanctioned by the Bishop of Rome, and that even 
 from such synods they can appeal directly to the pope. 
 The author probably intended his work to be only a livre 
 de drconsiance directed digsiinst Hincmar; he little dreamed 
 that his forgeries, even after the attempt to defend 
 their authenticity had been given up, were to be the 
 chosen armoury of the Roman churchmen in all subse- 
 quent ages. Their authenticity could hardly have gone 
 unsuspected at the time. Hincmar himself, though he 
 did not scruple to invoke the authority of the Decretals 
 against laymen who had seized Church lands, declared
 
 POPE NICHOLAS I. 299 
 
 that their rulings against archbishops in favour of the 
 bishops (whom he quietly went on deposing) were not 
 good law.^ And he openly told Pope Hadrian H. that 
 Gregory IV. and all his successors had been seeking to 
 stir up trouble in the Kmpire and to dispose of its crowns, 
 ' which it was not the business of one bishop to do.' 
 Anyone, indeed, who knew any Roman history ought to 
 have been able to trip up the forger, for not only does his 
 list of popes differ from that of the Liber Pontificalis (the 
 list then universally accepted by the Church), but he makes 
 his first- and second-century popes preside in judgment 
 and override the decrees of Imperial Rome, when in 
 reality they were conducting with infinite skill, devotion, 
 and secrecy, the affairs of the infant Church under the 
 disguise of a burial club. He makes them solve, in the 
 atrocious Latin of the ninth century (for which alone they 
 would probably have excommunicated him), all the burn- 
 ing questions of his own day. 
 
 But to the hands of Nicholas I. no weapon could have 
 been more opportune. It was also not fortuitous that, in 
 the reign of the same pope, John the Deacon wrote the 
 life of Gregory the Great. The wine was red, the cup 
 was full-mixed, and Nicholas and his successors scrupled 
 not to pour out of the same. With the Decretals in his 
 hand, Nicholas beat down the last attempt of Ravenna to 
 claim some shade of independence ; he drove its arch- 
 bishop to Pavia, and then compelled him to crawl back 
 and sue for pardon. He excommunicated two of the most 
 powerful German Metropolitans (Cologne and Trier), 
 who, in common with all the clergy of Lotharingia, had 
 supported a doubtful marriage of their temporal lord, 
 Lothair II., the emperor's brother; he excommunicated 
 that brother himself and made his life that of a hunted 
 animal ; he applied the whole doctrine of the False 
 Decretals to the solution of a question between two 
 patriarchs of Constantinople, in which his mediation had 
 been unwisely asked. This resulted in the excommunica- 
 tion of the one really learned and independent Eastern 
 ' See Migne, J'u/roloi^ici Laiina^ cxxvi., 290 si](j.
 
 300 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 churchman of the age, Photius,^ whose ' Library ' has 
 preserved for us so many fragments of otherwise unknown 
 ancient writers. In connection with this matter it is 
 interesting to see that Nicholas ignored everything that had 
 happened since the fourth century ; especially he ignored 
 the very existence of Islam. ' What,' he asked, ' have you 
 been doing at Constantinople to ignore St Peter's rights 
 for so long ? Why do not the patriarchs of Antioch and 
 Alexandria obey me? Why do you not hand back my 
 Sicilian farms ? ... as for you Photius, St Peter and St 
 Paul, Almighty God, the six general Councils, all the 
 Saints and the Holy Ghost alike condemn you.' 
 
 Against such a torrent of words one needed to be as 
 far off as Rheims or Constantinople to hold up one's 
 head at all. Louis II. made some attempt to interfere on 
 behalf of his brother Lothair, and actually marched troops 
 into Rome ; but the pope went and knelt fasting for two 
 days on end at the Apostles' tomb, until, terrified by such 
 holiness, Louis withdrew his army. Hincmar answered 
 each burst of thunder in very long letters, which may be 
 read in Flodoard's History of Rheims, and on the whole 
 just managed to brave it out for the nine dreadful years 
 of Nicholas' reign. Photius did not scruple to call a 
 council (in answer to one which obeyed the pope's 
 summons to Rome), and to counter-excommunicate 
 Nicholas ; but an unlucky palace revolution at Constantin- 
 ople did what Nicholas could not do, namely, deprived 
 him of his patriarchate in the very year of his enemy's 
 death. It is needless to say that Saracens in Italy were 
 of little account to a pope who, like themselves, was 
 engaged in the congenial task of making Christendom 
 tremble. Louis II. was left to continue his dogged efforts 
 to get rid of the common enemy entirely unaided by 
 Nicholas ; he even patched up an alliance with the Greeks, 
 got the help of a Greek fleet and retook Bari, which the 
 
 ' To the churchmen, both of East and West, Photius was an 
 impious wretch who said that earthquakes were not the manifestation 
 of divine wrath, but to be attributed to natural causes. Clearly, like 
 Gerbert a century later, he was instructed by demons.
 
 CHARLES THE BALD 301 
 
 Saracens liad held for twenty-eight years (869). He could 
 not, however, prevent the legates of the next pope 
 (Hadrian II. , 867-72) from being captured, on their 
 return from some cxcommunicatory business in the East, 
 by Slavonic pirates who had made themselves a comfort- 
 able eyrie on the Dalmatian coast; Hadrian, with extreme 
 want of good feeling, scolded poor Louis for this mishap. 
 Worse still, Louis was actually taken prisoner himself by a 
 Duke of Benevcnto and then contemptuously released. He 
 died in 875, a vigorous, hard-fighting great-grandson of 
 Charlemagne, of whom one would gladly have known 
 more. His loving uncles Charles the Bald and Louis the 
 German, at once proposed to divide his territory and each 
 claimed his Imperial crown. 
 
 These uncles had not always got on well together. It 
 would no doubt be fanciful to trace in the temperaments 
 of the two men the respective characters of the nation- 
 alities that were coming into being under their rule ; but 
 there was a dogged German persistence in Louis which 
 was wanting in Charles. Charles was quick to take up, 
 and as quick to drop new enterprises ; too ready to 
 promise and too forgetful to fulfil. But Louis was far 
 more master of his own dominions than Charles was of 
 his ; feudal disintegration had not proceeded nearly so far 
 in Germany as in France. As regards interference with 
 each other's territory, and the game of grab at that 
 ' Lotharingia ' which lay between them, there was not 
 much to choose between the brothers. 
 
 Charles, however, we must remember had the more 
 difficult task on his frontiers. Aquitaine, with its depend- 
 ency Gascony, was in wild rebellion throughout most of his 
 reign, and Aquitaine and Gascony then roughly meant all 
 between the Loire, the Cevennes, the Western Pyrenees 
 and Septimania ; the basis of its race and civilisation was 
 probably more Iberian than Gallic. Septimania stretched 
 along the Mediterranean from the Rhone to the Eastern 
 Pyrenees and bordered with the Spanish March, now 
 oftener called the County of Barcelona. The sons of the 
 deceased Pippin held on to Aquitaine as long as they
 
 302 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 C(5i]lcl, and Charles had constant wars with them ; moreover, 
 the north-eastern boundaries of Aquitaine were quite 
 uncertain. As for Septimania and IJarcelona Charles very 
 rashly put to death his mother's old friend Count Bernard 
 in 844, and Bernard's sons, not unnaturally, joined the 
 Moslem. It is of no use to scold Charles for not helping 
 Spanish Christians, for rebellious Aquitaine, Septimania, 
 and Barcelona lay between him and them. But the result 
 was that the March-land was as good as lost ; Barcelona 
 itself, the hard won conquest of Charles' father's youth, 
 was retaken by an Emir in 852 and held for some years. 
 Another Emir called Musa, believed to be a renegade of 
 pure Gothic descent, raided over the Pyrenees far into 
 Aquitaine. Only the long reign of the valiant Alfonso III. 
 (866-910) in the Asturias Mountains began to redress the 
 balance again in favour of the Cross. 
 
 Brittany also gave Charles infinite trouble, and a 
 Breton duke called Nomenoe ended by becoming a 
 crowned and anointed king. When the French bishops 
 objected to crown him, he calmly broke off the Breton 
 Church from its metropolitan of Tours and set up an 
 archbishopric of his own at Dol ^ (845-9). He pushed 
 his arms far into France, and Charles was at last glad to 
 conclude a treaty with his successor which left to Brittany 
 the counties of Nantes and Rennes, i.e., virtually its limits 
 of to-day. A century later Brittany entered on its long 
 frontier-contest with the Norman dukes. 
 
 Both the Breton and the Aquitanian trouble, perhaps 
 even the invasions of the Northmen might have been 
 successfully dealt with if Charles could have relied on his 
 own fideles. The latter name, by this time generally in 
 use, was a mere mockery : the French nobles lived by 
 showing unfaith to the Crown. In 858, when Charles had 
 got together a good army to tackle the Northmen, they 
 simply deserted him in the field, talked about 'tyranny,* 
 and called in his brother Louis, who came willingly 
 enough, penetrated into Champagne and even dated 
 
 1 This never obtained papal sanction ; Tours had regained its rights 
 by the twelfth century.
 
 CHARLES Till': 15.\L1J 303 
 
 some grants as 'King of the West Franks.' It was 
 Hincmar who upon this, as upon a later occasion (875), 
 conjured him back again. Hincmar may indeed be 
 claimed as a very early 'French' patriot; he was 
 prepared to school his king a good deal in ecclesiastical 
 matters, but he tried to prevent others from bullying him. 
 If we may believe Flodoard's History of Rlicivis (iii., 18), 
 it was Hincmar who was able to deliver the king's soul, 
 after his death, out of what a later generation would have 
 called purgatory. 
 
 It was not intelligence that failed Charles, it was 
 strength of will to enforce obedience to his intelligent 
 plans. In his later years he began to do somewhat better 
 against the Danes. He was one of the first persons to 
 perceive that a few mailed horsemen were worth more 
 than large numbers of ill-armed infantry, and so he set 
 himself to increase his cavalry. Once (861) he cut off 
 a very large detachment of pirates in the Marne, by 
 besetting the lower fords of the river ; but then he gave 
 them their lives on condition of their quitting France, 
 which for a year or two this band actually did. In 860 
 he committed the defence of the whole Loire valley to 
 Count Robert the Strong, ancestor of the Third Race of 
 PVench kings, and Robert really set things in better 
 order till he was killed in battle in 866. From about 
 this time till 878 there was certainly a lull in France, 
 while the pirates were concentrating their strength against 
 Wessex ; and Charles took the opportunity to begin a 
 system of fortifications at the bridges and fords of the 
 Seine system. He repaired the Roman walls of Paris, 
 and these walls stood the city in good stead in 886. He 
 captured a large body of pirates at Angers in 873. But 
 he had the greatest difficulty in getting soldiers to man his 
 forts. His great feudatories grew more and more unruly, 
 and were yet not independent enough — as they were to 
 be a hundred years later — to defend their own territories 
 without royal help. One of them, Baldwin with the Iron 
 Arm, first (?) Count of Flanders^ (died 879), shocked the 
 ' He was the founder of the city of Bruges, whose growing weahh
 
 304 CHILDREN STILT. CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 feelings of all good churchmen by running away with 
 Charles' daughter Judith, widow of Ethelwulf of Wessex 
 and stepmother of Alfred the Great; Judith had shocked 
 people even more by marrying, between Ethelwulf and 
 Baldwin, one of her own stepsons, and had been obliged 
 to fly from England in consequence. 
 
 Meanwhile Louis the German, whom Flodoard always 
 calls Transrkenamis^ a man, like his half-brother, of 
 considerable culture, who had been the pupil of Raban 
 Maur, was bravely defending his eastern and northern 
 frontiers, not without success. Ever since 833 he had 
 called himself ' King of the East Franks,' and had based 
 his power on the great Duchy of Bavaria. There was no 
 real racial distinction between Bavaria and Swabia (or 
 'Alamannia') which lies westward of it, and not much 
 between these and their northern neighbour Franconia. 
 All were governed on the Frankish system by counts, 
 ruling in gmie, and Louis was able to keep a fairly tight 
 hand on his counts. Saxony was racially more distinct 
 and more inclined to rebel, and Louis had once to apply 
 very drastic methods to it ; but he was successful in them, 
 and, what is more wonderful, he was successful in keeping 
 his own three sons from quarrelling. And, in the forty- 
 three years'-^ of his rule, he beat off Northmen, Serb.s, 
 Moravians, and Bohemians, pushed the Bavarian frontier 
 steadily down the Danube, and succeeded, as we shall now 
 see, in getting the best part of Lotharingia annexed to 
 Germany. 
 
 That great province came into the market when 
 Lothair II., excommunicated but still kicking against 
 ecclesiastical censures, died in 869. His matrimonial 
 
 was to turn the fishermen and pirates of the Flemish estuaries into 
 the most civilised community of Northern Europe in the later Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 1 An illustration of the idea that there was as yet no ' France ' 
 may be seen in the fact that Flodoard, writing at Rheims, always uses 
 the expression Transsequaiiia for everything west of the Seine. 
 
 - Fifty-nine if one were to date from the partition of 817, but Louis 
 was then a child of eight ; it is not till about 833 that he really begins 
 to be active in Germany.
 
 LOUIS THE GERMAN 305 
 
 troubles had filled Frankish history for years past ; and 
 they had been of deep interest both to Louis and Charles 
 the Bald, for by the wife whom the pope supported this 
 Lothair had no children, by the wife whom the 
 Lotharingian clergy supported he had several. The 
 interests then of the rulers of France and Germany led 
 them to take the papal view of the matter. Even before 
 he died, they had made a provisional treaty to divide his 
 dominions between them on his death ; and when that 
 happened, Charles was first in the field, made a grab at 
 the whole of Lotharingia, and got Hincmar to come 
 and crown him at Metz. In that region, which was 
 afterwards * Upper ' Lorraine, he was well received 
 especially by the clergy ; but when he moved to Aachen 
 he got no greeting at all ; the ecclesiastics of ' Lower ' 
 Lorraine had no mind to be schooled by Hincmar. It 
 needed only that Louis the German should threaten 
 instant and bloody war to make Charles retreat from 
 his aggression. A treaty at Mersen (870) between the 
 brothers is far more of a landmark in the gradual 
 separation of France and Germany, than that of Verdun 
 twenty-seven years before. Except for the fact that it 
 gave part of modern Belgium and a small strip of modern 
 Holland to France, the frontier established between them 
 was not very much unlike that of to-day. Strassburg and 
 Bale are German ; the Moselle, up to and including Metz, 
 is German. Dauphine, Franche Comt6, and a good bit of 
 modern Lorraine are French. Above all, the treaty fully 
 expresses the German view of the Rhine ; it is ' Deutsch- 
 lands Strom, nicht Deutschlands Grenze ' (Germany's 
 river, not her boundary). Nothing was settled as yet 
 concerning the kingdom of Italy or the Imperial crown ; 
 Louis 1 1, was indeed childless, but he had still five years 
 of stormy life before him. If seniority were to count for 
 anything, the crown of Rome would have to go to the 
 German branch of the Carolings, and this was evidently 
 the wish of Louis II. ; in 874 he actually invited Carloman, 
 eldest son of his uncle Louis the German, to come into 
 Italy, so as to be ready in the event of his own death. 
 
 U
 
 3o6 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 The Lombard nobles and bishops, on the other hand, 
 leaned rather to the French line. Pope John VIII. (872- 
 882) took the matter in his own hands and, on the death 
 of Louis II. (875), sent swiftly to Charles the Bald, * Come 
 and be crowned emperor.' Charles, with his usual 
 impetuosity, had started even before the invitation 
 reached him, 
 
 John was a pope much more of the type of Leo IV. 
 than of Nicholas I. The Saracens and his Roman nobles, 
 the latter now again beginning to be troublesome, were 
 his main anxieties. The whole of the south was seething 
 with anarchy, and two successive 'Dukes' of Naples — 
 one of them being an archbishop as well as a duke ! — 
 invited Saracens to help them to maintain that anarchy. 
 But if John, in calling in Charles, expected help against 
 anarchy or Saracens, he was to be grievously disappointed. 
 No one in France liked the new departure, least of all the 
 churchmen of Hincmar's type ; they saw that the crown 
 was being offered as a mere papal gift, and Hincmar had 
 taught them to think little of popes. The Germans liked 
 it still less ; Louis was really disappointed on his son's 
 behalf, and he promptly crossed the Rhine and seized all 
 of Lotharingia that Charles had got by the treaty of 
 Mersen. Charles came to Italy, brought few troops, was 
 crowned, ran away again ; Carloman, supported by 
 Berengar, Margrave of Friuli, had just invaded Italy. 
 Old King Louis of Germany died (876) ; Charles now 
 thought he might regain all Lotharingia for France. 
 He, as a crowned Caroling Emperor, might have in 
 Germany a few partisans of the old ideas of unity on 
 his side ; but most of Germany held firm for the sons of 
 the late king, and Charles' army was shamefully beaten 
 near Andernach. In 877 Charles again visited Italy, was 
 covered with papal blessings but effected nothing. His 
 failure there is a great event in history. 
 
 From it dates almost a century of anarchy in North as 
 well as in South Italy ; from it, the complete and final 
 divergence of French and German interests ; from it the 
 final triumph of feudality over monarchy in France.
 
 POPE JOHN VIII. 307 
 
 Before starting on his last expedition (he died on the 
 return journey, 877) he had called together his fideles 
 and practically recognised that the lands and offices of all 
 counts were hereditary. This was the celebrated capitu- 
 lary of Quicrcy-sur-Oise, the legalisation of feudalism as a 
 system of government and land tenure in the same hands.^ 
 Profound distrust of his own son, 'Louis II. of France' 
 (Louis the Stammerer), to whom he was leaving the 
 regency, breathes in every line of that capitulary. As 
 for the pope, he might please himself with the thought 
 that he, first of popes, had avowedly made the Imperial 
 crown his gift ; but then he had given it to the wrong 
 man. He would have to fight the Saracens himself, and 
 he bravely set out to do so. In 876 they had devastated 
 the Roman Campagna ; in 877 John got a fleet and beat 
 them off Cape Circe. But he could not prevent them 
 from building a great fortress on the Garigliano (Liris), 
 from which eyrie they, for the next forty years, plundered 
 the country far and wide. It was then that they burned 
 Monte Cassino, as the Lombards had done three 
 centuries before. John, indeed, walled in, after Leo's 
 model, the suburb of St Paul's and called it Johnstown 
 (Johannopolis). 
 
 To whom was he to give the crown, on whom was he 
 to call for help, when Charles the Bald died ? There 
 were strong factions in Rome both for a French- 
 man and a German ; there were even Italian 
 princes, several of whom, by female descent, had 
 Caroling blood in their veins, and these began to 
 think of one of themselves. Lambert, Margrave of 
 Spolcto, led the way by seizing Rome and imprisoning 
 John. John escaped, fled to France and tried, first, the 
 new King Louis II. there ; but he, poor fellow, could only 
 get himself recognised as king by his own nobles when, 
 on Hincmar's advice, he had pacified them by stripping 
 the crown of nearly every estate and prerogative it had 
 left. John then tried a certain Boso, Count or Duke of 
 Provence, who had been an agent of Charles the Bald 
 
 ' Vide infra, p. 378.
 
 3o8 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 (his brother-in-law) in Italy. Boso saw the pope safely 
 back to Italy, but no more; his modest wishes confined 
 themselves to a crown of Provence or ' Burgundy,' with 
 a bit of Lombardy thrown in if possible ; and he did 
 succeed in 879 in getting some sort of independent 
 dominion between the Alps, the Saone, and the Jura. So 
 at last John had to come to terms with the German line. 
 He took Charles the Fat, the youngest of the three 
 German brothers, made him King of Italy in 879, and 
 Emperor in 881. The Fat man was to prove of no more 
 use to Italy than the Bald man ; and John died poisoned 
 or assassinated — the first but by no means the last pope 
 to die so — in 882. 
 
 Meanwhile Germany, which had, on the whole, been 
 happy during the long reign of Louis the German,^ was 
 going to suffer much in the next few years, and France 
 was to be no better off. It was not only in Italy that 
 these critical years (877-81) saw a collapse of all govern- 
 ment. The descendants of Charlemagne begin to die off 
 with appalling rapidity, and they confuse the reader very 
 much by the tiresome frequency with which they are 
 called by the same name, and even the same number, in 
 the kingships of France, Germany, and Italy. Thus we 
 have hardly said good-bye to Louis II., Emperor and 
 King of Italy (died 875), before we have to greet, and 
 almost immediately lose, two other kings called Louis II. 
 
 (i) The first of these, called 'the Young,' is the son of 
 Louis the German ; he reigned in his allotted third of 
 Germany and in Lotharingia from 8y6 till 882, and had 
 to fight the Northmen, who, driven out of England, 
 began a series of terrible assaults up the rivers Rhine 
 and Seine. This Louis II. died in 882, his elder brother 
 Carloman had died before him, and his younger brother 
 Charles the Fat alone was left. 
 
 (2) The second of these is the son of Charles the Bald, 
 and is commonly called 'the Stammerer'; he reigned in 
 
 ^ He, too, had unfortunately divided his territory at his death 
 between his three sons, Carloman, Louis, and Charles the Fat, into 
 the three shares of Bavaria, Saxony, and Swabia.
 
 CHARLES THE FAT 309 
 
 France as Louis H., if one could call it reigning (877-79), 
 and left two growing boys, the elder of whom was at once 
 crowned as Louis HI.; he died in 882,^ and his younger 
 brother, Carloman, who had been crowned with him, died in 
 884. But Louis the Stammerer also left an infant, Charles, 
 afterwards Charles the Simple, of whom we shall hear 
 more hereafter. 
 
 In 882, therefore, Charles the Fat was apparently the 
 coming man. He had been emperor for a year ; he had 
 just become king of a reunited Germany, and he was 
 already on his third totally ineffectual visit to Italy when 
 he was astonished to receive, on the death of Carloman, 
 an invitation to come and be King of France also (885). 
 That anyone should have invited a person who had so 
 conspicuously failed to defend Germany from the North- 
 men, or Italy from the Saracens, to rule a third country, 
 would be a matter for wonder, were it not evidently the 
 last triumph of the Unitarian party, of those who thought 
 that nothing had gone right since the Empire of Charles 
 the Great had been divided in 817. 
 
 For the Fat King's failure was complete wherever he 
 came. Burgundy or Provence, call it which you will, had 
 become independent under Boso; that, indeed, did not 
 much matter. Italy was in sheer anarchy, and Charles, 
 on his several visits there, merely quarrelled with Mark- 
 graves instead of fighting Saracens. The Saracens on 
 the Garigliano were in full career of plunder ; others, 
 perhaps from Spain, were hammering the coasts of the 
 Riviera on both sides of the Alpine barrier. A series of 
 weak and quarrelsome popes succeeded John VIII., who 
 had, I think, done his best. But far more serious was the 
 fresh impact of the Norse pirates on the coast of the 
 North Sea and the Channel. They seem to have passed 
 at their ease, not only by sea but also overland, from the 
 Rhine and the Meuse to the Somme, the Seine, and the 
 Loire, although in 881 the young King of France, Louis 
 II I., had given them one bad beating near Abbeville. But, 
 
 * Hincmar, the best prop of the French branch of the Royal 
 House, died in the same year (882).
 
 3IO CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 after his death next year, there was as good as no 
 resistance. The body of St Remigius (St Remy), who 
 had baptised Clovis, had to be carried away from its 
 resting-place near Rhcims for safety; the aged Hincmar 
 had to fly and die at ^pernay. Laon was taken, Rheims 
 itself threatened ; Liege, Cologne, Bonn, Trier, Mainz, and 
 Worms were plundered ; even Aachen fell, and the church 
 of Charlemagne was desecrated. At Aschloh (Elsloo) on 
 the Meuse, near the later city of Maastricht, the pirates 
 built themselves a great fortress, like that of the Saracens 
 on the Garigliano, and held it for several years as a centre 
 for their raids. Charles the Fat advanced against it with 
 a great army, but professed himself satisfied with a few 
 baptisms of Danes, and then, to the great disgust of his 
 own soldiers, retired without attacking (884). 
 
 Further west on the Seine, the Northmen had made 
 another base for raids in the Isle of Oissel, ten miles above 
 Rouen. Evidently the whole of the lower valley was in 
 their hands, and their communications with the sea were 
 open. They seized Pontoise in 885, and then, joined by 
 fresh bands from the Loire, sat down to besiege Paris. The 
 siege has become famous, not only because of its valiant 
 defence, but because it was celebrated, in twelve hundred 
 spirited and atrocious hexameters, by the monk Abbo 
 of Saint-Germain, who was an eye-witness of it. I never 
 believe the figures of mediaeval chroniclers, and I do not 
 believe Abbo when he says that 700 great ships, numerous 
 smaller ones, and 40,000 men were collected at this siege ; 
 but we may well believe that there was a very great army 
 of Northmen, that the whole Viking strength was for the 
 time concentrated on the important exploit. The siege 
 lasted eleven months, November 885 to October 886, and 
 the defenders were Count Odo or Eudes (son of Robert 
 the Strong) and Bishop Jocelyn. The walls then inclosed 
 only ' the City,' i.e., the island on which Notre Dame 
 now stands, but there were suburbs on either bank, and 
 recently fortified bridges to either bank. All the outworks 
 were gradually taken, a flood washed away the more 
 important bridge, the good bishop died ; Frank armies
 
 END OF CAROLING EMPIRE 311 
 
 hovered near but dared not to attempt a rescue. Count 
 Odo stole out in disguise, and sent frantic messages to 
 King Charles the Fat who was in Italy. When at length 
 Charles reached the heights of Montmartre, instead of 
 falling upon the besiegers, who were now in a plight 
 almost as bad as that of the besieged, he began to 
 negotiate with them, and finally bought them off by 
 promising them the plunder of Burgundy^ — one of the 
 few parts of the Frankish dominions as yet unwasted. It 
 was the story of Aschloh over again, and his men of war 
 were so angry that, in the next year (887), a German diet 
 deposed the incapable king : he was already in a dying 
 condition, died in 888, and left no children. The legitimate 
 line of Charlemagne was now represented only by the 
 boy Charles, ten years old, son of Louis the Stammerer. 
 But the resistance of Paris had made a great impres- 
 sion, and Count Odo was the hero of the Continent. The 
 Northmen (on their way to plunder Burgundy as per 
 agreement) were beaten off from Sens ; they began to 
 realise that their strategy was ceasing to pay, and began 
 to turn their thoughts rather to settlement on the Lower 
 Seine. 
 
 This date of 887 is, therefore, an important landmark ; 
 for the last time in that year all Frankish kingdoms, 
 except Burgundy, had been in the same hand, the hand 
 that also held the sceptre of the Empire ; from that year 
 France and Germany each got kings of their own, and 
 in France, for a moment, the king was not a Caroling by 
 blood. 
 
 The leading spirit in the deposition of Charles the 
 Fat had been Duke or Margrave Arnulf, a bastard 
 grandson of Louis the German. He owed his fame to 
 his brave fighting on the far south-eastern frontier against 
 a Slavonic monster called Swatopluk, whose temporary 
 kingdom, called the Moravian, stretched from the Theiss 
 
 ' Not Boso's little growing kingdom, but the district where 
 Burgundy wine is now grown, between the head-waters of the Seine 
 and Saone ; in fact, the later French ' Duchy ' of Burgundy. Vide 
 infra, notes on pp. 31;:, 336, 339.
 
 312 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 in Hungary westward to Bohemia and Bavaria. It 
 was characteristic of Charles the Fat that he actually 
 ordered Arnulf to stop fighting, and received the hor- 
 rible Slav as a vassal king. But now, on Charles' 
 end, Arnulf, both as a (/uasz-CaroYmg and as a brave 
 and successful soldier, was elected king by the German 
 diet ; while, at the same time, the French nobles elected 
 Count Odo in preference to the boy Charles. Both 
 were candidates of the laity as opposed to the bishops. 
 
 Arnulf, qud German King, did valiantly; in 891 he 
 stormed a fortified camp of the Northmen on the river 
 Dyle, near where Louvain now stands ; it was the first 
 time the invaders had been attacked and beaten in 
 their entrenchments. He continued the war against the 
 Moravians, and we can hardly blame him for calling 
 in against them (if indeed he did call, which is doubtful) 
 the advanced guard of a new set of savages, the 
 Hungarians, of Turkish descent, who were on their way 
 westwards across the plains of Dacia. But, as we shall 
 see, the results of their coming were disastrous for all three 
 portions of the Empire. As King of Germany we also 
 find Arnulf holding a synod at Mainz and getting French 
 and Italian bishops to come to it, as well as Germans 
 and Lorrainers. He patronised the France of Odo, and 
 patronised the two fragments into which, after the death 
 of Boso in 887, the Burgundian kingdom had further 
 broken up ; the northern fragment, ic, the later Franche 
 Comt6, chose Count Rudolf of Auxerre ; the southern, z'.e., 
 the later Dauphine and Provence, took Louis, son of Boso,^ 
 in 890. Arnulf also patronised Berengar, Margrave of 
 Friuli, who was wrestling with Guy, Margrave of Spoleto, 
 to be called King of Italy. But he had other and less 
 fortunate activities. It was difficult even for a bastard 
 Caroling to look upon himself as anything but a successor 
 of Charlemagne, for the idea of unity was by no means 
 
 ^ These portions were united again in 930 (or 933) under a 
 Rudolf II., and the ' Kingdom of Burgundy' or ' Arelat,' with a capital 
 at the old Roman city of Aries, dragged on a precarious existence till 
 the thirteenth century, oftener than not under German supremacy.
 
 ARNULF, KING AND EMPEROR 313 
 
 dead; and so Arnulf was now tem[)tcfl to interfere in 
 Italian politics and to claim the crown of Italy and the 
 crown of the Empire as well. The death of his old 
 enemy Swatopluk in 894 gave him rest on his Eastern 
 frontiers, and therefore perhaps gave him some excuse 
 for an Italian expedition. 
 
 The papal history after the death of John VIII. is 
 both futile and horrible, and we may avoid its details. 
 There were two fierce parties in Rome, and the leading 
 figure was a certain Bishop Formosus of Porto ; he had 
 been in trouble with two successive popes before he 
 became pope himself. Guy of Spoleto was the most 
 powerful layman on the spot, and, on the death of Charles 
 the Fat, had managed to compel Pope Stephen V. to 
 crown him emperor (891). Pope Formosus, probably also 
 against his will, went further and crowned Guy's son 
 Lambert as co-emperor, and so there seemed just a 
 chance for a native Italian dynasty. But Guy died in 
 894, and P'ormosus, who was in great danger from ecclesi- 
 astical factions in Rome, began to send messages to 
 Arnulf for help. Arnulf came, the first time (894) only 
 to the north, sacked cruelly the city of Bergamo, and 
 went back calling himself merely King of Italy. Two 
 years later he came again, made a hasty dash on Rome, 
 which was being held by young Lambert's Spoletan 
 troops, won an entry by a single gate, snatched the 
 Imperial crown from Formosus, and retreated north 
 at once, leaving young Lambert really in possession 
 of all Central Italy. Lambert was a fine fellow ' who,' 
 says Liutprand, ' if swift death had not seized him (898), 
 would have subdued the whole world to himself like a 
 man.' 
 
 Formosus, luckily for himself, died and was buried 
 in 896; but his successor, Stephen VI., who belonged to 
 the opposing faction, dug him up, had him solemnly 
 tried before a synod, and threw what remained of him 
 into the Tiber. This episode has occasioned some 
 difficulties to those who have wished to maintain that 
 popes are always infallible. Liutprand, who as a rule
 
 314 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 treats us to few miracles, says that he has ' often heard 
 from the most religious persons in Rome ' that, when 
 the bones of Formosus were at last recovered and buried 
 in St Peter's, the statues of the saints in that church 
 saluted them as they passed to their rest. 
 
 Arnulf, meanwhile, went back to Germany a very 
 sick, perhaps a dying man, and died in 899 ; his whole 
 Italian policy had been a complete mistake. He had 
 far better have made Lambert or Berengar his lieu- 
 tenant in Italy; even if the peninsula had had to be 
 left alone altogether, the very life of civilisation in 
 the north and east depended on the presence of a war- 
 like leader, such as Arnulf undoubtedly was. He 
 left a son known as ' Louis the Child,' who kept a 
 precarious hold on a tottering German throne till his 
 death in 91 r. 
 
 In France, Odo had been far less successful as king 
 (888-98) than he had been as Count and defender of 
 Paris, The Northmen in the Seine valley by no means 
 confined their efforts to settlement there ; once Odo had 
 to pay them a very heavy Danegeld, and his own family 
 property (the County of Paris and large estates on either 
 side of this from the Loire to Champagne) was perennially 
 exposed to their ravages, Guy of Spoleto moreover had 
 a fling for the French crown as well as the Imperial ; 
 and when he failed for himself he rallied the churchmen 
 to the cause of young Charles the Simple. When Odo 
 was dying childless he advised his brother Robert and 
 all his friends to rally to the same side, and they accord- 
 ingly crowned Charles in 898 ; Robert no doubt expected 
 to rule in his stead, though Charles was not altogether 
 the simpleton that his name implies. 
 
 During Charles' first year and that of Louis the Child, 
 the Hungarians appeared and began a series of raids 
 that lasted for over fifty years. It is possible, though 
 not likely, that Arnulf was guilty of calling them into 
 Italy to avenge his own ill luck on Berengar or the 
 Spoletans. They were no doubt a branch of those 
 Turkish Chazars of the Volga, with whom, three centuries
 
 HUNGARIANS AND SARACENS 315 
 
 before, we saw Hcraclius in alliance against the Persians. 
 Liutprand and the Greek Imperial author Constantine 
 Porphyrogenitus both speak of them as ' Turks.' They 
 rushed into battle 'with a base and diabolical shout of 
 " Hui ! Hui!'" Like their Hunnish predecessors, they 
 were horse-archers, each man sitting as if he were a piece 
 of his own shaggy Cossack pony. When mailed knights 
 met them in the field, as in 933 and 955, the Hungarians 
 were usually defeated in spite of their enormous numbers, 
 and their successes were evidently owing to the amazing 
 swiftness of their marches. Walled towns (except Pavia, 
 see above, p. 274) usually resisted them, but the destruction 
 they wrought in the open country of France, Germany, 
 and Italy was awful. It is to be noted that their main 
 lines of ravage lay rather between those already covered 
 by Saracens and Northmen, i.e., from the Danube to the 
 Garonne, northwards as far as Saxony, Orleans, and Tours, 
 southwards not much beyond Rome. They never seem 
 to have combined with Saracens or Northmen, nor did 
 the three sets of brigands ever play consciously into each 
 other's hands ; but each made the task of driving out the 
 others well nigh impossible. Matters were not improved 
 for Italy by the fact that, in 888, certain new Saracens 
 had seized a port on the Provencal shore at Fraxinetum 
 (Garde-Frainet) ; they built a castle there, held it for 
 near a century to come, and established a profitable system 
 of brigandage on travellers going through the Alpine 
 passes. Flodoard of Rheims is always telling us, till the 
 year of his death (966), dismal tales of pilgrims, especially 
 English ones, being murdered or robbed by these wretches. 
 Northern Italian potentates were not much more scrupu- 
 lous than Southern as to alliances with them ; Hugh of 
 Provence, of whom anon, after actually getting a Greek 
 fleet equipped with Greek fire to come and help him to 
 take Fraxinetum, took the bandits into his pay, and used 
 them to stop his rival Berengar II. from coming through 
 the Alps. 
 
 But this is anticipating our story. Berengar I., grand- 
 father of this man, in his north-eastern Mark of Friuli
 
 3i6 CHILDREN STILL CLINGING TOGETHER 
 
 (if you look at the map you will see that Friuli guards the 
 old ' jumping-off place,' which we knew in the days of 
 the Goths and Lombards) faced the Hungarians manfully, 
 but was badly beaten on the Brenta, and after that there 
 was little to stop this human deluge. Both he and young 
 Louis of Provence, son of Boso, were candidates for the 
 Empire ; and Louis actually managed to get crowned in 
 901. But four years later Berengar caught and blinded 
 him; he lived, a nominal 'Emperor Louis III.,' till 
 928, while his rival held most of Northern Italy, 
 ever with an eye towards Rome. He, Berengar, was 
 a grandson of Louis the Pious in the female line, and, 
 like his contemporaries Boso, Rudolf, and Guy of Spoleto, 
 was descended in the male line from counts of the 
 Caroling Empire, who had managed to swallow the 
 counties of their neighbours and to make office and lands 
 alike hereditary. But he became distinctly the repre- 
 sentative of Italian nationality. 
 
 As for the popes, who alone could give him the crown, 
 from the death of Formosus in 896 to 904 inclusive, we 
 count no less than ten persons in occupation of the Holy 
 See, one at least of whom was strangled, while two more 
 died in prison. Sergius III. got on a little better and 
 managed to live for seven years (904-11). He owed 
 his security to the fact that he had a strong party among 
 the Roman nobles, who, being now freed from the fear 
 of any emperor coming in from France or Germany, did 
 after their kind. Both Sergius III. and John X. (914-28) 
 — there are two nonentities between them — appear as the 
 nominees of one Theophylactus and his wife Theodora. 
 Of the origin of this family nothing is known ; by their 
 names only we can guess that they were of Greek descent. 
 The man is at first called Dux et Magister Milituvi and, 
 later, ' Consul and Senator of Rome.' The woman is 
 constantly called Senatrix, and the title passes from her 
 highly disreputable self to her still more disreputable 
 daughters, Theodora and Marozia. Probably they were 
 just Roman nobles of extra force and cunning with rich 
 estates and strong peel-towers on the Canipagtia, and
 
 A DYNASTY OF POPES 317 
 
 perhaps (though we do not read of such) fortified houses 
 within the city.^ Anyhow they were not far from creating 
 a dynasty of popes. Sergius III. was the lover of one 
 of the younger ladies, Marozia, and by her the father of 
 a later pope, John XI. And Marozia, besides numerous 
 lovers, had three successive husbands, and managed to 
 control and bestow the papacy for several years. 
 
 ' I know no evidence for the existence before the e;leventh century 
 of any fortified house within Rome except the castle of St Angelo ; 
 but the analogy of the later centuries, and of other Italian cities, 
 would lead one to believe that there were such as early as the 
 beginning of the tenth.
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Time covered is, roughly, the tenth century. 
 
 The most important Events are — (i) The substitution of new 
 dynasties in Germany in 912, 919, and France in 987, in place of 
 the Carolings. (2) The establishment of Normandy as a Christian 
 province of France and the consequent cessation of Viking raids. 
 (3) The cessation, after their defeat near Augsburg, of the 
 Hungarian raids, and the conversion of Hungary at the end of 
 the century into a Christian country. (4) The comparative 
 immunity even of Italy from Saracen raids after the defeat of the 
 Saracens on the Garigliano in 915. (5) The continuance of the 
 eastward advance of Germany against the Slavs, some of whom 
 accept Christianity at the end of the century. (6) The struggle 
 between France and Germany for Lotharingia or Lorraine, 
 ending in the victory of Germany, especially in Lower Lorraine. 
 (7) The utter weakness and long vacancy of the Empire, until 
 the elevation of the Saxon dynasty to it in 962. (8) The extreme 
 corruption of the Papacy, which the Saxon Emperors attempt to 
 rescue from itself. (9) The struggle of these Emperors against 
 the Greeks for the hold on Southern Italy. (10) Above all, the 
 growth of Feudalism as the coming force in France and 
 Germany, and to a lesser extent in Italy. 
 
