The Life of Charlemagne (Charles the Great)

CHAPTER XIII.

Chapter 1410,759 wordsPublic domain

RESULTS.

No ruler for many centuries so powerfully impressed the imagination of western Europe as the first Frankish Emperor of Rome. The vast cycle of romantic epic poetry which gathered round the name of Charlemagne, the stories of his wars with the Infidels, his expeditions to Constantinople and Jerusalem, his Twelve Peers of France, the friendship of Roland and Oliver and the treachery of Ganelon--all this is of matchless interest in the history of the development of mediæval literature, but of course adds nothing to our knowledge of the real Charles of history, since these romances were confessedly the work of wandering minstrels and took no definite shape till at least three centuries after the death of Charlemagne.

In this concluding chapter I propose very briefly to enumerate some of the chief traces of the great emperor’s forming hand on the western church, on Literature, on Laws, and on the State-system of Europe.

I. Theologically, Charles’s chief performances were the condemnation of the Adoptianist heresy[72] of Felix of Urgel by the Council of Frankfurt (794): the condemnation of the adoration of images by the same Council; and the addition to the Nicene Creed of the celebrated words “Filioque,” which asserted that the Holy Spirit “proceedeth from the Father _and the Son_.” In these two last performances Charles acted more or less in opposition to the advice and judgment of the pope, and the addition to the Creed was one of the causes which led to the schism between the eastern and western churches, and which have hitherto frustrated all schemes for their reunion.

In the government of the church Charles all through his reign took the keenest interest, and a large--as most modern readers would think a disproportionate--part of his Capitularies is dedicated to this subject. Speaking generally, it may be said that he strove, as his father before him had striven, to subdue the anarchy that had disgraced the churches of Gaul under the Merovingian kings. He insisted on the monks and the canonical priests living according to the rules which they professed: he discouraged the manufacture of new saints, the erection of new oratories, the worship of new archangels other than the well-known three, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. He earnestly exhorted the bishops to work in harmony with the counts for the maintenance of the public peace. While not slow to condemn the faults of the episcopacy he supported their authority against mutinous priests: and pre-eminently by the example which he set to Gaul in the powerful and well-compacted hierarchy which he established in Germany he strengthened the aristocratic constitution of the church under the rule of its bishops. At the same time there can be no doubt that by his close relations with the Roman Pontiff and by the temporal sovereignty which he bestowed upon him, he contributed, consciously or unconsciously, to the ultimate transformation of the western church into an absolute monarchy under the headship of the pope. That Charles, with all his zeal for the welfare of the church, was not blind to the faults of the churchmen of his day is shown by the remarkable series of questions--possibly drawn up from his dictation by Einhard--which are contained in a Capitulary of 811 written three years before his death:

“We wish to ask the ecclesiastics themselves, and those who have not only to learn but to teach out of the Holy Scriptures, who are they to whom the Apostle says, ‘Be ye imitators of me’; or who is that about whom the same Apostle says, ‘No man that warreth entangleth himself with the business of this world’: in other words, how the Apostle is to be imitated, or how he (the ecclesiastic) wars for God?”

“Further, we must beg of them that they will truly show us what is this ‘renouncing of the world’, which is spoken of by them: or how we can distinguish those who renounce the world from those who still follow it, whether it consists in anything more than this, that they do not bear arms and are not publicly married?”

“We must also inquire if that man has relinquished the world who is daily laboring to increase his possessions in every manner and by every artifice, by sweet persuasions about the blessedness of heaven and by terrible threats about the punishments of hell; who uses the name of God or of some saint to despoil simpler and less learned folk, whether rich or poor, of their property, to deprive the lawful heirs of their inheritance, and thus to drive many through sheer destitution to a life of robbery and crime which they would otherwise never have embraced?”

Several more questions of an equally searching character are contained in this remarkable Capitulary.

II. If doubts may arise in some minds how far Charles’s ecclesiastical policy was of permanent benefit to the human race, no such doubts can be felt as to his patronage of literature and science. Herein he takes a foremost place among the benefactors of humanity, as a man who, himself imperfectly educated, knew how to value education in others; as one who, amid the manifold harassing cares of government and of war, could find leisure for that friendly intercourse with learned men which far more than his generous material gifts cheered them on in their arduous and difficult work; and as the ruler to whom more perhaps than to any other single individual we owe the fact that the precious literary inheritance of Greece and Rome has not been altogether lost to the human race. Every student of the history of the texts of the classical authors knows how many of our best MSS. date from the ninth century, the result unquestionably of the impulse given by Charles and his learned courtiers to classical studies. It is noticeable also that this reign constitutes an important era in Paleography, the clear and beautiful “minuscule”[73] of the Irish scribes being generally substituted for the sprawling and uncouth characters which had gone by the name of Langobardic. In one of his Capitularies Charles calls the attention of his clergy to the necessity for careful editing of the Prayer-books; otherwise those who desire to pray rightly will pray amiss. He enjoins them not to suffer boys to corrupt the sacred text either in writing or reading. If they require a new gospel, missal, or psalter, let it be copied with the utmost care by men of full age. In another Capitulary, he expresses his displeasure that some priests, who were poor when they were ordained, have grown rich out of the church’s treasures, acquiring for themselves lands and slaves, but not purchasing books or sacred vessels for the church’s use.

Something has already been said as to the Academy in Charles’s palace, which was apparently founded on the basis of a court-school established in his father’s lifetime but became a much more important institution in his own. Probably it was then transformed from a school for children into an Academy for learned men, in the sense in which the word has been used at Athens, Florence, and Paris. Alcuin, after his departure from court, founded a school at Tours, which acquired great fame; and we hear of schools also at Utrecht, Fulda, Würzburg, and elsewhere. Doubtless, most of these schools were primarily theological seminaries, but as we have seen in the case of Alcuin, a good deal of classical literature and mathematical science was, at any rate in some schools, taught alongside of the correct rendering of the church service.