 The most important AcTORs in these struggles are as follows : — 
 (i) The Capetian family in France, headed by 
 
 Robert, the Strong, 
 
 marries a daughter of Louis ihe Pious, 
 
 dies 866. 
 
 Odd, Robert I., 
 
 the defender of Paris chosen King in 922, 
 
 in 885-886, dies 923. 
 
 chosen King in 888, | 
 
 dies 898, Hugh, the Great, 
 
 \s hen the crown went back dies 956. 
 
 to the Caroling, | 
 
 Charles the Simple. HUGH CAPHT, 
 
 987-996. 
 
 I 
 
 ROBERT II., the Pious, 
 
 996-1031. 
 
 810
 
 320 
 
 ARGUMENT OF CHAPTER IX 
 
 (2) The Saxon dynasty in Germany (Emperors after 963). 
 
 After CONRAD I. of Franconia, King of Germany, 911-918, came 
 
 HENRY I., The Fowler 
 
 Duke of Saxony, 
 
 King of Germany, 919-936. 
 
 OTTO I., 
 
 936-973, 
 Emperor 962, 
 
 Bruno 
 
 (Archbishop 
 
 and Saint), 
 
 dies 965. 
 
 Liudolf. 
 
 OTTO 11., 
 973-983- 
 
 OTTO III., 
 
 983-1002. 
 
 Henry, Duke of Bavaria, 
 dies 955. 
 
 1 
 
 Henry, the Quarrelsome, 
 
 dies 995. 
 
 I 
 HENRY H., 
 
 1002-1024. 
 
 (Henry the Fowler 
 
 is reckoned Henry I., 
 
 though he was 
 
 never Emperor. 
 
 (3) The last of the Carolings in France (none of these were ever 
 Emperors). 
 
 CHARLES, THE SIMPLE 
 
 (for whose origin, see Table in Argument to Chapter VI H.), 
 
 King 898, deposed 922, 
 
 dies 929. 
 
 His deposition was followed by one year's reign of ROBERT I. (see Table 
 l), and then of Raoul, 923-936, a distant connection of the Carolings. 
 
 Then in 936 was restored the Son of 
 
 Charles, the Simple, 
 
 I 
 
 LOUIS I\^ (D'OUTREMER), 
 
 dies 954. 
 
 LOTHAIR, 
 
 dies 986. 
 
 I 
 
 LOUIS v., 
 
 dies 987, 
 
 the last of the Carolings. 
 
 Charles of Lorraine, 
 
 struggled for the crown 
 
 against Hugh Capet 
 
 in vain. 
 
 (4) For the last of the Carolings in Germany, and their connections 
 in Italy, some of whom are mentioned in this chapter, see Table in 
 Argument to Chapter VIII. 
 
 (5) For the 'Burgundian' rulers, see Table in Argument to 
 Chapter VIII.
 
 'MACEDONIAN' DYNASTY 3^1 
 
 (6) In the 'Eastern Empire' there is again a new dynasty, the 
 so-called * Macedonian' (really Armenian), beginning with 
 
 BASIL I., 
 
 867-886. 
 
 I 
 
 LEO VI., 
 
 886-911. 
 
 CONSTANTINH Vil., who associates with himself a Cjcsar, ROMANL'S I., 
 911-959. 919-944- 
 
 ROMANUS II., succeeded by his General, NICEPHORUS PIIOCAS, 
 
 959-963. 9637969. 
 
 I who again is succeeded 
 
 RASII. II., tjy another General, 
 
 the Bulgar-slaycr, his own nephew, 
 
 976-1025. JOHN ZIMISCES, 
 
 969-976.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 Omnia terrena per vices sunt aliena, 
 
 Nunc mea, nunc hujus, post mortem nescio cujus. 
 
 As we have now got to the beginning of the tenth century, 
 I may perhaps be permitted to pause and say a word or 
 two about the chroniclers who are to be our chief guides 
 through it. With the exceptions of the Liber Pon- 
 tificaliSy of Eginhard's brief life of Charlemagne, 
 Eginhard's own (?) rather unsatisfactory Annals, and the 
 dreary Four Books of Histories by Count Nithard, 
 grandson of Charlemagne and friend of Charles the Bald, 
 we have been, since the death of Paul the Deacon, mainly 
 dependent for contemporary evidence on the very imper- 
 sonal monkish annalists such as Regino, Abbotof Prum,the 
 Annals of tlic Monastery of Saint- Berlin} Annals of Fulda, 
 or on Lives of Saints. But in the tenth century we have 
 actually four extremely personal and interesting writers, 
 who had seen and taken part in what they describe. By 
 far the most remarkable of these is Liutprand, Bishop of 
 Cremona. Perhaps he is one of the most remarkable 
 authors of all ages. Unfortunately he is such a flibber- 
 tigibbet, skipping without warning from Germany to Italy, 
 from Italy to Constantinople and back again, and he 
 writes so obviously more for the pleasure of telling a good 
 story than of recording the truth, that we can put little 
 trust in what he says. Undoubtedly he has coloured all 
 subsequent history. But he knew Greek, and, in order to 
 
 1 The latter part of the Annals of Saint-Bertin, however, is largely 
 the work, direct or indirect, of Archbishop Hincmar. 
 
 322
 
 LIUTPRAND AND WITTIKIND 323 
 
 show his own learning, he uses it continually, translating it 
 as he goes, and he quotes most of the classical Latin 
 writers. He also knew everyone worth knowing, went 
 twice on embassies to the Eastern Court, was present at 
 the deposition of two popes (John XII., Benedict V.), at 
 the election of one (Leo VIII.), and at the coronation of 
 an emperor (Otto II. in the lifetime of Otto I.). One is 
 sometimes tempted to think of him as a Roman rhetorician 
 of the third century returned to earth, and taking an 
 impious delight in making fun of the language and ideas 
 of his new contemporaries. When Berengar I. is going to 
 gouge out the eyes of his rival, Louis of Provence, 
 Liutprand makes him work himself up into the necessary 
 rage by quoting Cicero's apostrophe to Catiline — Quousque 
 tnndeui^ etc. Not content with calling the wife of Berengar 
 II. 'Jezebel,' he must add 'Lamia.' Spiritalis Pater is 
 good enough Latin in which to address a pope. The 
 degenerate Greeks of Constantinople are often Argi. 
 Corpora sicqiie cadunt imittiis confossa sagittis is a fair 
 specimen of Liutprand's hexameters. 
 
 Yet he is very precious ; and the more so because the 
 real Liber Pontificalis stops at 891, though the gaps of the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries are bridged with catalogues 
 of popes ; it is resumed at greater length in the twelfth 
 century. Some of the ninth-century lives in the Liber are 
 particularly large ; but even these are often filled with 
 accounts of new church furniture or of relic-collecting, to 
 the exclusion of political events. The only other Italian 
 witness in the tenth century is a sad monk called Benedict 
 of Soractc, who enjoys the distinction of being the worst 
 Latinist on record ; he lived till the time of the Ottos. 
 
 North of the Alps we have a very careful monk of New 
 Corbey, called Wittikind ; ^ his Res Gestce Saxoniac are 
 actually contemporary only from 936, but fairly trust- 
 worthy till they end in 973. He was an exceedingly 
 patriotic Saxon and adored the Saxon Emperor Otto the 
 Great. He makes very few mistakes, though it is odd 
 that, with Bede in his hands, he should say that Britain is 
 
 ' Whom it is now the fabliion to call 'Widukiiul.'
 
 324 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 now called Anglia because it is ' in an angle of the 
 sea.' 
 
 Early in the tenth century there also begins to be 
 contemporary one of the most trustworthy of all 
 chronicles, the Annals of Canon Flodoard of Rheims, 
 whose other work, History of the Church of Rheims, 
 goes back to the foundation of the see. Flodoard, like 
 Liutprand, was a man of affairs, had been to Rome in 
 the days of Leo VH. (936-9), knew the Emperor Otto I., 
 had been imprisoned for a year by a turbulent Count of 
 Vermandois, had been a candidate for a bishopric, and 
 died in 966. His chronicle is taken up by the fourth 
 writer of our series, the monk Richer, also of Rheims, 
 whose work was unknown before the third decade of the 
 nineteenth century. Richer begins at 884 and carries on 
 the story till 998. He is not nearly so accurate as 
 Flodoard (where they can be checked against each other) 
 and far more bombastic ; he delights in inventing long 
 speeches for his heroes. But he is interesting as being one 
 of the few monks who knows anything of war — his father 
 was a trusted soldier of Louis IV. — and of the weird siege- 
 engines then in use. Also he was a professional doctor, 
 and revels in the description of loathsome diseases. His 
 account of his ride from Rheims to Chartres is the most 
 vivid travel-story of the Dark Ages and has been often 
 quoted ; and he has one or two humorous touches, such 
 as that at the destruction of a monastery at Blois ( ' the 
 food was all eaten up, and so the monks ran away ' ) which 
 would have delighted Thomas Love Peacock. He also 
 was well read in the classics, indeed he had been a pupil of 
 the great Gerbert. Of Gerbert's own letters, which cover 
 the last thirty years of the century, I shall have something 
 to say later. 
 
 VVhile, then, we may leave Berengar trying to be King 
 of Italy and Emperor, we must turn back and follow the 
 fortunes of France and Germany from the accessions of 
 Charles the Simple and Louis the Child (898, 899). A 
 most important event for the whole future history of 
 Europe was the commencement of the definite settlement
 
 THE DUCHY OF NORMANDY 325 
 
 of ' Normandy ' as a French Province by the Norse 
 pirate RoUo and his comrades. RoUo or Rolf had been 
 driven perhaps from Denmark, perhaps from Norwa)-, anrl 
 could no lontjcr take his booty home. Early in the tenth 
 century he, after one of the best raids on record, includini^ 
 attempts both on Paris and Chartres, settled at Rouen * 
 and consented to be baptised. The received stor\- of a 
 regular treaty between him and Charles the Simple at Saint- 
 Clair-sur-Epte in 913, is not known to Flodoard, but his 
 baptism was about that date, and Duke Robert was his 
 sponsor. The French bishops had probably been labour- 
 ing for years at conversion of such of the Norniaiis as had 
 made themselves permanent homes on the Lower Seine ; 
 and the first known boundary of Normandy to the south 
 certainly seems to have been the Epte, which joins the 
 Seine from the east near Vernon ; what, if any, western 
 boundary was fixed does not appear. But peace was not 
 immediately secured by Rollo's baptism ; as late as 923 
 some more pirates came across from the Loire and settled 
 down in the county of Bayeux and in parts of Maine. 
 Some of this territory was then granted to them by Hugh 
 ' the Great,' the son of Robert, the first of his race to be 
 called ' Duke of France.' The Cotentin was not added 
 until at least ten years later — say 933 ; and, with that gift, 
 ' Normandy ' was fairly complete. 
 
 For several years after this the newcomers kept their 
 swords from rust by grabbing at the frontier of Brittany, 
 but by the middle of the tenth century the Breton dukes 
 had again become too strong to permit this, and the Nor- 
 mans began either to busy themselves in French politics or 
 to look round for more distant lands to conquer. There is 
 good evidence of the extremely Scandinavian character of 
 the population of the whole of the new duchy. The pirates 
 this time (and perhaps on many previous occasions)|brought 
 their wives with them, and there is no proof that they 
 readily intermarried with Frankish women. Neither is it 
 
 ^ Rouen like London no doubt owes its importance to the fact 
 that it is the lowest convenient crossing-place of the great river, as 
 well as to the great riches of the Seine valley.
 
 326 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 probable that an)- feudal arrangement was made between 
 Rollo and King Charles, or between Rollo and his former 
 companions. Normandy was an alodial gift and the first 
 Norman barons were alodial holders ; feudal custom is not 
 traceable in the duchy before the eleventh century. Rollo 
 ' meted out their lands to them with the rope ' after old 
 Scandinavian fashion. Nor is the name Dux regularly 
 applied to the Norman ruler before the eleventh century, 
 though Princeps is found (no doubt a loose use) as early 
 as 920. Rollo's ' Laws,' scraps of which are preserved in 
 an eleventh-century chronicle, are wholly Norse. Bayeux 
 is heathen, and talks Danish long after Rouen is a model 
 French and Christian capital. If a French king (as once 
 Louis IV.) tries to interfere in Normandy, help will come 
 from Scandinavia, Louis will be beaten and even held to 
 ransom. Otherwise the first three Norman dukes, Rollo (died 
 933)1 William Longsword (died 943), Richard the Fearless 
 (died 996), will be loyal to the wearer of the French crown. 
 Very few other people were loyal to it at all. Duke 
 Robert, brother of the late King Odo, did not perhaps 
 wish to be disloyal, but he was disappointed at not finding 
 his King Charles simple enough to let him govern in his 
 name. Charles did indeed manage to lay fairly successful 
 hands on Lorraine ; the Carolings were always popular 
 there, the most powerful person in that region, the Count 
 of Hainault, was devoted to them, and Charles held 
 Lorraine peacefully till his own captivity, recognising in 
 that district one Gilbert as his vassal, almost as duke, in 
 915. In the rest of his dominions Charles was at the 
 mercy of Duke Robert, and of a terrible person called 
 Herbert, Count of Vermandois, whose lands in Picardyand 
 Champagne marched with Robert's own.^ 
 
 Meanwhile things in Germany were going from bad to 
 worse and to worst. The reigns of Louis the Child (died 
 911) and Conrad (died 918) were the most distressful 
 
 1 The fief of Vermandois takes its title from Virmandis, the Latin 
 name of the town of Saint Quentin near the source of the river Somme. 
 The counts were originally vassals of the Bishop of Noyon, but could 
 not forget that they had Caroling blood in their veins.
 
 HUNGARIAN INVASIONS 327 
 
 period in her history before the Thirty Years' War of the 
 seventeenth century. There were eight Hungarian in- 
 vasions in twenty years. The old tribal divisions which 
 now begin to be called the four * duchies/ Bavaria, 
 Swabia, Franconia, and Saxony,^ though differing little in 
 speech and less in race, were showing tendencies to pull apart 
 again, and to set up as great feudal provinces, owing, or at 
 least acknowledging, no tie to any king at all. Saxony 
 was at death-grips with Northern Slavs and Danes on the 
 Elbe ; Bavaria was losing ground to Southern Slavs on 
 the Danube. The Hungarians, however, had effected one 
 good thing, they had broken the Slavonic tribes in half 
 and driven a wedge between them. In the long-run they 
 proved themselves to be capable, Turks though they were, 
 of assimilating civilisation to a far greater extent than any 
 Slav tribe; within a century of their first inroad they had 
 become good Latin Christians and settled down into 
 Dacia, which we shall henceforth call Hungary. Without 
 them an unbroken barrier of Slavs would have stretched 
 from the Baltic to Thrace. 
 
 Germany, however, was for the moment at the mercy 
 of these same Hungarians; its South-eastern Marks fell 
 altogether or ceased to be defended, while the heads of the 
 great families quarrelled among themselves. The leaders 
 
 ' Much ink has been spilt to Utile purpose over the origin of the 
 four duchies and their dukes, but it is tolerably clear that in the thirty- 
 nine years of anarchy between Louis the (ierman (died 876) and 
 Henry the Fowler, German feudality grew apace. Small men grouped 
 themselves, for protection's sake, round great men, great men round 
 greater men. The very people whom Louis the German had 
 employed and controlled as counts set up for themselves as dukes, 
 with private courts and private armies ; and, as was most natural, the 
 grouping followed the grouping of older tribes. Bavaria got a new 
 Uuke Arnulf and a new dynasty early in the tenth century ; Swabia, 
 after being disputed in civil war between two leading counts, was 
 grabbed by one of them called Erchanger at the end of the reign of 
 Louis the Child ; Franconia was torn from the Babenbergs by Conrad 
 who became King of Germany in 912. Saxony had the most respectable 
 history, for its dukes were descended from a loyal servant of Louis 
 the German called Liudolf, the founder of the monastery of 
 Gandersheim,
 
 328 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 in the strife were Conrad of Franconia, whose family 
 strength was mainly on the Lahn, and Adalbert of Baben- 
 berg, whose lands lay on the Saale and Upper Main. 
 Conrad was nominally loyal to little Louis, and got the 
 head of the rival house put to death in the very year in 
 which the Hungarians first reached the Elbe (906). Louis 
 died in 911, and of course there was a Conservative-Carol- 
 ing party among the bishops which proposed to offer the 
 crown to Charles the Simple. But what help could he 
 give ? he was busy in annexing Lorraine. The Archbishop 
 of Mainz therefore proposed Conrad, and in 912 Conrad 
 was elected by the heads of the four duchies. Unfortun- 
 ately the rule of the sturdiest of these duchies, Saxony, 
 passed almost at once from Otto, a friend of Conrad's, to 
 Otto's son Henry who was his bitterest foe ; he and Conrad 
 were already engaged in a struggle for the Mark of Thur- 
 ingia. Sheer chaos followed ; one bishop was blinded by 
 the neighbouring counts, another killed by the men of his 
 own Cathedral city. The bishops, who as a whole certainly 
 supported Conrad, also encouraged him in arbitrary and 
 bloody acts against the great nobles, and so the prestige 
 of the crown steadily declined. But the turn of the tide 
 came when Conrad, whose reign had been one long civil 
 war with Henry of Saxony, sent, from his deathbed, the 
 crown and other insignia of royalty to this very Henry, 
 as being the only person strong enough to take them 
 up (918). 
 
 The Duchy of Saxony, the last to be Christianised, was 
 the best remaining source of strength in Germany. It was 
 still the home of the small armed freeholder and foot- 
 soldier,^ who in the other duchies was rapidly disappearing 
 before the growth of the feudal principalities. It had 
 great religious foundations, of which Bremen, Madgeburg, 
 Quedlinburg, New Corbey, and Gandersheim were the 
 most important ; but it had very few towns or fortresses 
 east of the Weser, and, though perpetually struggling to 
 grow northwards towards Eider and Schlei and eastwards 
 
 ^ Who actually marched to battle in a straw hat (Wittikind is our 
 authority for this).
 
 HENRY THE FOWLER 329 
 
 towards Oder, it had to fight every inch of this advance 
 against Danes and Slavs. The traditionary descent of 
 Duke Henr)' from a Saxon all)' of Charlemagne is 
 incapable of proof; but his grandfather had been a great 
 man under Louis the German, his family had married into 
 the Frankish house of the Billungs, and also into the royal 
 house. His father Otto had accompanied Arnulf to Italy, 
 and had been rewarded with large grants of land. His 
 own second wife, Matilda, was traditionally descended from 
 Charlemagne's old enemy, Wittikind, the heathen hero of 
 the war of independence. It is clear that Henry had very 
 little Caroling blood in him ; he also had no episcopal 
 favour. He was never anointed, perhaps never even 
 crowned by a bishop ; one tradition says that he refused 
 these honours and meant his refusal to be a snub to the 
 great clergy. But he was a man of exemplary piety after 
 the lights of his day. When in 922 he heard that Rudolf 
 of Burgundy had got the ' Holy Lance of Constantine,' 
 with some of the nails of the True Cross in it, he made 
 large offers for purchase, l^ut, on refusal, he took the 
 simpler method of threatening fire and sword to Rudolf's 
 whole kingdom unless he would surrender the lance. 
 Rudolf promptly listened * to the just request of the just 
 king,' who thereon loaded him with gifts of gold and silver 
 and gave him part of the Duchy of Swabia.^ Henry's son 
 Otto inherited the lance and used it with terrific effect 
 against the Hungarians in 955. 
 
 Henry was at first the candidate of Saxon)' and 
 Franconia only ; Bavaria and Swabia had to be won over 
 with the gifts of great privileges for their dukes. What 
 Charles the Simple and his powerful vassal Gilbert in 
 Lorraine would say to his elevation was doubtful. Charles 
 at least could not do much, for he was always being tossed 
 
 ' Liutprand, Aniapodosis^ iv., 25. Wittikind (i., 25), however 
 says that Henry received the lance with the other regalia from his 
 predecessor King Conrad. There were several 'Holy Lances' in 
 the Middle Ages, notably those of .St Maurice and St Longinus, each 
 claiming to be that mentioned in St John xix. 34. The most famous 
 was the one presented by Sultan Bajazet II. to Pope Innocent \'III. 
 in 1492.
 
 330 THE SNAPriNG OF THE BONDS 
 
 and gored by his own nobles, who in 920 very nearly 
 deposed him. Henry and Charles had a meeting in 921 
 on a raft in the Rhine, with their armies drawn up on 
 either bank, and swore to keep the peace with each other. 
 Two years later Charles was deposed by Duke Robert and 
 Herbert of Vermandois, and Duke Robert was elected 
 king.' There was civil war, for Lorraine at least held for 
 the Caroling, and Robert was killed in battle within a year 
 of his accession ; one Ralph or Raoul was elected in his 
 place. Meanwhile the Count of Vermandois had caught 
 and imprisoned poor Charles, whose wife Edgiva, a 
 daughter of Edward the Elder of Wessex, fled with her 
 infant son to England. ' Nothing has gone right in 
 France,' wrote Charles to Henry two years later (while 
 sending him the hand of the blessed St Denis set in gold 
 and jewels) 'since the illustrious martyr St Vitus- deserted 
 us to go to you.' Once Charles was liberated for a short 
 time but died in captivity in 929. 
 
 This Ralph, Rudolf, or Raoul who ' reigned ' from 923-36 
 in France by the courtesy of Duke Hugh the Great, son of 
 the late King Robert, was brother-in-law of the said Hugh. 
 He was also cousin to his namesake Rudolf, King of Bur- 
 gundy, and he died without children. Hugh the Great for 
 his part was brother-in-law of Herbert of Vermandois who 
 married his sister ; he was brother-in-law of Charles the 
 Simple, for his second wife Ethel was, like Queen Edgiva, 
 a daughter of our great King Edward of Wessex ; he was 
 to become in 930 brother-in-law also to Otto, son of the 
 German King Henry, for Otto's first wife was Edith, sister 
 of the said Ethel and the said Edgiva ; while as his third 
 wife Hugh later on took a sister of the same Otto called 
 Hedwig (which is with us Avice, a beautiful name unfortun- 
 ately almost extinct in England). One is rather astonished 
 that Hugh the Great never took the crown of France for 
 himself; but he was evidently what the French call an 
 esprit froid, content with the substance of power, which 
 
 ' He is Robert I. of France, though he is not always reckoned. 
 -' St Vitus' bones had been moved from France to New Corbey by 
 Louis I.
 
 LORRAINE BECOMES GERMAN 331 
 
 the weariiif^ of the crown would actiiall)- liavc diminished. 
 At any rate he paved the wa)' for his son and his son's 
 dynasty, which wore it, in unbroken male descent, for 
 eight hundred years. 
 
 Meanwhile Raoul of France and Henry of Germany 
 stood face to face on the question of Lorraine. The deposi- 
 tion of his all)', Charles, set the latter free from an)' scruples 
 as to treaties : Henry held Lorraine to be German land, and 
 he [jrocecdcd to swallow it between the )ears 923 and 926. 
 He must have managed cleverly to win over such an inde- 
 pendent person as Gilbert, whom he permitted to rule the 
 province as a German duke, with a Saxon princess, Henry's 
 own daughter Gcrberga, to wife. Henceforth there are five 
 German duchies instead of four ; and, before his death, King 
 Raoul gave up all French claims upon Lorraine. Raoul, for 
 the rest, saw his country swept by the Hungarians in 926, 
 when the body of St Remy had to set out on its travels 
 again. Sometimes the saints took vengeance on such 
 marauders ; Flodoard tells us of one poor brigand who 
 rashly laid his hand on an altar dedicated to St Martin ; 
 the hand at once adhered to the marble, and his fellows 
 had to chip away a bit of the altar to free him ; and, ' as 
 returned captives told us,' the man carried the marble 
 about with him till his dying day. Raoul saw also the abdi- 
 cation of Rollo and the accession of William Longsword, 
 whose Norman duchy he was obliged to round off with the 
 gift of the Cotentin ; saw, above all, the perilous increa.se 
 of the great fief of Vermandois, and of that of his own 
 brother-in-law Hugh, who wrung from him the gift of the 
 County of Maine. In fact poor Raoul had to give to every- 
 one everything for which he was asked, upon pain of 
 deposition. 
 
 But across the Rhine King Henry I. proceeded ver)' 
 differently ; he found a chaos and he left the beginnings 
 of an orderly kingdom. He began by bu)ing in 924 a 
 nine years' truce with the Hungarians, who thereupon 
 went off to plunder France. When, two years later, he 
 had got thorough hold of Lorraine, he turned his attention 
 to the Slavonic tribes be)'ond the Elbe. It was then that
 
 332 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 he 'took Brannibor, a fortress of the Wends' — that first 
 appearance of Brandenburg in history which deh'ghted 
 Thomas Carlyle so much (928). Like Edward the Elder 
 in his reconquest of central England from the Danes, 
 Henry relied largely on the building of fortresses, or burgs, 
 Anglice burhs,^ i.e., wooden castles on raised earthen 
 mounds with a circuit of earthworks and ditches round 
 them. Probably Henry was not the first person since 
 Charlemagne to do this ; Charles the Bald had begun 
 fortifications at fords and bridges, Arnulf had built a fort- 
 ress of some sort at Eichstadt ; the use of wooden fortifica- 
 tions was well known to the invading Northmen. Anyhow 
 several of Henry's burgs grew up into the great cities 
 of Northern Germany ; and it is quite likely that he built 
 them at places {e.g. at Quedlinburg) where there was 
 already an undefended religious foundation. Meissen was 
 undoubtedly one of his creations, Merseburg another. 
 They would be places of refuge for the country people 
 when a Slav or Hungarian raid came. Henry * the 
 Fowler' becomes henceforth Henry the Builder.^ What 
 perhaps was really original in Henry's burgs was that he 
 provided a regular means of garrisoning them ; out of 
 every nine of the agrarii inilites, says Wittikind, one was 
 to come and live in the burg, and the other eight were to 
 cultivate his lands for him. Who were these inilites} — 
 the word in the eleventh century is always going to mean 
 a knight, a horse soldier ; but perhaps Wittikind just uses 
 it for a man liable to military service of any kind ; for a 
 knight's horse would not be of much use inside a wooden 
 castle. Whether any rotation of service was implied we 
 
 ^ The word burgus in the sense of a fortified tower, castellum 
 parvulum, is used by Vegetius writing in the fourth century, and the 
 older etymologists connected it with the Greek irvpyo^ ; but the 
 N. E. D. points out that burh is a word common to all early Teutonic 
 and Scandinavian languages. Vegetius may have picked it up among 
 Xhe. fcederaii oi the Imperial armies. 
 
 - The name ' Fowler ' was given him from the story that, when 
 the messengers of the late King Conrad came to his rude court with 
 the insignia of royalty, they found the rustic duke busy making snares 
 for birds.
 
 DEATH OF HENRY THE FOWLER 333 
 
 do not know, but the late Professor Maitland has showed 
 us something of the kind existing in eleventh-century 
 England. To both Moslem and Christian in Spain, as 
 well as to the Saracens in Italy, these fortified castles and 
 some system of castle-guard were known. Henry even 
 ordered that all 'moots, merry-makings, and markets' 
 {concilia, convivia, conventus i) were in future to take place 
 inside towns. 
 
 But Henry also did something that the old English 
 kings did not think of doing ; he began to create a heavy 
 cavalry. The horse soldier was the coming force in the 
 world, as our ancestors found out at Hastings a century 
 and a half later. Although there is good reason for 
 believing that the continental Saxons retained a large 
 proportion of well-armed infantry longer than any 
 other continental warriors, Henry perceived that mail- 
 clad knights would make a greater impression on the 
 swarms of Slavonic and Hungarian archers. In France 
 horse soldiers were beginning to tell in battle against 
 Norse and Saracen pirates ; - even the settled Normans 
 were becoming horse soldiers. The result of these 
 military reforms was that, when his nine years' truce was 
 up, Henry was able to scatter (rather than to annihilate) 
 a vast Hungarian host on the river Unstrut in 933 ; 
 it was the first European victory over these creatures, 
 and it made a deep impression. He then turned to the 
 Danes, gave them a severe lesson between Schlei and 
 Eider, drove them back behind their Danework, and 
 colonised the quite new Mark of Schleswig with Saxons. 
 Against the Slavonic Wends he built Meissen and created 
 the Mark of Misnia on the Elbe, near where that river 
 emerges from the Bohemian Mountains. Altogether it 
 would be difficult to overrate the debt which civilisation 
 owes to this practical German soldier, who died in 936. 
 
 Wittikind says that at the end of his life Henry had 
 
 ' How frequently truth may have been sacrificed by a medi.ival 
 chronicler for the sake of some such alliterative jinyle ! 
 
 - Flodoard, under the year 932, tells us of a Gascon knight who 
 had a very strong horse more than one hundred years old 1
 
 334 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 thoughts of interfering in Italy, but this is perhaps a 
 reflection of the later career of his son Otto the Great. It 
 was, indeed, high time that someone should interfere there. 
 We left the popes and their ladies at the end of the last 
 chapter struggling to maintain an independence between 
 Berengar on the north and the Saracens on the south. 
 John X., however disreputable his origin may have been, 
 was a most active man, who at once set to work to remedy 
 the evils of his country. The Saracens swarmed all round 
 Rome, and their great castle on the Garigliano was the 
 mother of numerous lesser dens of brigandage in the hills 
 that bordered the Cainpagna. There had been no emperor 
 crowned since the now blind Louis of Provence, 901, though 
 Berengar had taken the Italian crown at Pavia. In 915 
 John managed to galvanise Berengar with a promise of the 
 Imperial crown into sending, though he did not come him- 
 self, substantial help to a great Christian league. Better 
 still, he galvanised an Empress-regent of Constantinople, 
 and the South Italian cities and dukes, and so got together 
 a fleet as well as an army. Theophylactus and an old 
 Spoletan soldier called Alberic appeared as generals ; the 
 pope himself fought in the battle, and the great castle on 
 the Garigliano was taken. A real breathing space was thus 
 obtained, though it did not prevent fresh raids from Africa, 
 where a new and vigorous Moslem dynasty called the 
 ' Fatimite ' had recently become independent of either 
 caliphate ; the Sicilian Saracens refused allegiance to this, 
 and there was a Moslem civil war. But other outlaws con- 
 tinued to pour from Spain on to the Ligurian coast, and in 
 935 these took Genoa. This was in the reign of Caliph 
 Abderrahman III., the greatest of the Ommiad rulers of 
 Cordova, who wished for peace with the Christian powers 
 outside Spain (he had his hands quite full of those inside 
 it), but could not restrain his own outlaws. 
 
 Whether it were before or after his victory that Pope 
 John crowned Berengar emperor we do not know ; but it 
 was about 915. Thus, for a moment, a pope, all honour 
 to him, had played the Italian patriot and had been the 
 champion of Italian unity. He could not long continue to
 
 POPE JOHN X. 335 
 
 be so; a native emperor with any real power would have 
 been fatal to the papal claims, and far more formidable 
 than a distant P'rank or German. John, therefore, soon 
 began to stir up enemies to his new creature — marquises 
 of Ivrea, of Tuscany, kings of Provence, kings of Upper 
 Burgundy. Berengar, whose power never really extended 
 west of the Adda or south of the Po, was not particular 
 whom he called in — 'Hungarians if you like' — against 
 these intrusive persons. The Hungarians came, sacked 
 and burned Pavia,^ and somebody assassinated Berengar 
 in 924 ; the savages then passed on over the Alps into 
 Provence and Septimania and sacked Nismes. Pope John 
 soon managed to quarrel also with his Roman generals, 
 Theophylactus and Alberic, and there was civil war 
 in Rome. The pope was no more particular than 
 Berengar whom he emplo}ed ; once at least he had 
 Hungarians in his pay. Alberic, who was the first 
 husband of the wicked Marozia, was driven from Rome, 
 and we do not know his end, nor that of Theophylactus ; 
 Marozia immediately married Guy, Marquis of Tuscany ; 
 the Hungarians came back and ravaged all Central 
 Italy. 
 
 Meanwhile, Rudolf H. of Upper Burgundy had got one 
 party to call him King of Italy, and Hugh of Provence 
 soon got another; this Hugh was a great-grandson of the 
 PLmperor Lothair, and a half-brother and bitter enemy of 
 Marozia's new husband, Guy. He was a most dangerous 
 person, speciously devout, really cunning and wicked. 
 Liutprand, who was brought up as a choir-boy at his 
 court, retained a sneaking liking for him, but confesses 
 that he filled all the North Italian churches with his 
 bastards. John seems to have turned to him for help 
 against Marozia and Guy, but before Hugh could come 
 these persons managed to abolish John, probably by 
 strangling him in prison (928). Soon after this Marozia, 
 now calling herself Scnatrix and Patricia, created her 
 
 ' It is only fair to bay that Liutpiand {Antiip., iii., 1-4) says that 
 this raid happened after lierengar's death, and that the savages were 
 not called in by Berengar.
 
 S36 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 own son pope, as John XI. (931-936). Hugh, meanwhile, 
 had stopped off his rival Rudolf by ceding Provence to 
 him,' and meant to be king of Italy and emperor himself. 
 Marozia saw that she must make terms with him, and, 
 when her second husband Guy died in 932, she immedi- 
 ately invited Hugh to come to Rome and receive her hand. 
 Then occurred a most strange and important revolu- 
 tion in Rome. Marozia had, by her first husband Alberic, 
 a son of the same name ; he was required to serve as a 
 page at the wedding of his new stepfather, who, in the 
 course of his ministrations, boxed his ears. The young 
 man rushed out of the castle of St Angelo, where the 
 wedding feast was taking place, and called the Roman 
 people to arms against ' harlots and tyrants.' Hugh 
 escaped with difficulty, what became of Marozia is 
 unknown. But young Alberic, evidently a man of energy 
 and ability, soon appears as Princeps atque omnium 
 Romanorum Senator ; and, as there was no emperor from 
 928 till 962, there was no one, unless it should be a pope, 
 to dispute his position. Alberic, in fact, comes very near 
 to the later Italian tyrant (of the good variety), the 
 ' strong man ' of the Renaissance, who arms his own 
 citizens, whose motto is self-reliance, whose text-book is 
 the 'Prince' of Machiavelli. Evidently it was a military 
 power that Alberic wielded, though its limits did not 
 extend much beyond the old ' Duchy of Rome.' Liut- 
 prand calls it monardiiam civitatis Romano;. The one 
 Roman fortress, the castle of St Angelo, was his. The 
 militia of the city, divided into twelve schools according to 
 ' regions ' of the city (not the old Augustan regions), was 
 at his disposal and was paid by him ; perhaps pay was a 
 new thing. His name was on coins together with that of 
 the pope for the time being. His were the judges, and 
 there was no appeal save to himself. The nobles he 
 
 1 It was this cession in 930, or 933 (so Dummler in his re-edition 
 of Waitz' Liuiprand, iii., 48), which made the united kingdom of 
 Burgundy, see above notes on pp. 311, 312. Rudolf II. reigned till 
 937, and was succeeded by a son Conrad, who reigned till 993, with 
 some interruptions to be recorded below.
 
 ALBERIC, PRINCE OF ROME ^,^7 
 
 called together in a ' senate,' though he alone kept the 
 title of Senator : 
 
 " Rectorque Senatus nee regnantis erat." ^ 
 
 We have no evidence that he was a gory tyrant, or a man 
 of blood at all ; but, inasmuch as he kept five successive 
 popes, beginning with his own half-brother John XI., 
 completely under his thumb, the churchmen who wrote 
 history could never pardon him. Yet personally he seems 
 to have been devout, and the friend of the great Abbot 
 Odo of Cluny, who travelled to Italy from that famous 
 new foundation (of which we shall soon read) to reform 
 the terribly dissolute and worldly monks of the south. 
 Though there is some evidence that Alberic was inclined 
 to seek confirmation of his power from Constantinople, he 
 never actually entered an Eastern alliance, and it was on 
 himself that he depended and on his Romans ; indeed, he 
 made them for a time deserve the name. Three times 
 (933, 936, 941) he drove Hugh's armies from the walls; 
 once, by the mediation of Abbot Odo, a truce was patched 
 up and Alberic married his stepfather Hugh's daughter. 
 
 The table of kindred and affinity counted for little in 
 those days, unless the popes or other ecclesiastics had any 
 special interest in enforcing obedience to it.- When 
 Rudolf of Burgundy died in 937, Hugh, who had just 
 married his son Lothair to Rudolfs daughter Adelaide, 
 promptly seized Rudolfs widow, married her himself, and 
 grabbed back his old county of Provence. This may have 
 consoled him for his failure in central Italy, but he had 
 the north of it pretty well in his grip until about 945. 
 
 Meanwhile Berengar H. had appeared upon the scene, 
 grandson of Berengar I. ; being only Marquis of Ivrea, 
 he wished for the Italian and Imperial crowns, and he 
 began to head a party against King Hugh. Hugh was 
 
 ' ' Rectorque Senatus, sed regnantis erat.' So Cato in his 
 panegyric on Pompey in Lucan's Phatsalia^ i.x., 190. 
 
 -' Thus, at the end of the tenth century, in spite of dozens of worse 
 irregularities, we are surprised to find even the hberally minded 
 Gerbert much shocked because King Robert the Pious of France had 
 married his own third cousin. 
 
 Y
 
 338 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 able for a time to hold his own and drive Berengar to fly 
 to the new German King Otto ; but when in 946 Berengar 
 came back with troops from Swabia to help him, Hugh 
 could barely hold his own in Provence, even though he em- 
 ployed Saracens from Fraxinetum ; and he was driven out 
 of Italy for good. Hugh died in 947 and Berengar ruled 
 as guardian of Hugh's son Lothair till 950, when the young 
 man (who was crowned King of Italy, 946) died. Berengar 
 thereon seized the crown, seized Lothair's widow Adelaide 
 for his own son ; Adelaide refused to wed the son, and was 
 imprisoned. Thus a great crisis was approaching, for 
 Adelaide in her despair called upon Otto of Germany. 
 
 Everyone, in fact, was calling, or just about to call on 
 Otto. It was to Otto's court that the young Conrad of 
 Burgundy had fled when Hugh had seized Provence on 
 Rudolfs death. It was to Otto that, first the rebels 
 against the new King of France (Louis IV.), and then 
 that king himself, had turned for help. Otto (who before 
 the century ends is called 'the Great') was born in 912, 
 and owed his power in Germany mainly to the fact that 
 his father, Henry the Fowler, had departed from the usual 
 Teutonic plan of dividing his inheritance among his sons, 
 of whom four survived him, one, Thankmar, by an 
 earlier and doubtful marriage, and three. Otto, Henry, 
 and Bruno, by the good Matilda. Unity had thereby 
 achieved a victory over heredity. Matilda, indeed, seems 
 to have wished to crown young Henry, in spite of her 
 husband's clear designation of Otto. But the leaders of the 
 army {cuncti principcs^ says Wittikind) chose Otto, and 
 the great churchmen were enthusiastic on the same side ; 
 Otto therefore was crowned and anointed in 936 ; in 
 conscious imitation of Charlemagne, and as if he foresaw 
 his high destinies, he chose to be crowned at Aachen and 
 to hold there his coronation feast with full Caroling 
 ceremonies. King Raoul of F"rance was just dead also, and 
 Hugh the Great, again passing himself over, persuaded 
 the French nobles to send to England for his own nephew, 
 Louis, aged fifteen, the son of Charles the Simple. This boy, 
 we remember, had been carried by his mother Edgiva to the
 
 OTTO THE GREAT 339 
 
 West Saxon court for refuge in 923. He was now 
 crowned as Louis IV., and was called Louis d'Outremer 
 ' from beyond the seas.' He, Louis, and his son Lothair 
 and grandson Louis V,, the last of the Carolings, were by 
 no means the faineants that history, made after the acces- 
 sion of the * Third Race ' of French kings, has represented 
 them to be. They had good West Saxon blood in their 
 veins, and highly honourable German kings to help them 
 when they would let these do so. 
 
 Hugh, however, had no intention of allowing his 
 nephew any power, and poor Louis' reign was one long 
 series of struggles and of strippings from the crown, of every 
 castle, every farm, every tax, toll, or prerogative to which 
 it still laid claim. Hugh held all the richest part of the 
 North, the ' Duchy of France ' ^ and County of Maine, 
 and now he wrung from Louis the Duchy of Burgundy - 
 also. The Duchy of PVance evidently included all between 
 the Loire and the Norman Duchy ; perhaps it even implied 
 some suzerainty over the other Frank fiefs. Louis IV. 
 calls Hugh secundus a nobis. Richer (ii., 39) once calls 
 him Oumiuni Gallianivi Ducevi ; possibly the analogy of 
 the great duchies of Germany counted for something in 
 fixing Hugh's position. 
 
 We have, then, to follow the fortunes of Otto I. in 
 Germany for fourteen years before we can allow him to 
 look over the Alps at all. His eyes, so far as his own 
 German rebels will permit them, have to be continually 
 turning from his Eastern to his Western frontier. He 
 and his son Otto II. are to be the hammers of the Northern 
 Slavs. And, as a preliminary, we must remember that, 
 till Henry the Fowler had founded the oft-imperilled Mark 
 of Schleswig, no German had touched the Baltic at all ; 
 the whole of Mecklenburg and Pomerania were Slav and 
 
 ' It is in the year 943 that the title Dux Framio' \vas7K'\'en to 
 Hugh (Flodoard, sub anno 943 ad fin.) There is an excellent note on 
 the subject in M, Lauer's edition of I'lodoard in the Collection dcs 
 TexteSy 1905, p. 90. 
 
 " I.e., the land I)etween the headwaters of the Seine and Saone — 
 not to be confused with the ' Kinj;dom,' nor with the later 'County' 
 of Burgundy; vide supra, note on p. 31 1.
 
 340 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 Wend, and indeed remained so till long after the year 
 looo; and, in the last seventeen years of the tenth 
 century, the Slavs, Wends, and Danes were actually 
 gaining ground in those countries.^ On the other hand 
 the Southern Slavs on the Danube were now always in 
 retreat before the Babenberg family, which was steadily 
 creating the Mark confirmed to it in 976 by the name of 
 Austria. 
 
 One Boleslav of Bohemia began the disturbance on 
 Otto's Eastern frontier with the overthrow of such germs 
 of Christianity as had got east of the Elbe. The 
 Hungarians chimed in and raided through Germany into 
 Aquitaine. Otto despatched a ' legion of thieves ' from 
 Merseburg to deal with the Slavs ; for his good father, 
 wishing to people that fortress, had filled it with pardoned 
 robbers who were instructed to continue the exercise of 
 their talents east of the Elbe. The poor thieves won a 
 great victory, but then, dispersing to their more natural 
 task, were cut up to the last thief. Otto's best friend, 
 Duke Arnulf of Bavaria, died 937, and his successor 
 Eberhard refused to recognise Otto as king ; Franconia 
 next fell away. Then Gilbert of Lorraine, hitherto loyal, 
 made overtures to young King Louis of France, under 
 whom, perhaps, he might hope for more independence. 
 Louis foolishly agreed to help him. In fact it was a 
 regular and very serious feudal rebellion, like that at the 
 beginning of the reign of Henry I. in England ; worst of 
 all there were Otto's own brothers Thankmar and young 
 Henry ready to play the part that Robert Curthose played 
 to our Henry I. But Otto had his sturdy Saxons to rely 
 upon, beat his rebels in detail, and made some of them 
 'carry dogs to Madgeburg ' (apparently a symbol of 
 disgrace).- Before 939 was out Gilbert had been drowned 
 in the Rhine, and Otto in 940 avenged the French inter- 
 ference by a march to Paris. Louis thereon made peace 
 
 ' It was in the last year of Otto II. (982) that the tide began to 
 turn again in their favour. 
 
 - Wittikind, ii., 6 ; Schroder (p. 779) mentions ' dog -carrying ' as 
 one of the punishments of the later Middle Ages.
 
 WEAKNESS OE ERANCE 341 
 
 and married Otto's sister, Gerberga, widow of Gilbert. 
 The Slav task was committed to Gero, Margrave of Misnia 
 or Meissen, and to the family of Billung, Otto's cousin 
 and friend, ancestor of the later Dukes of Saxony. Close 
 behind the Saxon sword came the Saxon missionaries 
 and colonisers. Vast numbers of German peasants were 
 planted among the Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder, 
 and'Lusatia' began to grow into a Mark. Havelberg, 
 Brandenburg, and Schleswig became bishoprics, and even 
 in Denmark .sees were planted at Ripen and Aarhus ; we 
 hear of Danish bishops coming to a synod at Ingelheim in 
 948. Boleslav of Bohemia made complete submission in 
 950. In 941 brother Henry had found that rebellion did not 
 pay, reconciled himself with Otto, and soon received as his 
 reward the great Duchy of Bavaria, with a daughter of its 
 late ducal family to wife. Matilda, hitherto a partisan of 
 Henry, was also made at one with Otto by the influence of 
 the good English Edith, and became henceforth her son's 
 wisest counsellor. 
 
 Thus Germany was daily growing stronger, while 
 France or rather its king got weaker and weaker. 
 Vermandois, Elanders, and once even Normandy were in 
 arms against Louis IV., and Hugh the Great steadily 
 bullied him. The fighting was largely for the possession 
 of the two great bases of the old royal power, the rock- 
 fortress of Laon and the see of Rheims, for which each 
 party had a candidate. Once (945) Louis was actually 
 taken prisoner and held to ransom by the Normans of 
 Rouen. He had rashly interfered with these warriors 
 after the murder of their Duke William Longsword in 
 943, and had tried to act as guardian to the little Richard, 
 aged ten. The Normans promptly sent for help to their 
 relatives in Denmark, and King Harold ' Bluetooth ' either 
 came or sent a large reinforcement of Northmen. One 
 account says that he stayed some time and administered 
 the duchy for Richard ; it was after this that Louis IV. 
 sought the friendship of Otto and found it valuable. The 
 synod of Ingelheim in 948, under Otto's presidency, to 
 which also papal legates came, pronounced strongly in
 
 342 THE SNATFING OF THE BONDS 
 
 favour of the royalist cause in France, and excommuni- 
 cated Hugh, who three years later made his peace for 
 good with Louis. In 954 Louis died, as result of a fall 
 out hunting, and his thirteen-year-old son Lothair peace- 
 fully succeeded him ; in Lothair's name Hugh the Great 
 ruled quietly till his own death in 956. 
 
 Meanwhile Otto's Queen Edith also had died in 948, 
 and, if the great German king wished to get a foot in Italy, 
 it would be at least prudent to listen to the wails of the 
 distressed lady 'Adelaide. Possibly Adelaide had been 
 in communication with the last of Alberic's five popes 
 Agapetus II. (946-55). Agapetus had certainly been 
 whispering to Otto to come, and to deliver Rome from 
 the bogey of good government by that extremely secular 
 prince Alberic. And Berengar's tyranny and cupidity 
 in North Italy had raised him plenty of enemies there. 
 Liutprand tells us that, under pretence of buying ofif the 
 Hungarians, Berengar levied taxes on lay and clerical 
 property alike, but kept most of the money for himself; 
 the practice was one not unknown to some English kings. 
 Therefore over the Alps in 95 1 came Otto ; he was crowned 
 at Pavia and married Adelaide who made him a brave, 
 good, and prudent wife ; Berengar was at his feet in a 
 moment. But as yet he did not dare to push on to 
 Rome ; perhaps he did not like the look of Alberic's 
 Roman soldiers. He therefore returned with his wife to 
 Germany, whither in the next year Berengar followed him, 
 only to submit and return as a vassal King of Italy. But 
 Otto gave Berengar's old Mark of Friuli, under the name of 
 Verona, to his brother Henry of Bavaria. Alberic, therefore, 
 in 954 was able to die in possession of full power after a 
 reign — it was nothing less — of twenty-two years. On his 
 deathbed, he left his principality to his young son 
 Octavian, aged sixteen, and made the Roman nobles 
 swear that they would get this boy made pope on the 
 first vacancy. This amazing compact was fulfilled in 
 the next year, and Octavian, the first pope to change 
 his baptismal name, became John XII. in 955. 
 
 Not unnaturally Otto's first Italian expedition had
 
 THE VICTORY OF THE LECHFELD, 955 343 
 
 produced difficulties for him at home. In the first place 
 his own eldest son Liudolf, whom he had created Duke of 
 Swabia, had no mind to see his father marry again, and 
 no doubt all Adelaide's great influence was hostile to 
 Liudolf, who thereupon stirred up a second feudal revolt, 
 a revolt which coincided ominously, even suspiciously, 
 with a fresh advance of the Hungarians in great force. 
 Conrad ' the Red,' a brave soldier to whom Otto had 
 given a daughter and the Duchy of Lorraine, joined 
 Liudolf, professing to be jealous of the influence of 
 Duke Henry of Bavaria, who certainly was bitterly hostile 
 to Liudolf. The Archbishop of Mainz, who had given 
 trouble in the earlier rebellion, was also in it, and it cost 
 Otto both diplomacy and some fighting to put down the 
 rebels. His best supporter was his youngest brother 
 Bruno, to whom he now gave the Archbishopric of 
 Cologne. The rebel strength was concentrated at Mainz 
 and Regensburg, and Otto had barely triumphed over it 
 when the sudden appearance of a great Hungarian force 
 in the neighbourhood of Augsburg brought everyone to 
 his senses. Otto was not in time to get his own 
 Saxons southwards, but the forces of Bavaria and 
 Franconia, ex-rebel and royalist alike, came to the rescue. 
 Conrad and the king himself, with the Holy Lance in 
 his hand, were the heroes of the great battle of the 
 Lechfeld, loth August 955, and after the fight was over 
 Otto's troops hailed him as Imperator. Conrad was 
 killed at the end of the day, but the German victory was 
 complete. Otto had saved not only Germany but Europe 
 from this scourge for good. Such Hungarians as were 
 left rolled back on Dacia and stayed there. Otto treated 
 those that he caught as bandits and killed them in cold blood. 
 All this time Saxony was at death-grips with a new 
 Slav rising, and Otto, fresh from his victory on the Lech, 
 hurried over the Elbe to assist Margrave Gero ; he won 
 another great victory in the same year on the Recknitz. 
 The death of Louis IV. and the coronation of the youth 
 Lothair in 954 had not disturbed the peaceable relations 
 between Germany and France, although Hugh the Great
 
 344 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 had helped the rebels of 953, In Italy alone a fresh storm 
 was brewing. There Berengar, taking advantage of 
 Otto's home troubles, had quarrelled with Henry of 
 Bavaria over the Mark of Verona, had intrigued with 
 Tuscany, with Spoleto, with anyone who would listen to 
 him. Liudolf, pardoned but deprived of his Duchy of 
 Swabia, was sent in 956 to teach him manners, and died 
 on his way home. Berengar grabbed at Ravenna, at 
 Verona, at Spoleto, and was preparing to advance upon 
 Rome. 
 
 All these foolish little people seem to have been quite 
 blind to the coming danger from the North. John XII., 
 for his part, having none of his father's ability, courage, 
 or good morals, proceeded to enjoy his united tem- 
 poral and spiritual principality after the manner of 
 the beasts that perish ; he lived a wholly abandoned 
 life and mocked at his own sacred office. And he lived 
 in constant dread of Berengar and of Berengar's vigorous 
 son Adalbert, 
 
 Whether, then, it were John himself who in 961 called 
 in Otto against Berengar, or John's outraged Romans who 
 called him in against John, or whether, indeed, he needed 
 any calling, we do not know — Liutprand thinks it was John 
 who called ; but Otto was the only possible deliverer for 
 all parties. He was to some extent in the position of 
 Charlemagne before 774, and the tradition of Charlemagne 
 was strongly in his mind. It was in the mere ' nature 
 of things ' that he should covet the crown of Charlemagne. 
 And so he came ; before starting he left the administration 
 of Lorraine and Germany to his brother Bruno of Cologne 
 (to whom he had given Conrad's Duchy) and to his natural 
 son William, whom he had recently made Archbishop of 
 Mainz. His good mother Matilda was on her knees to 
 all the saints night and day for him. He rolled over 
 Berengar with perfect ease, left Lombardy in friendly 
 German hands, and passed on to Rome to be crowned 
 emperor by John XII. in 962. This turned out to be a 
 great event and a great landmark, for it began the practice 
 — and the practice was the basis of the theory — that the
 
 OTTO, EMPEROR OF THE WEST 345 
 
 crown of the Holy Roman Empire should be annexed to 
 the crown of Germany. But at the time it was, in my 
 opinion, somewhat of an accident. If there had been a 
 king of the West Franks (or France) as powerful as Otto, 
 men would as naturally, perhaps even more naturally, 
 have called upon him to be Charlemagne's successor in 
 Italy. No doubt the fact that Otto had in 936 been 
 crowned with one of Charlemagne's crowns at Aachen 
 carried great weight ; no doubt the utter weakness of 
 the last Carolings in France put them quite out of the 
 question. John promised to renounce all dealings 
 with Berengar, and Otto promised to John restora- 
 tion of all the property of the Church as well as a good 
 deal that had never been the property of the Church 
 ' when God should have put it into his hands.' This 
 promise was enshrined in the so-called ' Privilege of 
 Otto,' a document seen by no profane eyes till the 
 Vatican archives were opened to the world in 1883. 
 It is undoubtedly a tenth-century document, and a 
 reproduction both of the doubtful 'Privilege' of 817 
 and of the Constitution of Lothair of 824. Side by side 
 with vast promises of territory to St Peter (Spoleto, 
 Benevento, Tuscany ; Naples and Gaeta ; Parma and 
 Mantua ; Venice and Istria), provision is made for the 
 Imperial confirmation of papal elections, for the heredity 
 of the crown in Otto's own house, for an oath of allegiance 
 to be taken to the emperor by all Romans. The worst 
 of it was that a century and a half of practical independence 
 had left the Roman nobles with small intention of 
 real submission either to emperor or pope, especially if 
 the emperor should be a foreigner. If ever there should 
 be a foreign pope? Then there would be a revolt 
 royal. 
 
 Indeed the emperor's back was no sooner turned than 
 the first of a series of revolts broke out. Adalbert, son 
 of Berengar, came to head it and John undoubtedly 
 fostered it. Hungarian and Saracen help was asked for 
 it by this precious pair. Back came the emperor, and 
 John fled to Tivoli, hurling excommunications which
 
 346 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 Otto ignored. And the pope's evil life was so notorious^ 
 that Otto had no difficulty in getting a synod, composed 
 largely of Italian but also of some German ecclesiastics, 
 to depose him and elect Leo. VIII., without asking the 
 Roman people whether they willed it or not. No Caroling 
 had acted in such a high-handed manner as this. Leo 
 VIII. was, moreover, a layman, and had to be 'rushed' 
 through all the orders at once to qualify him for episcopal 
 ordination. Then followed a series of revolts, depositions, 
 and vengeances from 963 to 966. Every time Otto 
 left Rome (he went to Germany in 964) his nominee was 
 driven out and some creature of the Romans chosen in 
 his place. Every time he returned the process was 
 reversed. Once he had to fight his way in the Roman 
 streets ; once to besiege the city and reduce it by 
 starvation ; once (966) he took a fierce vengeance and 
 beheaded thirteen leading Roman nobles. That blood, 
 says Gregorovius, never dried in Rome, that vengeance 
 was never forgotten. The Romans bore to him and to 
 all his German successors an undying hatred, which would 
 have been more fruitful of success had not their hatred of 
 their own popes been almost as strong. 
 
 One cannot, I fear, praise Otto I., II. and III., for 
 their administration of Italy. One cannot call it a 
 Church-and-State Empire, such as that of Charlemagne, 
 that they set up. There were now no Imperial missi ; in 
 fact there was no central government at all, nor till 996 
 even a shadow of it. Occasionally there was a big 
 German army tramping about the country or quartered 
 in the cities ; otherwise the Saxon emperors had simply 
 to trust either to the great feudal princes, or, as these 
 were generally disloyal, to the churchmen and the lesser 
 feudatories. Of the popes whom they created only the 
 ' Liutprand {Historia Ottonis, Chaps. IV.-X.) gives an amusing 
 narration of John's offences, including his devotion to field sports, 
 his invocation of heathen deities at the gambling table, and his 
 omission to fortify himself with the sign of the cross. Much worse 
 things about his life were also mentioned at the synod, which ended 
 by rallying the pope about his bad Latin — though it must be confessed 
 that Liutprand was hardly an appropriate reporter of this last crime.
 
 ROME UNDER OTTO THE GREAT 347 
 
 two chosen by Otto HI. had any spiritual or temporal 
 importance, the others were nonentities. One or two 
 German houses were endowed with Mar^raviates which 
 did not last long; only one later Italian house, that of 
 Este of Modena, owed its fortunes to Otto I., though 
 doubtless, there were sturdy German garrisons and 
 soldiers of fortune occasionally left behind, who never 
 returned to the North but Italianised themselves after a 
 generation or two. 
 
 Rome remained quiet under the German sword from 
 966 to Otto's death, and he had full leisure to turn his 
 thoughts to the far South, which he intended to tear from 
 Saracens and Greeks ; and yet all along he held out an 
 offer of friendship to those same Greeks. ' The instinct 
 of the barbarian naturally prompts him to seek confirma- 
 tion of his power from the real Rome ; ' such was probably 
 the opinion of the soldier Emperor Nicephorus who ruled 
 at Constantinople. Otto sent no less a person than 
 Liutprand, the chronicler-bishop, to Constantinople to 
 ask for the hand of a Greek Princess for his young 
 son Otto II., who had been crowned co-emperor in 
 967. Liutprand has left an immortal, if grossly unfair 
 description of his embassy, of the horrors of Greek food 
 and wine (perhaps the modern Kpaai), of which the Greeks 
 drank ' bathsfull,' of the villainous ugliness of Nicephorus, 
 whom he calls * the sort of fellow you wouldn't like to 
 meet in the dark.' It is from Liutprand that we learn 
 that the Byzantine fleet was largely manned by Venetian 
 and Amalfitan sailors. Nicephorus was indeed scornful, 
 but it was mere reason which prompted him to reply to 
 Otto's request for the bride,^ ' not till you leave my 
 Italian possessions alone.' As Otto did not do so, and 
 even besieged Bari (968), Nicephorus not unnaturally 
 supported Otto's foes including Adalbert, the son of that 
 
 * 'Three things,' said the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus 
 in his book on the Adinim'siraiion of the Empire written in the 
 middle of the tenth century, ' should never be given to any barbarian 
 nation — (i) Imperial robes or crowns ; (2) Greek fire ; (3) A bride of 
 the Imperial family.'
 
 34S THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 Berengar who was meditating on his past life in a German 
 prison. 
 
 One good ally, in the South, Otto did get, Pandulf 
 'Ironhead' of Capua, the first 'Ghibelline' (if one may 
 use such a word before its time) in history. Pandulf was 
 indeed a thick-and-thin champion of the Empire, and 
 was rewarded with a vast increase of territory including 
 Benevento, Spoleto, and Camerino. But Otto had no 
 fleet, and so the last word in the heel of Italy could 
 never be his. Even on land his troops only just won in 
 a big battle at Ascoli. Meanwhile Nicephorus went the 
 way of most Greek emperors, and was murdered by his 
 successor, John Zimisces, who at once reversed his policy 
 and sent Otto the beautiful Greek daughter-in-law whom he 
 coveted.^ Otto made no express renunciation of his claims 
 on the South, but gradually withdrew his troops north- 
 wards, received the Princess Theophano at Ravenna (972), 
 went back to Germany, and died in the following year. 
 
 It is to Germany that his real greatness belongs, not 
 to Italy. There Matilda and Archbishop William had 
 kept things perfectly quiet during the emperor's long 
 absences. Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of 
 Lorraine, had divided the latter province definitely into 
 two duchies, an Upper and a Lower, Trier being about 
 on the boundary between them, before his death in 
 965. Brother Henry of Bavaria, so troublesome at the 
 beginning of the reign, had died in the year of the 
 Lechfcld (955); his daughter had married Burchard, to 
 whom Otto had given the Duchy of Swabia ; his son 
 Henry, second Duke of Bavaria of that line, was not yet 
 old enough to earn his later name of ' the quarrelsome.' 
 Otto's daughter Matilda was a nun (soon to be abbess) 
 at Ouedlinburg. His sister Gerberga was the widowed 
 Queen of France, whose son Lothair, king from 954 till 
 986, had only the friendship of Otto to trust to, and 
 appeared almost as a vassal of the German king-emperor. 
 Lothair also married in 966 Emma, daughter of the 
 
 ' Theophano, niece of Zimisces, not the lady for whom Otto had 
 first asked.
 
 GERMANY UNDER OTTO THE GREAT 349 
 
 Empress Adelaide by her first husband. After Ikuno's 
 death Adalberon (Auberon) Archbishop of Rheims (969- 
 989), a devoted friend to the Saxon House, did everything 
 possible to keep the peace between the two countries. 
 The only rock ahead was the continually increasing power 
 of the sons of Hugh the Great. The elder of these Hugh 
 'Capet' (the first of his line to earn that unexplained 
 surname) held the ' Duchy of France ' ; the younger, 
 Eudes or Odo, the Duchy of Burgundy. Hugh, a cold 
 calculating creature like his father, married the heiress of 
 the County of Poitou. 
 
 The holders of the German duchies, then, and their 
 French affinities were very much of a 'family party' in 
 the latter half of Otto's reign ; and one reali.ses that, 
 unfortunately, an emperor had little else to rely upon, 
 unless it were his clergy. For the sad truth is that, if 
 the Empire of the Saxons had no institutions to speak of 
 in Italy, their Kingship had not many more in Germany. 
 The kingship itself was in fact the only institution, and 
 apart from the family lands of its holder, it had no 
 resources at all. It could call Diets, but it was not 
 obliged to do so ; Otto I. took the most momentous step in 
 his career, the first march upon Italy, without consulting 
 anyone but his family. As long, therefore, as the ' family 
 party ' held together all went well ; when it ceased to do 
 so things went anything but well. We shall have to recur 
 to this subject again at the end of the chapter. 
 
 The Church at least was a whole-hearted supporter of 
 Otto, and Bruno, a man of great learning and afterwards 
 a Saint, did his best to make it a learned Church. The 
 schools which he fostered or founded did in the next 
 century produce a very fair crop of learned ecclesiastics, 
 not only from Cologne but from Reichenau, Saint-Gall, 
 Regensburg, Hersfeld, Corbey, Magdeburg, Hildesheim, 
 Halberstadt.i Otto himself tried in middle life to learn 
 Latin but in vain. He spoke, according to Wittikind who 
 
 ' Bruno hiinself knew Greek, and probably used his knowledge of 
 it with advantage in his official business when he was almost prime 
 minister to his brother. The most curious product of the age was the
 
 350 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 knew him (ii., t,6), besides his native Saxon dialect, 
 ' Roman,' i.e., the Lingua vulgaris or Lingua Rontana 
 Rustica which was becoming French, and some Slavonic. 
 His son, Otto II., spoke good Latin, and no doubt learned 
 at least to speak Greek from his Greek wife ; he was 
 indeed a highly cultivated young man. The continuous 
 eastward march of the German Church was a great feature 
 of the first Saxon reign. It was in a synod held at 
 Ravenna that Otto, who had long been desirous of raising 
 Magdeburg to the rank of an archbishopric, succeeded in 
 this task and subjected his new Northern and Eastern 
 sees to it. This arrangement, it is true, produced some 
 growls from the older Rhenish metropolitanates,^ which 
 probably lost revenue and certainly lost influence thereby. 
 But to all his great bishops and even to abbots and 
 abbesses Otto continually gave secular privileges and 
 possessions. He endowed them with counties as well as 
 episcopal lands, and gave them extensive feudal rights, 
 such as justice, coinage, the calling of soldiers to battle. 
 Thus he really feudalised his clergy and prepared the way 
 for the highly unspiritual German Church of the eleventh 
 and twelfth centuries. However regrettable this may 
 be, it was better that the bishops and abbots should 
 receive these privileges from the crown, and thereby 
 acquire some tie to the crown, than that they should 
 receive them, as otherwise they would probably have 
 received them, from the great dukes and margraves. 
 And we must not forget that Otto's annexation of Italy 
 and Rome at least kept the German Church in constant 
 contact with the nominal mother-church of Western 
 Christendom. 
 
 nun of Gandersheim, Roswitha, who wrote ' comedies after the manner 
 of Terence in praise of virginity' (which Terence's comedies, though 
 highly moral, are not), and an incomplete poem about the deeds 
 of Otto. 
 
 ' Especially Mainz which would lose what Magdeburg gained ; 
 this partly accounts for the hostility of Otto's first Archbishop of 
 Mainz (who was in both the feudal rebellions against Otto), and for 
 some opposition in his later years from his son William who succeeded 
 to that see.
 
 GERBKRT OK AOUITAINE 351 
 
 A great figure, then, disappeared from the scene when 
 Otto I. died at his villa of Memleben near Merseburg at 
 the age of sixty-one in May 973. In his last public 
 appearances at Ouedlinburg and Merseburg he had 
 received gifts from Bulgarian and Hungarian savages, as 
 well as from an African sultan, and homage from the 
 Dukes of Bohemia and Poland. 
 
 With the accession of Otto II. we begin to get a new 
 guide to the history of France and Germany, and to some 
 extent of Italy, in the shape of the letters of Gerbert, the 
 real wonder of the age. Few men have been successively 
 tutor to a King of France and to an Emperor of Rome 
 who was also King of Germany ; no other churchmen ever 
 passed from the see of Rheims to that of Ravenna, and 
 thence to the Papacy. No other mediaeval churchman 
 after repudiating the doctrines of the False Decretals and 
 the donation of Constantine, ever became pope. Gerbert, 
 afterwards Sylvester II., whose knowledge of astronomy 
 and mathematics earned him the reputation of a necro- 
 mancer, did all these things. He was probably the man 
 of the greatest intellect, certainly one of the most learned 
 men, that ever occupied the chair of St Peter. 
 
 He was born of humble parents in Aquitaine about 
 940, and educated at the monastery of Aurillac. About 
 967 he went, perhaps as tutor, to a Count of Barcelona, 
 and there, in a country at least near to the Arabic 
 influences, he probably laid the foundations of his mathe- 
 matics. He went to Italy in 970, and spent a year high in 
 favour with Otto I. ; thence ' to learn logic ' to Rheims 
 where he became cathedral schoolmaster and friend to the 
 good Archbishop Auberon, 972-82 ; Otto II. in the latter 
 year gave him the Italian abbey of Bobbio, and he then took 
 an oath of fcalt)' to the emperor and his family. He 
 stayed at Bobbio only a year — the turbulence of the 
 monks destroyed his chances of study — and returned to 
 Rheims in 984 to his old duties. The rest of his life 
 belongs to history in which he played a leading part. 
 
 His letters, of which a collection in the shape of a 
 ' Letter-book ' of transcripts has been preserved, are
 
 352 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 certainly an unusual product of the Dark Ages. They 
 are written in good Ciceronian Latin, with hardly a slip 
 in grammar ; yet they are quite free of purisms, and 
 the writer never scruples to Latinise Teutonic words 
 where necessary for the sense. He does not, like the 
 absurd Liutprand, quote Greek to show his knowledge of 
 it, for that knowledge is self-evident. When he calls the 
 Gauls ' Latins ' and the Germans barbari, he is merely 
 writing as he would have written in the fourth or the 
 second century, and means no offence at all. When he 
 calls Lower Lorraine ' Belgica ' it is because he naturally 
 thinks in terms of antiquity. Among the strange things 
 which he knew was Cicero's De Repiiblica, which we 
 moderns only know in fragments ; ^ perhaps he was the last 
 person who saw it in its entirety. To Gerbert, the Slav 
 is the consjcetus host is of the civilised European. The Greek 
 alliances of the Imperial family were warmly furthered 
 by him, and we once find him suggesting a similar 
 alliance to Hugh Capet.- Unfortunately the Letter- 
 book is so essentially kept for business purposes by a 
 busy writer, that the letters are full of allusions and 
 abbreviations of names, the clues to which are now lost to 
 us. But in nothing is Gerbert a more extraordinary 
 product of his age than in his strange political position ; 
 here you have an Aquitanian (and not even I, loosely as I 
 have always spoken in this book of ' France ' and 
 ' Frenchmen,' can yet call a native of Aquitaine ' French ') 
 taking, as we shall see, a leading part in retaining the 
 crowns of Germany and Italy for a Saxon, and in giving 
 the crown of France away trom a Caroling to Hugh 
 Capet ; fighting at the head of the French Church, the 
 losing battle of that Church against the popes and the 
 monks of Cluny, and then going off to Italy to become 
 Archbishop of Ravenna in one year and pope the next. 
 
 ^ See Letter 86, edn. Havet. The ' Dream of Scipio ' out of this 
 work has always been known ; but it was not till 1822 that the 
 most important fragment of the De Republica was discovered in 
 the Vatican, with a transcript of St Augustine's commentary on the 
 Psalms written over it. 
 
 - See Letter 3.
 
 OTTO 11. 353 
 
 The ten years of the reign of Ottu 1 1, arc divided into 
 seven of success north of the Alps, two of failure south 
 of them, and one of failure all round. The five great 
 German duchies were full of turbulent feudal life, but 
 Otto had two of them, Saxony and Franconia, in his own 
 hands and perfectly loyal ; Lorraine was also in his hands 
 but was in immediate peril. Bavaria and Swabia kicked 
 up their heels against the North at once. King Lothair 
 of France joined the rebels on two occasions (973, 97^) 
 and marched into Lorraine. Once he actually got hold of 
 Aachen, and he certainly wished to get all Lorraine for 
 himself. But in 980 he gave way and kept the peace till 
 Otto's death. Bavaria was the real centre of the trouble ; 
 what brother Henry had been to Otto I. at the beginning 
 of his reign, that Henry's son called ' Henry the 
 Quarrelsome' {Zd?zker) was to be to Otto H. He hoped 
 through his sister, the Duchess of Swabia, to get hold of 
 that duchy also. He intrigued with the Slavonic Dukes 
 of Bohemia and Poland, and with the King of France. 
 But the young emperor acted with great vigour. His 
 Billung cousins in Saxony were quite equal, as yet, to the 
 task of dealing with the Northern Slavs. Otto summoned 
 his quarrelsome cousin to ' explain himself to a Diet, 
 drove him to fly to his Slav friends, whose territory Otto 
 had already begun to ravage, gave the Duchy of Swabia 
 whole to his nephew Otto (son of his half-brother Liudolf), 
 and added to it the administration of Henry's own Duchy 
 of Bavaria. He erected Carinthia into a separate duchy 
 or margraviate, east of Bavaria, and it was probably now 
 that he confirmed Austria (Ostmark) as a margraviate to the 
 Babenberg family. In 978 another Diet, before which the 
 repentant Henry appeared as a suppliant, Otto ordered 
 that quarrelsome person's imprisonment at Utrecht, and in 
 prison Henry remained till Otto's death. The Danes, 
 who in 974 had advanced southwards, were driven 
 back, and Otto himself followed them up into Jutland 
 (being, I believe, the first German king to break through 
 the Danework) and made them pay tribute. In 979 we 
 find him again chastising the Slavs or Wends ( 'Guinidi, 
 
 z
 
 354 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 Gerbert calls them) and offering, among other gifts, to the 
 pacified Duke of Poland a camel, perhaps one of those 
 which Otto I. had received in 956, together with lions, 
 monkeys, and ostriches, from the Eastern Saracens.* As 
 for the French danger, that was disposed of by a swift 
 march, like that of Otto I., on Paris ; Lothair was glad to 
 swear friendship in 980, and German influence in Lorraine 
 was stronger than it had been before the late French 
 attack on it. Only in Otto's last year did the tide begin 
 to turn against him on his northern and eastern frontiers ; 
 and that turn was obviously the result of his failure 
 in Italy. 
 
 There, indeed, everything was going in the other 
 direction. The instant Otto the Great was dead Rome 
 burst out, killed his last papal creature, and set up a 
 creature of its own called Boniface VII. The leader of 
 the revolt was one Crescentius, who of course professed to 
 be descended from that Crescens who was a missionary 
 assistant of St Paul.- He probably aspired to be a 
 successor of Alberic rather than a champion of popes. 
 Otto sent somebody to drive out Boniface (who fled to 
 Constantinople), offered the papacy first to the Abbot of 
 Cluny, who wisely refused it, and then to a friend of the 
 abbot's who accepted it and did his best by the name of 
 Benedict VII. But, when Otto came at last across the 
 Alps in 980, he found his pope a fugitive at Ravenna. 
 He found also that the African Fatimites had at last 
 proved victorious in Sicily (976), and were vigorously 
 attacking Southern Italy. The best supporter of the 
 Imperial cause, Pandulf, died in 981 ; he had been taking 
 on his own iron head blows from all Otto's enemies these 
 seven years past. His large dominions fell to pieces at 
 once, and the Greeks were quite as eager to grab them as 
 were the Saracens and his Italian rivals. No punishment 
 seems to have been awarded to the Romans when Otto 
 visited his capital with an imposing German army and 
 brought back his pope. But, almost at once, he had to 
 
 ^ See Gerbert, Letter 91 ; Wittikind, iii., 56. 
 '^ 2 Timothy iv. 10.
 
 OTTO II. AND OTTO III. 355 
 
 depart to the Southern war, and, after taking Bari and 
 Taranto from the Greeks, he was very badly beaten by 
 the Saracens at Rossano ^ in 982, barely escaping with 
 his life in a small Greek vessel ; his army was annihilated. 
 Only Northern Italy, in which his good mother Adelaide 
 was acting as administrator, remained loyal. Otto was 
 able to hold a Diet at Verona in 983, at which his three- 
 year-old son Otto III. was recognised as King of Germany 
 and Italy. Negotiations for the hire of a fleet, to be 
 employed in the weary Southern war, were going on with 
 Venice ; but, if any promise was made by the Venetian 
 Duke or ' Doge,' it was never fulfilled. Otto was burning 
 to avenge Rossano, but the difficulty was to raise troops. 
 None could be got from Germany, where the lost battle 
 had made a terrible impression and fresh storms were 
 brewing. It was a wild world upon which the young man 
 of twenty-eight took his last look, with a heart perhaps 
 broken by the contrast between the great ideal and the 
 impossibility of fulfilling it. He died at Rome and was 
 buried in St Peter's, the only emperor who lies there (983). 
 His baby son Otto III. is one of those figures which 
 have attracted those who care for the romantic side of 
 history, and numerous legends have grown up round his 
 name. A later century invented the fiction that, at the 
 end of the first millenium after Christ's birth, men 
 believed that the second Advent was at hand,- and dated 
 their letters appropiiiqtiante fine viundi. Such a dating 
 (as a motive for good works) was quite common throughout 
 the Dark Ages, and, as a matter of fact, fewer instances 
 of it than usual are found at this particular time, and 
 there is no contemporary evidence of any extra fear. 
 Indeed the habit of reckoning the era from Christ's birth 
 was by no means universal as yet even in the West. But 
 there were plenty of other influences at work to make 
 the end of the tenth century a superstitious age, and 
 
 ' Or, as some say, at Stilo, or at Cotrone ; after several days of 
 fight, the Imperialists were surprised and cut up on the last day. 
 
 '^ This appears to be based on a misinterpretation of a passage of 
 the clevcnth-ccntury chronicler, Ralf Glaber.
 
 356 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 younfj Otto came to manhood under them. The son of 
 the flower of the West and of the flower of the East 
 combined the cleverness, such as it was, of both races 
 with the strength of neither. 
 
 The effect of the last battle in South Italy was felt 
 at the other extremity of Otto's realm. Before the death 
 of Otto II., the Danes swarmed over the Northern 
 frontier again, stubbed up their own new bishroprics as they 
 came, and overset Hamburg for the second time. Hence- 
 forth Bremen had charge of all the Scandinavian missions, 
 and ecclesiastical authority over Scandinavia, till the 
 creation of the see of Lund in Southern Sweden in 1151.^ 
 The Slavs came too, destroyed the new sees of Havel- 
 berg and Brandenburg, and ravaged up to the Elbe. 
 Worse still the greatest prince of Germany was allying 
 himself with these enemies; Henry the Quarrelsome 
 had escaped from his easy prison at Utrecht, marched 
 upon Cologne and compelled its Archbishop to hand 
 over to him the person of the baby king. Lothair of 
 France, though it was not three years since he had sworn 
 eternal friendship to Otto II., made a fierce grab at 
 Lorraine, and also declared himself to be guardian of the 
 baby. This was greatly to the grief of Auberon of 
 Rheims and Gerbert, who perhaps now began to say 
 to each other that these Carolings were incorrigible, and 
 that it was time that France turned to a race that would 
 not perpetually break treaties and waste Lorraine with 
 fire and sword, Lothair certainly suspected Auberon of 
 some such treason, but died (986) before he could prove it. 
 
 Saxony, however, was loyal to its royal house, and 
 on Saxony the ultimate strength of Germany as yet 
 rested. All the lesser feudatories of the kingdom rallied 
 to the same cause. Henry tried his old Duchy of Bavaria, 
 tried Franconia ; in neither district was he well received. 
 The good peace that the two first Ottos had made was 
 still appreciated. Willigis, Archbishop of Mainz, now took 
 the lead — 'Let there be a Diet, and let Henry meet the 
 
 ' It is interesting to an Englishman that this was the work of 
 Nicholas Breakspear, afterwards Hadrian IV., the only English pope.
 