The Monk of St. Gall (who wrote, as we have seen, two generations after Charlemagne, and whose stories we therefore accept with some reserve) gives us an interesting and amusing picture of one of the schools under Charles’s patronage. After giving a legendary and inaccurate account of the arrival of two Irish scholars in Gaul, named Alcuin and Clement, he goes on to say that Charles persuaded Clement to settle in Gaul, and sent him a number of boys, sons of nobles, of middle-class men and of peasants, to be taught by him, while they were lodged and boarded at the king’s charges. After a long time he returned to Gaul, and ordered these lads to be brought into his presence, and to bring before him letters and poems of their own composition. The boys sprung from the middle and lower classes offered compositions which were “beyond all expectation sweetened with the seasoning of wisdom,” but the productions of the young nobility were “tepid, and absolutely idiotic.” Hereupon the king, as it were, anticipating the Last Judgment, set the industrious lads on his right hand and the idlers on his left. He addressed the former with words of encouragement, “I thank you, my sons, for the zeal with which you have attended to my commands. Only go on as you have begun, and I will give you splendid bishoprics and abbacies, and you shall be ever honorable in my eyes.” But to those on his left hand he turned with angry eyes and frowning brow, and addressed them in a voice of thunder, “You young nobles, you dainty and beautiful youths, who have presumed upon your birth and your possessions to despise mine orders, and have taken no care for my renown; you have neglected the study of literature, while you have given yourselves over to luxury and idleness, or to games and foolish athletics.” Then, raising his august head and unconquered right hand towards heaven, he swore a solemn oath, “By the King of Heaven, I care nothing for your noble birth and your handsome faces, let others prize them as they may. Know this for certain, that unless ye give earnest heed to your studies, and recover the ground lost by your negligence, ye shall never receive any favor at the hand of King Charles.”

There was one branch of learning in which Charles was evidently not enough helped by his friends of the classical revival, and in which one cannot help wishing that his judgment had prevailed over theirs. Einhard tells us that he reduced to writing and committed to memory “those most ancient songs of the barbarians in which the actions of the kings of old and their wars were chanted.” Would that these precious relics of the dim Teutonic fore-world had been thought worthy of preservation by Alcuin and his disciples!

He also began to compose a grammar of his native speech; he gave names to the winds blowing from twelve different quarters, whereas previously men had named but four; and he gave Teutonic instead of Latin names to the twelve months of the year. They were--for January, _Wintarmanoth_; February, _Hornung_; March, _Lentzinmanoth_; April, _Ostarmanoth_; May, _Winnemanoth_; June, _Brachmanoth_; July, _Hewimanoth_; August, _Aranmanoth_; September, _Witumanoth_; October, _Windumemanoth_; November, _Herbistmanoth_; December, _Heilagmanoth_.

III. It is of course impossible to deal with more than one or two of the most important products of Charles’s legislative and administrative activity.

1. In the first place, we have to remark that Charles was not in any sense like Justinian or Napoleon, a codifier of laws. On the contrary, the title chosen by him after his capture of Pavia, “Rex Langobardorum,” indicates the general character of his policy, which was to leave the Lombards under Lombard law, the Romans under Roman law; even the Saxons, if they would only accept Christianity, to some extent under Saxon institutions. To turn all the various nationalities over which he ruled into Ripuarian Franks was by no means the object of the conqueror; on the contrary, so long as they loyally obeyed the great central government they might keep their own laws, customs, and language unaltered. As this principle applied not only to tribes and races of men, but also to individuals, we find ourselves in presence of that most peculiar phenomenon of the early Middle Ages which is known as the system of “personal law.” In our modern society, if the citizen of one country goes to reside in the territory of another civilized and well-ordered country, he is bound to conform to the laws of that country. Where this rule does not prevail (as in the case of the rights secured by the “capitulations” to Europeans dwelling in Turkey or Morocco) it is a distinct sign that we are in the presence of a barbarous law to which the more civilized nations will not submit. But quite different from this was the conception of law in the ninth century under Charles the Great and his successors. Then, every man, according to his nationality, or even his profession,--according as he was Frank or Lombard, Alaman or Bavarian, Goth or Roman, layman or ecclesiastic,--carried, so to speak, his own legal atmosphere about with him, and might always claim to be judged _secundum legem patriæ suæ_.[74] Thus, according to an often-quoted passage, “so great was the diversity of laws that you would often meet with it, not only in countries or cities, but even in single houses. For it would often happen that five men would be sitting or walking together, not one of whom would have the same law with any other.”

But though Charles made no attempt, and apparently had no desire, to reduce all the laws of his subjects to one common denominator, he had schemes for improving, and even to some extent harmonizing, the several national codes which he found in existence. But these schemes were only imperfectly realized. As Einhard says, “After his assumption of the imperial title, as he perceived that many things were lacking in the laws of his people (for the Franks have two systems of law, in many places very diverse from one another), he thought to add those things which were wanting, to reconcile discrepancies, and to correct what was bad and ill expressed. But of all this naught was accomplished by him, save that he added a few chapters, and those imperfect ones, to the laws [of the Salians, Ripuarians, and Bavarians]. All the legal customs, however, that were not already written, of the various nations under his dominion, he caused to be taken down and committed to writing.”

While Charles’s new legislation was in general of an enlightened and civilized character, a modern reader is surprised and pained by the prominence which he gives, or allows, to those barbarous and superstitious modes of determining doubtful causes--wager of battle, ordeal by the cross, and ordeal by the hot ploughshares. As to the first of these especially, the language of the Capitularies seems to show a retrogression from the wise distrust of that manner of arriving at truth expressed half a century earlier by the Lombard king, Liutprand.

2. A question which we cannot help asking, though it hardly admits of an answer, is “What was Charles’s relation to that feudal system which, so soon after his death, prevailed throughout his empire, and which so quickly destroyed its unity?” The growth of that system was so gradual, and it was due to such various causes, that no one man can be regarded as its author, hardly even to any great extent as its modifier. It was not known to early Merovingian times; its origin appears to be nearly contemporaneous with that of the power of the Arnulfing mayors of the palace; it must certainly have been spreading more widely and striking deeper roots all through the reign of Charlemagne, and yet we can hardly attribute either to him or to his ancestors any distinct share in its establishment. It was, so to speak, “in the air,” even as democracy, trades’ unions, socialism, and similar ideas are in the air of the nineteenth century. Feudalism apparently had to be, and it “sprang and grew up, one knoweth not how.”