 THE MINORITY OF OTTO III. 357 
 
 widow and mother of the late king at it.' At that 
 Diet in 984 Henry was obliged to hand over little Otto 
 to his mother Theophano ; but he obtained in return 
 the restitution of his former Duchy of Bavaria, which 
 he held till his death in 995. Theophano became regent 
 for her son, and spent such German strength as she 
 could command in punitive expeditions against the 
 Slavs, though without a great deal of success; but she 
 held Diets all over the Empire, and on the whole kept 
 order fairly well. She died in 991 when Otto's grand- 
 mother Adelaide, assisted by his aunt Matilda, Abbess 
 of Ouedlinburg, succeeded as regent in Germany ; the 
 regent's first experience was that of a great Danish raid, 
 the counterpart of those which were harassing poor King 
 Ethelred in England ; it swept up to the Weser and was 
 with difficulty beaten off. 
 
 In Italy, of course, Boniface VII. came back directly 
 Otto II. was dead, and starved or poisoned the Imperialist 
 pope in the castle of St Angelo, but soon died himself. 
 John Crescentius, perhaps son of the elder of that name, 
 seized power and called himself patrz'ci'us, but it is clear that 
 he was never more than the head of a faction. So when 
 he had created a pope to his liking, John XV., he wisely 
 sought to make terms with the Imperialists, and his pope 
 as wisely, sought to turn himself into a compromise. 
 In 989 we find Theophano in Rome presiding at tribunals, 
 and quite good friends with Crescentius and his pope. After 
 Theophano's death Adelaide administered Italy in her 
 grandson's name, and after a time Crescentius and John 
 quarrelled ; the latter was expelled, was restored, and 
 died 996, in which year young Otto first appeared in 
 Italy. 
 
 Great events had meanwhile been taking place west of 
 the Rhine, the most important of which was, perhaps, the 
 return of Gerbert from Bobbio to Rheims in 984. The 
 French nobles had not, I think, shown any real eagerness 
 to support their Caroling kings in their recent attacks 
 on Lorraine ; they were too much intent on consolidating 
 their own power against these kings at home. Lothair
 
 35^ THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 died in 986, leaving a son, Louis V., aged nineteen, and a 
 brother called Charles of Lorraine ; and this Charles had 
 a son Otto, afterwards Duke of Brabant, with whom in 
 1012 the male line of Charlemagne came to an utter end. 
 Charles was a false, traitorous wretch for whom scarcely 
 any one had a good word. Young Louis V., how- 
 ever, was a spirited fellow, who continued his father's 
 policy and cited Archbishop Auberon to appear at 
 Compiegne and explain his mysterious treason of a year 
 or two back. But before that assembly could be held 
 Louis V. was dead (987). Auberon came indeed to the 
 meeting, but it was to elect Hugh Capet King of France. 
 
 It was the old story of 751 over again. He who had 
 the power of king ought to have the name. The anathema 
 which Pope Stephen had then spoken on any who should 
 ever promote any other race than that of St Arnulf to 
 the French throne, had no terrors for Auberon or for his 
 inspirer Gerbert. 
 
 The family of Robert the Strong had been gaining in 
 wealth, in popularity, and above all in favour with the 
 clergy, for over a century, just in proportion as the 
 Carolingians had been declining. The Church had found 
 its nominal kings quite unable to protect its possessions 
 against the great feudatories, and so its leaders must turn 
 to some one who could do this. Hugh was such a man ; 
 and Rheims, by the mouths of Gerbert and Auberon, spoke 
 for clergy and people in his favour at an assembly at 
 Senlis. The great fiefs of Burgundy, Aquitaine, Normand)-, 
 Vermandois were held by men closely related by blood 
 or marriage to this 'Duke of France'; his own fief was 
 richer in men if not in natural resources, than any of these. 
 Above all, the abbots of the great abbeys were devoted 
 to his house. And so Hugh was unanimously elected ; 
 not by the partisans of feudal anarchy who might hope 
 to find in him a weak king, but by the wise men who hoped 
 to find in him a strong one ; and yet not by the partisans 
 of French nationality as against ' unity of empire,' for 
 hardly anyone as yet recognised a distinct French nation. 
 Nay, Hugh, though his elevation was destined to put an
 
 HUGH CAPET, KING OF FRANCE 359 
 
 end to the sort of protectorate which the Ottos had 
 exercised over the last three French sovereigns, had 
 the support not only of the best Frenchmen, but 
 of all Germans who were loyal to Otto and the 
 Empire ; Charles, who at once raised the Caroling flag 
 at Laon, had the support only of those Germans who 
 were disloyal and of feudal anarchy itself. And it was 
 to the old royalty of Charlemagne with all its traditions 
 and sanctity that Hugh's supporters raised, or believed 
 that they raised him. The voice of the common people 
 spoke in the same sense ; for a real king could be their 
 only help against the anarchic tendencies of feudalism. 
 What feudalism, as represented by such French fief-holders 
 as were not Hugh's friends, thought of this new royalty 
 we have little means of knowing, but we can fairly guess 
 that it would soon try to treat the Capetians as it had 
 treated the Carolings. 
 
 Hugh was, as I have said, a cold, wily, thankless 
 creature.^ In 989 Auberon died, and Hugh, with as much 
 ingratitude as folly, gave the see of Rheims, not to 
 Gerbert who was the obvious candidate, but to a young 
 bastard Caroling called Arnulf, who of course at once 
 betrayed the city of Rheims to his cousin Charles. 
 Gerbert for a moment was induced to go over to the 
 same side but in a few months repented and made a 
 frank confession of his folly. Hugh had the luck to catch 
 Charles and shut him up till his death. But to get rid 
 of Arnulf, a consecrated archbishop, was a more difficult 
 matter, and the struggle over his body must now introduce 
 us to a new phase of ecclesiastical politics. 
 
 The whole papal position of Nicholas I. was here at 
 stake ; the whole doctrine of the False Decretals was 
 impugned. Could a bishop be deposed by anyone but the 
 pope ? Gerbert maintained that he could, that the 
 
 ' He was also 7-cx illitcratus^ he could not speak Latin. Richer 
 (iii., 85) tells a good story to illustrate this, of an interview which 
 Hugh once had had with the accomplished Otto H. Otto used 
 a bishop to interpret his Latin to the duke (as Hugh then was), so 
 I suppose that Otto could not speak the Lingua Romana Rustica.
 
 36o THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 doctrines of the False Decretals (though he never mentioned 
 tlieir name) were moonshine, and maintained it in language 
 that even Hincmar had never dared to use. He was not 
 afraid to write : ' If they shall say to you, lo here is Christ 
 or lo he is there, believe them not. They say he is at 
 Rome because they justify what you ' [French bishops] 
 ' have condemned and condemn what you have justified.' A 
 synod was held in the church of Saint-Basol near Rheims, 
 and Gerbert just managed to get a majority on his side. 
 Arnulf was deposed and Gerbert elected to the great see. 
 But Gerbert's enemies so far prevailed that he had to 
 make, which was quite unusual, an explicit profession of 
 his faith, renouncing certain heresies.^ This may have 
 been in consequence of his mathematical learning. At 
 this and subsequent synods even stronger language against 
 the papal claims was used by the Bishop of Orleans 
 (another Arnulf by name) : the popes, he said, have 
 become tyrants, often of shocking lives, are in fact as good 
 as Antichrist. The Saxon monk. Brother Martin, was 
 going to use very much the same expressions five hundred 
 and twenty-nine years later. At Chelles, in the same year, 
 another synod confirmed the acts of that of Saint-Basol, 
 and declared null and void anything that any pope should 
 say * against the decrees of the Fathers.' - It is idle to 
 speculate on what might have happened if this spirit in 
 the French 'Church had triumphed and spread to othsr 
 lands, and if the papacy had remained in its degraded 
 condition for another century. Perhaps there would have 
 been, as in the Eastern Church, three or four great 
 patriarchates independent of Rome, say at Canterbury, 
 Rheims, Mainz, and Ravenna, with gradually diverging 
 liturgies, canons, or even doctrines. 
 
 Alas for France and for Europe ! this spirited protest 
 
 1 We have heard nothing of ' heresy ' in the West for many years. 
 The doctrines that Gerbert renounced were not unlike those of the 
 later Albigensians (a) that the devil was created bad ; (d) that marriage 
 and the eating of flesh are unlawful ; (c) that the Old Testament is not 
 the Word of God. 
 
 ''Contra patrutn decreta' ; patrcs may mean either the early 
 Fathers of the Church or the members of the Synod of Saint-Basol.
 
 THE CLUNIAC MOVEMENT 361 
 
 of the GalHcan Church was utterly contrary to the mind of 
 the age. Gerbert was five hundred, perhaps twice five 
 hundred )'ears ahead of his time. The French bishops of 
 the tenth century, though many of them, like Arnulf of 
 Orleans, were good men, had none so clean a record that 
 they could afford to throw stones at the popes ; there had 
 been too many politicians, rebels, simoniacs, worldly land- 
 and-wealth-grabbers among them. Count William of 
 Auvergne, a very powerful man, almost a king in 
 Aquitaine in the reign of Charles the Simple, had been 
 so much struck with this fact, and so ignorant of, or so 
 indifferent to the far worse record of his contemporary 
 popes, that he had spent his wealth in the foundation and 
 endowment of the great monastery of Cluny, to be a 
 protest against the French bishops and all their works. 
 Cluny lies on the lower slopes of the northern Cevennes 
 on the road from Boulogne to Lyons, and so on the direct 
 road between the North and Italy. Its abbots were to be 
 independent of bishop and king alike, and under the direct 
 protection of the pope. And, whereas each Benedictine 
 Abbey had hitherto been autonomous, all the daughter 
 houses of Cluny were to be dependent on the Abbot of 
 Cluny and to be nominated by him. A lofty ideal of 
 asceticism was at the root of the foundation ; the Cluniacs 
 were to be, and many really were, saints upon earth. 
 Every movement which, like Benedictine monasticism, has 
 celibacy and a high standard of holiness for its bases, 
 needs revival from outside from time to time ; the Cluniac 
 was the first of these revivals, to be followed a century 
 later by the Cistercian. 
 
 Cluny had now been founded more than eighty years, 
 and its success had been very largely due to its second 
 abbot Odo, whom we have already met at the side of 
 Alberic of Rome, trying to reform the Italian monasteries. 
 The nearer men were to the seat of the papacy, the less 
 they approved of the Cluniac constitution, and Central and 
 Southern Italy had little to say to the new movement. In 
 some places its success was startling ; France and Bur- 
 gundy were its best seed-grounds, and the colonisation of
 
 362 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 the slopes of the Jura was largely the work of Cluniac 
 monks. At the end of the tenth century there were in 
 France and Burgundy thirty-seven daughter monasteries, 
 all looking to the Abbot of Cluny, and through him to 
 the pope — a sort of foreign garrison in constant rebellion 
 against the French bishops. In Lorraine, however, there 
 was only one such foundation, in Germany none. In 
 England, in spite of the zeal of St Dunstan and St 
 Oswald, there was before the Norman conquest little 
 enthusiasm for Cluny; after that, its success and that of its 
 offspring the Cistercian movement was rapid. And, where 
 it spread, it got at once the ear of the common people ; the 
 new King Hugh of France, whose strength lay at Paris, 
 might be anti-Cluniac, but his city of Paris was Cluniac to 
 its paving-stones. It mattered nothing to the popular 
 opinion that Gerbert and Arnulf of Orleans were good men, 
 or that Arnulf, late of Rheims, was a bad one ; he had 
 been deposed without sanction of the god upon earth who 
 ruled at Rome, and so he must be an injured innocent. 
 Gerbert tried hard to stand firm, but he was almost boy- 
 cotted at Rheims and was excommunicated by John XV. 
 in 994. Even his old friends of the Imperial family, 
 including Adelaide, turned a cold shoulder to him. At a 
 Council at Mouzon in 995 his life was in danger, his policy 
 was reversed, and the Cluniacs got the upper hand. In 
 this condition of things Gerbert was saved by a sudden 
 and unexpected invitation from the young emperor to 
 come to his court at Magdeburg and teach him Greek and 
 mathematics. 
 
 * Come,' wrote Otto, ' and exorcise my Saxon rusticity 
 and stimulate my Greek subtlety.' At the end of the 
 letter the poor boy even broke into poetry and apologised 
 for its badness by saying that he had ' never learned 
 to make verses ' ; he also begged for an arithmetic book, 
 and said that he should consult his new tutor on politics 
 as well as on learned subjects. So to Madgeburg in 996 
 Gerbert went, well pleased no doubt to be out of Rheims, 
 to which Arnulf, who had been imprisoned and let out, 
 returned. Hugh Capet had just died, ' killed by the
 
 OTTO III. IN ROMK 363 
 
 Jews,' says Richer, probably meaning his doctors.^ His 
 son, who then became King as Robert II., had for a 
 while been Gerbert's pupil at Rheims ; but he did not 
 conciliate men's opinion by insisting on marrying his own 
 third cousin. Even Gerbcrt disapproved of this, and 
 the next pope disapproved of it still more ; Robert at 
 last earned the title of the Pious by obeying the pope 
 and sending his beloved queen away. Gerbert still further 
 lost his own claim to be considered pious by setting up 
 at Merseburg a sun-dial and a telescope through which 
 he looked at the stars ; manifestly he was in league with 
 the powers of darkness. 
 
 Meanwhile in 996 Otto, aged sixteen, had set out for 
 Rome, full of burning zeal to put an end to the repeated 
 scandals of the papacy, and to revive in his own person 
 all the glories of all the Caesars. He was well received 
 at Pavia and crowned King of Italy in the spring, but 
 Pope John died before he reached Rome. Crescentius 
 made no resistance to Otto's entry to the capital, and 
 probably could have made none ; he also acquiesced 
 in the election of Otto's own cousin Bruno as Pope 
 Gregory V., the first non-Roman pontiff (with the excep- 
 tion of two nonentities) for two hundred and fifty years. 
 Gregory was a man of learning and high character but 
 ridiculously young. Think of an emperor of sixteen and 
 a pope of twenty-three setting out to reform the Church 
 of Western Christendom ! Bruno crowned Otto at St 
 Peter's in May 996. Some of the prudent German 
 councillors suggested that it would be a good precaution 
 to put Crescentius out of the way, and a sentence of 
 banishment was passed upon him ; but Otto remitted 
 it and made his pope-cousin remit also. He then went 
 back to Germany, and Crescentius rebelled at once, drove 
 out Pope Gregory, and got hold of an unfortunate and 
 hitherto respectable person called Philagathus, who had 
 once been a tutor of Otto's and was now on his way 
 back from Constantinople ; he had gone thither to ask 
 for a Greek bride for the emperor. Crescentius, who 
 
 ' Hincni;irh;id asserted the same thing concerning Charles the Bald.
 
 364 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 was very possibly intriguing with the Greeks on his own 
 account, made this man pope as John XVI. 
 
 At the end of the year 997 Otto, with Gerbert at 
 his side, returned to Italy and Rome, leaving his Aunt 
 Matilda as regent in the north. He was accompanied 
 by an imposing array of princes, including the new Duke 
 of Bavaria (afterwards Henry II.), the Margrave of 
 Carinthia, and his grandmother Adelaide. He restored 
 Gregory V. at once to Rome, and his soldiers caught 
 and mutilated the unfortunate John XVI. in a horrible 
 manner. Crescentius was hanged on the battlements 
 of St Angelo. Later tradition ascribed Otto's subsequent 
 wanderings and asceticisms to remorse for the 'murder' 
 of this rebel, but there is no need for us to accept such 
 a story ; Crescentius had certainly earned no mercy, and 
 the emperor was a born wanderer and mystic. The 
 rescue of the papacy from the factious Roman nobles 
 was thoroughly applauded by reasonable people every- 
 where except in Rome ; but no one, least of all Pope 
 Gregory, approved of the elevation of Gerbert to the see 
 of Ravenna ; that was Otto's own personal deed of daring. 
 Still less did anyone approve, when on Gregory's death 
 (probably by poison) in the next year (999), Gerbert, 
 without any form of election but by the mere will of 
 Otto, became pope as Sylvester II. 
 
 What would be the new pope's attitude towards all 
 the things he had condemned when he was at Rheims? 
 The shortness of his reign hardly allows us to give 
 an answer. The few things that he did look as if he 
 meant to hold out a hand of reconciliation to the Cluniac 
 party. The voice in which he spoke was as lofty as 
 that of Nicholas or of either Gregory, the First or Seventh. 
 In authoritative and scolding language he confirmed his 
 old rival Arnulf in the see of Rheims, of which the latter 
 was not yet in canonical possession. He had already in 
 998 insisted that Robert of France should give up his 
 wife. He set himself with all his might to root out 
 simony and unchastity among the clergy, and the young 
 emperor was heartil}' with him. The mere name that
 
 OTTO III. AND SYLVESTER II. 365 
 
 Gerbcrt took, that of the pope who, according to tradition, 
 had bapti.sed the first Christian emperor, implied that 
 he and Otto were to be the new Sylvester and the new 
 Constantine. The same man who at Rheims had been 
 utterly sceptical as to the donation of the temporal 
 sovereignty of Italy by Constantine to Sylvester I., 
 received at Rome as Sylvester II. with open hands a 
 donation of the Pentapolis from Otto. There is some 
 evidence that the great German bishops looked with a 
 good deal of anxiety on this alliance of pope and emperor, 
 and that a sort of clerical and national opposition, headed 
 by the Archbishop of Mainz, was visible before Otto's 
 death. 
 
 Had their joint lives been prolonged who can say 
 that the harmony between this strange pair of friends 
 would have endured? Otto, an antiquarian idealist, 
 intended to make Rome once more the political capital 
 of the West and to fix his main residence there. He 
 built and often inhabited a palace on the Aventine ; he 
 formed, after the model of Constantine, a small body- 
 guard of troops of the palace. He created officials, some, 
 such as prefects, on the old Roman model, some with 
 Byzantine names, dresses, and duties. He struggled 
 with hopeless bravery against the wilderness of personal 
 and tribal law and custom, in favour of Roman law. 
 All this Imperialism (or Caesarism if you like to use 
 so strong a word) would probably have clashed with 
 Sylvester's newly assumed papalism ; Otto's ' prefect ' 
 would have left no room for an independent pope. And, 
 all the while, without Otto's German troops that pope 
 was not safe in Rome for an hour, while, a few miles 
 away, little fortresses like Pala.strina, Frascati, and Tivoli 
 bristled with armed partisans of some fierce brigand 
 calling himself a Roman noble, whose father had perhaps 
 learned war-craft under Alberic. Further south, Capua, 
 Salerno, Naples, and Gaeta were enjoying a civil war 
 of the first class. In Germany a wild feudality was 
 straining at the leash, and when Otto took his best 
 friends with him to Italy he removed the only persons
 
 366 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 who were capable of putting down an outbreak, if there 
 should be one, in the north ; yet no Italian would 
 lend the slightest hand to keep order in Italy. Meanwhile 
 the emperor varied his imitation of Byzantine ceremonial 
 by running up and down Italy, Germany, and Lorraine, 
 either, like Hadrian before him, to see marvels, or to confer 
 with holy hermits, St Nilus at Gaeta, St Romuald ^ at 
 Ravenna, or to pray at the tomb of the martyr St 
 Adalbert, late Bishop of the new see of Prague in 
 Bohemia. He listened to such men and attributed to 
 them the gift of prophecy. 
 
 North Italy, it is true, was fairly quiet, and had been 
 so ever since the days of Otto I.'s assumption of the 
 Imperial crown. But Adelaide, who had ruled it for her 
 son and grandson, and Aunt Matilda, who had from 997 
 (if not from 994) ruled Germany for the latter, died in the 
 year of Sylvester's election ; and Otto, when he next went 
 to Germany had to leave the regency of Italy to his friend 
 Hugh, Margrave of Tuscany. He returned to Rome in 
 the year 1000, with the intention of dealing with the 
 southern imbroglio, but had instead to deal with a 
 rebellion of Tivoli against the capital of the world ! 
 Because, in his mercy, he refused to destroy Tivoli and 
 to massacre its inhabitants, ' his Romans ' rose against 
 him, and besieged him in his own palace on the Aventine, 
 from which, during a lull in the riot, he escaped with 
 difficulty. In fact, while Otto was dreaming of a World- 
 Empire, the Romans were dreaming of a city-state with a 
 Count of Tusculum (Frascati), probably a descendant of 
 Alberic's, at its head. When Otto left Rome, he had, 
 
 ^ St Romuald of Ravenna, or Camaldoli, was one of the pioneers of 
 a great movement towards the hermit life which became popular at 
 this time. He once flogged his own aged father till he consented to 
 go back into a monastery from which he had fled. It is also 
 illustrative of the time that, when Romuald proposed to fly from 
 a certain neighbourhood where he had become too popular, his 
 neighbours proposed, and actually attempted to kill him ; he was very 
 valuable to them living on the spot, and his dead body would be 
 perhaps almost more valuable ; but if he went away alive he would be 
 of no use to his late neighbours at all.
 
 DEATH OF OTTO III. 367 
 
 of course, to take Sylvester with him to Ravenna. 
 Thence, he went in disguise to Venice, to try and borrow 
 from his friend, the doge, a fleet to be used in his southern 
 venture. But Venice refused to support its doge ; it knew 
 nothing of Western emperors, and such a fleet might too 
 easily be used against its very good commercial clients, 
 the Saracens of Sicily ; such a use of it vi^ould be 
 agreeable to no Venetian mind. Then Otto marched 
 southwards, besieged and took Benevento, but was not 
 strong enough to attempt the recapture of Rome. A few 
 years before he had told Pope Gregory that the ' qualities 
 of the Italian air agreed ill with the qualities of his body,' 
 and he was probably ill in body as well as in mind when 
 he took post, waiting for reinforcements, at Paterno on the 
 slopes of Soracte. He was waiting also for his Greek 
 bride who was on her way from Constantinople. He 
 never lived to see her, but died of fever and a broken 
 heart, a boy of twenty-two, at the beginning of the year 
 1002, 
 
 In amplitude of dreams a god, 
 A slave in dearth of power. 
 
 Pope Sylvester followed him to the grave sixteen months 
 later. 
 
 Events of real importance to Germany and to 
 Christendom had meanwhile been happening on the 
 North-eastern frontier, concerning which two opinions 
 have been held and probably will continue to be held. 
 Some will say, and, in view of later, and even of modern 
 history, I should be loth to contradict them, that, as the 
 Slav has never shown any capacity for civilisation, the 
 proper method to apply to him was that of Henry the 
 Fowler and Otto the Great, to push him steadily back 
 eastwards and to colonise his territory with sturdy 
 Teutons, to leave him, if at all, only in a completely 
 inferior position with no separate political existence. 
 Those who think otherwise ought to praise young Otto 
 III. very highly, for it was he who really admitted 
 Bohemia, Poland, as well as Hungary into the circle of
 
 368 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 European nations. There had been a set-back of German 
 conquests on the east from the later days of Otto H., in 
 fact from the time when that brave fellow made his 
 Italian venture, and no one really continued his earlier 
 work of pushing Teutonic colonisation eastwards until the 
 twelfth century. 
 
 The Bohemia of those days reached far into Southern 
 Poland, and, under Boleslav ' the pious,' had somewhat 
 suddenly accepted Christianity. Boleslav himself founded 
 more than twenty churches, and set up a bishop at Prague 
 as a suffragan of Mainz. Another bishop had been set up 
 further north at Posen in Poland as a suffragan of Magde- 
 burg; so far all was well. Prague was a great missionary 
 centre, and its first Bishop Adalbert had met his death 
 preaching to the heathen Prussians and Letts in the 
 region of the Eastern Baltic. Boleslav Chrobry, Duke of 
 Poland, a recent convert, freed all Southern Poland from 
 Bohemia, and made his capital at Cracow in 999. Then, 
 knowing that young Otto cherished a romantic admiration 
 for the memory of Bishop Adalbert, he bought that 
 martyr's bones, or what were asserted to be his bones, 
 from the Prussians who had killed him and buried them at 
 Gnesen. Otto made a pilgrimage to Adalbert's tomb in 
 that dismal region, and horrified the whole German 
 Church, and especially his own Saxon people of Magde- 
 burg, not only by allowing Boleslav to erect Gnesen into 
 an archbishopric independent of the German Church, but 
 also by treating the wily Slav duke as an independent 
 sovereign ; and this was not so well. 
 
 During these years, too, Hungary was beginning to be 
 Christianised, chiefly by missionaries sent by a Bishop of 
 Passau, who bore the very appropriate name of Pilgrim, 
 though he did not scruple to forge papal bulls in favour of 
 his own see and to the prejudice of the Archbishop of Salz- 
 burg, the prelate who had hitherto profited most by the 
 extension of German Christianity to the south-east. These 
 great German archbishops undoubtedly objected to the 
 diminution of their temporal, as well as their spiritual 
 influence by such changes. The new dynastic power of
 
 BOHEMIA, POLAND, AND HUNGARY 369 
 
 the Babenbergs of Austria spent the last quarter of the 
 tenth century in a long frontier war with Hungary, which 
 only came to an end when the Hungarian chief Waik, in 
 the year looo, was baptised by the name of Stephen, 
 married Gisela, daughter of Henry the Quarrelsome of 
 Bavaria, and took the title of king. Otto and Sylvester 
 enthusiastically confirmed to Stephen the possession of 
 both wife and crown, and Sylvester erected the see of 
 Gran into an independent metropolitanate for Hungary ; 
 no doubt, from the papal point of view, it was a great 
 thing to spread Latin Christianity into regions like 
 Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia, which might otherwise 
 have fallen into line with the Greek Church. That Church 
 had just accomplished the first step in the evangelisa- 
 tion of still more barbarous Russia, whose ruler, in return 
 for the hand of a Greek princess, had recently been 
 baptised by the name of Vladimir and founded an arch- 
 bishopric at Kieff. 
 
 Yet, if by these changes the Latin Church was winning 
 conquests in these regions more rapidly than the Greek, 
 Teutonic influence was for the time actually in retreat. 
 Hungary did, indeed, after many years, develop a civilisa- 
 tion and a power of her own, and earned her place among 
 European nations. But the countries ruled by Slavonic 
 princes never did so, or did so only in so much as they 
 were Teutonised or conquered by Teutons in later 
 centuries. 
 
 It would be idle to disguise how precarious was the 
 hold which these three sovereigns of high gifts and noble 
 aims. Otto I., II., and HI., really had upon any country 
 outside their native Saxony. As regards his Imperial 
 power in Italy the first of them had probably no illusions ; 
 he must have known that it was the rule of the sword and 
 nothing else ; a union of two Italian crowns with his own 
 German crown, rather than a World-Empire. The 
 subjection of the popes, whom Otto the Great probably 
 believed himself to have made into the first spiritual 
 vassals of the crown, could only be maintained by force, 
 and that force could only be supplied from Germany. 
 
 2 A
 
 370 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 And the experiences of the three Ottos in their own 
 country must have kept their eyes wide open to the 
 precarious nature of this resource. Only on their family 
 alliances and on their ecclesiastics could they ever rely, and 
 not always on these. At one time or another between 
 936 and 1002 all the five duchies of Germany had been 
 in the hands of the crown, or had been given by the kings 
 to members of the Saxon House. This was really in 
 accordance with the theory that the duchies were offices 
 rather than inheritances. But historically that theory was 
 untrue ; the duchies had really originated in a feudal 
 return to tribal organisation, and the dukes, however much 
 they might be put in as officials, were seldom successful 
 unless they married into the families of the old tribal 
 chiefs. Thus the duchies never wholly shook off, and 
 after a time wholly resumed their old tribal and hereditary 
 character. The marks with their margraves, being of new 
 creation, were perhaps more obviously intended to be 
 official, but they too were going the way of feudality and 
 inheritance. As for the lesser division, that o{ gau, with a 
 count at its head, we hear almost nothing of it in the 
 tenth century. On the other hand, alodial holding did 
 survive in Germany and especially in the north, right 
 down to the end of the Middle Ages, both among the lesser 
 gentry or ' knights,' and among considerable classes of 
 peasant freeholders. But the emperors, even the Saxon 
 emperors, could make no use of these men because they 
 had no institutions through which they could command 
 their services. 
 
 The most we can say is that feudalism in Germany was 
 a much later and more incomplete growth than it was in 
 France. It came in later, and so it went out later. And, 
 if feudalism as a system was incomplete, even more incom- 
 plete was the royalist and centralising machinery of the 
 Carolings. On the Rhine and in the country west of that 
 river this machinery had been of natural growth ; but into 
 Central and Eastern Germany it was an importation of 
 the Caroling age, and so it never obtained so much hold 
 on the Eastern as it did on the Western half of the
 
 GERMAN FEUDALISM 371 
 
 Empire ; while those fragments of it that did obtain a hold 
 died out a little later than they died in France, because 
 they had a less vigorous feudalism to combat, a more 
 conservative people to uphold their shadows after their 
 substance had passed awa}'. One institution and one 
 only of a centralising tendency is usually ascribed to the 
 Ottos, that of ' Counts Palatine ' — Counts of the Royal 
 Palace, whom we may suppose to have been analogous to 
 the Carolingian Missi. There are traces of such an 
 official in each duchy ; and one of them, the ' Count 
 Palatine of the Rhine ' survived to give his name to a 
 territory, ' the Palatinate,' which very soon became 
 hereditary and very early ceased to be official. There is 
 another and even more important difference between the 
 several developments of feudalism in France and in Ger- 
 many. Among the East Franks and the German tribes 
 dependent on them the partibility of inheritances between 
 all sons survived much longer than it did west of the 
 Rhine. There can be no true feudalism without primo- 
 genitary succession, for feudalism implies military 
 command of the fighting force on the landowners' estate, 
 propter jus gladii quod dividi non potest) Thus, in 
 Germany, it was a surprise when Henry the Fowler left 
 his whole duchy to one son ; and it was a surprise 
 five centuries later when the Hohenzollern Electors of 
 Brandenburg followed the same plan. VVittikind (ii., 10) 
 gives an account of a legal dispute in the reign of Otto I. 
 on the question if the sons of a deceased son had a right 
 to their father's share in their grandfather's property at 
 that grandfather's death. The matter was tried, in what 
 their English cousins would have called an open ' moot,' 
 by the Saxon freeholders at Steele on the Ruhr, and tried 
 by the simplest of all methods, judicial combat ; not by the 
 gentlemen concerned but by hired 'champions' {gladiatorcsy^ 
 
 ' The curious medi;cval German custom of coinvestiture {Belehnung 
 zur gesanuntcn //a«^/), by which several persons at once were invested 
 with the same fief, shows how imperfectly true feudal principles were 
 understood. See Schroder, Deutsche Rechtsgeshichte^ 413-4- 
 
 - The case was one of Urtheilschclte, in which the findiny of
 
 372 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 and the very ancient (or very modern) practice won ; 
 it was decided that the sons of A took A's share, 
 which was equal with the shares of their uncles B, C, and 
 D. But there was no law, no ruling on the subject, for 
 there was never an Imperial law court strong enough to 
 make any such ruling.^ So it became a matter simply of 
 ' family custom ' whether the Count of Schnippy-Schnap- 
 penhausen should leave his lands to his eldest son or some 
 other of his sons, or should divide them among all his sons. 
 In the last case all would equally be counts, and this will 
 explain the existence of a Count of Schnippy-Schnappen- 
 hausen - Sonderburg, another of Schnippy - Schnappen- 
 hausen-Gllicksburg, and a third of Schnippy-Schnappen- 
 hausen-Ungliicksburg, and so on. That is what used to be 
 called, in the infancy of the present writer, German 
 Particularisiniis, and was the curse of Germany until 
 the creation of the modern Empire in 1871. 
 
 All through the ninth and tenth centuries on both sides 
 of the Rhine the process of decentralisation had been 
 going on, but with far greater celerity on the left bank. 
 Whether the nominal king ruled at Laon or Paris, at 
 Aachen, Ingelheim, or Regensburg, whether he ruled West 
 Franks or East Franks, Aquitanians, Bretons, Frisians, 
 Bavarians, or Swabians, his real hold over those persons 
 was slipping from him. In the reign of Charlemagne only 
 the extremities, Brittany, Aquitaine, Bavaria, were really 
 kicking; at the death of Hugh Capet and Otto III. every- 
 one was kicking. Royalty was all but powerless to kick 
 the kickers back, still more powerless to kick them out. 
 Let us turn our eyes to the West, and we shall see the 
 process, if not the reasons, of this steady failure of 
 power. 
 
 Charlemagne had governed, as Dagobert or Clevis had 
 
 the court was challenged, and the court had to fight the challengers 
 by its champions. 
 
 ^ In the next century the Diet, gradually becoming a more powerful 
 body, would occasionally give sentence like a law court, and its 
 sentences might be appealed to by subsequent litigants ; but it failed 
 of creating a series of precedents to which all could appeal.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 373 
 
 governed, each ci7>itas'^ in Gaul, each ga7i in Germany, by 
 means of a count, whom we long ago realised to be only 
 a slightly transformed official of the later Roman Empire. 
 This count, the greatest administrative, judicial, and 
 military officer in his district, was paid in lands, whose 
 rents he took while he held his office ; Charlemagne had 
 nothing else with which to pay his officers, for you 
 remember that the sixth-century bishops had made even 
 the most wicked Merovingian kings 'repent' of their 
 taxes. After Charlemagne's death, such a count gradually 
 made both his office and the lands, whose rents were its 
 wages, hereditary ; he added to them all the royal rigl.ts 
 {e.g. tolls on river-fords or bridges or on markets, and 
 profits of justice) on which he could lay hands, and kept 
 all the results thereof for himself and his sons. Very 
 likely, in the civil wars of S29-43, he made war on a 
 neighbouring count, beat him and added his county, with 
 all its aforesaid rents and profits, to his own. Perhaps he 
 reached the same felicity without even a private war, by 
 merely marrying the daughter of a deceased neighbour- 
 count who happened to have no sons. At what date he 
 abandoned the wasteful practice of squandering this new 
 family strength by dividing his lands among his several 
 sons it is difficult to say ; certainly not even in France 
 was primogeniture the invariable rule before the year 
 1000. But it was becoming the rule, and, when it had 
 become the rule, the eldest descendant of such a count 
 stepped upon the scene as a full-blown feudal noble and 
 obeyed Hugh Capet or Robert the Pious as much as, and 
 when, he pleased. 
 
 The actual number of counts was not great, and that 
 of dukes or margraves far smaller ; but the number of 
 smaller officials, viscounts, vicars, hundred-men, stewards, 
 and the like, was very great, and the wages of all were 
 simply paid in land, either by the crown, or by the counts 
 or dukes who nominated them and under whom they 
 served. As each of them played on a lesser stage the 
 same game that the counts were playing on a greater, 
 ' The word in use for civitas by the eighth century was comitatus.
 
 374 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 their mere number was just so much food-stuff for 
 feudalism. All the bishops and great abbots'and abbesses, 
 (who were, indeed, among the earliest of the Seigneurs to 
 get immunity from taxes and royal justice) did, upon 
 their lands, precisely what the lay Seigneurs were doing on 
 theirs. A bishop would occasionally get the grant of a 
 county to administer ; very well, he would annex the lands, 
 rents, and profits of that county to his see, and the next 
 king would not be able to take them away from the next 
 bishop.^ Sometimes, though rarely, vicibus versatis^ a 
 layman would get the grant of an abbey, would actually 
 call himself abbot, would appoint a monk to perform the 
 abbot's spiritual functions, or even let the monks elect 
 one, while he would keep the rents of the abbey lands for 
 himself 
 
 An intelligent king like Charles the Bald must have 
 had a shrewd idea of what was going on ; but he was 
 powerless to prevent it because he had lost control of the 
 armed forces. And he had lost this control because the 
 armed freemen, west of Rhine at least, had disappeared. 
 And these had disappeared because it paid them better to 
 surrender their lands to the nearest great man, and 
 receive those lands back as his vassals. Protection — 
 against Norman, Saracen, Hungarian, or against some 
 other great Frank — was their main need, and this protec- 
 tion could be got more surely from the nearest great man 
 than from the distant king. Alodial ownership of land 
 thus died out altogether in the western half of the Empire; 
 everyone came to hold his acres as a 'benefice' or 'fief 
 from someone else. Such holding would not at first be 
 hereditary, but it inevitably tended to become so. It 
 must always have begun in some sort of a contract, express 
 or implied : — ' I, Jacques Bonhomme, commend my 
 person to you. Count Hugh, and to you I surrender my 
 
 1 Instances of this are the counties of Tournai, Beauvais, Noyon, 
 Laon, Rheims, Chalons, Langres annexed to their respective bishop- 
 rics. On the other hand, if the bishops absorbed counties, they 
 occasionally got plundered themselves ; the fortunes of the great 
 House of Coucy originated in robbery from the see of Rheims.
 
 SEIGNEURS AND VASSALS 375 
 
 land. I shall continue to till the land and pay you a rent 
 for it, either in money, or in produce, or in labour, or in 
 fighting for you. You in return will, next time the pirates 
 come, allow me, my wife, children, and cows to take refuge 
 in the wooden castle which I hear you are going to build ; 
 I will help you to build it.' It may very well happen 
 that it is not Jacques who is the first to make overtures 
 for such a contract ; it may be Count Hugh who, being 
 short of men to garrison his new castle, actually advertises 
 for stout freemen to become his vassals. Brigandage, 
 quite apart from barbarian invasions, was rife all over the 
 Empire. Count Hugh ougJU to hang all the brigands he 
 catches; but, if he is short of men . . .? A pardoned 
 brigand may make a good vassal, and may be endowed 
 with lands. Did not Henry the Fowler garrison Merseburg 
 with such men ? 
 
 This contract between Jacques and Hugh will at first 
 terminate with the life of either. But, if Jacques leave 
 a son of full age, what more natural than that such son 
 should continue to serve the son of Hugh? Even 
 Charlemagne had recognised that men may seek protec- 
 tion from their powerful neighbours, may * choose their 
 own lord ' {senioreni, seigneur). His grandson Charles the 
 Bald will say they must choose a lord, that they must 
 follow to battle the lord whom they have chosen ; which 
 is as good as saying that the crown can no longer protect 
 them. Now a strong king and a rich king, even if he is 
 losing all his sovereign power, ought to be able to find 
 many men willing to commend themselves to him as 
 seigneur ; even if he is losing his grip on Hugh as the 
 official and count, he ought to be able to buy fidelity back 
 from Hugh as a vassal. He will then be more of a 
 seigneur than a sovereign, but even that will be better 
 than nothing. 
 
 That was just what all the later Carolings tried to do. 
 They made large grants of benefices out of their large 
 crown estates in order to buy the fidelity of their fideles. 
 This was a process which soon exhausted itself. When 
 all the crown lands have been given away (and the last
 
 376 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 CaroHngs were reduced to the city of L.ion as almost their 
 sole possession) the kings will have to give away their 
 ' regalian ' rights, the profits of striking coins, the fines in 
 the law courts, the right to build and garrison castles. 
 And unfortunately they will get no fidelity in return for 
 these gifts. It is obvious that an oath of fealty from 
 Count Hugh to King Charles sat far more lightly on 
 Count Hugh, than an oath of fealty from Jacques to 
 Hugh sat on Jacques. Not that Jacques was in any way 
 more averse from perjury than Hugh, but simply because 
 Hugh would be able to lay hands on Jacques, if he 
 violated his oath, and the king would not be able, in 
 similar circumstances, to lay hands on Hugh. 
 
 There was nothing, after all, new in this process ; it had 
 been going on, as we saw in an earlier chapter, under the 
 First Race of kings ; something not unlike it had been 
 going on in the latest days of the old Roman Empire. 
 What was new in the ninth and tenth centuries was that 
 nothing else was going on. The feudalising process, 
 which Charlemagne had at least checked, now worked 
 independently of all checks, exclusively of all other 
 processes. If the king was acting thus towards his 
 Jideles, each count was also * gratifying ' a long list of 
 stewards, hundred-men, vicars, viscounts, abbots, perhaps 
 even bishops, by similar grants of fragments of his comital 
 power ; ^ the feudal ladder was growing rung after rung. 
 
 The oath of allegiance to the crown, which Charle- 
 magne had imposed on all persons over twelve years, 
 though still legally binding, gave way in practice to the 
 oath of fealty to the seigneur to whom a man commended 
 himself. True, such seigneurs ought to take the same 
 
 1 For instance the great House of Anjou began with a certain 
 Fulk, whom Robert the Strong made Viscount of Angers ; it 
 improved the shining hours of the ninth century by perpetual 
 quarrels with another house of similar origin, that of Blois, concern- 
 ing that part of the later province of Touraine which lay between 
 their respective territories. The rock of Angers was a frontier station 
 of great importance between Normans, Bretons, and Aquitanians ; and 
 the loyalty of the counts of Anjou to the early Capetian kings was a 
 great factor in French history.
 
 WEAKNESS OF THE CROWNS 377 
 
 oath to each new king. Ikit some will hesitate to take 
 it; it will become a matter of contract. Count Hugh will 
 say to King Charles : ' What will you give me if I do take 
 it? Will you give my father's county and city of Paris?' 
 When Count Hugh subsequently throws off his allegiance 
 to King Charles, he ought to say, with Alceste in Molicre's 
 JMisanthrope, ' Reprenez votre Paris.' But he will not 
 say so ; he will stick to it and to everything else he can 
 grab. Duke Henry said much the same to the Empress- 
 Regent Theophano in 984 — ' If I "come in" at the end of 
 this rebellion of mine, will you give me back the Duchy of 
 Bavaria?' How much more must this have been the 
 case in the debateable land of Lorraine ! A man like 
 Gilbert can say to Henry the Fowler and to Charles the 
 Simple at one and the same time : ' I can transfer to you 
 the whole of Lorraine if you will make me duke of it ; I 
 can make it French or German at my will, for I hold in it 
 the largest number of countships, castles, vassals, manors, 
 royal rights. Some of these I have simply grabbed, but 
 I can show a title, from the predecessors of one or the 
 other of you, for a good many of them.' In fact in 
 Lorraine any duke or count who is punished by one of 
 the kings can easily transfer his allegiance to the other. 
 There are actual instances — that of the deposition of 
 Charles the Simple is a very clear one — in which the 
 great men publicly renounce their fidelity, give it back to 
 the king as a thing for which neither party has further use. 
 Thus each succession to the crown becomes the 
 occasion of a long series of new bargains, Wahlcapitula- 
 tionen (election-compacts). Not that either crown, of the 
 East or West Franks, is supposed to be elective. Even 
 Arnulf, though a bastard, succeeds because he is a Caroling, 
 Conrad is the first clear instance of election in Germany 
 (912), Odo in France (8S8). As long as Caroling blood 
 survives there is always a party for it on either bank of 
 the Rhine. Yet never is the succession of the best heir 
 a matter of course ; the eldest son of a crowned and 
 anointed Caroling, even if he has been crowned and 
 anointed in his father's lifetime, needs recognition, or
 
 378 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 acceptance of some kind, by the Convc?itns Gencralis^ 
 P/acituui, or Diet of the great vassals. And such a 
 recognition is as good an opportunity of wringing privi- 
 leges from him as an open election would be. A king in 
 such a position, having lost all taxes, all free landowning 
 soldiers, all control of the law courts, all power of legislat- 
 ing (there are no more capitularies after 885), will have 
 but one object, to increase the number of his personal 
 following, to become richer in vassals than any of his 
 counts, bishops, or dukes. One might almost say that 
 the sons of Louis the Pious fought their dismal civil w^ars, 
 not so much to get lands or regalian rights, as to get 
 personal followings of vassals. One might almost say 
 that directly a king got any land he stripped himself of 
 it, by giving it away as a benefice or fief, in order to buy 
 more vassals ; and then of course all the king's vassals on 
 that bit of land become vassals of the new holder. 
 
 Law, however, we know, follows custom at a very 
 halting pace. One definite legal enactment, and one only, 
 almost the last melancholy fragment of Imperial legisla- 
 tion, registers and ratifies this sorry state of things. It is 
 the capitulary of Kiersy or Quiercy-sur-Oise issued by 
 Charles the Bald ^ just before his last journey to Italy (877), 
 Its gist roughly is that, when a count dies, his son is the 
 natural person to succeed to his office and to all the lands 
 and regalian rights attached to that office. This edict or 
 capitulary does not say ' The son of such a count shall so 
 succeed, and such lands, office, and regalia shall henceforth 
 be hereditary in his family ' ; but it assumes that this is 
 the normal state of things, which the regent is not to 
 violate in the king's absence. It orders the counts to 
 observe a similar scheme of hereditary succession in 
 nominating to the minor offices to which they have 
 always nominated. It is, then, a simple legalisation of the 
 feudal system of land-tenure and government, legalisation 
 of a machinery with a constantly growing number of inter- 
 cogging wheels, which can go on working in almost entire 
 independence of any central force. 
 
 ' Vide supra, p. 307.
 
 WHAT FEUDALISM MEANT 379 
 
 Why then did kingship as a centre, or pretence of a 
 centre, continue to exist? Partly because the process of 
 the change was so little understood, that it would never 
 occur to anyone to ' abolish ' the crown ; very likely only 
 a few people realised its steady loss of prestige. Partly 
 also because the feudal machinery needed some sort of 
 key to wind it up occasionally, some sort of fountain of 
 these gifts of lands and privileges. It was useful to keep 
 a person from whom you could take away not only that 
 which he had, but that which he seemed to have. But 
 most of all the crown survived because of the influence 
 of the Church and the Bible. There was no divine ri^ht of 
 any particular king, but kingship was believed to be of 
 divine institution and origin. The Carolings had been 
 hallowed to be kings with great solemnity, and, by the 
 time their race was worn out, the sanctity of kingship 
 was such a well-established idea that the Saxons on the 
 east of the Rhine and the race of Robert the Strong 
 on the west of it had no difficulty in annexing 
 that sanctity to themselves. The Church had indeed 
 special need of the crown to be a champion, if only 
 in name, of its vast wealth against the lay nobles ; 
 and even these to some extent could make a corre- 
 sponding use of the crown against the greed of the great 
 churchmen. 
 
 Finally let us be slow to condemn feudalism. When 
 it is tried at the bar of history its results appear to have , 
 been good. The change from a weak and incapable 
 central power to a set of strong local powers was all for 
 good. The new feudal lords did what no king since 
 Charlemagne had done ; they drove back the pirates and 
 hanged all the brigands whom they did not want as 
 soldiers. It also probably led to greater comfort, or 
 rather to less abject misery all round ; to possess strong 
 fighting men rather than treasure was now the object of 
 all who would rise or even hold their own ; and, if men 
 are to be strong and to fight heartily for their lord, he 
 in turn must be a good lord to them. He must see that 
 his tenants are not skin and bone or they will be of no
 
 38o THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 use to him. The strongest of such tenants would usually 
 be horse-soldiers. The pirate invasions had taught every- 
 one that a few heavily armed cavalrymen were worth 
 any number of half-armed infantry. Before the eleventh 
 century is half over the word miles has begun to mean 
 exclusively a ' knight ' on horseback. 
 
 As I close this volume my weary readers may very 
 well ask me why I have made no attempt, in tracing 
 the fortunes of the Children of the Roman Empire after 
 the year 800, to include the territory which still claimed 
 to be the Mother Empire itself, Constantinople and all 
 the broad lands, European and Asiatic, over which the 
 Greek emperors still ruled. My answer must be, in the 
 first place, that I desire much to show some mercy to 
 my readers, and desire still more to show some to myself. 
 In the second place, I would plead that, from the deposi- 
 tion of Irene until the Crusades, the points of contact 
 between the Greeks and their Western neighbours are 
 few, and that I have not wholly omitted to refer to them 
 in the course of the Western history. The East was becom- 
 ing every day more Eastern, less European. It had no 
 doubt still great lessons to teach the Western world, and, 
 in the twelfth century, it began to teach them. Its 
 military power remained unbroken, and, indeed, had a 
 remarkable revival in the hands of the ' Macedonian ' 
 (or rather Armenian) dynasty which began with Basil 
 I. in 867. Its old machinery went grimly and dully 
 round, varied by an occasional palace revolution or by 
 the deposition of a patriarch. Its missionary work among 
 Bulgarians, Southern Slavs, and Russians also went on ; 
 in the ninth century the * Apostles of the Slavs,' the 
 brothers Cyril ^ and Methodius, translated the liturgy 
 of the Eastern Church into the Slavonic speech, and 
 omitted from the Apostles' creed the jilioque clause. 
 
 ^ Cyril is the reputed author of the exceedingly stupid and un- 
 necessary Russian alphabet — an excuse for which may be that he 
 thought the Greek alphabet too good for Slavs. Cyril is sometimes 
 called ' Constantine ' ; probably he took the former name at his 
 consecration as bishop.
 
 ERRATUM 
 
 Page 380, last line, read : — 
 "in that liturgy there was no filioque clause in the creeds.
 
 TIIK EASTERN EMPIRE 381 
 
 Basil I,' began that fresh eastward advance of the 
 Empire which was only checked with the appearance of 
 the Seljukian Turks in the eleventh century ; he remodelled 
 his fleet till it became for the next two centuries the 
 dominant power in the Mediterranean ; he led his own 
 troops across Mount Taurus, where no Greeks had been 
 since the days of Heraclius. 
 
 In Europe the successes of the rulers of Constantinople 
 in the ninth century were not so great ; a vast l^ulgarian 
 kingdom stretched over all but the sea-coasts of the 
 Balkan Peninsula, and, before it was overthrown by Basil 
 II. early in the eleventh century, it had been conquered 
 and ravaged by Russians, almost as barbarous as the 
 Bulgars themselves. Rurik ' the Varanger ' was the 
 traditionary founder of the Russian power ; probably he 
 was a Swede, and there is no great reason to doubt that, 
 while Danes and Norwegians raided to the south-west, 
 their kinsmen the Swedes raided to the south-east, up 
 the Vistula and down the rivers of the Black Sea, through 
 what the Greek historians of those days still called 
 * Scythia.' The name ' Varangian ' is believed to be 
 of Arab origin and was applied by the Arabs to the 
 peoples on the Baltic. From Novgorod-on-the-Ilmen 
 such Varangers pushed ever southwards, and at last took 
 Kieffon the Dnieper, and exacted tribute from the Turkish 
 Chazars on the Volga. And far beyond that too ; we 
 hear of Russian raids deep into the Balkan Peninsula. 
 Nine centuries before Katharine the Great, two of her 
 barbarous predecessors (Oskold, 865, and Oleg, 907, whose 
 names betray their Scandinavian origin) knocked, where 
 Katharine would fain have knocked, at the gates of 
 Constantinople, and one of them even hung his shield 
 on them ; half a century later another, with a name now 
 
 ' Basil I. was law-giver as well as warrior ; he published in 
 Greek an abbreviation of Justinian's Codex, which remained in 
 force to the fall of the Eastern Empire, and thereby upset the 
 Ecloi^a of Leo the Isaurian, and restored many abuses such as 
 serfdom, which the enlightened jurisprudence of the Iconoclasts had 
 abolished.
 
 382 THE SNAPPING OF THE BONDS 
 
 completely Russified into Svvatoslav, followed in Oleg's 
 footsteps, though he did not get quite so far (970), 
 
 The Hungarians, busy as they were elsewhere, were 
 obliged to put their noses into the same distracted region, 
 Leo. VI., son of Basil L, employed them against the semi- 
 Christian Bulgarians at the end of the ninth century ; 
 Leo, though he wrote a book on military matters called 
 Tactica, was no fighter himself. His son Constantine 
 VII., * Porphyrogenitus,' was also a man of letters, and 
 it was in his minority that his mother-regent Zoc sent 
 help to the league of Berengar I. and John X. against 
 the Saracens in South Italy. Readers of Byzantine 
 history in the tenth century are often puzzled at finding 
 that there are occasionally two or more emperors at once ; 
 during minorities a warlike general would be co-opted as 
 ' associated Caesar,' and would be married to a princess 
 of the Imperial House; or two brothers would be crowned 
 as August! together. Nicephorus Phocas and John 
 Zimisces were Caesars of the former kind, and both were 
 excellent and valiant soldiers. Nicephorus, Liutprand's 
 ' villainous looking fellow whom you wouldn't like to 
 meet in the dark,' won back Crete in 961 and Cyprus 
 in 965. John Zimisces drove Bulgars and Russians 
 before him, and carried the frontier once more to the 
 Danube ; in the East Nicephorus recovered Cilicia and 
 even Antioch, which was again a Christian city until the 
 Seljukian Turks retook it on the eve of the first Crusade. 
 The century and our period closes with a fresh and terrible 
 war in the Balkan Peninsula, out of which Basil II. will 
 emerge in 1018, honourable to all time as the ' Bulgar- 
 slayer.'
 
 ^i
 
 INDEX 
 
 Aachen, School of, 253, 254; diet 
 at, 243, 252 ; allied with Bagdad, 
 248 ; Northmen threaten, 251 ; a 
 capital city, 254, 273 and ;/., 277, 288, 
 372 ; embassies to, 262, 263 ; Louis 
 I. at, 280, 281; plundered, 310; 
 Otto I. at, 338, 345 ; Lothair at, 353 
 
 Aar, River, 288 
 
 Aarhus, Bishopric nf, 341 
 
 Abbassids, 206 «., 207, 237, 238 and «., 
 239, 248, 271 
 
 Abbesses, 350, 374 
 
 Abbeville, 309 
 
 Abbo, 310 
 
 Abbots, 252, 350, 358, 361, 362, 374, 
 376 
 
 Abdallah, 197 
 
 Abderrahman, leader of ' Moors ' at 
 Battle of Poitiers, 2lS, 223 
 
 Abderrahman, Ommiad refugee in 
 Spain, 237, 238 and w. 
 
 Abderrahman III., 238 «., 334 
 
 Abdul-Melik, Caliph, 209, 237 
 
 Aboulabbas, elephant, 263 
 
 Abraham, 196, 197, 198 
 
 Abu-Bekr, Caliph, 198, 200, 202, 207 ;/. 
 
 Abyssinia, 201 
 
 Acacius, 103, 135, 136 
 
 Ac/a, of Church councils, 162, 172 
 
 Adalberon. Sff Auberon 
 
 Adalbert, son of Berengar II., 344, 347 
 
 Adalbert. St, 366, 368 
 
 Adda, River, 100, 335 
 
 Adelaide, Empress, 337, 338, 342, 343, 
 349. 355. 357, 362, 364, 366 
 
 Adelchis, 247, 249 
 
 Adige, River, 100 
 
 Adolf, King of Visigoths, 77, 78 
 
 Adrianople, 6, 64, 65, 67 
 
 Adriatic Sea, 72, 131, 262 
 
 i^gidius, 106 
 
 yEneas, 1 94 
 
 Aetius 39 and ;/., 44, 83, 85, 86, 88, 
 92, 218 
 
 383 
 
 Afghanistan, Ameer of, 182 
 
 Africa, the continent, ' Spain a piece of,' 
 180; Gotlis may invade, 181; 
 Moors from, 192 «. ; influences 
 Arabia, 196 ; Almoravids from, 238 
 ;/. ; losing touch with civilisation, 
 271 ; Saracens from, 289 and //. ; 
 Fatimite dynasty in, 334 ; gifts to 
 Otto I. from, 351 
 
 ^/Wctf, the Roman province, feeds Rome, 
 4 and ;/., 8, 38, 75, 77, 85 ; becomes 
 a 'diocese,' 36 ;/. ; held by \'alen- 
 tinian II., 69; rebels, 71, 75 and «., 
 77 ; Boniface in, 83 ; Vandals in- 
 vade, 83, 84, 85 ; character of, 84, 
 85 ». ; Vandal hold on, 105 ; Jus- 
 tinian's conquest of, 114, 119, 120, 
 121, 127; pacified, 122; fortified, 
 134; exarchate of, 145, 193; in 
 danger, 204, 205, 206 ; conquered by 
 Arabs, 209, 2 10, 2 1 1 ; Berbers in, 211, 
 212 
 
 Agapetus II., Pope, 342 
 
 A^fr (= estate), 173 
 
 Agilulf, Duke of Bavarians, 249 
 
 Agilulf, King of Lombards, 146, 148, 
 149, 185 
 
 Agnes, St, 245 ;/. 
 
 Agobard, 279, 280, 281, 284 
 
 Alamannia, 109, 241, 304 
 
 Alamans, 47, 48, 64, 73, 107, 128, 131, 
 162, 180, 217 
 
 Alans, 45, 73. 77, 88 
 
 Alaric I., King of \'isigoths, 3, 71, 72, 
 73, 74. 75. 77.92, 138 
 
 Alaric II., King of Visigoths, 105, 108, 
 162, 181 
 
 Alberic the Elder, 334, 335 
 
 Alberic the Younger, 336, 337, 342, 
 354. 361, 365 
 
 Alboin, King of Lombards, 141, 143, 144 
 
 A/cfs//; 377 
 
 Alcuin, 254, 255, 256, 258. 263, 279 
 
 Alexander tlic Great, 62, 193
 
 3«4 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Alexandria, Jews at, lO ; scliool of, 24, 
 59; Justinian rules at, 114 ; Persians 
 take, 194 ; Arabs take, 204 ; St 
 Mark's body stolen from, 290 ; 
 patriarchate of, 300 
 
 Alfonso II., Spanish king, 263, 2S2 
 
 Alfonso III., Spanish king, 302 
 
 Alfred the Great, 152 «., 264, 293, 304 
 
 Algiers, 85 ;/. 
 
 AH, Caliph, 201, 202, 205, 206 and «., 
 207 and ;/., 236 
 
 Aliso, 47 
 
 Allema^QJie, 109 
 
 Almoravids, 238 ;/. 
 
 Alodial holdings, 370, 374 
 
 Alphabet, 177, 380 ;/. 
 
 Altinus, 173 
 
 Amalasuntha, 112, I18, 119, 121, 122, 
 
 133 
 
 Amalfi, 274, 347 
 
 Amals, 99, lOi, 112 
 
 Amalungus, 142 
 
 Amandus, St, 216 
 
 Ambrose, St, 5, 67, 69, 70 
 
 Ammianus Marcellinus, 23, 65, 1 19 ;/. 
 
 Ampulla, 107 n, 
 
 Amru, 204, 205 
 
 Anastasius I., Emperor, 99, I02, 103, 
 109, no, 134, 194, 204 
 
 Ancona, 130, 131, 277 
 
 Andernach, 306 
 
 Andorra, 180 n. 
 
 Anecdota ('Secret History '), iig n, 
 
 Angelo, castle of St, 317 «,, 336, 357, 
 364 
 
 Angers, 303, 376 «. 
 
 Anicia Gens, 102, III, 147 
 
 Anjou, 376 n, 
 
 Antwna, 4 «., 30, loi, 1 31 
 
 Anonymus Valesii, 66, 103 and ;/. 
 
 Anscharius, St, 282 
 
 Anthemius, Emperor, 95 
 
 Antioch, Bishop of, 21 ; base of Roman 
 army, 48 ; Julian at, 61 ; Valens at, 
 64 ; Church of, 91 ; Persians take, 
 128 ; Arabs take, 203 ; patriarchate 
 of, 300 ; Nicephorus retakes, 382 
 
 Antrustioiis, 108, 165 
 
 Antwerp, 296 
 
 Apocalypse, 13 and n. 
 
 Apuleius, 25 
 
 Apulia, 290 
 
 Apollinare Nuovo, Church of San, 104 
 
 A(/ua Claudia, 124 
 
 Aqueducts, 124 
 
 Aquileia, 70, 89, 171, 137 
 
 Aquinas, St Thomas, 90 
 
 Aquincum, 47 
 
 Aquitaine, character of, 176, 177 ; 
 
 rebellions in, 179, 224, 241, 286, 301, 
 372 ; laws issued in, 181 ; Moors 
 threaten, 215, 218; Grifo flies to, 
 226 ; Pippin subdues, 233 ; Louis I. 
 in, 280 ; at the first partition, 281 ; 
 boundaries of, 301, 302 ; Hungarians 
 raid, 340 ; Gerbert from, 351 ; is not 
 ' France,' 352 ; duchy of, 358, 361 
 
 Aquilania Secunda, 79 and n, 
 
 Arabia, bishops from, 56 ; desert of, 
 156; nature of, 195, 196; traditions 
 of, 197 «., 212 ; purged of idols, 198 ; 
 disunion of, 201 ; revolts in, 202 
 
 Arabs, 12 1 ; name of, 192 n. ; origin of, 
 196; religion of, 197, 198, 199, 215; 
 fighting qualities of, 203 ; colonies 
 of, 202, 209; best of Moslems, 210, 
 212; literature of, 211 and n.\ 213 
 V. ; occupy the emperor, 228, 238 ; 
 architecture and trade of, 237 ; 
 language of, 237, 351 ; Nicephorus 
 fighting the, 262 ; not ill-treating 
 pilgrims, 263 ; culture of, 270 ; in 
 Spain and Africa, 289 and «,; invent 
 the name ' Varangian,' 381 
 
 Arbogast, 69, 70 
 
 Arcadius, Emperor, 71, 72, 73, 74 
 
 Archbishoprics, 171 
 
 Archdeacons, 172 
 
 Archers, mounted, 120, 124 
 
 Ardennes, 265 ard ;/. 
 
 Arelat, 312 «. 
 
 Arena, games of the, 14 and ;/., 24, 30, 
 38 ;/., 73 ; the Constantinopolitan, 
 117, 118, 135, 139 
 
 Arianism, Arius, 55 ?/., 56, 57, 58, 59, 6r, 
 67, 68, 71, 78 ; of Burgundians, 108 ; 
 of Goths, 102, 103, 105, 108, 119, 
 12S, 132, 151, 155, 181, 182 ; of 
 Lombards, 142, 149, 151, 155, 
 186, 227; of Odoacer, 99; of 
 Vandals, 105, 108, 1 19; persecuted, 
 III, 133 ; stories of, 159, 160 
 
 Arichis, 249 
 
 Aristotle, 11, in 
 
 Aries, 54, 77, 93, 108, 171, 219, 295, 
 312 n. 
 
 Armenia, 48, 50, 62, 134, 194, 205, 208, 
 239 
 
 Armenian Dynasty. See Macedonian 
 Dynasty 
 
 Arminius, 5 
 
 Arnulf, Archbishop of Rheims, 359, 360, 
 362, 364 
 
 Arnulf, Bishop of Orleans, 360, 361, 
 362 
 
 Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, 327 ;/. 
 
 Arnulf, Emperor, 31 1, 312, 313, 316, 
 329, 332, 377
 
 INDEX 
 
 385 
 
 Arnulf, St, 179, 226 
 
 Arpino, 247 
 
 Arsacids, 48, 50 
 
 Arthur, 177 n. 
 
 Aryan race, 140, 177 
 
 Aschloh, 310, 311 
 
 Ascoli, 348 
 
 Asia, the Roman province of, 15 «. ; be- 
 comes a diocese, 36 n. ; ravaged, 48, 
 194. 195. 205, 207, 209, 214, 215 ; 
 organisation of, 208 ; idolaters fly 
 from, 222 
 
 Asti, 277 
 
 Astulph, 229, 231, 232, 234, 244 
 
 Asturias, 213, 263, 282, 302 
 
 Athalaric, 112, 121 
 
 Athanasius, 56, 57, 58, 59 and «., 61, 157 
 
 Athene, 60, 72 
 
 Athens, 14 ;/., 24, 59, 60, 72, 116 
 
 Attalus, Emperor, 74, 75 
 
 Attica, 72 
 
 Attigny, 173, I74- I7S. 244, 254 
 
 Attila, 45 and ;?., 86, 87, 88, 89, 138 
 
 Auberon, 349, 351, 356, 358, 359 
 
 Augsburg, 47, 217, 343 
 
 Augurs, 26 
 
 Augustine of Canterbury, St, 151 
 
 Augustine of Hippo, St, 7 ;/., 12, 23, 
 66, 76, 85, 89 and «., 279, 280 
 
 Augustus, Emperor, 4 «., 6, 7 ;;., 34, 
 168, 180 «., 256, 257, 258, 259, 261, 
 264 
 
 Augustus (as a title), 36, 37, 38, 50, 51, 
 63, 65, 109, 257, 261, 262, 272, 
 276, 382 
 
 Aurelian, Emperor, 22, 29, 34, 47, 49 
 and «., 74, 123, 134, 232, 289 
 
 Auras Mountains, 209 
 
 Aurillac, 351 
 
 Aurochs, 265 ». 
 
 Aurum Oblaticium, 30 «. 
 
 Ausonius, 28 ;/. 
 
 Austrasia, 158, 176, 177, 179, 180, 215, 
 216, 225, 241, 243 
 
 Austria, 250, 353, 369 
 
 Autharis, King of Lombards, 145, 146 
 
 Autun, 159, 213 
 
 Auxerre, 287, 295 and «., 312 
 
 Avars, 89 «., 127; savages, 134, 138, 
 139 and «., 142 ; Justinian's policy 
 to, 140 ; compact with Lombards, 
 141 ; in Balkans, 145, 148 ; peace 
 with, 150; enemies of Lombards, 
 186 ; besiege Constantinople, 194 ; 
 retreat, 195, -05 ; destroy churches, 
 ai7 «. ; Charlemagne destroys, 250 
 
 Aventine Hill, 75, 365, 366 
 
 Avicc. Sff Hedwig 
 
 Avignon, 219 
 
 Avitus, Emperor, 93 
 Ayesha, 200 and «., 205 
 
 BabenBERG, family of, 327 ;/., 328, 
 340, 353, 369 
 
 B.ibylon, 13 and ;/., 76, 129 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 279 
 
 Baden, 109 
 
 Bagdad, 238, 248, 263, 264, 271 
 
 Bajazet IL, Sultan, 329 «. 
 
 Baldwin ' Ironarm,' 303 
 
 Bale, 305 
 
 Balearic Isles, 211, 264 
 
 Balis tee, 1 24 
 
 Balkan Peninsula, 65 ; Goths raiding, 
 72, 87, 99; Justinian defends, 114, 
 128; cities of, 134; ravaged, 138; 
 problem of, 139; dreadful fate of, 
 142, 145 ; Bulgarian kingdom in, 381 
 
 Baltic Sea, 86, 142, 327, 339 
 
 ' Balto,' 174, 175 
 
 Ban, 243 
 
 Baptism, 17, 18, 19 
 
 Barberini, 92 
 
 Barcelona, 78, 180 ;/., 264, 301, 302, 
 
 351 
 
 Bari, 274, 289, 290, 300, 347, 355 
 
 Barnabas, St, 20 n. 
 
 Basil L, Emperor, 215 «., 380, 381 «. 
 
 Basil n„ Emperor, 381, 382 
 
 Basil the Great, St, 67 
 
 Basilica, 169 
 
 Basol, Synod at St, 360 and >i. 
 
 Basques, 177 
 
 Bavaria, Bavarians, nobility among, 
 loi «. ; Theudebert conquers, 128 ; 
 in Merovingian times, 162 ; hostile 
 to Franks, 178 ; St Rupert in, 216; 
 trouble Pippin, 225, 226 ; fight 
 Charlemagne, 249, 250 ; at first 
 partition, 28 1 ; Count Welf of, 283 ; 
 hostile to Saxons, 286 ; Louis the 
 German and, 304 ; the Moravians 
 threaten, 312 ; Duchy of, 327 and «. ; 
 Henry L wins over, 329 ; rebel, 340, 
 353, 372 ; Duke Henry L of, 341 ; 
 help Otto L, 343; Duke Henry IL 
 of, 356, 357. 377 ; slight hold on, 372 
 
 Bayeux, 326 
 
 Beam, 180 «. 
 
 Beaucaire, 1 72 «. 
 
 Beauvais, 374 n. 
 
 Becket, Thomas, 59 
 
 Bede, 38, 221, 242, 323 
 
 Bedouins, 196 
 
 Btlfiica, 352 
 
 Belgium, 305 
 
 Belisarius, army of, no, 1 18, 119, I30 ; 
 saves Constantinople, 118, 130; 
 
 2 B
 
 386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 campaign in Africa, 120, 121 ; cam- 
 paign in Italy, 122, 123, 124, 125, 
 126 ; offered crown, leaves Italy, 127 ; 
 second Persian campaign, 128 ; 
 second Italian campaign, 129 ; death 
 of, 130 ; Musa compared to, 213 
 
 Benedict Levita, 298 
 
 Benedict III., Pope, 297 
 
 Benedict V., Pope, 323 
 
 Benedict VII., Pope, 354 
 
 Benedict, St, 116, 132 and «;/., 172,184, 
 278, 361 
 
 Benedict of Aniane, 278 
 
 Benedict of Soracte, 323 
 
 Benrfjcja, 216 
 
 Benevento, Lombard wars for, 142 ; 
 Dukes of, 148, 184, 227, 228, 247, 
 249, 277, 301 ; rebellion of, 187 ; 
 Constans II. foiled by, 206; pre- 
 tended donation of, 246, 345 ; 
 Saracens invade, 289 ; given 10 
 Pandulf, 348 ; Otto III. takes, 367 
 
 Berbers, 85, 209, 210, 211, 212, 289 
 
 Berengar I., Emperor, 306, 312, 314, 
 316, 323, 324. 334, 335 and «., 382 
 
 Berengar II., King of Italy, 315, 337, 
 338, 342, 344, 345, 348 
 
 Bergamo, 313 
 
 Bernard, St, Pass of the Great, 244 
 
 Bernard of Septimania, 283, 284, 285, 
 302 
 
 Berserker, 45 n. 
 
 Berlin, St, Annals of , 107//., 322 and n, 
 
 Bertrada, 226 
 
 Berytus, 24 
 
 Bessas, 129 
 
 Bethlehem, 76, 90 
 
 Billung, family of, 329, 341.^353 
 
 Bishops, as rulers of the Church, 17, 
 20 ; as feudal lords, 350, 374, 376 
 
 The Galilean or Prankish, Chap, V. 
 tassim ; administrators, 157; semi- 
 hereditary, 158, 159 ; as judges, 167 ; 
 power of, 168, 171, 172, 177, 216, 
 217, 219; simony of, 173; kept in 
 order by Carolings, 225, 233, 252 ; 
 come to diets, 243 ; dioceses of, 244 «. 
 learning of, 253 ; protest of, 254 ; 
 independence of, 274, 279, 280, 2S1, 
 285, 286; Hincmar quarrels with, 298, 
 299 ; converting the Normans, 315 ; 
 anti-papal, 360, 361, 362 
 
 The German, support Conrad I., 
 328 ; against Henry I., 329 ; Otto I. 
 relies on, 349 ; the Italian, 276, 278 
 
 Black Sea, 6, 27 «., 48 and «., no, 
 209, 381 
 
 Black stone, ig6 and «., 201 
 
 Blois, 324 
 
 ' Blues,' faction of the, 117, 118 
 
 Bobbio, 162, 186, 351, 357 
 
 Boethius, 102, in and «. 
 
 Boctica, 77 
 
 Bohemia, Bohemians, 250, 304, 312, 
 333, 340, 341. 351. 353, 366, 368, 
 369 
 
 Boleslav Chrobry, of Poland, 368 
 
 Boleslav, Duke of Bohemia, 340, 341 
 
 Boleslav, the Pious, Duke of Bohemia, 
 368 
 
 Bolsena, Lake of, 247 
 
 Bondivy 293 n. 
 
 Boniface, Archbishop and St, 217, 224, 
 225, 226, 230 and «., 233 
 
 Boniface, Count of Africa, 83, 85 
 
 Boniface VII., Pope, 354, 357 
 
 Bonn, 310 
 
 Bordeaux, 77, 79, 1 14, 160, 161, 295 
 
 Boso, 307, 308, 311 »., 312, 316 
 
 Bosphorus, 48, 53, 96, 139, 194, 214 
 
 Bostra, 202 
 
 Boulogne, 50, 361 
 
 Brandenburg, 332, 341, 356, 371 
 
 Brannibor, 332 
 
 Bremen, 244 «., 282, 328, 356 
 
 Brenta, River, 89, 262, 316 
 
 Breton March {see also Brittany), 177, 
 248 
 
 Brigandage, 25, 94, 375 
 
 Brigantia, 2 16 
 
 Bright, Dr William, History of the 
 Church, 55 n. 
 
 Britain, 4 n. ; diocese of, 35 «. ; raided, 
 45 ; colonies in, 48 ; Carausius in, 
 50; Constantius I. in, 51 ; wall of, 
 63, 65 ; legions of, 67, 69, 73 ; flight 
 from, 177 ; Vikings attack, 294 
 
 Brittany, 177 and ;/., 179, 286, 302, 
 325, 372 
 
 Broceliande, 177 "• 
 
 Bruges, 172 ;/., 303 n. 
 
 Brunhilda, Queen, 177, 178, 179, I16 
 
 Bruno. See Gregory V'., Pope 
 
 Bruno, Archbishop and St, 338, 343, 
 348, 349 and n. 
 
 Bryce, James, The Holy Roman Empire^ 
 246 n. 
 
 Bug, River, 27 «. 
 
 Bulgarians, Bulgars, 89 «. ; Persians 
 treat with, 194, 204 ; Constantine IV. 
 beats, 208 ; Justinian 11. and, 209, 
 214; attacking Empire, 238, 239; 
 Nicephorus I. and, 26a ; Christian- 
 ised, 271, 380 ; send gifts to Otto L, 
 351 ; kingdom of, 381, 383 
 
 Burchard, 348 
 
 Bureaucracy, the Roman, 29, 36 
 
 Burgs, 261, 303
 
 INDEX 
 
 )87 
 
 Burgundians, 45 ; in G;iiil, 77, 78 ; first 
 kingdom of, 77, 78, 94 ; divided at 
 Attila's invasion, 87, 88 ; heljis 
 Odoacer, 100 ; Theodoric protects, 
 104, 105, 108 ; Ciovis defeats, 108 ; 
 invade Italy, 126 and >/. ; Franks 
 extinguish, 126 ;/., 128, 176; Arians, 
 157, 160; united with Austrasia, 
 177; a mayor of, 179; allotted to 
 Carloman. 241 
 
 Burgundy, various meanings of the 
 word, 339 «. ; abbeys in, 172 //., 361 ; 
 duchy of, 311 and ;/., 339 and ;/., 
 358; second kingdom of, 308, 311 
 and «., 312 and «., 316, 329, 330, 
 335. 336 and «., 337 
 
 Burhs, 332 and tt. 
 
 Bury, Professor J. B., Gibbon i Decline 
 ami Fall of R. E., 72 «., II7 «., 143 
 «., 197 «., 207 «., 246 
 
 Byzantium (^see also Constantinople), 
 24. 53 
 
 Cadiz, 181,212 ;,■. 
 
 Cad walla, King of Wessex, 221 
 
 Caelian Hill, 93 ;/. 
 
 • 6>jar,'as a title, 36, 37,50, 51, 382 
 
 Caesarea, 203 
 
 ' Caesarism,' 365 
 
 Csesarius, St, 108 
 
 Cairo, 204, 205, 238 ;/. 
 
 Caliph, Caliphate, title of, 202 ; strife 
 for, 205, 206 and n. ; schism in, 207 
 and «., 236, 337, 248, 271 ; limits of, 
 210 ; weakness of, 211 ; the 
 Omniiad and Abbassid, 248 ; a 
 Church and State power, 252 ; 
 Fatimites independent of, 334 
 
 Callinicum, 134 and ;/. 
 
 Callinicus, 149 
 
 Camaldoli, 366 ;/. 
 
 Camerino, 348 
 
 Cainpagna, the Roman, 4, 25, 124, 
 125, 184, 185, 231, 289, 307, 316, 
 
 334 
 Cannae, 5 
 
 Canon, of Scripture, 19 and ;/. 
 Canonisation, 161 
 Canons of the Church, Canon Law, 
 
 252, 298 
 Canterbury, 360 
 
 Canute, King of Kngland, etc., 292 
 ' Capet,' name of, 349 
 Capetians, kingship of the, 358, 359, 
 
 372, 373, 377. 379 
 Capitol, The, 92 
 Capitoline Hill, 62 
 Capitularies, 162 ; of Charlemagne, 243, 
 
 244 and ;/., 249, 252, 259, 260, 261 ; 
 
 of Louis L, 282 ; of Charles the 
 Bald, 307 ; tlie last, 378 
 
 Cappadocia, 208 
 
 Capua. 131, 247, 274, 277, 348, 365 
 
 Carausius, 50 
 
 Carinthia, 250, 353, 364 
 
 Carloinan, son of Charles Martel, 224, 
 225, 227, 228, 230 
 
 Carloman, son of Pippin, King of the 
 Franks, 241, 242, 244 
 
 Carloman, son of Louis the German, 
 305, 306, 308 and «., 309 
 
 Carloman, son of Louis the Stammerer, 
 309 
 
 Carlyle, A. J., History of Mediaval 
 Political Theory^ 246 «. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomiis, 332 
 
 Carolingians, Carolings, capitularies of, 
 162 ; wm/of, 169 ; origin of, 171, 176, 
 179, 180; Aquitaine troubles, 177 ; 
 invigorate Christendom, 271 ; mean- 
 ing of name, 277 ; the three brothers, 
 296 ; German branch of, 305 ; French 
 branch of, 306 ; importance of blood 
 of, 307. 311, 312, 326 and «., 377; 
 weakness of, 316 ; hold on Lorraine, 
 326, 357, 359 ; last of the, 339, 345, 
 352 ; character of Empire of, 370- 
 376 ; sanctity of, 379 
 
 Carpathians, Mountains, 27 and n. 
 