One of the clearest allusions to the growing feudalism of society is contained in a Capitulary of Charles issued the year before his death, in which it is ordained that no man shall be allowed to renounce his dependence on a feudal superior after he has received any benefit from him, except in one of four cases--if the lord have sought to slay his vassal, or have struck him with a stick, or have endeavored to dishonor his wife or daughter, or to take away his inheritance. In an expanded version of the same decree a fifth cause of renunciation is admitted--if the lord have failed to give to the vassal that protection which he promised when the vassal put his hands in the lord’s, and “commended” himself to his guardianship. Other allusions to the same system are to be found in the numerous Capitularies in which Charles urges the repeated complaint that the vassals of the Crown are either endeavoring to turn their _beneficia_ into _allodia_ or, if possessing property of both kinds,--a _beneficium_ under the Crown and an _allodium_ by purchase or inheritance from their fathers,--are starving and despoiling the royal _beneficium_ for the benefit of their own _allodium_.

3. An institution which was intended to check these and similar irregularities, and generally to uphold the imperial authority and the rights of the humbler classes against the encroachments of the territorial aristocracy, was the peculiarly Carolingian institution of _missi dominici_, or (as we may translate the words) “imperial commissioners.” These men may be likened to the emperor’s staff-officers, bearing his orders to distant regions, and everywhere, as his representatives, carrying on his ceaseless campaign against oppression and anarchy. The pivot of provincial government was still, as it had been in Merovingian times, the Frankish _comes_ or count, who had his headquarters generally in one of the old Roman cities, and governed from thence a district which was of varying extent, but which may be fairly taken as equivalent to an English county. Under him were the _centenarii_, who, originally rulers of that little tract of country known as the Hundred, now had a somewhat wider scope, and acted probably as _vicarii_ or representatives of the count throughout the district subject to his jurisdiction. These governors, especially the count, were doubtless generally men of wealth and great local influence. They had not yet succeeded in making their offices hereditary and transmitting the countship, as a title of nobility is now transmitted, from father to son. The strong hand of the central government prevented this change from taking place in Charles’s day, but it, too, like so much else that had a feudal tendency, was “in the air”; and it may have been partly in order to guard against this tendency and to keep his counts merely life-governors that Charles devised his institution of _missi_.

But a nobler and more beneficial object aimed at was to ensure that justice should be “truly and indifferently administered” to both rich and poor, to the strong and to the defenceless. It is interesting in this connection to observe what was the so-called “eight-fold ban” proclaimed by the Frankish legislator. Any one who (1) dishonored Holy Church; (2) or acted unjustly against widows; (3) or against orphans; (4) or against poor men who were unable to defend themselves; (5) or carried off a free-born woman against the will of her parents; (6) or set on fire another man’s house or stable; (7) or who committed _harizhut_--that is to say, who broke open by violence another man’s house, door, or enclosure; (8) or who when summoned did not go forth against the enemy, came under the king’s _ban_, and was liable to pay for each offence sixty solidi (£36).[75] Here we see that three of the specified offences were precisely those which a powerful local count or _centenarius_ would be tempted to commit against the humbler suitors in his court, and which it would be the business of a _missus dominicus_ to discover and report to his lord.

The _missi_ had, however, a wide range of duties beyond the mere control and correction of unjust judges. It was theirs to enforce the rights of the royal treasury, to administer the oath of allegiance to the inhabitants of a district, to inquire into any cases of wrongful appropriation of church property, to hunt down robbers, to report upon the morals of bishops, to see that monks lived according to the rule of their order. Sometimes they had to command armies (the brave Gerold of Bavaria was such a _missus_) and to hold _placita_ in the name of the king. Of course the choice of a person to act as _missus_ would largely depend on the nature of the duties that he had to perform: a soldier for the command of armies or an ecclesiastic for the inspection of monasteries. As Charles, in his embassies to foreign courts, was fond of combining the two vocations, and sending a stout layman and a subtle ecclesiastic together to represent him at Cordova or Constantinople, so he may often have duplicated these internal embassies, these roving commissions, to inquire into the abuses of authority in his own domains.

We have, in one of Charles’s later Capitularies, an admirable exhortation which, though put forth in the name of the _missi_, surely came from the emperor’s own robust intellect:--“Take care,” the _missi_ say to the count whose district they are about to visit, “that neither you nor any of your officers are so evil disposed as to say ‘Hush! hush! say nothing about that matter till those _missi_ have passed by, and afterwards we will settle it quietly among ourselves.’ Do not so deny or even postpone the administration of justice; but rather give diligence that justice may be done in the case before we arrive.”

The institution of _missi dominici_ served its purpose for a time, but proved to be only a temporary expedient. There was an increasing difficulty in finding suitable men for this delicate charge, which required in those who had to execute it both strength and sympathy, an independent position, and willingness to listen to the cry of the humble. Even already in the lifetime of Charles there was a visible danger that the _missus_ might become another oppressor as burdensome to the common people as any of the counts whom he was appointed to superintend. And after all, the _missus_ could only transmit to the distant regions of the empire as much power as he received from its centre. Under the feeble Louis the Pious, his wrangling sons and his inept grandsons, the institution grew ever weaker and weaker. Admirable instructions for the guidance of the _missi_ were drawn up at headquarters, but there was no power to enforce them. With the collapse of the Carolingian dynasty towards the close of the ninth century the _missi dominici_ disappear from view.