 Carrhre, 5 
 
 Carthage, situation of, 84, 85 n. ; home 
 of pirates, 85 ;/., 289 n. ; emperors 
 threaten to retake, 93,95 ; Theodoric's 
 sister at, 104; Belisarius at, 1 20; 
 Heraclius and, 194 ; to be defended, 
 206 ; Arabs take, 209 ; Greek fleet 
 at, 210 ; Musa at, 211 
 
 Casata, 163, 1 74 
 
 Caspian Sea, 135, 2Io 
 
 Cassianus, 172 
 
 Cassiodorus, 97, 102, 103, 112 
 
 ' Castle guard,' 333 
 
 Castra Vetera, 47 
 
 Catacombs, 15, 19, 221, 231 
 
 Catap/iracts, I20, 127 
 
 Catholicism, meaning of, 21 ; defined, 
 57, 59 i persecuted by Vandals, 105 ; 
 of Franks, 107, 108, 178; in Con- 
 stantinople, 105, 110, III, 119, 128; 
 of Sueves, 181 ; of Spaniards, 182 ; 
 of Paul the Deacon, 183 ; of Thcodc- 
 linda and Liutprand, 186 
 
 Caucasus, 195 
 
 Cautinus, 171 
 
 Cavalr}', importance of, 44, 48, r<4. 69, 
 165, 260, a6i, 303, 333, 380 
 
 Census, 31 
 
 Centena. See Hundred
 
 388 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Centumcellac, 255, 290 
 Ceuta, 211 
 
 Cevennes Mountains, 301, 361 
 Chalcedon, 193, 194, 195, 204 
 
 Council of, 91, 98, 103 
 Chalons-sur-Marne, 63, 88 ; county of, 
 
 374 «. 
 
 Champagne, 106, 302, 303, 314, 326 
 
 Channel, the English, 50, 251 
 
 Chariot races, 103, 117 
 
 Charlemagne, Emperor, 141, 174, 177 ; 
 coronations of, 226 «., 257 ; receives 
 Stephen II,, 229 ; his donations, 231, 
 
 246, 247 ; embassy to Irene, 239, 
 262 ; legends concerning, 240 ; 
 Eginhard's Life of, 240, 241 ; accession 
 of, 241 ; his interest in Rome, 242 ; 
 iiis Saxon wars, 242-44 ; busy in 
 Italy, 244 ; bishoprics founded by, 
 244 n. ; in Rome, 245, 247, 249, 256 ; 
 King of Lombards, 247 ; in Spain, 
 
 247, 248 ; in Italy again, 249 ; on 
 Danube, 250 ; hears of Danes, 251 ; 
 keeps church in order, 243 ; schools 
 of, 252, 253 ; his 'renaissance,' 254 ; 
 his popes, 255, 256, 281 ; emperor, 
 257 ; results of his coronation, 258, 
 259, 261, 262; as judge, 258; his 
 capitularies, 259, 260; his military 
 reforms, 260, 261 ; his power in Italy, 
 261, 262 ; "his attitude to Constan- 
 tinople, 262 ; to Bagdad, 263 ; to 
 Spain, 262, 263 ; his death and char- 
 acter, 264, 265 ; his capitals, 273 ; 
 traditions of, 274 ; his county system, 
 288 ; his church desecrated, 310 ; 
 comparison of his Empire with the 
 Saxon, 338, 344. 346, 372, 373, 375, 
 376 
 
 Charles the Bald, Emperor, birth of, 
 283 ; to be endowed, 284 ; growing 
 up, 286 ; agrees with his brother 
 Louis, 287, 288 ; King of West 
 Franks, 288 ; weakness of, 296 ; 
 culture of, 297 ; grabs at Lotharingia, 
 301 ; at Aquitaine, 301, 302 ; al 
 Brittany, 302 ; the Northmen plague, 
 302, 303 ; crowned emperor, 306 ; 
 death of, 307 ; children of, 308, 309 ; 
 builds fortresses, 332 ; in purgatory, 
 303 ; Hincmar on death of, 363 «. ; 
 his capitularies, 375, 378 
 
 Charles, Count of Provence, son of 
 Lothair I., 297 
 
 Charles the Fat, Emperor, 308, 309, 
 310, 311, 312 
 
 Charles of Lorraine, 358, 359 
 
 Charles Martel, 180, 21S, 216,217,218, 
 219, 223, 224, 225, 233, 240, 280 
 
 Charles the Simple, King of France, 
 
 309, 312, 314, 324, 325, 326, 328, 
 
 329, 330, 331, 361, 377 
 Chartres, 324, 325 
 Chatellerault, 218 
 Chazars, 314, 381 
 Chelles, 360 
 
 Cliemin de Saint Jacques, 1 58 
 Childebert, King of Franks, 146, 164 
 Childeric I., King of Franks, 106 
 Childeric III., King of Franks, 176, 
 
 225, 226 
 Chilperic I., King of Franks, 163 «., 
 
 164, 167, 171, 177, 178 
 Chilperic III., King of Franks, 215 
 China, 135, 193 
 Ckorepiscopus, 17 1, 172 
 Chosroes I. (Nushirvaii), King of 
 
 Persia, I19, 126, 138, 193 
 Chosroes II., King of Persia, 193, 194, 
 
 195 
 Chrysostom, St John, 71 
 Church, infancy of the, 7-31 
 
 Councils of the, 21, 54-59, 222, 
 
 223 ; see also, Aries, Chalcedon, 
 
 Ephesus, Constantinople, Nicae.i, 
 
 Sardica, Sirmium, Toledo 
 
 Lands of the, 151, 175, 178, 216, 
 
 219, 232, 233, 246, 247, 255 ; orders 
 
 of the, 172 
 Church, the Eastern, separation of, 360, 
 
 369, 380 ; the Prankish, 164-175, 225, 
 
 233,252-254; the German, 225 <r/ 5^7. 
 Cicero, 5, 253, 323, 352 
 Cilicia, 214, 382 
 Circe, Cape, 307 
 Circesium, 134 
 Cirta, 85 
 Cistercians, 362 
 Citeaux, 173 
 Civitas, Civitdles, 30 «., 157, 165, 168, 
 
 169, 171, 255, 259, 290, 373 and It. 
 Civitas Leonina, 390 
 Clair-sur-Epte, Saint-, Treaty of, 325 
 ' Classics,' The, 22, 23 
 Classis, 144, 145, 146, 223 
 Claude, Sainte-, Abbey of, 172 
 Claudian, 2, 3, 4, 23, 54 and «., 71, 72, 
 
 84 
 Claudius I., Emperor, 10, 11 «., 93 «., 
 
 177 
 Claudius II., Emperor, 49 
 Claudius, Bishoji of Turin, 279, 280 
 Clement of Rome, St, 20 ;/., 22, 298 
 Cleph, 144 
 Clermont, 173 and «. 
 Clothair I., 158, 162. 163, 164, 178 
 Clothair II., 158, 162 
 Clotilda, 107
 
 INDEX 
 
 389 
 
 Clovis, 106-110, 157, 163, 165, 176, 181, 
 
 373 
 Cluny, 172, 353, 354, 361, 362, 364 
 Coblenz, 27 «., 47, 173, 243 
 Codex, of Justinian, 116, 133 «., 159, 
 
 208, 214 «,, 381 «., of Theodosius, 
 II., 68 «., 86 and «., I02, 115, 159, 
 165 
 
 Co-investiture, 371 «. 
 
 Collatio GUbaliSy Lustralis, 30 w. 
 
 Colmai, 285 
 
 Cologne, 299, 305, 310, 343, 344, 348, 
 356 
 
 Colonate, Coloni, 33, 163 «. 
 
 Colonicr, 9 
 
 Columbanus, St, 162, 172, 216 
 
 Comts Palatii, 168 
 
 Comitatenses, 37 
 
 Comitatus. See Civitas, County 
 
 ' Companions,' the, 201, 205 
 
 Compi^gne, 233, 285, 358 
 
 Concilia Provincialia, 9, 170 
 
 Conrad I., King of Germany, 326, 327 
 and «., 328, 329 «., 377 
 
 Conrad III., King of Burgundy, 336 «., 
 338 
 
 Conrad the Red, 343, 344 
 
 Constans II., Emperor, 204, 205, 206, 
 220 
 
 Constantina, 134 
 
 Constantine I., Emperor, 4 w., 16, 22 ; 
 his reforms, 34, 35, 36, 37 ; his life 
 and reign, 51-57 ; his Hne extinct, 62 ; 
 Theodosius copies, 66 ; his spoil of 
 buildings, 92 ; Charlemagne as 
 successor of, 258, 264 ; his donation, 
 246, 351 ; Otto III. compared to, 365 
 
 Constantine III., Emperor, 204 
 
 Constantine IV., Emperor, 207, 208, 
 
 209, 238 
 
 Constantine V., Emperor, 214 ;/., 222, 
 
 229, 239, 248 
 Constantine VI., Emperor, 239, 340, 
 
 256 
 Constantine VII., Emperor, 315, 347 
 
 «., 382 
 Constantine 1., Pope, 220 
 Constantine, a layman, anti-pope, 241 
 ' Constantine,' homonym for Cyril, 
 
 380 n. 
 Constantine, usurper in Britain, 73, 74, 
 
 76,77. 
 Constantinople, foundation of, 23, 24, 
 34, 53, 54; Arian temper of, 58; Julian 
 at, 6l ; sphere of influence, 65, 73 ; 
 Second General Council at, 68 ; sends 
 help to Honorius, 75 ; Italy clings 
 to, 83 ; Huns threaten, 88 ; Honoria 
 at, 88 ; is Monophysite, 91 ; its see. 
 
 92 ; sole seat of Empire, 94, 96 ; 
 Goths covet, Theodoric at, 99 ; its 
 patriarch, 103 ; its walls, I ID; John 
 I. goes to. III ; Amalasuntha seeks 
 help from, 112; Justinian's reign at, 
 114 fl se(j.\ arena of, 1 1 7, I18; 
 Gclimer sent to, 121 ; Italian jealousy 
 of, 123, 136, 145, 147, 150, 219; 
 treasure sent to, 127 ; plague at, 129 ; 
 Belisarius defends, 129, 130 ; popula- 
 tion of, 134; condition of, 135; Council 
 at (553). 137; Gregory 1. at, 147; 
 Avars threaten, 148, 194 ; its relations 
 with Rome, 183-87 ; Heraclius takes, 
 193, 194 ; Persians attack, 193, 194 ; 
 persecutes heretics, 202, 222 ; revolu- 
 tions at, 204, 209 ; in danger, 205 ; 
 Constantine IV. at, 206, 207 ; first 
 Arab siege of, 207 ; becoming 
 Asiatic, 208 ; a taxing-maohine, 209 ; 
 second Arab siege of, 214 ; Pope 
 Constantine at, 220 ; papal appeal to, 
 228 ; Council at (753), 229, 239 ; 
 orientalised, 236, 238 ; Damascus 
 copies, 237 ; Irene at, 239, 240, 261, 
 262 ; Adelchis at, 247 ; allied with 
 Cordova, 248 ; vacancy of throne at, 
 256, 258, 261 ; still claims Empire, 
 270, 380 ; Hugh Capet writes to, 
 272 ; its hold on South Italy, 275 ; 
 fleet of, 290, 300, 315, 334; voyages 
 to, 291 and «. ; pope excommunicates 
 patriarch of, 299, 300 ; revolution at, 
 300; helps John X,, 334; Alberic 
 leans to, 337 ; Liutprand goes to, 
 347; Boniface VII. at, 354; Phila- 
 gathus at, 363 ; its power, 381 ; 
 Russians besiege, 381, 382 
 
 Constantius I., Emperor, 50, 51, 52 
 Constantius II., Emperor, 57, 58, 59, 
 
 60, 61, 62, 67, 86, 157 
 Constantius, General of Honorius, 77, 
 
 78 
 Constanz, 2 16, 217 
 Consul, Consulate, 38, 39 and v., 94, 98 
 
 and «., 99, 100, 109 
 Conventiii Generalis, 170, 378 
 Corbey (New), 282, 323, 328, 330 «., 
 
 349 
 Corbey (Old), 253, 282 
 Cordova, 133, 181, 212, 213, 238 and w., 
 
 248, 264, 271, 282, 334 
 Coronation, ceremony of, 226 and «. ; 
 
 theory of, 272, 275, 277 
 Corsairs, 85 n. 
 
 Corsica, 104, 122, 232, 246, 282, 290 
 Cosmas and Damianus, Sts, Church of, 
 
 93 «. 
 Cotentin, 325, 331
 
 390 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cotrone, 355 w. 
 
 Cottius, 180 w. 
 
 Coucy, 374 n. 
 
 Couesnon, River, 109 
 
 Councils, Church. See Church, Coun- 
 cils of the. See also, Chalcedon, 
 Constantinople, Ephesus, Nicaeu, 
 Sardica, Sirmium, Toledo 
 
 Count, County, 165-170, 259, 260, 277, 
 281, 373-379 
 
 Courtrai, 296 
 
 Cracow, 368 
 
 Creeds, 17 and «., 20, 21, 53, 68 
 
 Cremona, 143, 276 
 
 Crescens, 354 
 
 Crescentius (the elder), 354, 357 
 
 Crescentius, John (the younger), 357, 
 363, 364 
 
 Crete, 372, 382 
 
 Crimea, 134, 220 
 
 Crispus, 53 
 
 Crocodiles, 38 «. 
 
 Crucifix, use of the, 221, 279 
 
 Crusades, 105, 107, 119 
 
 Ctesiphon, 193, 238 
 
 Cumae, 131 
 
 Cunincpert, 142 
 
 Citrid, CttriaUs, 30, 31, 32, 131, 145, 
 146, 157, 164, 170, 184, 185 fi. 
 
 Currency, the Roman, 4 and w. ; the 
 Prankish, 166 n. 
 
 Curtis, 173 
 
 Customs-duties, 29 v, 
 
 Cyprian, St, 21 
 
 Cyprus, 205, 382 
 
 Cyrene, 84, 209 
 
 Cyril, Apostle of Slavs, 380 and «. 
 
 Cyril, St, of Alexandria, 91 
 
 Czechs, 250 
 
 Dacia, 29, 36 «., 47 and «., 48, 49, 63, 
 
 87,312 
 
 Dacia Ripensis, 47 
 
 Dagobert, King of Franks, 158, 162, 
 170, 175, 179, 205, 372 
 
 Dalmatia, 65, 98, no, 122, 301 
 
 Damascus, 194, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207 
 and «., 212, 213, 222, 236, 237, 
 238 
 
 Damasus, Pope, 66 «., 68, 298 
 
 'Danegeld,' 296, 314 
 
 Danes, first heard of, 242 ; receive 
 Saxon rebels, 243, 351 ; danger 
 from, 251 and v., 252, 273, 287, 388 ; 
 Charlemagne fights, 263 ; Christian- 
 ised, 271, 341 ; name of, 272 ; 
 missions to, 282 ; help Lothair, 287 ; 
 language of, 326 ; Henry I. beats, 
 333 ; gaining ground, 340 ; bishoprics 
 
 of, 341 ; driven back, 353 ; swarm 
 over frontier, 356, 381 ; Theophano 
 meets, 357 
 
 Danework, 251 w., 333, 353 
 
 Danube, River, as frontier, 27 w., 39, 
 38, 47, 48, 49 "•. 53, 63, 64, 86, 134, 
 262,382; Goths cross, 48,64-; Avars 
 on, 138, 139, 148 ; Lombards on, 139, 
 140 ; mutiny on, 1 50 ; Slavs on, 239, 
 327, 340; Charlemagne on, 250; Louis 
 the German on, 286, 304 ; Hungarians 
 on, 315 
 
 Dara, 134 
 
 Dardania, 65 
 
 Dastagerd, 195 
 
 Dauphine, 69, 305 
 
 Decius, Emperor, 48 
 
 Decretals, the False, 246 n., 297, 298, 
 
 299, 351. 359> 360 
 Decuriones. See Curicp, Curiales 
 Defensor Civitatis, 1 57 
 Demeter, 195 n. 
 Denarms, 166 n. 
 Denis, St, 226, 232, 330 
 Denmark, Vikings from, 291, 292, 294, 
 
 295- 325, 341 
 Dervishes, 50, 203 
 Desiderius, King of Lombards, 234, 
 
 241, 242, 244, 247, 249, 258, 261 
 Desiderius, a quack, l6l 
 Diana, 173 
 Dido, 84, 194 
 Diet, the Frankish, 243, 282, 284 ; the 
 
 German, 311, 312, 349, 353, 355, 356, 
 
 357, 372 «., 378 
 ' Dietrich von Bern.' {_See also Theo- 
 
 doric), 100 
 Digest, the, 116 
 Dioceses, 35 and «., 36 and «. 
 Diocletian, Emperor, edict of, 4 and n. ; 
 
 persecution bj^, 14,29 ; census oi, 31 ; 
 
 emperor, 34; reforms of, 34, 37, 38 and 
 
 «. , 49 ; abdicates, 50 ; his conquests 
 
 lost, 62 ; triumph of, 73 n. 
 Dnieper, River, 381 
 Dol, 302 and n. 
 Domestici, 165, 168 
 Dormnhim, 23 1, 232, 233i 247 
 Don, River, 47 «. 
 ' Donations.' See Charlemagne, Con- 
 
 stantine L, Louis I., Otto 1., Otto HI., 
 
 Peter, St, Pope 
 Donatists, 75 w., 85 
 Dordogne, River, 213 
 Drave, River, 27 «., 47 
 Drogo, 225, 227 
 Droit de gite, 1 69 
 Duchesne, I'Abbe, Liber Pontificalis, 66 
 
 n., 103 w., 246, 281 «.
 
 INDEX 
 
 391 
 
 Diikc, Duchy, Dux, title of, 134, 144, 
 145, 168, i6(j, 170; of Rome, see 
 Rome, Duihy of; of Naples, 184 ; of 
 the Lombards, 184, 186; of Venice, 
 184 ; of Germany, 258 ; of France, 
 339 and «., 358 
 
 Dunstan, St, 362 
 
 Durazzo, 129 
 
 Durostorum, 47 
 
 Dyle, River, 312 
 
 Earwig, King of Visigoths, 183 
 
 ' East,* the, prefecture of, diocese of, 35 
 and «., 36 and n. 
 
 Ebbo, 282, 284, 286, 296 
 
 Eberhard, 340 
 
 Ebro, River, 180, 259, 264 
 
 Ebroin, 179 
 
 EcheviiiSy 166 
 
 Ecloga, 208, 214 «., 381 and n. 
 
 Eclhesis, 204, 219 
 
 Edessa, 6, 48, 134, 193 
 
 Edgiva, yiieen, 330, 338 
 
 Edith, Queen, 330, 341, 342 
 
 Edward the Elder, King of Wessex, 
 330, 332 
 
 Eginhard, Life of Charkmagfie, 230, 
 240, 241, 250, 251, 253, 257, 265, 
 322; Annals, 322 
 
 Egypt, feeds Rome and Constantinople, 
 4 and «. ; corrupts Christianity, 20 ; 
 diocese of, 36 «. ; recovered, 49 ; 
 Athanasius in, 57, 58, 59 ; in sphere 
 of Asia, 84 ; monks of, 90, 91 ; base 
 of attack on Constantinople, 193 ; 
 conquest of, 204, 205, 209 ; under 
 Moslem rule, 237, 271 
 
 Eichstadt, 217, 332 
 
 Eider, River, 251 «., 328, 333 
 
 Elagabalus, Emperor, 196 ti. 
 
 Elbe River, Saxons on, 105 n. ; Franks 
 on, 109 ; Lombards on, 140 ; Slavs 
 on, 178, 225, 327, 331, 356; Dago- 
 bert reaches, 179 ; Saxon frontier, 
 242, 243, 295 ; fortresses on, 251 ; 
 Hungarians reach, 328 ; Mark founded 
 on, 333 ; missions beyond, 340 ; 
 Otto 1. crosses, 343 
 
 Elijah, 90 
 
 Emesa, 196 w. 
 
 Emirs, Emirates, 205, 206, 211, 213, 
 238 w., 271 
 
 Emma, Queen, 348 
 
 Empire, the 'Eastern.' {See also Con- 
 stantinople) the name of, 270 ; loses 
 Sicily, 289 ; relation to Saxon 
 emperors, 347, 348 ; Gerbert favours, 
 352 ; at end of period, 380-382 
 
 Empire, the German (Modern), 372 
 
 Empire, the Holy Roman, founded, 257, 
 25*^, 259, 261 ; succession to, 271 ; 
 nationalities within, 272 ; popes 
 claim to give, 277, 281 and «., 283, 
 307 ; German claims to, 278, 345 ; 
 breaking up, 281, 311; Italian 
 variety of, 313, 316; Saxon variety 
 of, 346, 347- 348, 369. 370 
 
 Empire, the Roman. See Rome 
 
 Ems, River, 27 w., 288, 294 
 
 England, conversion of, 132, 151, 155, 
 156, 218; evangelises Germany, 
 216, 217 ; close intercourse with 
 Rome, 221 ; being hammered, 270 ; 
 John Scot in, 298 ; Edgiva in, 330, 
 338 ; Cluniacs in, 362 
 
 I'ipernay, 310 
 
 Ephesus, 15 «. ; councils of, 91 
 
 Epicureans, 17 
 
 Kpirus, 72, 99, 129 
 
 Epte, River, 325 
 
 Equity, Roman, 115 
 
 Era, the dating of the, 98 w., 355 
 
 Erchanger, 327 ii. 
 
 Erfurt, 217 
 
 Erzeroum, 239 
 
 Esau, 196 
 
 Esquiline Hill, 36 
 
 Este, House of, 347 
 
 Ethel, Duchess, 330 
 
 Ethelbert, King of Kent, 151 
 
 Flthelred H,, King of Wessex, 293, 357 
 
 Ethelwulf, King of Wessex, 304 
 
 Ethiopia, 196 
 
 Eucharist, the, 18, 19 and n. 
 
 Eudes. See Odo 
 
 Eudo, 213, 215, 216, 218, 219 
 
 Eudocia, Empress, wife of Theodosius 
 H., 86 
 
 Eudoxia, Empress, wife of Arcadius, 83 
 
 Eudoxia, Empress, wife of Valentinian 
 III., 92 
 
 Eugenius, puppet Emperor, 69, 70 and 
 «., 71 
 
 Eugenius II., Pope, 383 
 
 Euphemia, St, 245 «. 
 
 Euphrates, River, as frontier, 47, 48, 
 57, 62, 134, 195 ; Goths serve on, 
 99; Belisarius on, 119; Persians 
 cross, 128 ; trade route over, 135 ; 
 Arabs reach, 203 ; Kufa on, 207 «. 
 
 Euric, King of Visigoths, 100 
 
 ' Europe,' a geographical expression, 65 
 
 Eusebia, Empress, 60 
 
 Eusebius, of Caesarea, Bishop, 52 and 
 «., 66, 177 
 
 Exarch, Exarchate. (5>^ a/50 Ravenna) 
 origin of, 145 ; Gregory I. and, 149, 
 150; nominates tribunes, 184;
 
 392 
 
 INDEX 
 
 seizes pope, confirms papal elections, 
 
 220, 222 ; Lombards covet, 223 ; 
 
 tumult in, 223 ; Astulph takes, 229 ; 
 
 Astulph surrenders, 231, 232 ; 
 
 Desiderius clutches at, 244 ; pope 
 covets, 246 ; in Sicily, 289 
 Exarchate of Africa, 193 
 
 Faroe Isles, 292 
 
 Fustrada, (jueen, 250 
 
 'Fathers,' the, 21, 22, 23, 253, 360 
 and «. 
 
 Fatima, 201 
 
 Fatimites, 238 «., 334, 354 
 
 Faunus, Temple of, 93 n. 
 
 Felix, general of Galla Placidia, 83 
 
 Felix III., Pope, 98 
 
 Felix IV., Pope, 93 «. 
 
 Ferdinand the Catholic, King of 
 Arragon, 238 n. 
 
 Feudalism, has begun, 94 ; in Mero- 
 vingian Gaul, 163, 170, 173, 174, 
 175; in Italy, 184, 185, 276, 277; 
 growth of, 240, 259, 260 ; in Caroling 
 Empire, 281, 301, 316; legalised, 
 307; in France, 305. 307, 339; in 
 Normandy, 326 ; in Germany, 327 k., 
 328 ; in Italy, 346, 347 ; in church, 
 350 ; hostile to Church, 358 ; dis- 
 loyal, 359; turbulent, 365; conclu- 
 sion on, 370-379 
 
 Fide/es, 165, 168, 170, 175, 2i5, 302, 
 307, 375. 376 
 
 ' Field of Lies,' 286 
 
 Filioque Clause^ 68, 380 
 
 Fiscus, 163 
 
 Flameti, 20 w., 157 
 
 Flanders, 303 and «., 341 
 
 Flavian, 91 
 
 Flodoard, Hisioria Remensis Ecclesice, 
 Annals, 107 «., 159 and «., 300, 303, 
 304 and «., 315, 324, 325, 331, 333 «., 
 
 339 «• 
 
 Faderati, 44, 46, 48, 49, 64, 66, 71, 95, 
 99, 105, 119, 120, 208, 332 n. 
 
 Fontenay-en-Puisaye, 287, 294 
 
 Formosus, Pope, 313, 314, 316 
 
 Forum Romanunt, 103 
 
 Forum Suarium, 92 
 
 Forum Trajani, 125 
 
 ' Fowler,' The. See Henry I., King of 
 Germany 
 
 France, ' eldest child ' of Empire and 
 Church, 57 ; origin of, 107 and «., 
 109; nature of, 156, 157; ninth 
 century state of, 273, 274, 277 ; 
 Stephen IV. visits, 281 ; names of, 
 286, 304 and n. ; separating from 
 Germany, 288, 305, 306, 311 ; king- 
 
 ship of, 308, 309, 311. 314, 339. 377 ; 
 ravaged by Hungarians, 315; tenth 
 century condition of, 325, 326, 330, 
 331 ; growing weak, 341 ; nationality 
 of. 358, 359; Church of, 360, 361, 
 362 ; feudalism in, 370-379 
 
 Franche-Comte, 305, 313 
 
 ' Francia,' 109, 286, 339 and n. 
 
 Francisca, 88, 105 
 
 Franconia, 109, 286, 304, 327 and ;/., 
 328, 329, 340, 343, 353, 356, 372 
 
 Frankfort on the Main, 254, 264, 288 
 
 FraJikreich, 233 
 
 Franks, 45 ; on Rhine, 49 ; Constantine 
 1. beats, t)i ; faederati, 57, 66, 88; 
 invade Gaul, 73 ; disputed headship 
 of, 87 ; conquer Burgundians, 100, 
 126 «., 128 ; Theodoric watches, 104, 
 108, lie; conquer Gaul, 105-109; 
 laws of, custom of, 106, 159 «., 
 Chapter V., 259, 283 and «., 288 ; 
 conversion of, 107, 108, 109 ; 
 Justinian and the, 122, 138, 140; 
 Goths fear the, 123, 127, 130 ; invade 
 Italy, 126, 128, 131, 146, 229-232, 
 246, 247, 274, 275 ; hold on Italy 
 of, 130 w. ; relation to Lombards, 
 141, 143, 145 ; Paul Deacon on, 
 141 n. ; conditions of. Chapter V., 
 passim; Church of, 151, 225, 233; 
 kings and bishops of, 157 ; Gregory 
 of Tours on, 159 w. ; language of, 
 162, 163, 253; army of, 164, 165; 
 aristocracy of, 170, 281 ; wars with 
 Brittany, 177 ; civil wars of, 178, 285, 
 et seq.; wars with Visigoths, l8l ; 
 popes call upon, 178, 187, 223, 244, 
 246 ; support missions in Germany, 
 216, 217, 218 ; win Battle of Poitiers, 
 218, 219 ; friendly to Lombards, 219 ; 
 beat Bavarians, 225 ; lords of Gaul, 
 233 ; were they champions of 
 Christendom ? 240 ; architecture of, 
 254; attitude to iconoclasm, 255; 
 kingship of, 259, 263, 377; land 
 tenure of, 260 and n. ; splitting into 
 two nations, 286, 287, 288 ; end of 
 old army of, 287 ; inheritance from 
 Rome, 291 ; Viking raids on, 294 ; 
 East and West Franks, 303, 304, 311 
 
 Frascati, 365, 366 
 
 Fraxinetum, 315 
 
 Fredegarius, 161 
 
 PVedegonda, Queen, 177, 178 
 
 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, 
 249 
 
 Freisingen, 217 
 
 Freya, 142, 195 n. 
 
 Frigidus, River, 70
 
 INDEX 
 
 393 
 
 Frisia, Frisians, 162, 180, 216, 217, 218, 
 
 242, 251, 294, 29s 
 Fritzlar, 217 
 Friuli, 148, 277, 312 
 Froissart, 141 
 Frontiers, the Roman, 8, 9, 27 and u., 
 
 36, 37, 46 and «., 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 
 
 57, 62, 63, 65, 114 
 Fulda, 217, 253, 279 ; Atinah of, 322 
 Fundus, 28, and «., 30, 31, 32, 33, 163, 
 
 173, 174. 175 
 
 Gabriel, Archangel, 196, 197 
 
 Gadara, 203 
 
 Gaeta, 274, 345, 365, 366 
 
 Gains, 115 
 
 Galerius, Emperor, 36, 50, 51 
 
 Galla Placidia, 77, 78, 79, 83, 85, 87 
 
 Gallicia, 77, 181, 263 
 
 Gallienus, Emperor, 63 u. 
 
 Gallus, St (Saint-Gall), 216, 253, 349 
 
 Games. See Arena 
 
 Gandersheim, 328, 350 ;/. 
 
 Garibaldi, 186 «. 
 
 Garigliano, River, 184, 261, 307, 309, 
 310, 334 
 
 Garonne, River, 181, 233, 295, 315 
 
 Gascons, Gascony, 248, 281, 301 
 
 Gasquet, Dom, 132 w. 
 
 Gau, 169, 243, 250, 260, 304, 370, 373 
 
 Gaul, 4 «., 6, 8 ; garrison of, 10 v. ; 
 provincial assembly of, 9 ; an estate 
 in, 28 «. : prefecture of, 35 and w. ; 
 former barbarism of, 45, 46 ; frontier 
 of, 47 ; rebellion in, 49 ; Prankish 
 colonies in, 49 ; pirates in, 50 ; Con- 
 stantine I. in, 51 ; loyal to Rome, 52, 
 69, 73, 76, 93 ; Athanasius in, 57 ; 
 Catholicity of, 58 ; Julian in, 60 ; 
 raided, 63, 73, 74, 76, 77 ; supports 
 Maximus and Eugenius, 69, 70 ; 
 Visigoths in, 77, 78, 79 and n. ; Huns 
 invade, 86, 88 ; supports Avitus, 93 ; 
 falls away from Italy, 93, 94 ; recon- 
 structed, 97 ; Prankish invasion of, 
 102 «., 106, 107, 108 ; the name, in 
 Gregory of Tours, 109 ; Chapter V. 
 passim ; divisions and reunions of, 
 157, 158, 168, 169; Roman law in, 
 159; in transition, 162-177 ; church 
 of, 171, 172, 173; rural life in, 173, 
 174; growth of feudalism in, 174, 
 17s ; parent of Germany, 176 ; 
 Saracens in, 210, 213, 215, 218, 224 ; 
 becoming ' Prance,' 233, 272 
 
 Gayangos, Don P. de, history of Ma- 
 nommedan Dynasties in Spain, 212 ;/. 
 
 Gaza, 202 
 
 Gelimer, King of Vandals, 1 18, 120, 121 
 
 Geneva, 244 
 
 Genoa, 143, 184, 334 
 
 Genseric, King of Vandals, 84, 85 and 
 «., 87, 92, 95, 104, 138 
 
 Gepids, 45, 87, 130, 140, 141 
 
 Gerberga, 331, 341 
 
 Gerbert. 6V1? Sylvester 1 1. 
 
 Germain, St, 295 «. 
 
 Germanus, nephew of Justinian, 130 
 
 Germanus, patriarch, 222 
 
 Germany, Germans, condition of primi- 
 tive, 43,44; early Christianity of, 132, 
 in sixth century, 162, 164, 169, 178 ; 
 roads from, 172 n. ; a grandchild of 
 Roman Empire, 176, 270; mission- 
 aries in, 180 ; conversion and infant 
 church of, 216 and «., 217, 218, 124 ; 
 rebellious, 224, 241 ; subdued, 249 ; 
 the duchies of, 249, 327 and n., 331, 
 339, 344, 349, 353, 370; her share 
 in Holy Roman Empire, 257, 258, 
 274, 277, 278 ; Charlemagne's power 
 in, 259, 260, 264 ; growing nationality 
 of, 272, 273, 276, 278, 286, 301, 304, 
 305, 306, 308, 31 1 ; historians of, 278 ; 
 wine of, 288 and n. ; language of, 
 287; suffering, 308, 309, 315; 
 desperate condition of, 326, 327 and 
 M., 328; revival of, 329, 331, 332, 
 333 ; eastern frontier of, 340, 367, 
 368, 369; growing strong, 341 ; 
 rebellions in, 343, 355, 356 ; armies 
 of, 346, 347, 354, 363, 365 ; learning 
 of, 349, 350 ; regencies in, 357 ; not 
 Cluniac, 362 ; feudalism in, 370-379 
 
 Gero, 341 
 
 Ghent, 296 
 
 'Ghibelline,' 348 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire. (^See also Bury, 
 Professor J, B.), 39, 72 //., 117 n. 
 
 Gibraltar, 180, 211, 212 
 
 Gilbert, Duke of Lorraine, 326, 329, 
 
 331, 340, 341, 377 
 
 Girgenti, 289 
 
 Gisela, Queen, 369 
 
 Glaber, Ralf, 355 «. 
 
 Glycerius, Emperor, 95 
 
 Gnesen, 368 
 
 Gnostics, 21, 197 
 
 Godfrey, King of Danes, 251 and «. 
 
 Gorm, King of Denmark, 251 n. 
 
 Gospels, the Apocryphal, 19 and n. 
 
 'Gothia,' 121, 127 
 
 Goths. (_See also Ostrogoths, Visi- 
 goths), traditions of, 43 ; loyalty of, 
 44 ; temper of, 45 ; feared, 47, 48 ; 
 cross Danube, 48, 64 ; Constantine I. 
 represses, 53 ; beat Valens, 64 ; fail
 
 394 
 
 INDEX 
 
 to take cities, 65 ; /(rderati, 66-72 ; 
 invade Greece and Italy, 72, 73, 74 ; 
 sack Rome, 75 ; retreat, 77 ; settle 
 in Claid, 77, 78 ; and Spain, 79 ; 
 rudeness of, 94 ; settled and unsettled, 
 99; in Ital)', 100-I12; land settle- 
 ment of, 1 01, 102 II. ; law of, 102 V. ; 
 army of, 105 n. 
 
 Grado, 137 
 
 Graf, Grafsc/ia/t, 169 and «., 260 
 
 Gran, 369 
 
 Granada, 21 1 w., 238 11. 
 
 Grajides^ 165, 168, 178, 179, 216 
 
 Grapliia Aurce Rojiice, 245 
 
 Gratian, Kmperor, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68 
 and «., 69 
 
 Greece, Greeks (in sense of Hellas, 
 Hellenes), pirates of, 6 ; cities of, o, 
 10; mother of culture, 10; wiles of, 
 10 ; gods of, 12 ; games of, 14 and 
 w. ; schoolmasters, 23 ; depopulation 
 of, 28 «. ; colonies of, 48 «., 134; in 
 Eastern half of Empire, 65 ; Goths 
 ravage, 72 ; Justinian fortifies, 134 ; 
 Slavs penetrate, 140 ; language of, 5, 
 16, 23, 89, 91, 1 35, 147, 253, 278, 297, 
 322, 349 «., 350, 352, 362, 381 n. ; 
 philosophers of, 192 ; mythology of, 
 292 
 
 Greece, Greeks (in the sense of Con- 
 stantinople, Byzantines), nameof, 1 19, 
 120, 270 ; garrisoning Spain, 182 ; 
 in Southern Italy and Ravenna, 
 186; defending Bosphorus, 194, 
 207 ; Mahomet summons, 198, 201 ; 
 beaten in Syria, 203, 203 ; fleet at 
 Carthage, 210 ; garrisoning Ceuta, 
 211 ; Musa's opinion of, 212 ; papal 
 distrust of, 224 ; Arabs imitate, 237 ; 
 ' Eastern Empire' of, 238 ; still covet 
 Italy, 248 ; in Naples and Sicily, 249, 
 289 ; Italian sympathy with, 262 ; in 
 Holy Land, 263 ; Latins hate, 273 ; 
 will not help Franks, 290 ; Louis II. 
 and the, 300 ; Liutprand on the, 347 ; 
 Gerbert favours, 352 ; Otto II. and 
 the, 354, 355 ; Crescentius and the, 
 364 ; Otto III. imitates, 365 ; rivalry 
 of Latin Church with, 369 ; historians 
 of, 381 
 
 Greek fire, 207 and «., 214, 315, 347 w. 
 
 ' Greens,' faction of the, 117, 1 18 
 
 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, Rome in the 
 Middle Ages, 93 «., 222, 346 
 
 Gregory I., Pope, disapproves of 
 classics, 103, 152 ; supports monks, 
 132 ; independence of, 133 ; de- 
 fends Rome, 144, 147, 149 ; con- 
 verts Lombards, 146, 148, 151 ; 
 
 career as pope, 146-153 ; attitude to 
 Frankish Church, 171 ; to Jews, 173 
 fi. ; sovereign in Rome, 185 ; his 
 missionary zeal, 216 ; his title, 219 
 «. ; other popes compared to, 297, 
 364 ; Life of, 299 
 
 Gregory 11., Pope, 217, 220, 222, 223, 
 228, 298 
 
 Gregory III., Pope, 217, 223, 224, 228 
 
 Gregory IV., Pope, 285, 286, 289, 299 
 
 Gregory V., Pope, 363, 364, 367 
 
 Gregory VII., Pope, 297, 364 
 
 Gregory of Nazianzus, St, 67, 91 
 
 Gregory of Tours, Historia Fraiicorum, 
 loi w., 105, 106, 109, 141 «., 158, 
 159, 160, 163 «., 164, 168, 171, 173, 
 177, 178, 251 ;/. 
 
 Grifo, 224 
 
 Grimoald, Duke of Benevento, 249 
 
 Grimoald, King of Lombards, 185, 186 
 and 71. 
 
 Grimoald, Mayor, son of Pippin, 179 
 
 Guadalquivir, River, 84, 213 
 
 Guinidi. See Wends 
 
 Gundobald, King of Burgundians, 160 
 
 Gunpowder, 208 n. 
 
 Guy, Margrave of Spoleto, Emperor, 
 312, 313, 314, 316 
 
 Guy, Margrave of Tuscany, 335, 336 
 
 Hadrian, Emperor, 10, 16 «., 47 and 
 «., 144, 366 
 
 Hadrian I., Pope, 244, 246, 247, 249 
 
 Hadrian II., Pope, 299, 301 
 
 Hadrian IV., Pope, 356 w. 
 
 Hainault, 326 
 
 Halberstadt, 244 w., 349 
 
 Hamburg, 282, 356 
 
 Harold, ' King ' of Danes, 287, 294, 295 
 
 Harold Bluetooth, King of Denmark, 
 251 «., 341 
 
 Haroun al Raschid, Caliph, 239, 263, 
 264 
 
 Hartmann, Dr L., Geschichle Italiens im 
 Mittelalter, 145 
 
 Hariispices, 62 
 
 Hasting, 295 ;/. 
 
 Hastings, Battle of, 333 
 
 Haufif, W., F/iantasiet! in Bremer Raths- 
 keller, 288 «. 
 
 Havelberg, 341, 356 
 
 Havet, Dr, Lettres de Gerbert, 352 «. 
 
 Headlam, Dr A. C, 19 
 
 Hebrides, 294 
 
 Hedwig, Duchess of Swabia, 353 
 
 Hedwig, wife of Hugh the Great, 330 
 
 Hegira, the, 200 and w,, 20I, 206, 2IO 
 
 Hellenism, 8, 9 w., lo, 49, 60, 6i, 62, 
 116
 
 INDEX 
 
 395 
 
 Henolikon, 98, 103 
 
 Henry, Duke of U;ivaria, son of Henry 
 
 I-, 338, 340-344, 348 
 Henry, Duke of Bavaria (called 'the 
 
 Quarrelsome'), 348, 353, 356, 357, 
 
 368, 377 
 Henry II., Emperor, 364 
 Henry I., King of Kngland, 340 
 Henry I„ King of Germany (called 
 
 'the Fowler'), 327 «., 328-332 and «., 
 
 333, 338, 339, 340, 367, 371, 375- 377 
 Henry VHI., King of Kngland, 222 
 Heraclea-of-Pontus, 214 
 Heracleon, 204 
 Heraclian, 75, 77 
 Heraclius the Elder, Exarch of Africa, 
 
 193 
 Heraclius the Younger, Emperor, 179, 
 
 194, 195, 202, 203, 204, 208, 219, 
 
 315, 381 
 Here ban, 243, 26 1 
 Heresy, Heretics, 13, 14 w., 21, 69 ;/., 
 
 135, 136, 155, 160, 192, 204, 219, 
 
 220, 222, 254, 360 and ;/. 
 Her is Hz, 261 
 Hermits, 132, 366 and ;/, 
 Herodotus, 116, 119 w. 
 Hersfeld, 349 
 Herules, 45, 95, 120, 130 
 Hessians, 217 
 Heteroonsion, 67 
 Hide, the, 260 and w. 
 Hilary, St, 157, 177 
 Hildebrand. See Gregory VII., Pope 
 Hilderic, 118 
 Hildesheim, 244 ;/., 349 
 Hildibald, 127 
 Hincmar, 107 «., 246 «., 280, 296, 298, 
 
 300, 303, 305, 306, 307, 309 and ;/., 
 
 322, 360, 363 n. 
 Hippo Regius, 76, 85 
 Hodgkin, Dr Thomas, Italy and her 
 
 Invaders, 29, 46, 103 n. 
 Htifer, Histoire de la Cliiinie, 207 n, 
 HohenzoUern, 371 
 Holds, 293 and n. 
 Holland, 294, 305 
 HoUingstedt, 351 n. 
 Homer, 60 
 
 Homoousiov, 55 and w., 56 
 Honoria, 88 and ;/. 
 Honorius, Emperor, 9, 44, 71, 73-79, 
 
 96, 170, 206 
 Honorius I., Pope, 204, 219 
 Horace, 28 n., 144 
 Hospitatiias, 29 ?/., 1 69 
 Hugh Capet, King of France, 273, 
 
 349, 352, 358, 359 and w., 363, 
 
 373 
 
 'Hugh,' 'Count' (imaginary char- 
 acter), 374-377 
 
 Hugh, Count of Provence, King of 
 Italy, 315, 335-338 
 
 lluf^h. Margrave ol Tuscany, 366 
 Hugh the Great, Duke of Francia, 325, 
 
 330, 331, 338, 339 and «., 341, 342 
 Hugo, Victor, 165 n. 
 Hundred, the, 169 
 
 Hundred-man, the, 167, 169, 373-376 
 Hungarians, 271-274, 312-316, 327-333, 
 
 340-345, 351, 382 
 Hungary, 27 «., 312, 327, 368, 369 
 Huns, 64, 83, 86-89 and ;/., 120, 130, 
 
 134, 139 and;/., 315 
 Hymns, 161 
 
 Iberians, 177, 181, 301 
 
 Iceland, 292 
 
 Iconoclasts, Iconoclasm, 215 and «., 
 
 219, 222-224, 229, 232, 239, 254, 255, 
 
 262, 279, 381 n. 
 IgnatiuF, St, 21 
 Illyria, 128 
 
 Illyricuni, 35 and «., 36 v., 61, 7I-74 
 Imaiims, 1 99, 236 
 India, 193 
 
 ' Indictions,' 31, 98 k., 164 
 Indus, River, 210, 214 
 Ingelheim, 243, 249, 254, 282, 288 «., 
 
 341, 372 
 
 Injuriosus, 164 
 
 Innocent II., Pope, 257 w. 
 
 Innocent VIII., Pope, 329 n. 
 
 Iiiijuilini, 33 
 
 lona, 156, 292, 294 
 
 Ionian Isles, 130 
 
 Ireland, Irish, 156, 181, 216, 291, 292, 
 294 
 
 Irenaeus, St, 22 
 
 Irene, 239, 240, 254, 261, 262 
 
 Isaac, elephant keeper, 263 
 
 Isaac, patriarch, 197 
 
 Isala, River. 6Vf Yssel 
 
 Isauria, Isaurians, 50, 96, 120, 205, 
 208, 214, 271 
 
 Ishmael, 196 
 
 Isidore, l8l, 298 
 
 Isis, II, 26 
 
 Isker, River, 47 
 
 Islam, 20, 35 ; message of, 156; Syria 
 accepts, 193 ; early history of, 197 
 «. ; meaning of word, 198 ; sterility 
 of, 199 and ;/. ; union of, 200 ; early 
 dangers of, 201 ; prophets of, 202 ; 
 schism in, 206 «., 237, 248, 271 ; 
 Berbers accept, 210 ; conquests of, 
 202, 210, 211 ; fresh advances of, 215, 
 216, 219, 240, 272, 289; develop-
 
 396 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ment and trials of, 271 ; not to be 
 provoked, 2yo 
 
 Isonzo, River, 100 
 
 Istria, 345 
 
 Italy, free from taxes, 4, 30 ; decaying, 
 6 ; Ilellenised, 10 ; law studied in, 
 24, 133 "•; to be taxed, 30; pre- 
 fecture of, 35 n., 36 //. ; poverty of, 
 38 ; enthusiasm for Goths in, 45 ; 
 road to, 47 ; Maxentius holds, 51 ; 
 Athanasius in, 58 ; hates Arians, 58, 
 123; Valentinian II. holds, 69; 
 Radagaisus invades, 73 ; Alaric 
 invades, 74 ; Goths quit, 77 ; 
 depends on Africa, 83, 85 ; depends 
 on Constantinople, 83, 104 ; Attila 
 invades, 89 ; Leo I. in, 91 ; Vandals 
 invade, 92 ; Ricimer in, 94, 95 ; bar- 
 barians settle in, 95, 96, loi, 102, w. ; 
 Odoacer patrician of, 96, 'King' 
 ofi 99 ; Theodoric invades, 99, 100 ; 
 Kingdom of, 1 01 ; recovers, 104 ; 
 imperial designs on, 112, 114; 
 Amalasuntha offers to Justinian, 121 ; 
 Belisarius invades, 122 ; reinforce- 
 ments sent to, 125 ; Franks invade, 
 126, 128; Belisarius offered crown 
 of, 127 ; ruined, discontented, 127, 
 128, 131; Totila reconquers, 130; 
 Justinian administers 133, 135 ; 
 schism in, 137; value of, 138; 
 Lombards invade, 141, 143, 149; 
 Justin II. and, 145 ; Maurice and, 
 146 ; Gregory I. and, 148 ; must do 
 for herself, 150, 151 ; disunion of, 
 I55i 156 ; Theudebert ravages, 178 ; 
 seventh century state of, 183-187 ; 
 popes and Lombards in, 205, 206, 
 219, 224 ; Constans II. in, 220 ; 
 idolaters fly to, 222 ; wholly for 
 pope, 222, 223 ; Leo III. threatens, 
 223 ; hates Constantinople, 227 ; 
 popes spoil chances of, 230, 233 ; 
 Franks invade again, 230, 231, 246, 
 249; Saracens threaten, 240, 255; 
 papal power in, 246 ; famine in, 249 ; 
 germs of municipia in, 255 ; in Holy 
 Roman Empire, 257, 258, 277 ; 
 Charlemagne's power in, 258, 261, 
 262 ; Greek influence in, 262, 270 ; 
 growing nationality of, 272, 273, 276, 
 316 ; kingship in, 277, 280, 282, 308, 
 313 ; Lothair I. in, 283, 286, 288, 
 296 ; Saracens raid, 289, 290, 334 ; 
 V'^ikings raid, 295 and «. ; Louis II. 
 defends, 297, 300, 301 ; Charles the 
 Bald in, 306 ; anarchy in, 306, 307 ; 
 Charles the Fat in, 309 ; Berengar 
 I. and Guy in, 312, 324 ; Arnulf 
 
 invades, 313; Hungarians in, 315; 
 Henry I. and, 334 ; Odo of Cluny 
 in, 337 ; calling on Otto I., 338, 
 342 ; Gerhert goes to, 351 ; Otto II. 
 '", 354. 355 ; indifference to Cluny, 
 361 ; Otto III. in, 363, 364, 366 
 Ivrea, 148, 277, 335, 337 
 
 'Jacques, Bonhomme,' 374, 376 
 James II., King of England, 61 
 Jar/s, 293, 294 
 
 Jean-de-Maurienne, Saint-, 231 
 Jehad, 199, 290 
 Jerome, St, 66, 76, 90 
 Jerusalem, 15, 16, 121, 139 and «. 
 
 158 w., 194, 195, 203, 221, 237, 263 
 Jesuits, 86 
 Jews, 13 ; the Church and the, 15, 16; 
 
 Hellenised and Zealot, 16 and ti. ; 
 
 magicians, 26 ; not persecuted, 103 ; 
 
 in Constantinople, 135 ; in Gaul, 
 
 171, 173 and «., 175 ; in Spain, 182, 
 
 212; at Mecca, 196; Mahomet uses, 
 
 199 ; at Medina, 199, 200, 201 ; in 
 
 Syria, 202 ; at Damascus, 222 ; 
 
 doctors, 363 and «. 
 ' Joan,' Pope, 297 
 Jocelyn, Bishop, 310 
 Johannopolis, 307 
 John I., Pope, iii, 112 
 John VIII., Pope, 306, 307, 308 
 John X., Pope, 274, 334, 335, 382 
 John XL, Pope, 317, 336, 337 
 John XII., Pope, 274, 323, 342, 344, 
 
 345, 346 and n. 
 John XV., Pope, 357, 362, 363 
 John XVI., Pope, 363, 364 
 John the Baptist, St, 142, 245 n. 
 John the Deacon, Life of Gregory /., 
 
 299 
 John the Evangelist, St, 245 n. 
 John the Faster, Patriarch, 147, 1 50 
 John Scotus Erigena, 280, 297, 298 
 John, usurper of Empire, 83 
 John Zimisces, Emperor, 348 and «., 
 
 382 
 Jordanes, 39 «., 88 «., 97 »., 141 
 Jovian, Emperor, 62 
 Judaea, 16 n. 
 Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, 
 
 304 
 Judith, Queen, 283, 284, 285, 286 
 Julian Alps, 140 
 Julian, Count, 211 
 Julian, Emperor (called ' the Apostate '), 
 
 60, 62, 64 
 Julius Nepos, Emperor, 95, 96 
 Jumi^ges, 295 
 Jupiter Capitolinii=, 27
 
 INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 Jura Mountains, 362 
 
 Jurists, the Roman, 7, 12, 22 
 
 Jury, germ of, 1 66 
 
 Jus Civile^ I15 
 
 Jus Gentium, 1 15 
 
 Justin I., Emperor, no, 114 
 
 Justin II., Emperor, 139, 140, 144, 145 
 
 Justinian I., Emperor, 23 ; appoints 
 Consul, 98 n. ; his reign. Chapter 
 IV. ; his character, 114; legal work, 
 114, 115, 116; religious work, 116; the 
 factions and, 117, 118; builds St 
 Sophia, 118 ; buys peace with Persia, 
 119; 'secret history' of, 119 «. ; 
 conquers Vandals, 120, 121 ; attacks 
 Goths, 122 ; suspects Belisarius, 
 135 ; drives out philosophers, 116, 
 192 ; fears Franks, 128, 178 ; illness 
 of, 129 ; rejects Totila's offers, 130, 
 131 ; attacks Spain, 133, 181 ; issues 
 edict for Italy, 133 and «. ; fortifies 
 frontier, builds churches, 134, 136; 
 keeps popes good, 135, 136, 137 ; 
 finance of, 137, 138; death of, 138; 
 diplomacy of, 138, 139, 140; com- 
 pared with Charlemagne, 264 
 
 Justinian II., Emperor, 209, 213, 220, 
 
 237 
 Jutland, 294, 353 
 
 Kaaba, the, 196, 198, 201 
 
 Kadis, 237 
 
 Kadishah, 197, 200 n. 
 
 Kahina, 210 
 
 Kairouan, 209, 238 «. 
 
 Kaiser-Saal, 264 
 
 Katharine II., Empress of Russia, 381 
 
 Kelheim, 27 n. 
 
 Ker, Professor W. P., The Dark A^es, 
 
 III ;/. 
 Kieff, 369, 381 
 
 Kindaswintha, King of Visigoths, 182 
 Kingship, origin and nature of, 34, 35, 
 
 loi and //., 379 
 Klysma, 205 
 Kohgraben, 251 ;/. 
 Koran, the, 198, 200 
 Koreishites, 196-198, 205 
 
 Lahn, River, 328 
 
 Lambocsis, 85 «. 
 
 Lambert the Elder, 307 
 
 Lambert the Younger, Emperor, 313, 
 
 314 
 Lance, the Holy, 329 and ;/., 343 
 Land-settlements, of barbarians, 71, 72, 
 
 74i 78, 79 anJ "; 95 ; of Goths, loi, 
 
 102 and ;/., 105, 106 ; of Lombards, 
 
 143 and //. 
 
 Langres, 106, 374 >i. 
 
 Lanf^ue d'oc, Lan^ue d'oil, 158 
 
 Laon, 107 «., 288, 310, 341, 359, 372, 
 
 374 "• 
 Lares, the Compital, 68 
 Lateran, Basilica of the, 53 ; palace of 
 
 the, 136, 147, 204, 274 
 Latin language, 5 ; Theodoric's zeal for, 
 103 ; forgotten in East, 135 ; Gregory 
 1. and, 152 ; Gregory of Tours and, 
 159 ; use in Prankish Gaul, 162, 165 ; 
 Lombard laws in, 186 ; vernacular 
 derived from, 186 ;/, ; in schools of 
 Charlemagne, 252, 253, 254 ; Louis 
 1. knows, 278 ; Otto I. tries to learn, 
 349; Otto II. speaks, 350; Hugh 
 Capet does not speak, 359 n. 
 
 Latrocinium, the, 91 
 
 Law, Prankish, Chapter V., 106, 378 
 Gothic, 102 n. 
 
 Roman, see Rome, Law of Ancient, 
 conflict of, 259, 283 and «., 288 
 
 Lech, River, 109, 225 
 
 Lechfeld, battle of the, 343, 348 
 
 Legates, papal, 225, 233, 239, 254, 282 
 
 Legions, the Roman, 37 and «., 46-49, 
 51, 52, 60, 64, 65 
 
 Leo I., Emperor, 94, 95, 96, 226 «. 
 
 Leo III., Hmperor, 204, 208, 214 and 
 «., 215, 219, 220, 221-224, 232, 238 
 275i 381 >i. 
 
 Leo IV., Emperor, 239 
 
 Leo VI., Emperor, 382 
 
 Leo I., Pope, 89, 91, 146, 147 
 
 Leo III., Pope, 255, 256, 257 
 
 Leo IV., Pope, 290, 297, 306, 307 
 
 Leo VII., Pope, 324 
 
 Leo VIII., Pope, 323, 346 
 
 Leonidas, 134 
 
 Leontius, Emperor, 213 
 
 Leovigild, King of Visigoths, 182 
 
 Lerins, 172 
 
 Letts, 250, 368 
 
 Leudastes, 159 
 
 Levee, origin of the, 265 
 
 Lex Ripuaria, 162, 165 
 
 Lex Romana Burgunduoiuin, 162 
 
 Lex Romana Visigolhorum, 162, 1 8 1, 233 
 
 Lex Salica, 162, 1 6;; 
 
 Liber Pontificalis, 66 and «., 183, 221, 
 246, 290, 295 ;/., 299, 322, 323 
 
 Libcrius, 133, 181 
 
 Libcrtus, 174 
 
 Liburnian galleyi, 6 
 
 Licinius, Emperor, 51, 53 
 
 Lii;ge, 310 
 Liguria, 143, 334 
 
 Limes. See Prontiers 
 Limitanei, 37
 
 598 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lingua Rotnuna Kustica, 287, 350, 359 n, 
 
 Lippe, River, 5 
 
 Liris, River. See Garigliano 
 
 Liti, Iceis, 163 and «., 174 
 
 Liturgy, 151, 253 
 
 Liudolf, ancestor of Saxon House, 327 n. 
 
 Liudolf, son of Otto I., 343, 344, 353 
 
 Liutprand, Bishop of Cremona, 
 chronicler, 207, 276, 289, 291 ;/., 315, 
 322, 323, 335, 336 and «., 346 >i., 347, 
 352, 382 
 
 Liutprand, King of Lombards, 1 84- 1 87, 
 222-228, 230 ;/., 232 
 
 Loire, River, 35 ;/., 106, 109, 213, 215, 
 223, 295, 301, 303, 309, 310, 314. 325 
 
 Lombards, traditions of, 43 ; Arianism 
 of, 58, 142, 186; first appear, 89; 
 nobility of, loi «., 275 ; North Italy 
 called after, 127; help Narses, 131, 
 140; early situation of, 139, 140, 
 183; invade Italy, 141, 142, 143; 
 covet Rome, 144, 185-187, 227-232; 
 besiege Ravenna, 145, 229 ; kings and 
 dukes of, 146, 184, 187, 228, 247, 
 249; popes and, 146-150, 183-187, 
 205, 219,222, 223, 240; conversion 
 of, 146, 151, 155, 162, 216; tiie 
 Franks and the, 164, 178; laws of, 
 184, 186, 259, 283 and «. ; archi- 
 tecture of, 186, 277 ; Charles Martel, 
 friend of, 219, 224; Constans' 
 designs on, 228 ; Boniface a friend 
 of, 230 and 71. ; treasure of, 232 ; 
 last king of, 234 ; party in Rome 
 for, 241 ; Charlemagne against, 244 ; 
 Charlemagne, King of, 247, 259 ; 
 serve in French army, 250 ; blood 
 of, in Italy, 274, 276 ; crown of, 
 277 ; bishops of, 306 ; Saracens and 
 the, 307 
 
 London, 325 ;/. 
 
 Longinus, Exarch, 145 
 
 Longinus, St, 329 ;/. 
 
 Lorraine, 106 ; origin of Duchy of, 28S ; 
 Charles the Bald in, 305 ; Bishops of, 
 312 ; struggle for, 326, 328, 329, 330, 
 331 ; becomes German, 331 ; given 
 to Conrad, 343, to Bruno, 344 ; 
 divided, 348 ; Gerbert's name for 
 Lower, 352 ; in peril, 353 ; French 
 grabbing at, 356, 357 ; not Cluniac, 
 362 ; power of Duke in, 377 
 Lothair I., Emperor, 281-290, 294, 296, 
 
 297, 345 
 Lothair II., Emperor, 257 «. 
 Lothair, Duke of Lotharingia, son of 
 
 Lothair I., 297, 299-301, 304, 305 
 Lothair, King of France, 339, 342, 343, 
 
 348, 349, 353, 354, 356, 357, 358 
 
 Lothair, King of Italy, son of Hugh of 
 
 Provence, 337, 338 
 Lotharingia. See Lorraine 
 Louis I., Emperor, 107 and «., 240, 263, 
 
 264, 278-286, 330 «., 378 
 Louis II., Emperor, 289, 290, 297-301, 
 
 305, 306, 308 
 Louis 111., Emperor, 312, 316, 334 
 Louis 11., King of France, the Stam- 
 merer, 307-311 
 Louis HI., King of France, 309, 310 
 Louis I^^, King of France, called 
 
 d'Cuiremer, 324, 326, 338-343 
 Louis v.. King of France, 339, 358 
 Louis XIV., King of France, 252 
 Louis ' the Child,' King of Germany, 
 
 son of Arnulf, 314, 324, 326, 328, 
 Louis, King of East Franks, called 
 'Louis the German,' 281-288, 296 
 297, 301-308 and «., 311, 327 n. 
 
 329 
 Louis II., King of Germany, son of the 
 
 above, 308 and n. 
 Louvain, 312 
 Lucan, 337 and n. 
 Lucretius, 5 
 Luke, St, 245 n. 
 Lund, 356 and n. 
 Lupercal^ 27 
 Lusatia, 341 
 Lusitania, 77 
 Luther, Martin, 280 
 Luxeuil, 162, 172 and «. 
 Lyons, 10 «., 35 "., 172 //., 361 
 
 Maastricht, 310 
 
 Macedonia, Empire of, 9 //. ; the Roman 
 
 Province of, 36 ;/., 65, 99, lOO 
 Macedonian Dynasty, 271, 380-382 
 Machiavelli, 7, 125, 138, 336 
 Macon, 287 
 Magdeburg, 328, 340, 349, 350 and «., 
 
 362, 368 
 Magisler Miilutn^ MagisUr Ulriusque 
 
 Militicc, 44 and «., 94, 95, 134, 144 
 Magna C/iarta, 179 
 Magna Graecia, 120 
 Magna Mater ^ 1 1 
 Ma/ufi, 238 ;/. 
 Mahomet, 197-201 and nn. ; companions 
 
 of, 201, 205 
 Main, River, 109, 180, 286, 328 
 Maine, Province of, 325 
 Maine, Sir Henry S., Ancienl Law, 115 
 Maintenon, Madame de, 25 
 Mainz, 47 ; archbishop of, see of, 217, 
 
 230 «., 279, 298, 344, 350 and «., 
 
 356, 360, 365, 368 ; bridge of, 261 ; 
 
 a Danish king at, 282 ; a capital city,
 
 INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 288 and n. ; plundered, 310; synod 
 at, 312 
 Maitland, F. W., Domesday aud Beyond, 
 
 3.33. 
 
 Majorian, Emperor, 95, 106 
 
 Malltis, 168, 169 
 
 Manorial system, 173-175 
 
 Mansiis, 163, 260 and 11. 
 
 Mantua, 143, 345 
 
 Manuscripts, 103, 253, 297 
 
 Marches, Marks, plantation of, 250, 
 327, 328, 333, 339- 340, 341, 342, 
 344 
 
 Marcian, Emperor, 88, 89, 93, 95, 99 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, Hmperor, 10, 28, 47 «. 
 
 Margaret Sprenghest, 251 n. 
 
 Mark, St, 19 «., 290 
 
 Markgraves, Markgravialcs, 277, 281, 
 370 
 
 Marmora, Sea of, no, 207 
 
 Marne, River, 296, 303 
 
 Marcs, River, 87 
 
 Marozia, 316, 317, 335, 336 
 
 Marseilles, 10, 173, 295 
 
 Martin, I., Pope, 220 
 
 Martin, St, Life of, 66 ; protests against 
 persecution, 69 11. ; his Church at 
 Ravenna, 104 ; Clovis venerates, 
 109; apostle of Gaul, 157, 158; his 
 sanctuary, 158 and «., 167, 213 ; his 
 power, 159, 161 ; poem to, 161 ; his 
 body moved, 295 and n. ; his ven- 
 geance, 331 
 
 Martyrs, number of the, 13 
 
 Mary, the Blessed Virgin, 27, 91, 193, 
 195 «., 221 
 
 Maslama, 214 
 
 Matasuntha, 12 2, 130 
 
 Mathematicians, Mathematics, 86, 360, 
 363 
 
 Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg, 348, 
 357, 364, 366 
 
 Matilda, Queen, 329, 338, 341, 344, 348 
 
 Maurice, Emperor, 145-150, 193, 203, 
 208 
 
 Maurice, St, 329 «. 
 
 Mauritania, 192 ft. 
 
 Mauritania Caesaricnsis, 84 
 
 Mauritania Tingitana, 84, 209, 210 
 
 Maxentius, usurper, ji, 52, 53 
 
 Maximian, Hishop of Ravenna, 102, 
 103 and ;/. 
 
 Maximian, Emperor, 50, 51 
 
 Maximin Daia, usurper, 51, 5 J 
 
 Maximin Thrax, Emperor, 48 
 
 Maximus, usurper, 69 and »/., 70 
 
 Mayor of the Palace, 168 170, 179, 180, 
 
 215 
 Meaux, 296 
 
 Mecca, 196, 197, 199, 200 and «., 201, 
 
 205, 207 «., 209, 236 
 Medicine, study of, 277 
 Medina, 199-201, 200-205, 207 n. 
 Megara, 28 ;/. 
 Meissen, 332, 333, 341 
 Memleben, 351 
 Merida, 282 
 Merobaudes, 68 
 Merovingians, 106, 107 >/., Chapter V,, 
 
 179, 205, 215, 224, 226, 259 
 Merseburg, 332, 340, 35', S^S, 375 
 Mcrsen, 305, ?o6 
 Mervan II., Caliph, 237 
 Mcry-sur-Seine, 88 
 Mesopotamia, 47 
 Messina, 289 
 Methodius, 380 
 Metz, 162, 176, 179, 254, 305 
 Meuse, River, 273 ;/., 288, 309, 310 
 Michael Rhangabes, Emperor, 262 
 Michael, St, 142, 144 
 Migne, Pairolo^ia Lalina, 68 11. 
 Milan, 53, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 73, 126, 171 
 Mih's, 332, 380 
 Milvian Bridge, 53 
 Mincio, River, 89 
 Minden, 244 ;/. 
 Miralnlui Urbis Ro»ut^ 245 and «. 
 
 J//.V5/, 169, 260, 276, 277, 346, 371 
 
 Missionaries in Germany, 180, 216-218, 
 224, 243 ; in Sweden and Denmark, 
 282, 356 ; in Slav countries, 341, 368, 
 369, 380 and ;/. 
 
 Mithras, 11, 26, 60 
 
 Moaviah I., Caliph, 205-207 and ;/., 
 209, 236 
 
 Modena, 347 
 
 Moesia, 47, 65, 99, 134 
 
 Molicre, Le Misatilhvopr, %TJ 
 
 Mommsen, Theodor, Prorinces of the 
 Rornun Empire, 6, 10 11., 63 n. 
 
 Monasteries, Monasticism, Saint 
 Jerome's, 90 ; Egyptian, 58, 59, 61 
 90,91; Saint Benedict's, 116, 151 
 132 and ;/. ; visions of, 136 ;.'. 
 Gregory I. and, 147, 149 ; stories of, 
 160; in Gaul, 172 and «., 175 
 growth of, 218; the Iconoclasts 
 suppress, 222 
 
 Mongols, 238 ;/. 
 
 Monophysites, 91, 92, 98, 99, 103, in, 
 118, 135, 136, 159, 204, 219 
 
 Monuthelites, 204, 219, 220 
 
 Montalembert, Le Comte de, The 
 Monks of the West, 132 ;/. 
 
 Montanists, 21 
 
 Monte Cassino, 116, 141, 142, 156 «., 
 184, 225, 230. 254, 307
 
 400 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Montesquieu, VEsptitJes Lois, i68 
 
 Montmartre, 311 
 
 Mont Cenis, 244 
 
 Moors, 85; in Africa. 120; in Spain, 
 180, 211 and «., 213, 284; meaning 
 of name, 192 «., 208 ;/. ; raiding 
 Gaul, 213, 215, 216, 219, 230, 233, 
 240, 263, (^See also Arabs, Saracens) 
 
 Morava, River, 47 
 
 Moravia, 304, 311, 312 
 
 Moselle, River, 47, 305 
 
 Moses, 196, 198 
 
 Moslem {see also Arabs, Moors, Sara- 
 cens, Islam) not all Arabs, 192 
 It. ; brotherhood of, 199, 201 ; Hegira 
 of, 200 and It. ; colonies of, 202, 209 ; 
 society, 205 ; armies of, 208 «. 
 
 Mosquitoes, 124 
 
 Mouzon, 362 
 
 Mummolus, 160, 178 
 
 Mund, 163, 175 
 
 Municipia, municipal institutions, 9, 32 
 ;/., 146, 255 
 
 Mursa, 47 
 
 Musa, 211, 212, ai3 
 
 Mussulman, 198 (see also Moslem, 
 Arab, Moor, Saracen, Islam) 
 
 Naissus, 47 
 
 Nantes, 177, 295, 302 
 
 Naples, Greek city, 10 ; Belisarius at, 
 122; Totila takes, 129; Lombards 
 threaten, 144 ; Gregory I, defends, 
 149; Duchy of, 184, 306; Greek 
 hold on, 227, 228, 249; popes claim, 
 
 232, 345 ; Charlemagne leaves alone, 
 261; a stirring place, 274; helps 
 Saracens, 289, 306 ; helps pope, 290 ; 
 civil war in, 365 
 
 Napoleon, Emperor, 62, 250 
 Narbonne, 77, 79 and «., 179, 213, 219, 
 
 233, 263 
 
 Narses, 73 «., no, 125, 126, 130-132, 
 
 140, 141, 145 
 Nasrids, 238 n. 
 Nattirwirthschafl, 4 
 Neo-Platonism, Neo-Platonists, 24, 
 
 89 «., 297 
 Nero, Emperor, 10, 14 
 Nerthus, 195 n, 
 Nestorius, 91, 193 
 Neustria, 157, 176, 177, 179, 180, 215, 
 
 216, 225, 241, 243 
 Nicasa, Council of. Creed of, 55, 56, 57 ; 
 
 Second Council of, 239, 254 
 Nicephorium, 134 «. 
 Nicephorus I., Emperor, 262 
 Nicephorus Phocas, Emperor, 347, 348, 
 
 382 
 
 Nicholas I., Pope, 297-300, 306, 359, 
 364 
 
 Nichols, F. M., Mirabilia Urhis Romce 
 (edition of), 245 ;/. 
 
 Nicomedia, 38, 50 
 
 Nike, II 7-1 19 
 
 Nile, River, 205 
 
 Nilus, St, 366 
 
 Nineveh, 195 
 
 Nisibis, 48, 134 
 
 Nismes, 233, 335 
 
 Nithard, Count, Four Books of Histories, 
 322 
 
 Nobility, hereditary, loi and «., 108, 
 170 
 
 Noirmoutier, 295 
 
 Nomenoe, 302 
 
 Nordlingen, 27 ;/. 
 
 Noricum, 47, 49, 99, no, 128, 141, 142 
 
 Normandy, Normans, Saxo on the, 
 292 ; origin of, 294, 295, 325 and n. ; 
 land tenure of, 326 ; Dukes of, 326, 
 331, 358 ; rebelling, 341 
 
 Northmen {see also Danes) coming 
 of, first raids of, 273 and «,, 287, 
 288 ; raids of, 291-296, 302 ; Sagas of, 
 292, 293 ; classes of, 293, 294 ; name 
 of, 294 ; bribes to, 296, 314 ; the 
 Frank kings and, 303, 304 ; second 
 period of raids of, 308-311 ; at 
 Abbeville, 309; besiege Paris, 310, 
 311; King Odo and, 314; Hun- 
 garians and, 315 
 
 North Sea, 251 
 
 Northumbria, 156, 221, 294 
 
 Norway, Norwegians, 291-294, 325, 381 
 
 Noire Dame de Paris, 310 
 
 Novoe, 47 
 
 Novempopulania, 79 ;/. 
 
 Noyon, 326 «., 374 ;/. 
 
 Numidia, 84, 121 
 
 Nunneries, 173 
 
 Nymwegen, 27 «., 296 
 
 Obotrites, 242, 250 
 
 Octavian, see John XII., Pope 
 
 Octroi, 29 «. 
 
 Odenwald, 63 
 
 Oder, River, 178, 329, 341 
 
 Odo, Abbot of Cluny, 337, 361 
 
 Odo (Eudes), Duke of Burgundy, 349 
 
 Odo, King of France, 310-314, 326, 377 
 
 Odoacer, 95-101, 104, 143 n. 
 
 ' CEcumenical Patriarch,' 147, 150 
 
 CEscus, 47 
 
 Oissel, Isle of, 310 
 
 Oldenburg, 351 n. 
 
 Oleg, 381, 382 
 
 Oliver, 248
 
 INDEX 
 
 401 
 
 Olybrius, Emperor, 95 
 
 Olympiodorus, 66 
 
 Oman, Professor C. W., Art of War in 
 
 the Middle Ai;>-s, 105 n. 
 Omar, Calipli, 198, 20O w., 202, 203- 
 
 205, 207 ;/., 237 
 Ommiads, Ommiali, 205, 206 ;/., 207 
 
 and «., 236-238 ;/., 248, 264, 271, 334 
 Oplifnatfs, 165, 168 
 Ordeal, the, 167, 168, 279, 371 
 Or do cur id lis, 185 n. 
 Orestes, 95 
 Origen, 21 
 Orkneys, 294. 
 
 Orleans, 88, 176, 296, 360-362 
 Orosius, 66 
 Orvieto, 247 
 Osnabrlick, 244 ;/. 
 Ostia, 74, 123, 255; New Ostia, 289, 
 
 290 
 Osl-Mark. See Aii-tr'a 
 Ostrogoths (^see also Goths), 64 ; witli 
 
 Huns, 87, 89 ; in Pannonia, 89, 99 ; 
 
 invade Italy, iod ; kingship of, loi 
 
 and «. ; law of, 102 n. ; deliver Aries, 
 
 108; decline and fall of, 121-129; 
 
 final end of, 131, 132 ; Justinian and 
 
 the, 138 ; remnant joins Lombards, 
 
 143 
 
 Oswald, St, 362 
 
 Othman, Caliph, I98, 205 
 
 Otranto, 129 
 
 Otio, Duke of Saxony, father of Henry 
 I-, 328, 329 
 
 Otto I., Emperor, 323, 329, 330, 334 ; 
 accession of, 338 ; hammer of Slavs, 
 339-343, 367 ; attitude to France, 340 ; 
 first Italian expedition of, 342; defeats 
 Hungarians, 343 ; second Italian 
 expedition of. becomes Emperor, 345, 
 346; administers Italy, 347, 348; 
 relations with East, 347, 348 ; in 
 Germany, 348, 349, 369-371 n. ; death 
 o^ 351 ; receives gifts, 354 ; weak- 
 ness of, 369, 370 ; a lawsuit before, 
 371 and w. 
 
 Otto II., Emperor, 323, 339, 346, 347, 
 350, 351, 353-357, 36«-370 
 
 Otto III., Emperor, 355-357, 359. 362- 
 369 
 
 Otto, Duke of Brabant, 358 
 
 Otto, Duke of Swabia, 353 
 
 Ottoman Tinks, 206 ;/., 221, 238 n. 
 
 Oviedo, 264 
 
 Oxus, River, 210 
 
 Paperhorn, 244 >/., 248 
 
 Paganism, 23, 25-27, 58-62, 68, 70, 173 
 
 Pagus, 169 
 
 Palace, see Mayor of the Palace, 
 
 Palalium 
 Palastrina, 276, 365 
 Palatine, Counts, 371 
 Palatine Hill, 168, 196 ;/. 
 Palatine House, 133, 184 
 Palatine Librarj', 152 
 Palatini, 37 
 Pa/atuim, 179 
 Palermo, 289 
 Palestine, 203, 221 
 Palmyra, 49, 134 
 Pampeluna, 248 
 Pandects, the, 116, 133 «. 
 Pandulf, 'Ironhead,' 348, 354 
 ' Pange Lingua^ 16 1 
 Pannonia, 47, 49, 65, 88, 89, 99, 100, 
 
 lio, 134, 141, 142, 158, 250 
 Pantheon, 93, 206, 221 
 Paris, 63 ; fair of, 172 ;/. ; siege of, 273 
 and «., 293, 310, 311; capital of 
 Charles the Bald, 288 ; sacked 295, 
 296 ; walls of, 303 ; county of, 314 ; 
 RoUo's attempt on, 325 ; Otto 1. 
 marches on, 340; Otto II. marches 
 on, 354 ; Cluniac, 362 ; the capital, 
 372 ; the property of a count, 
 377 
 Parma, 345 
 Particular ismus, 372 
 Paschal i.. Pope, 281-283 
 Paschasius Radbert, 1 9 n. 
 Passati, 217, 368 
 Paterno, 367 
 ' Patrician,' title of, 94, 96, loo, 106, 
 
 131, 141, 145. 230, 231, 241, 335 
 Patrocimum, 30 w., 31, 173 
 Paul the Deacon, 139 «., 141 and //., 
 142, 146, 155, 183, 184, 186 //., 219, 
 253. 254 
 Paul, St, 15, 16, 19 «., 20 «., 22, 26 ; 
 barbarians fear, 75, 89 ; a coinmission 
 from, 161 ; tomb of, 221, 231 ; head 
 of, 245 «. ; a 'heretic,' 280; a 
 missionary, 354 
 Paul -without- the -Walls, Church of 
 
 Saint-, 289, 307 
 Paul I., Pope, 234, 241, 244, 255 
 Pax Romana, 3, 10, 28, 46, 49 and «., 
 
 50, 94 
 Pavia, Odoacer at, 95 ; Theodoric 
 at, 104; Goths hold, 127, 131; 
 Lombards besiege, 143 ; Lombard 
 capital, 143, 149, 185, 187, 228, 288 ; 
 Stephen II. at, 229; Astulph at, 
 231 ; Desiderius at, 234, 242, 244 ; 
 Charlemagne blockades and takes, 
 245, 246, 247 ; capitulary of, 249 ; 
 Hungarians burn, 274, 315, 335 ; 
 
 2 C
 
 402 
 
 INDEX 
 
 crowning place, 277, 334 ; journey 
 to Venice from, 291 n. ; Archbishop 
 of Ravenna at, 299 
 
 Peacock, T. L., 324 
 
 Pehigius I., Pope, 136, 137 
 
 Peloponnesus, 72 
 
 Pentapolis, 223, 229, 231, 232, 244, 
 246, 365 
 
 Persia, Persians, corrupt Christianity, 
 20; hereditary foes, 38, 46, 68, 139, 
 150; beat Valerian, 48; Galerius 
 beats, 50; bishops at Niccca, 56; 
 Constantius II. and, 60 ; beat Julian, 
 60 ; Goths hate, 64 ; Theodosius If. 
 defeats, 86 ; Anastasius and the, 
 no; Justinian's wars with the, 1 14, 
 118, 119, 128, 129, 134; Greek pro- 
 fessors go to, 116 ; trade with, 135 ; 
 Avars and the, 138 ; fresh victories 
 of, 145 ; refuge for heretics, 192 ; 
 culture in, 193 ; attack Empire, 193, 
 194; beaten, 195; Mahomet sum- 
 mons, 198, 201 ; end of, 202 ; 
 heretical Moslem, 206 n. ; Abbassid 
 rising in, 237 ; lose touch with 
 civilisation, 271 
 
 Persian Gulf, 135, 202 
 
 Perugia, 143, 148 
 
 Peter, St, author of St Mark's Gospel, 
 19 n. ; known to Clement, 22, 27 ; 
 basilica of, tomb of, 53, 220, 223, 
 231, 232, 257, 289, 314, 355- 363; 
 Goths fear, 75 ; Huns fear, 89 ; 
 Gregory I. represents, 151 ; a com- 
 mission from, t6i ; forbids a battle, 
 225 ; crowns Pippin, 229 ; nominates 
 a patrician, 231 ; writes a letter, 232 ; 
 donations to, 234, 246, 345 ; head of. 
 245 n. ; Hadrian I. invokes, 249 ; 
 claims dominion, 282 ; condemns 
 Photius, 300 
 
 Petra Pertusa, 143 
 
 Petronius Maximus, 92 
 
 Philagathus, see John XVI., Pope 
 
 Philip, anti-Pope, 241 
 
 Philip II., King of Spain, 182 
 
 Phocas, Emperor, 150, 193, 194 
 
 Photius, 300 and ;/. 
 