4. Another institution was perhaps due to Charles’s own personal initiative; at any rate it was introduced at the outset of his reign, and soon spread widely through his dominions. It was that of the _scabini_, whose functions recall to us sometimes those of our justices of the peace, sometimes those of our grand-jurors, and sometimes those of our ordinary jurors. Chosen for life, out of the free, but not probably out of the powerful classes, men of respectable character and unstained by crime, they had, besides other functions, pre-eminently that of acting as assessors to the _comes_ or to the _centenarius_ in his court of justice. Seven was the regular number that should be present at a trial, though sometimes fewer were allowed to decide. As in all the earlier stages of the development of the jury system, they were at least as much witnesses as judges--their own knowledge or common report forming the chief ground of their decision. It is not clear whether their verdict was necessarily unanimous, but it seems certain that the decision was considered to be theirs, and not that of the presiding functionary, whether _comes_, _vicarius_, or _centenarius_. It was, moreover, final; for, as one of the Capitularies distinctly says, “After the _scabini_ have condemned a man as a robber, it is not lawful for either the _comes_ or the _vicarius_ to grant him life.”

The _scabini_ were expected to be present at the meetings of the county--probably also, to some extent, at those of the nation, and they joined in the assent which was there given to any new Capitularies that were promulgated by the emperor. It is easy to see how, both in their judicial and in their legislative capacity, the _scabini_ may have acted as a useful check on the lawless encroachments of the counts. There was probably in this institution a germ which, had the emperors remained mighty, would have limited the power of the aristocracy, and have formed in time a democratic basis upon which a strong and stable monarchy might have been erected.

IV. Lastly, a few words must be said as to the permanent results of Charles’s life and work on the state-system of Europe. In endeavoring to appraise them let us keep our minds open to the consideration not only of that which actually was, but also of that which might have been, had the descendants of Charles been as able men as himself and his progenitors.

The three great political events of Charles’s reign were his conquest of Italy, his consolidation of the Frankish kingdom, and his assumption of the imperial title.

1. His conduct towards the vanquished Lombards was, on the whole, generous and statesmanlike. By assuming the title of King of the Lombards he showed that it was not his object to destroy the nationality of the countrymen of Alboin, nor to fuse them into one people with the Franks. Had his son Pippin lived and transmitted his sceptre to his descendants, there might possibly have been founded a kingdom of Italy, strong, patriotic, and enduring. In that event some of the glorious fruits of art and literature which were ripened in the independent Italian republics of the Middle Ages might never have been brought forth, but the Italians, though a less artistic people, would have been spared much bloodshed and many despairs.

But we can only say that this was a possible contingency. By the policy (inherited from his father) which he pursued towards the papal see, Charles called into existence a power which would probably always have been fatal to the unity and freedom of Italy. That wedge of Church-Dominions thrust in between the north and south would always tend to keep Lombardy and Tuscany apart from Spoleto and Benevento; and the endless wrangle between Pope and King would perhaps have been renewed even as in the days of the Lombards. The descendants of the pacific and God-crowned king would then have become “unutterable” and the “not-to-be-mentioned” Franks, and peace and unity would have been as far from the fated land as they have been in very deed for a thousand years.

2. Charles’s greatest work, as has been once or twice hinted in the course of the preceding narrative, was his extension and consolidation of the Frankish kingdom. One cannot see that he did much for what we now call France, but his work east of the Rhine was splendidly successful. Converting the Saxons,--a triumph of civilization, however barbarous were the methods employed,--subduing the rebellious Bavarians, keeping the Danes and the Sclavonic tribes on his eastern border in check, and utterly crushing the Avars, he gave the Teutonic race that position of supremacy in Central Europe which, whatever may have been the ebb and flow of Teutonism in later centuries, it has never been forced to surrender, and which, with all its faults, has been a blessing to Europe.

3. As to the assumption of the imperial title, it is much more difficult to speak with confidence. We have seen reason to think that Charles himself was only half persuaded of its expediency. It was a noble idea, this revival of the old world-wide empire and its conversion into a _Civitas Dei_, the realized dream of St. Augustine. But none knew better than the monarch himself how far his empire came short of these grand prophetic visions; and profounder scholars than Alcuin could have told him how little it had really in common with the state which was ruled by Augustus or by Trajan. That empire had sprung out of a democratic republic, and retained for centuries something of that resistless energy which the consciousness of self-government gives to a brave and patient people. Charles’s empire was cradled, not in the city but in the forest; its essential principle was the loyalty of henchmen to their chief; it was already permeated by the spirit of feudalism, and between feudalism and any true reproduction of the _Imperium Romanum_ there could be no abiding union.

I need not here allude to the divergence in language, customs and modes of thought between the various nationalities which composed the emperor’s dominions. The mutual antagonism of nations and languages was not so strong in the Middle Ages as it has been in our own day, and possibly a succession of able rulers might have kept the two peoples, who in their utterly different languages swore in 842 the great oath of Strasburg,[76] still one. But the spirit of feudalism was more fatal to the unity of the empire than these differences of race and language. The mediæval emperor was perpetually finding himself overtopped by one or other of his nominal vassals, and history has few more pitiable spectacles than some that were presented by the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire--men bearing the great names of Cæsar and Augustus--tossed helplessly to and fro on the waves of European politics, the laughing-stock of their own barons and marquises, and often unable to provide for the ordinary expenses of their households.

But all this belongs to the story of the Middle Ages, not to the life of the founder of the empire. It would be absurd to say that he could have foreseen all the weak points of the great, and on the whole beneficent, institution which he bestowed on Western Europe. And whatever estimate we may form of the good or the evil which resulted from the great event of the eight hundredth Christmas day, none will deny that the whole history of Europe for at least seven hundred years was profoundly modified by the life and mighty deeds of Charles the Great.

APPENDIX A

GENEALOGY OF THE ANCESTORS OF CHARLES THE GREAT

_Note._--Many of the above dates are conjectural.