 Piacenza, 93, 143 
 
 Picardy, 106 «., 326 
 
 Picts, 63 
 
 Pilgrim, Bishop of Passau, 368 
 
 Pilgrimages, 90, 215, 218, 221, 263, 279, 
 368 
 
 Pippin I., Mayor of Palace, 179 
 
 Pippin II., Mayor of Palace, 179, 180, 
 217 
 
 Pippin, King of the Franks, 176, 224- 
 234, 240, 241, 244, 246, 247 
 
 Pippin, son of Charlemagne, 262, 280, 
 286 
 
 Pippin, son of Louis I., 281, 284-286 
 
 Pisa, 295, n. 
 
 Pius IX., Pope, 252 
 
 Placitum^ 378 
 
 Platasa, 28 n. 
 
 Plato, Platonism, 23, 89 and «., Ill, 
 297 
 
 Plutarch, De Defeciu Oracu/orum, 28 «. 
 
 Po, River, 127, 291 ;/., 335 
 
 I'trni^ 289 
 
 Poitiers, 108, 141, 158, 172, 218, 285 
 
 Poitou, 349 
 
 Poland, 351, 353, 354, 368, 369 
 
 Police, 25 
 
 Pollentia, 72 
 
 Poll-tax, 30 
 
 Poly bins, 119 ;/. 
 
 Polycarp, St, 22 
 
 Ponthion-sur-Marne, 229 
 
 Pompey, 103 
 
 Pomptine Marsh, 103 
 
 Pontifex Maximus, /'ouli/ices. College 
 of, 20 «., 26, 54, 68 
 
 Pontoise, 310 
 
 Pontus, 36 11. 
 
 Pope, Papacy, II ; persecuting, 13, 
 14 «., 135, 136, 137, 280 ; early creed 
 of, 17 ". ; claims in fourth centuiy, 
 58, 68 and «., 91, 92 ; Catholic spirit 
 of, 59 ; increasing power of, 63 ; leads 
 Western ideas, 98 ; imperial confirma- 
 tion of, 103, 104, 227, 277, 281 
 and ;/., 282, 283, 345 ; elections of, 
 104 ; welcomes Belisarius, 123 ; 
 monks the champions of, 132 ; 
 Justinian and the, 133, 136; leads 
 the Romans, 144, 149 ; quarrels 
 with Constantinople and Ravenna, 
 145, 146, 184, 1S5, 187 ; Gregory 1. 
 founder of, 146, 147, 151 ; weakness 
 in seventh century, 155 ; over- 
 shadows all bishoprics, 171, 218, 227, 
 228; hostility to Lombards, )78, 
 183-187, 227, 228 ; letters of, 183 ; 
 end of sovereignty of, 200 «. ; 
 infallibility of, 204, 313 ; missionary 
 zeal of, 217, 218; on monothelites, 
 219, 220 ; on iconoclasts, 222, 223 ; 
 Boniface and the, 224 ; appeals to 
 Franks, 229 ; donations to, 232-234, 
 246 and «., 247, 345, 365 ; sends 
 legates, 239 ; Charlemagne and the, 
 255i 256 ; attitude to Holy Roman 
 Empire, 257, 258, 277, 278, 307 ; 
 degradation of, 274-276, 278, 
 313. 334; Louis I. and the, 281, 
 285 ; forged letters of early, 298
 
 INDEX 
 
 403 
 
 299 ; Hincmar and the, 298, 299 ; 
 
 mortality of, 316; dynasty of, 317 ; 
 
 Alberic and the, 337 ; Romans and 
 
 the, 345; nominated by Saxon 
 
 emperors, 346, 347, 363 
 Population, 28, 29, 44 
 Populonia, 247 
 
 Porto Romano, 123, 129, 255, 290 
 Portugal, 181 
 Posen, 368 
 
 Possessio, 231-233, 247 
 Powell, F, Y., and Vigfusson, C, 
 
 Origines /s/atKiicir, 292 and ti. 
 Piurdium, 173 
 Pnrfectus Urin, 38 and «., 74, 97, 102, 
 
 131, 133, 147, 365 
 Prcetor, 115 
 
 Praetorian Guards, 34, 36 
 Prague, 366, 368 
 Prayerbook, the English, 15 
 Precarium, 3 1 
 
 Prefectures, 35 and « , 36 and w. 
 Priests, Christian, origin of, 19, 20 and 
 
 11. ; heathen, 20 n. ; Jewish, 20 n. 
 Primogeniture, 371 
 Princeps, Principate, 8, 12, 29, 30, 34, 
 
 35.37.63,65,71,326 
 Priscus, Bishop of Lyons, 171 
 Priscus, historian, 66, 88 «. 
 ' Privilege of Louis L,' 282, 283, 345 
 ' Privilege of Otto I.,' 345 
 Probus, Emperor, 49, 50, 134 
 Procopius, 119 and «., 122, 130 
 Provence, 94, 108, 128, 177,241,275, 
 
 297. 307. 308, 312, 315, 316, 335, 336 
 
 and «., 338 
 Provinces, the Roman, 9, 10 
 Prussians, 368 
 Pulcheria, Empress, 83, 86 
 Purgatory, 136 «. 
 Pyrenees, Mountains, 77, 180 and «., 
 
 181, 192, 213, 219, 243, 248, 263 
 
 QUEDLINBURG, 328, 332, 348, 351, 357 
 Quentin, St, 326 ;/. 
 Quiercy-sur-Oise, 307, 378 
 
 Raban Maur, 279 
 Rachimbiirgi^ 166 
 Rachis, King of Lombards, 228 
 Rackham, Acts of the Apostles^ II n. 
 Radagaisus, 73 
 Radegunda, 172 
 Ragnar Lodbrog, 295 
 Raoul, King of France, 330, 331, 338 
 Rathlin Island, 294 
 Ratiaria, 47 
 
 Ravenna, chronicle of, 66 ; a capital, 
 73, 104, 131, 141, 145, 148 ; in 
 
 danger, 74, 75 ; Ilonorius at, 77, 78, 
 79 ; Galla Placidia at, 83, 85 ; 
 Romulus at, 95, 96 ; Odoacer at, 
 95-99 ; Maximian of, I02 ; Theo- 
 doric at, 104; fleet of, 98, no; 
 Pope John L dies at, in, n2 ; 
 Amalasuntha, Witiges, at, 122, 
 125 ; Belisarius blockades, 126, 
 takes, 127 ; second blockade of, 
 129, 130; delivered, 131; church 
 of San Vitale at, 133 ; Lombards 
 fail to take, 143, 145, 146, 148, 184 ; 
 Lombards take and restore, 223, 
 229, 232 ; exarchate of, 145, 148, 
 149, 150, 183-186, 220, 223, 227; 
 buildings at, 237 ; Desiderius clutches 
 at, 244 ; pope does not get, 247 ; 
 Greek designs on, 248 ; Archbishop 
 bullied, 299 ; Berengar grabs at, 
 344 ; Gerbert at, 351, 352. 364, 367 ; 
 Theophano at, 348 ; synod at, 350 ; 
 Benedict VII. at, 354 ; importance 
 of, 360 
 
 Reccared, King of V'isigoths, 151, 182 
 
 Recknitz, River, 343 
 
 Red Sea, 6, 135, 196, 205 
 
 Regensburg, 47, 217, 288, 343, 349, 
 372 
 
 Reggio, 75, 122 
 
 Regino, Abbot of Priim, 251 n., 287, 
 322 
 
 Pegu/ci, the monastic, 132 and «., 252, 
 
 279 
 
 Rehoboam, 139 and w. 
 
 Reichenau, 253, 349 
 
 Relics, worship of, 86, 90, 215, 218, 
 221, 245 and «., 279 
 
 Remigius, Remy, St, 107, 310, 331 
 
 Renaissance, a primitive, 254, 264 
 
 Renegades, 292 «. 
 
 Rennes, 177, 302 
 
 Responsa Prudentum^ n5 
 
 Rhaetia, 74, 98, 109, no, 128, 217 
 
 Rheims, 107 n., 159 and «., 281, 310, 
 324, 341, 351, 357-364, 374 n. 
 
 Rhetoric, 23 
 
 Rhine, River, as frontier, 27 «., 47, 49 
 and «., 51, 73, 162, 274, 286, 287, 288 
 and «., 306, 331, 357, 370, 372, 374; 
 Burgundians on, 78 ; Clovison, 180 ; 
 a Prankish river, 169 ; Frisians on, 
 180; Charles Martel on, 224; 
 Saxons reach, 242, 243 ; Charle- 
 magne bridges, 261 ; Northmen raid- 
 ing on, 273 «., 294, 295, 309 ; wine 
 of, 288 n. ; a German river. 305 ; 
 Henry L and Charles the Simple 
 meet on, 330 ; Gilbert drowned in, 
 340 ; Palatinate of, 37 1
 
 404 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rhodes, 49 ;/., 205 
 
 Rhone, River, 295, 301 
 
 Rialto, 262 
 
 Richaid the Fearless, 326, 341 
 
 Richer, 324, 339, 359 «., 363 
 
 Ricimer, 93, 94, 95 
 
 Rimini, 125, 126 
 
 ' Ring,' The, 250 
 
 Ripen, 341 
 
 Riviera, 252, 309 
 
 Roads, the Roman, 27 ; from Marseilles 
 to Boulogne. 172 «. ; the 'Great 
 Eastern' or 'Great Western,' 47, 100, 
 122, 130, 141. See a/so Via. 
 
 Robert Curthose, 340 
 
 Robert the Strong, 303, 310, 358, 376;/., 
 
 379 
 Robert I., King of France, 314, 325, 
 
 326, 330 and «. 
 Robert II., King of France, 337 «., 
 
 363, 364, 373 
 
 Roderick, King of Visigoths, 183, 211 
 
 Roeskilde, 292 
 
 Roland, 248 
 
 Rollo, 292, 325, 326 
 
 Roma Dea, 4, 8, 12, 13, 22, 35, 71' 
 
 Romagna, 227 n. 
 
 Romaic Language, 135 
 
 Romania^ 45 and «., 71, 74, 76, 93 
 
 Roman us, 146, 148, 149 
 
 Rome, Ancient, Army of, 5, 9, 10, 36, 37 
 and «., 44-50, 60-67, 86, 95 ; con- 
 quests of, 210 
 
 Economics of, 4 and ;/. 
 Law of, 7, 12, 15, 22, 24, 32 ; 
 Theodoric upholds, 102 ; Justinian 
 codifies, 115, 116, 133 and;/. ; adapted 
 to Greeks, 208, 381 and n. ; ecclesiasti- 
 cised, 215 n.\ in Prankish countries, 
 171, 175 ; in Italy, 184 ; giving way, 
 259; studied in Italy, 277, 283 and 
 ;/. ; Otto III. and, 365 ; Basil I. and, 
 381 and n. 
 
 Literature of, 5 
 Navy of, 6, 48 
 Rehgion of, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11 
 Senate of, 6 ; exempt from taxa- 
 tion, 29, 30 and «., 31 ; wealth of, 
 35 ; neglected, 38 ; placid, 39, 63 ; 
 Probus conciliates, 50 ; hostile to 
 Maxentius, 52 ; hates Constanti- 
 nople, 54 and n. ; hates monks, 
 58 ; begs for statue, 69 ; Theodosius 
 snubs, 70 ; activity of, 92, 95 ; in 
 Gothic times, 102, 103, iii, 123 ; 
 shadow ot, 131, 254, 255, 257, 336, 
 
 337 
 Rome, City of, Plebs of, 6, 13, 24, 34, 
 38, 103 ; Jews in, 16 ; losing influence, 
 
 36, 37, 38, 54 ;'nd «., 71, 75, 92 ; 
 walls of, 49, 123, 129; see also 
 Aurelian ; Maxentius at, 52 ; Con- 
 stantius II. at, 57 ; Athanasius at, 
 58; bored with Julian, 61; 'wid- 
 owed,' 69, 70; Honorius at, 73 and «.; 
 Alaric besieges, 74, takes, 75 ; com- 
 pared to Babylon and Sodom, 76 ; 
 saved from Attila, 89 ; Vandals sack, 
 92 ; art treasures destroyed in, 92, 
 93, 152 ; resents Avitus, 93 ; local 
 worship in, 93 ;;. ; Ricimer plunders, 
 95 ; Theodoric loves, 103 ; sieges of, 
 123, 124, 125, 129, 131, 144; empty 
 of men, 129, 131 ; Narses governs, 
 133, 141; papalism of, 136, 147; 
 jealousy of Constantinople, 145, 183- 
 187, 204, 219, 220 and >/., 223 ; 
 Gregory I. at, 147-152 ; danger from 
 Lombards, 148, 149, 186, 223, 224, 
 227, 229, 231, 232 ; ignorance in, 
 156 «, ; 'formerly the Capital of the 
 World,' 183, 184, 241; new aristocracy 
 of, 184, 185, 228, 229, 241, 256, 275, 
 276, 282, 283, 316, 317, 364, 366 ; 
 Constans II. at, 206 ; pilgrimages to, 
 221 ; council at, 223 ; Prankish 
 embassy at, 226 ; self-consciousness 
 of, 228, 275 ; barbarism of, 241 ; 
 Charlemagne at, 245, 246, 249, 256 ; 
 relics at, 245 ;/. ; harbours of, 255 ; 
 militia of, 228, 241, 256, 336, 
 337 ; once more a capital, 271, 273, 
 288, 365 ; dangers of, 273 and n. ; 
 fighting spirit of, 276 ; art dead at, 
 277 ; WH5Z at, 277 ; Lothair I. at, 283 ; 
 insurrections at, 284, 285, 335, 354 ; 
 papal parties in, 313 ; Arnulf and 
 Lambert at, 313 ; fortified houses in 
 (?), 317 and n. ; Flodoard visits, 324 ; 
 Saracens threaten, 334 ; Hugh of 
 Provence at, 336 ; regions of, 336 ; 
 Albericin, 336, 337, 342 ; Otto I. at, 
 344-347 ; Otto II. and, 354, 355 ; 
 Theophano at, 357 ; Otto III. at, 
 363, 364 ; its real wishes, 366 
 
 Rome, Duchy of, Duke of, 134, 144, 148, 
 150, 184, 231, 246, 336 
 
 Romuald, St, 366 and «. 
 
 Romulus, Emperor, 95, 96 
 
 Romulus, King of Rome, 76 
 
 Roncesvalle?, 248 
 
 Rossano, 355 and n. 
 
 Roswitha, 350 ;/. 
 
 Rotharis, King of Lombards, 1 8 5, 1 86 
 
 Rouen, 292, 295, 325 and ;/., 326, 341 
 
 Rudolf I., King of Burgundy, 312, 316 
 
 Rudolf IL, King of Burgundy, 312 
 «., 329, 330, 335-337
 
 INDEX 
 
 405 
 
 Rugians, 87, 95, 9S 
 
 Ruhr, River, 371 
 
 Rupert, St, 216 and //. 
 
 Rurik, 381 
 
 Russia, 65, 89, 271, 369, 380-382 
 
 Saale, River, 251, 328 
 Sabine district, 247 
 Sacramenlum, Sacr;inicnts, 19 
 Sagas, 142, 291-294 
 Sahara, 27, 84 
 
 Saints, Lives of the, 161, 162, 322 ; 
 prayers to the, 90 ; venge;ince of tlie, 
 331 ; worship of local, 195 ;/., 215, 
 220, 221 
 Salarian Gale, 75 
 Salerno, 274, 277, 365 
 Salian?, 106 
 Salona, 50 
 Salvian, 17 
 
 Salzburg, 216 and w., 217 anil v., 368 
 Santiago di Compostella, 158 
 Saone, River, 35 «., 288, 308, 311 «. 
 Saracens. See also Arabs, Moors 
 wandering, 134, 194, 196 ; at Poitiers 
 141, 219 ; name of, 192 ;/., 208 and n. 
 in Sardinia, 223 ; in Sicily, 223, 289 
 367 ; Liutprand sends help against 
 224 ; besiege Rome, 273 and n. 
 trouble Charlemagne, 248 ; plunder 
 Italy, 255, 289, 300, 309, 315, 334 
 Leo IV. beats, 290; compared to 
 Northmen, 291 ; sack Aries and 
 Marseilles, 295 ; Nicholas 1. neglects, 
 300; John VIII. resists, 306, 307; 
 Charles the Fat fails to heat, 309; do 
 not combine with Hungarians, 315 ; 
 in Provence, 315, 338; their fortresses, 
 333 ; John X. beats, 334 ; John XII. 
 uses, 345 ; send gifts to Otto I., 354 ; 
 beat Otto II., 355 ; danger from, 374 ; 
 Zoe sends help against, 334, 382 
 Sarago?sa, 248 
 Sardica, 58, 130 
 Sardinia, 4 //., 104, 120, 122,211,223, 
 
 282 
 Sarmatians, 53 
 Sassanids, 48, 193, 195, 238 
 Sassoferrato, 131 
 ' Satraps," 242, 243 
 Save, River, 47, 69, 140 
 Savoyards, 180 u. 
 Saxo Grammaticus, 292 
 Saxon emperors, invigorate Christen- 
 dom, 271 ; deal with popes, 281 «. ; 
 form of government of, 346-349, 369, 
 370 
 Saxons, Saxony, invade Britain, 38, 45, 
 50, 177; as yo-f/crrt//, 57; compared 
 
 to Franks, 105 ; on Loire, 106 ; in 
 Lombard army, 143 ; in Merovingian 
 times, 162 ; hostile to Franks, 178 
 missions to, 151, 217, 218, 225, 226 
 Pippin fights, 230, neglects, 231 
 Charlemagne's wars with, 242-244, 
 247, 249 ; serve in Frank army, 250 
 rebel, 251, 304; Christians, 282 
 jealous of Bavaria, 286 ; school at 
 Rome of, 289 ; Northmen harry, 294, 
 295 ; Hungarians harry, 315 ; Duchy 
 of, 327 and ;/., 328, 329; infantry of, 
 333 ; loyalty of, 340, 353, 3S6, 369, 
 379 ; struggle with Slavs, 343 
 Scabini, 166 
 
 Scandinavia, early traditions of, 43 
 Scheggia, 131 
 Scheldt, River, 106, 288, 295, 304 n. 
 
 Schlei, estuary, 251 «., 328, 333 
 
 Schleswig, 333, 339 
 
 ' Schnippy - Schnappenhausen,' Counts 
 of, 372 
 
 Schools, 23, 237, 253, 271, 276, 377 
 
 Schroder, Deutsche Rechtsgeschkhte^ 
 102 w., 340 «., 371 n. 
 
 Scoring, 142 
 
 Scotland, 216 
 
 Scyrians, 95 
 
 Scythia. Scythians, 48 ;/., 381 
 
 Seigneurs, 374-377 
 
 Seine, River, 295, 296, 303, 304 >/., 
 308-311, 314, 325 and «. 
 
 Selim I., Sultan, 238 «. 
 
 Seljukians, 271, 381, 382 
 
 Selymbria, 1 10 
 
 Senate. See Rome, Ancient, Senate of 
 
 Senatrixy 335 
 
 Seiiatus- Consu/ta, 1 1 5 
 
 Senlis, 358 
 
 Sens, 311 
 
 Septem Fata/ia, 26, 27 
 
 Septimania, 281, 284, 285, 301, 302, 335 
 
 Serapis, 26 
 
 Serbs, 250, 304 
 
 Serfs, serfdom, 163 and >i., 174, 215 ;/. 
 
 Sergius I., Pope, 220 
 
 Sergius II., Pope, 289, 290 
 
 Sergius III., Pope, 316, 317 
 
 Sergius, St, 160, 178 
 
 SeveruB, Emperor, 95 
 
 Seville, 213, 295 
 
 Sheriff, 169 
 
 Sheriffmuir, 72 
 
 Shetland Isles, 292 
 
 Shiites, 206 n. 
 
 Sicily, feeds Rome, 4 and «., 122; 
 Greek, 10, 227, 249, 270, 275 ; 
 declares for Theodoric, lOO ; Vandals 
 in, 104 ; Justinian's fleet in, 1 19, 120, 
 
 2C 2
 
 4o6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 122 ; Romans fly to, 124 ; Totila 
 takes, 130; Pope Vigilius in, 137; 
 Constans II. visits, 206; papal 
 estates in, 223, 232 ; Saracens raid 
 and conquer, 223, 273, 289, 354 ; 
 Constantine V. defends, 239 ; Charle- 
 magne leaves alone, 261 ; popes 
 claim, 282 
 
 Siege-craft, 293, 324 
 
 Simeon of Antioch, St, 173 
 
 Simony, 173, 361, 364 
 
 Singidunum, 47 
 
 Sirmium, 47, 59 
 
 Slavery, 11, 18, 28, 32, 201, 249 
 
 Slavs, 33 n. ; Franks confront, 109 ; in 
 Pannonia, 134; savages, 138, 140, 
 142, 176 ; raiding westwards, 178, 
 225, 242, 250, 272, 327 ; Dagobert 
 beats, 179 ; Persians treat with, 194 ; 
 Constantine IV. beats, 208 ; help 
 Justinian II., 209; in Balkan 
 peninsula, 238 ; on Danube, 239 ; 
 absorbed into Christendom, 271 ; 
 Carolings fight, 273 ; in Dalmatia, 
 301 ; driven'back, 329, 331, 332, 333, 
 339. 34I)!343 ; gaining ground again, 
 340 ; language of, 350 ; Gerbert 
 hates, 352 ; Henry the Quarrelsome 
 flies to, 353 ; destroy bishoprics, 356 ; 
 Theophano fights, 357 ; incapable of 
 civilisation, 367 ; Christianised, 368, 
 369, 380 ; alphabet of, 380 «. ; Swedes 
 organise, 381 
 
 Sleipnir, 294 
 
 Smaragdus, 145, 146 
 
 Snorri Sturluson, 292 
 
 Socialism, Slate, 24, 38 
 
 Sodom, 76 
 
 Soissons, 106, 107 «., 176, 226, 285 
 
 Solidus, 166 ;/. 
 
 Solomon, King of the Jews, 139 and «., 
 
 245 ''• 
 Somme, River, 106, 282, 309, 326 «. 
 Sophia, St, Church of, 1 18, 193, 237, 
 
 254 
 
 Soracte, Mount, 367 
 
 Soudan, the, 50, 203 
 
 Spain, feeds Rome, 4 v. ; diocese of, 
 35 n. ; a usurper in, 76 ; barbarians 
 invade, 77 ; Goths invade, 78, 79 and 
 "•) 93i 94) 99 ; Vandals leave, 83 ; 
 a piece of Africa, 84 ; reconstructed, 
 97 ; Justinian and, 114, 133; turns 
 Catholic, 151, 155, 182; early 
 united, 155 ; compared with Gaul, 
 I55i 156; heretics of, 160; in sixth 
 and seventh centuries, 176, 180-183 ", 
 Dagobert and, 179 ; climate of, 181 ; 
 fall of, 183, 192 ; civil wars in, 205, 
 
 218, 248, 263; Moors conquer, 211 
 and «., 212, 213 and «., 218, 219; 
 under Moslem rule, 237, 238 and 
 n. ; Ommiad prince escapes to, 238 ; 
 Charlemagne and, 240, 247, 248, 
 259, 263, 264 ; Arabic influence on, 
 237, 270 ; will revive, 271 ; march 
 of, 263, 264, 281, 284, 301, 302 ; 
 Louis I. and, 282 ; vines brought 
 from, 288 n. ; Saracens raiding from, 
 289, 295, 309, 334 ; Northmen attack, 
 295; Alphonso III. in, 302 ; fortresses 
 in, 333 
 
 Spalato, 51 
 
 Spathar, 262 
 
 Speyer, 288 n. 
 
 Spoleto, 148, 149, 184, 187, 227, 228, 
 246, 247, 277, 290, 312, 313, 314, 
 316, 334, 344, 345, 34^ 
 
 Steele, 371 
 
 Stefano Rotondo, Church of San, 93 w. 
 
 Stephen, King of Hungary, 369 
 
 Stephen II., Pope, 226, 228, 230 «., 232, 
 234, 244, 358 
 
 Stephen III., Pope, 241, 242, 244 
 
 Stephen IV., Pope, 281 
 
 Stephen V., Pope, 313 
 
 Stephen VI., Pope, 313 
 
 Stewards, 373, 376 
 
 Stilicho, 71, 72, 73, 74, 86 w. 
 
 Stoics, 10, 17 
 
 Strassburg, 60, 217, 287, 305 
 
 Suhurj-a^ 92 
 
 Suetonius, 11 w., 253 
 
 Sueves, 45, 73, 77, 93,94, 181, 182 
 
 Sulpicius Severus, 66 
 
 Sun, God of the, 26, 49, 60 
 
 Sunnites, 206 «. 
 
 Susa, 231 
 
 Swabia, 109, 304, 327 and «., 329, 338, 
 
 344, 348, 353, 372 
 
 Swatopluk, 311, 312, 313 
 
 Swatoslav, 382 
 
 Sweden, Swedes, 44, 282, 356, 381 
 
 Syagrius, 106 
 
 Sylvester I., Pope, 52, 246 and n. 
 
 Sylvester II., Pope (Gerbert), on 
 Italians, 276 ; independence of, 280, 
 instructed by demons, 300 «. ; letters 
 of, 324, 351, 352 and «. ; shocked, 337 
 n. ; character and career of, 351-367 ; 
 gives crown to Hungary, 369 
 
 Symmachus, O. Aurelius Memmius, 
 102, III 
 
 Symmachus, Pope, 104 
 
 Synods, appeals from, 298 
 
 Syracuse, 275, 289 
 
 Syria, recovered from Zenobia, 49 ; 
 Persians waste, 128 ; Saracens
 
 INDEX 
 
 407 
 
 ravage, 134; a Syrian with a relic, 
 160 ; apostasy in, 192 ; Saracens of, 
 194 ; Arabs conquer, 202, 203 ; 
 Roman institutions in, 209 ; Le(j 
 III. from Q) 214 ; Gregory 111. from, 
 223 ; under Moslem rule, 237, 238 ; 
 losing touch with civilisation, 271 
 
 Tacitus, ioi, 139, 170 
 
 Tacfica, 382 
 
 Tagin^, 131 
 
 Tanaro, River, 72 
 
 Tangiers, 84, 210, 211 
 
 Taranto, 290, 355 
 
 Tarik, 212 
 
 Tartars, 271 
 
 Tassilo, 249, 250 
 
 Taunus, Mountains, 27 ». 
 
 Taurus, Mountains, 381 
 
 Taxation, taxes, the Roman, 29-34, 
 
 128, 131, 138, 164, 203; the Prankish, 
 
 164, 167, 169, 174, 378 ; the Arab, 
 
 203 
 Taylor, II. O., T/ie Medicrval Mind, 
 
 89 n. 
 Teano, 247 
 Telemachus, 73 
 Terence, 350 «. 
 Terracina, 149 
 Tertullian, 13, 20 w., 21, 84 
 Teutoburger Wald, 5 
 Thamugadi, 85 n, 
 Thankmar, 338, 340 
 Theiss, River, 311, 312 
 Themes, 208, 209, 275 
 Theodahat, 112, 121, 122, 133 
 Theodelinda, Queen, 146, 148, 151, 
 
 185, 186 
 Theodora, Empress, 114, 118, 119 w., 
 
 139 
 Theodora, Seuatrix (the Elder), 316 
 Theodora, Senatrix (the Younger), 316 
 Theodore, Pope, 219 
 Theodoric, King of Italy, 97, 99-112, 
 
 122, 127, 128, 133, 143, 157, 245 
 Theodoric, King of Visigoths, 88 
 Theodosiopolis, 134, 239 
 Theodosius, General, 63 
 Theodosius I., Emperor, 37, 44, 65-72 
 Theodosius II., F!mperor, 74, 83, 86-88, 
 
 91 
 Theodulf, 253 
 Theophaiies, 262 
 Theophano, Empress, 348 and w,, 357, 
 
 377 
 Theophylactus, 316, 334, 335 
 Thermopylae, 134 
 Thessalonica, 68 «,, 70, 148, 204 
 Thessaly, 25 
 
 Theudebert, King of East Franks, 126, 
 178, 251 It. 
 
 Theudis, King of Visigoths, 181 
 
 Theveste, 85 n. 
 
 Thieves, legion of, 340 
 
 Thrace, Thracians, diocese of, 36 «, ; 
 Goths in, 48, 64, 99, 100 ; in Eastern 
 sphere of government, 65 ; Lom- 
 bards invade, 141 ; Avars in, 194 ; 
 Bulgarians and, 204 ; good infantry, 
 208 ; winter of, 214 ; Slav settlements 
 in, 327 
 
 Thuringia, Thuringians, 98, 109, 128, 
 162, 178, 217, 328 
 
 Thyra, Queen, 251 w. 
 
 Thyrenberg, 251 n. 
 
 Tiber, River, 74, 92, 124, 129, 144, 224, 
 289, 290, 313 
 
 Tiberius I., Emperor, 36, 47 
 
 Tiberius II., Emperor, 145 
 
 Tiberius III., Emperor, 213 
 
 Tigris, River, 47, 50, 62, 238 
 
 Tivoli, 276, 345, 365, 366 
 
 Toledo, 68, 171, 181, 182, 213, 213, 
 282 
 
 Torture, use of, 167 
 
 Totila, 128-131, 133, 181 
 
 Toulouse, 77, 79 and ^/., 181, 182, 213, 
 263, 295 
 
 Touraine, 376 «. 
 
 Tournay, 106, 374 «. 
 
 Tours, 107 ;/., 109, 158 and «., 159, 161, 
 213, 218, 283, 295, 302 and ;/., 315 
 
 Trajan, Emperor, 3, 16 w., 47, 49, 50, 
 125, 205, 264 
 
 Trafisr/tenanus, 304 
 
 Trausseqnania, 304 n. 
 
 Treasure, hoards of, 109, 121, 127, 131, 
 137, 138, 180, 213, 233, 250 
 
 Trebizond, 48, 194 
 
 Tribonian, 1 15 
 
 Tribunes, 184 
 
 Trihutittn, 164, 174 
 
 Tricameron, 121 
 
 Trier, 47, 57, 61, 63, 106, 299, 310, 
 
 348 
 Trinity, doctrine of the, 55, 56, 57, 177 
 Tripoli of Africa, 85 w. 
 Tripoli of Syria, 305 
 Triumph, the last, 73 and ;/. 
 Trondhjem, 292 
 Troyes, 88, 172 n, 
 Turin, 148, 277 
 Turks. (6>caAo Ottomans, Seljukians), 
 
 23, 195 and «., 210, 214, 221, 272, 
 
 312, 314, 315 
 Tuscany, 73, 347, 277, 335, 344, 345 
 
 366 
 Tusculum, 366
 
 4o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Twelve Tables, the, 115 
 Tyana, 214 
 Tyne, River, 27 
 ' Type,' the, 220 
 
 Ul.PIAN Library, 125 
 Unstrut, Kiver, 333 
 Urllieilschelte, 371 ;/. 
 Utrecht, 217, 230, 396, 353, 356 
 
 Valens, Emperor, 63, 64, 65, 67 
 
 Valentinian 1., Emperor, 62, 63, 66, 67 
 
 Valentinian II., Emperor, 65, 67, 69 
 
 Valentinian, III., Emperor, 83, 8S, 92 
 
 Valerian, Emperor, 48 
 
 Valis, 213, 218, 248, 263 
 
 Valla, Laurentius, 246 n. 
 
 Vallaihi, 294 
 
 • Vandalia,' 85, 121, 127 
 
 Vandals, 45 ; Arians, 58, 105, 108, 119 ; 
 fivJerali, 66 ; invade Gaul, 73 ; in 
 Spain, 77, 94, 181 ; in Africa, 83, 84, 
 85, 209 ; allied with Huns, 87 
 sack Rome, 92 ; Ricimer hates, 95 
 pirates, 98 ; Theodoric and the, 104 
 Justinian conquers, 120, 121, 138 
 treasure of, 137 
 
 Varangians, 381 
 
 Varus, 5 
 
 Vatican, the, 92, 289, 290, 345 
 
 Vegetius, 332 w. 
 
 Venantius Fortunatus, 161 
 
 Venetia, 146, 232, 246 
 
 X'enetians, Venice. 74, 89 ; name of, 89 ; 
 escape Lombards, 184 ; government 
 of, 262 ; fleet of, 275, 289, 355, 367 ; 
 traders of, 290 and n. ; journey to 
 embark from, 291 and n. ; Pope 
 claims, 345 ; serve in Greek fleet, 347 
 
 Venus, 16, 54 
 
 Verden, 244 and ;/. 
 
 Verdun, 288, 296, 305 
 
 Vermandois, 324, 326, and «.; 330, 331, 
 
 341- 358 
 Verneuil, 233 
 Vernon, 325 
 Verona, loo, 104, 108, 129, 244, 277, 
 
 342, 344, 355 
 Vesta, 49 
 
 Vestal Virgins, 26, 27, 68 
 Veterans, 33, 37 
 ' Vexilld Regis," 161 
 Via Flamiuia, 131, 143 
 Via Lati)ta, 122 
 Vicars, 167, 169, 373, 376 
 Victory, statuette of, 26, 68, 69 
 Vienna, 47 
 Vienne, 35 ;/., 230 
 Vigfusson, see Powell, F. Y. 
 
 Vigilius, Pope, 136, 137 
 Vikings. See Danes, Northmen, Nor- 
 wegians 
 
 Vil/a, 173 
 
 Villain, 174 
 
 Viminacium, 47 
 
 Vinogradoff, Professor, 30 n. ; English 
 Socielv ill Eleventh Cev/iiry, 260 11, 
 
 Virgil, 3, 5, 10, 28 II., 159 
 
 X'iscounts, 373, 376 
 
 Visigoths (^see also Goths), 64 ; against 
 Attila, 88 ; in Gaul, 93, 94, 99, 100, 
 104, 106, 108, no, 143 w. ; 176; in 
 Spain, 94, 99, loi «., 181-183, 211, 
 212, 213 ; land settlements of, 143 «. ; 
 become Catholic, 151, 154; Franks 
 fight, 164; turbulence of, 205; 
 coronations of, 226 
 
 Vistula, river, 178, 381 
 
 Vitale, Church of San, 133 
 
 Viterbo, 247 
 
 Vittoria, 182 
 
 Vitus, St, 330 and 11, 
 
 Vizier, 168 
 
 Vladimir, 369 
 
 Volga, River, 195 ?/., 214, 314, 381 
 
 Volkerwaitdevjtng, 43 
 
 Vosges, Mountains, 106, 162, 265 and n. 
 
 Vulgate, the, 90 
 
 Wahlcapilulationen, 377 
 Waifer, 233 
 
 Waik, see Stephen, King of Hungary 
 Waitz, Liulpraiid, 336 w. 
 Wala, 280, 283-285 
 Walafrid Strabo, 279 
 XValcheren, 295 
 
 Waldemar, King of Denmark, 251 w. 
 Wallia, 78 
 Walloons, 106 
 
 Wamba, King of \'isigolhs, 183 
 Wandrille, Abbey of Saint-, 295 
 VVelf, 283 
 
 Welid I., Caliph, 214, 237 
 Wellington, Arthur, Duke of 182 
 Wends, 225, 242, 250, 332, 340, 353 
 Wergild, 106, 166, 167, 169, 174, 243, 
 
 293 n. 
 Wesel, 47 
 Weser, River, 105 v., 140, 242, 243, 
 
 282, 328, 357 
 Wessex, 293, 294, 303, 330, 339 
 Westphalia, 216, 243 
 William, Archbishop of Mainz, 344, 
 
 348, 350 «• 
 William, Count of Auvergne, 361 
 William Longsword, Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, 326, 331, 341 
 William I., King of England, 264
 
 INDEX 
 
 409 
 
 Willibrod, 217 
 
 Willijjis, 356 
 
 Winchester, 292 
 
 Wine-growing, 288 n. 
 
 Witiges, King of Ostrogoths, 122-130, 
 
 133 
 Witiza, King of Visigoths, 183, 211 
 Wittiliind, S;ixon hero, 243, 244, 329 
 Wittikind of Corbey, 323 and ;/., 328 «., 
 
 329 ;/., 333, 333 and ;/., 338, 340 and 
 
 "•, 349. 350. 371 and ;;. 
 Worms, 24*, 2SS y/., 310 
 Wulfiac, 173 
 Wurtemberg, 109 
 Wiirzburg, 217, 226 
 
 Xenophon, 116 
 
 Xeres, 212 and ;/. 
 Ximenes, 2ii n. 
 
 YatREH. See Medina 
 Yezid, Caliph, 209 
 York, 253, 254 
 Yssel, River, 106 
 
 Zacharias, Pope, 225, 226, 328, 232 
 Zealots, the, 16 //. 
 Zeno, Emperor, 96-100, IO|, 204 
 Zenobi:i, 49 
 Zcugm.i, 48 
 
 Zoe, Empress, 334, 382 
 Zosimus, 66 
 
 Zulueta, F. de, De Patrociniis Vicorum, 
 30 n.
 
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