APPENDIX B

FAMILY OF ST. CHARLES THE GREAT

(WIVES) 771 783 795 Himiltrud = Desiderata = Hildegard = CHARLES = Fastrada, †794. = Liutgard, †800. | daughter of _b._ 759, | the Great, | +------+ DESIDERIVS †783. | 742–814. | | King of the | +-----------------+ | Lombards, | | | Pippin the divorced 771. | Theoderada Hiltrud, Abbess Hunchback. | Abbess of Argenteuil. of Farmoutier. | +---------+------------+-------------+--+---------+--------+-----------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | | | | CHARLES, PIPPIN LOUIS Lothair, Hrotrud, Gisela, Adelheid, Bertha Hildegard, 772–811. or Carloman, the Pious, twin-brother 772–810. _b._ 781. died young. born and 777–810. or the of Louis, died 783. Debonnair, born and 778–840. died 778.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (CONCUBINES)

Mathalgard (?) = Gersvindis, = CHARLES = Regina = Adelinda +-----+ a Saxon. | the Great | +----------------------------+ | | | | | +---+-+-+---+ +-------+---------+ | Rothaid | | | | | | | Two daughters Hugo, Abbot of Drogo, Archbishop Theodoric, _b._ and three sons. St. Quentin, and of Metz, 810. Made an The youngest Chancellor of Archchaplain. ecclesiastic, Theodoric, †807. Louis I. †844. †855. 818.

FOOTNOTES

[1] In the headings of this book, the form of the name _Charlemagne_ is used throughout, in preference to the English form _Charles the Great_, or _Charles I._ (which suggests Charles Stuart), or the Latin form _Carolus Magnus_, or the grotesque combination of the Teutonic _Karl_ with the Latin _Magnus_. The editor does not overlook the difficulties of the case. The word _Charlemagne_ is conceded to be misleading because of its French form. It is natural to infer that the man so named was peculiarly connected with the French people or race. The fact is otherwise; for the illustrious leader of the Franks was much nearer akin to the Germanic and Teutonic peoples, than to the Gallic or French. The reader should therefore keep it in mind that Charlemagne was not a Frenchman, nor did he belong to the predecessors of the French, despite the form of his name. He was not king of the French, but “king of the _Franks_” as the author says above. And “with all his wide, far-reaching schemes, he remained, it would seem, at heart a ... Frank ... and we may conjecture that Neustria was to him as little of a homeland as Aquitaine or even Italy.” (See below, p. 280.) For the extent of his kingdom, which centred about the Rhine, not the Seine, see below, pp. 11, 12.

On the other hand, it may be said in favor of the form _Charlemagne_ that it has not only obtained common usage, but it has the authority of Milton, Scott, and other English writers, while in the United States it is to-day the common, almost exclusive form. This seems to be sufficient reason for its adoption.

[2] The dates of these landmarks are as follows:--

Constantinople was founded 330, A.D.;

Alaric captured Rome 410;

The Hegira, or Flight, of Mohammed occurred 622;

America was discovered 1492;

The Reformation began with Luther’s nailing his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517;

And the great French Revolution occurred between 1789 and 1795, the dreadful climax being in 1793.

[3] New Rome was Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern, or Byzantine empire.

[4] Justinian, Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565, is chiefly known to fame by his important work, the codification of the Roman laws. It was his generals Belisareus and Narses who destroyed the Vandal kingdom in Africa and the Ostragothic kingdom in Italy, restoring those countries to the Byzantine sway. In 550 several Spanish cities both on the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic, were ceded to Justinian, and they did not shake off the yoke until 620: so that for 70 years Rome had the empty honor of numbering Spain among her provinces.

[5] One of the fifteen decisive battles of the world was that fought in the year 732, the battle-field being between the cities of Tours and Poitiers, France. By English historians it is usually called the battle of Tours, while the French call it Poitiers. It was here that Charles Martel checked the tide of the Moorish invasion into Europe.

[6] The Avars were a Tartar tribe, one branch of which settled on the Danube about the year 555. They served in Justinian’s army, helped the Lombards to overturn the Gepidæ, conquered Pannonia, subdued Dalmatia, and frequently devastated large tracts of Germany and Italy. They were subdued by Charlemagne and were well nigh destroyed by the Moravians and again by the Magyars. Early in the 9th century they disappeared from history.

[7] Clovis, like other names of early date, may be variously spelled. The common German form is Chlodwig, from whence comes the German name Ludwig. Clovis is allied to the Latin Ludovicus, and from it are derived the French Louis and the English Lewis.

[8] The Salian Franks took their name from the river Sala, now the Yssel. These inhabited the districts of the lower Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt.

[9] Syagrius, king of the Burgundians and Franks, was the last Roman governor of Gaul. He inherited the city and diocese of Soissons, while “Rheims and Troyes, Beauvais and Amiens, would naturally submit to” him. He was defeated by Clovis in 486.

[10] The origin of the word Neustria is uncertain. It was certainly an antonym of Austrasia, which means the eastern kingdom. The opposite of this would be Ouestrasia, or western kingdom; but owing to the similarity of pronunciation the first syllable was changed to its later form which may have been derived from _neuf_, or new.

[11] The _gau_ was a division of the old Germanic state. The word is preserved in such terminations as that of Oberammergau, Glogau, Bardengau, etc.

[12] The Merovingian kingdom took its name from the grandfather of Clovis: Merwig, or Merowig: the Latin form being Merovœus, and the French Mérovée.

[13] The Anglo-Saxon word _witan_ means wise man. The council called the Witenagemot was the assembly of the king, nobles, and clergy, a precursor of the parliament of later years, but with greater powers than those ever exercised by parliament.

[14] Gregory was born in Auvergne, France, about 540, and became bishop of Tours in 573. He wrote a work in ten books entitled “Historia Francorum” which was a history of the Franks from the establishment of Christianity down to about 591. This work is the principal history of the Merovingian dynasty. Gregory was persecuted for exposing the crimes of the Frankish sovereigns Chilperic and Fredegunde. He retired to Rome where he died in 595.

[15] Fredegarius, called Scholasticus, was an obscure Burgundian monk of the 8th century, of whom nothing further is known than that he continued Gregory of Tours’ history of the Franks down to the year 641.

[16] It has been shown by Bonnell that neither Pippin of Landen nor Pippin of Heristal was so called by contemporary writers. But for the sake of distinction it seems better to retain these well-known surnames.

[17] It is not the saint, but the horse-race, that is often on the lips of Englishmen. The St. Leger, established in 1776, is an annual race for three-year-olds, run at Doncaster in September. It is second only to the Derby in importance. The race was named in honor of Colonel Anthony St. Leger.

[18] See p. 55 for description of the battle of Tours.

[19] Isidore was born about 560, became bishop of Seville in 600, and died in 636. He was a voluminous writer and his works were highly esteemed during the middle ages. His name is familiarly connected with the Isidorian, or Spanish, Decretals, of which, however, he was not the author.

[20] October 10th, 732.

[21] An Italian ecclesiastic who died at Monte Casino about the year 800. He is called the first important historian of the middle ages.

[22] “This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the Germanic, the grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims and Rouen.”--Gibbon, chap. lii. note 34.

[23] St. Augustine, the apostle to England, must not be confounded with the great theologian of the same name who was bishop of Hippo, in Africa.

[24] St. Boniface was born at Crediton. The date of his birth is not known. He died in Friesland, June 5, 755, and was known as “the Apostle of Germany.”

[25] Gregory I., surnamed the Great, was born about the year 540, and reigned as pope from 590 to his death in 604. He was famous for his zeal in enforcing ecclesiastical discipline and promoting missionary activity, especially in sending Christian missionaries to England. He is also noted for his arrangement of church music into what are still known as “Gregorian modes” or chants. His claim to being the greatest of the sixteen Gregories can be disputed by Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) alone. But there is a serious stain on his memory in a letter written to Phocas who had acquired the imperial throne at Constantinople by usurpation and murder. “The joyful applause with which” this successor of the apostles “salutes the fortunes of the assassin, has sullied, with indelible disgrace, the character of the saint.” Apart from this one fault, Gregory was meek, kind, sympathetic, and marvellously efficient. It is the more remarkable that such a man could so fawn upon even an emperor.

[26] Diocletian became emperor of Rome in the year 284, and shortly after associated Maximian with himself in the imperial government. In the division of the empire, Diocletian received the eastern portion, including Thrace, Egypt, Syria, and Asia--the territory of which Constantinople was afterwards the capital, though he made his capital in Nicomedia. This emperor is infamous from his severe persecution of the Christians 303–305. In the latter year he abdicated, compelling Maximian to do the same, and spent the remainder of his life in the cultivation of his gardens in Dalmatia. To the successors of this man, the popes as head of the Church that had suffered so signally by the cruelty of the imperial persecution, did abject homage.

[27] Lancashire contains 1,887 square miles.

[28] Silentiary is defined one who is sworn not to divulge the secrets of the state; hence, a privy councillor.

[29] The exarchate was the dominion of the vicegerent of the Byzantine emperor in Italy. Justinian originally conferred the title of exarch upon his commander-in-chief Narses, who reconquered Italy from the Goths and established his seat of government at Ravenna. The extent of the exarchate was gradually diminished by the varying fortunes of wars, until it comprised only a small district about Ravenna.

[30] The word Pentapolis means “the five cities,” and in different countries refers to various celebrated groups. In Italy the group included Rimini, Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, and Sinigaglia, with part of the exarchate of Ravenna.

[31] “One of the most interesting caves is that of Moustier (Perigord).... It has yielded remains of hyena, cave-bear, and mammoth, with flint implements.... From the caves of Perigord and some of those in the Pyrenees have come the most numerous and best finished examples of carved and engraved horns, and bones, and ivory.”--Geikie, _Prehistoric Europe_, p. 111.

[32] See p. 104.

[33] The Monk of St. Gall (Monachus Sangallensis) is by some supposed to be Notker, surnamed Balbulus (the Stammerer), who lived about 840–912. He was famous as a hymn writer and the inventor of that peculiar kind of hymn called “sequence.” The book, whether its author be Notker or a fellow monk, was written about the year 883, and is valuable not only for its anecdotes--some of which are doubtless legendary--but because it gives the popular opinion of Charlemagne that prevailed at the time the book was written, three quarters of a century after the king’s death.

[34] “Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of Pope Hadrian, seized the King Desiderius in his capital, himself assumed the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his victorious army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian with distinguished honors, and welcomed by the people as their leader and deliverer.”--Bryce, _The Holy Roman Empire_, chap. iv.

[35] According to ancient Greek mythology, Sisyphus was, for his great wickedness, condemned in Hades to roll a great stone from the bottom to the top of a hill; but before he reached the top, the stone broke away and rolled down again, so that his task had to be begun anew, and thus it resulted in endless and tantalizing monotony.

[36] Augustine--the theologian and bishop of Hippo--completed in the year 426 his book _De Civitate Dei_ (The City of God), which is regarded the greatest monument of his genius and learning. The chief aim of this book is to vindicate the claims of the Christian Church against those who asserted that such calamities as the capture of Rome by Alaric resulted from the new religion. On the contrary Augustine conceives of the Church as a “new order rising on the ruins of the old Roman empire:” a claim that might easily be used to defend the transference of despotic authority from the empire to the Church.

[37] The conflict with the Saxons at Eresburg was precipitated by the ill-timed zeal of an Anglo-Saxon missionary named Lebuinus, who forced his way into their sacred assembly. “Arrayed in gorgeous robes and carrying a cross in his hand, the zealous missionary passed through the throng to an open enclosure, peculiarly sacred to the worshippers. The Saxons resented this intrusion as sacrilegious, but suppressed their indignation and for awhile listened to him.” He delivered a fiery and threatening address which so roused their wrath that they came near killing him. More moderate councils prevailed and the missionary was allowed to depart, but the church that Lebuinus had built for the salvation of these heathen, but which they could not be persuaded to use for Christian worship, was burned to the ground. This act of sacrilege was readily used to work on the feelings of Charlemagne. “Idolatry must perish” and Charlemagne was not reluctant to be the instrument of its punishment. In any view of the subject, however, it must be conceded that, human nature being what it is, the conflict between the two peoples, the Christian Franks and the heathen Saxons, was irrepressible, and one or the other was destined to prevail.--See Mombert, _Charles the Great_, book ii., chap. iii.

[38] The words of Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, are, ... “_dum aut victi christianæ religioni subicerentur, aut omnino tollerentur_,” “until they were either subdued and converted to the Christian religion, or annihilated.”

[39] The most ferocious and warlike of all the barbarians with whom Charlemagne contended, not even excepting the Avars, were the Saxons. These people seemed to have an inextinguishable hatred of Christianity and of slavery. Almost their only redeeming trait was their respect for womanhood. They roamed the forests, and to some extent sailed the seas; they lived largely by hunting, but they preferred piracy and plunder. They could not be won by kindness. Even their word of honor was not binding upon them, for they continually violated the pledges of their treaties. The only way to deal with them was thoroughly to conquer them and to deal with them with a severity bordering on cruelty. This Charlemagne did. It took eighteen expeditions--though he never lost a battle with them--and thirty-three years to accomplish his purpose, but he was successful at the last. This people became civilized, christianized, and they developed into the best people of Europe, becoming the nucleus of the great German empire, and an important constituent of the English. Beyond almost all others, they have escaped the corruptions and vices attendant upon a luxurious life, and they are to-day among the leaders of industry and enterprise in both hemispheres.

[40] See chap. viii.

[41] Berserker was a hero of Norse legend who fought without coat of mail and overcame all foes. His descendants, called Berserkers, went into battle under the inspiration of a fury, or demoniacal possession, in which condition gnawing the rim of their shields, howling like wild beasts, and foaming at the mouth, they were supposed to be invulnerable. This fury was the Berserk, or Berserker’s, rage.

[42] The Schleswig-Holstein question is proverbially complicated, being made so by the relations of the two provinces to each other, by the further relations of each separately and both combined to Denmark, and by the relations of all three to Austria, Prussia, etc. There was an almost ceaseless succession of wars over the question, or questions, from 1848 to 1866, when Schleswig-Holstein became a province of Prussia. For a full statement of the subject, see Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, note B.

[43] See p. 58, note.

[44] The placitum of the middle ages was a sort of convention for the consideration of public questions, over which the sovereign presided.

[45] See p. 160.

[46] “The details of the plot are said to have embraced the assassination of the king and his three royal sons, and the subsequent proclamation of Pippin as king. This was the bait which the conspirators held out to him....

“The secret was well kept. Pippin shammed sickness and for a while stayed away from court; the plot was fairly under way and dangerously near a successful termination, when by the inexplicable carelessness of the conspirators the whole of their impious scheme became known.

“They met in the church of St. Peter at Ratisbon and discussed all the details of the plot in the hearing of a cleric who from some cause or other had found his way into the church. Perhaps he came to sleep there; the conspirators found him hiding under the altar, and, strange to tell, contented themselves with his solemn promise on oath that he would not divulge the ominous secret. But the oath sat lightly on his conscience, and the moment after the conspirators had left he ran half-dressed at the dead of night to the royal palace and gave the alarm.

“No one could stay his progress on his way to the royal bed-chamber; he passed through seven doors and at last stood before it and so frightened the ladies in attendance upon the queen that they shut it in his face; they tried to stifle their laughter at his appearance with their dresses [_sic_.] But the king had heard the noise and asked what it meant. They said that a half-clad, scraped, silly, and raving scamp demanded to see the king, and made an unmannerly noise. Charles sent for him and made him tell all he knew. ‘Before the third hour of the day,’ writes the Monk, ‘all the chief conspirators, not expecting anything of the kind, were either on the way to exile or punishment. The dwarfish, hunch-backed Pippin received a good beating, was shaved, and sent _for a little while_ to the monastery of St. Gall to do penance.’”--Mombert, p. 219.

[47] Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot (1753–1823) served as minister of war for nearly three years during the French revolution. His success as a strategist won for him the popular title of “organizer of victory.”

[48] The Koreish is the most influential tribe of the Arabs. Their prominence is due to the fact that, early in the 5th century, they obtained and became the masters and guardians of the Kaabeh, in Mecca, which was a sacred shrine long before the days of Mohammed. Having once obtained the temple keys, they have succeeded in holding them against every effort to capture them. “Their possession of the temple-keys not only gave the tribe of Koreysh a semi-religious pre-eminence over all the other clans of Arabia, but also placed at their disposal the treasures of gold, silver, jewels, and other offerings accumulated by the pagan piety of ages in the temple of Mecca.”--_Encyc. Brit._

The Abbasides, who were descended from Mohammed’s uncle Abbas, became a powerful tribe and were caliphs of Bagdad for five centuries, from 750 to 1258.

[49] “The Normans had crossed the English fosse, and were now at the foot of the hill, with the palisades and the axes right before them. The trumpet sounded, and a flight of arrows from the archers in all the three divisions of William’s army was the prelude to the onslaught of the heavy-armed foot. But before the two armies met hand to hand, a juggler or minstrel, known as _Taillefer_, the Cleaver of Iron, rode forth from the Norman ranks as if to defy the whole force of England in his single person. He craved and obtained the duke’s leave to strike the first blow; he rode forth, singing songs of Roland and of Charlemagne--so soon had the name and exploits of the great German become the spoil of the enemy. He threw his sword into the air and caught it again; but he presently showed that he could use warlike weapons for other purposes than for jugglers’ tricks of this kind; he pierced one Englishman with his lance, he struck down another with his sword, and then himself fell beneath the blows of their comrades. A bravado of this kind might serve as an omen, it might stir up the spirits of the men on either side; but it could in no other way affect the fate of the battle.”--Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, iii. 319.

[50] After Charlemagne had delivered France and Germany from external enemies, he turned his arms against the Saracens of Spain. “This was the great mistake of his life.... In seeking to invade Spain, Charlemagne warred against a race from whom Europe had nothing more to fear. His grandfather, Charles Martel, had arrested the conquests of the Saracens; and they were quiet in their settlements in Spain, and had made considerable attainments in science and literature. Their schools of medicine and their arts were in advance of the rest of Europe. They were the translators of Aristotle, who reigned in the rising universities during the middle ages. As this war was unnecessary, Providence seemed to rebuke Charlemagne. His defeat at Roncesvalles was one of the most memorable events in his military history.... The Frankish forces were signally defeated amid the passes of the Pyrenees; and it was not until after several centuries that the Gothic princes of Spain shook off the yoke of their Saracenic conquerors, and drove them from Europe.”--John Lord, _Beacon Lights of History_.

[51] see p. 7, note.

[52] See p. 117, note.

[53] Rhine?

[54] The _solidus_ was a Byzantine coin worth about $5.12 of United States money.

[55] See p. 125.

[56] See pp. 165, 166.

[57] The wrangling between James I. of England and Philip II. of Spain over the terms of the marriage treaty between the Prince of Wales and the Infanta, came near to involving the two countries in war.

[58] Adoptionism, the heresy that Jesus was the Son of God by adoption only, caused much disturbance in the Spanish and Frankish Churches in the latter part of the 8th century. It was promulgated chiefly by Felix, bishop of Urgel, and by Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo; it was resisted by Alcuin and by Charlemagne. It was condemned by the council at Ratisbon in 792, at Frankfort in 794, and at Aix-la-Chapelle in 799, and soon disappeared.

[59] The festival of the Robigalia was said to be instituted by Numa for the purpose of worshipping Robigus, or Robigo,--for it is uncertain whether the divinity was masculine or feminine,--in order to avert the blight of too great heat from the springing grain. With the ancient Romans the cereal festivals were held at the time of planting, and not, like our thanksgiving, after the harvest.

[60] See p. 230, note.

[61] Melan-Chthon is merely the Greek translation of the German Schwarz-Erd, or Black-Earth; and Œco-Lampadius is the Greek equivalent of the German Hans-Schein which in turn was substituted for Hussgen or Heussgen.

[62] The ambo was an elaborate pulpit or reading desk placed in the choir of the church and having two ascents--one from the east and the other from the west.

[63] In this case the purple cope, a vestment of the pope.

[64] The description of the coronation by Bryce is added for its picturesqueness:--“On the spot where now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the buildings of the modern city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as that of the apostle’s martyrdom, Constantine the Great had erected the oldest and stateliest temple of Christian Rome. Nothing could be less like than was this basilica to those northern cathedrals, shadowy, fantastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the mediæval types of architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long row of Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness, its sternness, its simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman art, and had remained a perfect expression of Roman character. Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the high altar underneath and just beyond the great arch, the arch of triumph, as it was called: behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising tier above tier around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest, and looking down past the altar and over the multitude, was placed a bishop’s throne, itself the curule chair of some forgotten magistrate. From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of the gospel ended, advanced to where Charles--who had exchanged his simple Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman patrician--knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem of the Cæsars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and centre of the world, “Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori vita et victoria” [Long life and victory to Charles the August, crowned by God as the great and peaceful emperor]. In that shout, echoed by the Franks without, was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from that moment modern history begins.”--_The Holy Roman Empire_ chap. vi.

[65] Theodosius the Great was born in Spain about 346 and died in 395. Though he was under the influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan; and though the bishops humiliated him and once compelled him to do penance for the period of eight months, his reign was one of great splendor, and the last year of his life he was sole emperor.

[66] It was in the winter of 1804–5 that the fiasco of Boulogne occurred.

[67] “The emperor celebrated the birth of our Lord at Aachen.”

[68] The city of Ravenna; which is situated between the Ronco and the Lamone rivers.

[69] He absolutely refused to take medicines, and when ill his only treatment was abstaining from food. See also p. 304:--“According to his usual custom he thought to _subdue the fever by fasting_.”

[70] Louis deserved the surname “Pious” so far as his care for the morals of his people was concerned. At the beginning of his reign he earnestly attacked the abuses that prevailed. At court he suppressed licentiousness and punished the nobility who had abused their authority. He also tried to reform the clergy. Seeking to establish the order of succession, he associated his oldest son, Lothair, with himself in the government, and gave to his two younger sons, Pippin and Louis, portions of the empire. His wife, however, died, and he marrying again became the father of a fourth son. Upon this he revised his plans of the partition of the empire. The three older sons rebelled, and took their father prisoner in the year 833, but in the following year he was reinstated by his son Louis. Again in 838 Louis was involved in a dispute with his sons, but he died (840) while the question was in process of arbitration. “He had capacities which might have made him a great churchman, but as a secular ruler he lacked prudence and vigor, and his management prepared the way for the destruction of the empire established by his father.”

[71] A curious and somewhat difficult question arises as to the disposal of the remains of the great emperor. This account rests on the authority of Einhard, and is fully confirmed by Thegan the biographer of Louis the Pious. But in the year 1000 the Emperor Otho III. opened the tomb in the presence of two bishops, and a knight named Otho of Lomello, and according to the statement of that knight communicated to the author of the chronicle of Novalese, they found the emperor sitting on a throne, with a golden crown on his head, and holding a golden sceptre in his hands. The hands were covered with gloves, through which the nails protruding had worked their way. A little chapel (_tuguriolum_) of marble and lime was erected over him, through the roof of which the excavators made their way. None of the emperor’s limbs had rotted away, but a little piece had fallen from the end of the nose, which Otho caused to be replaced in gold. The four discoverers fell on their knees before the majestic figure. Then they clothed him with white robes, cut the finger nails, took away one tooth as a relic, closed the roof of the chapel and departed.

The account is a very circumstantial one, and is given by a contemporary chronicler on the authority of one of the actors of the scene who is a fairly well-known historical personage. Yet most modern inquirers accept the conclusion advocated by Theodor Lindner (Die Fabel von der Bestattung Karls des Grossen), that the story must be rejected as untrue, in other words, that Otho of Lomello in relating it was playing on the credulity of his hearers. The chief reasons for this conclusion are, that the story is hopelessly at variance with the statements of Einhard and Thegan. If the body was buried on the very day of death, there would be no time for the elaborate process of embalming which this story requires. The words of the epitaph “humatum,” “sub hoc conditorio situm est,” would not be applicable to such a mode of interment. Moreover, such a very unusual mode of dealing with the great emperor’s body would surely have attracted some notice from the ninth-century authors who in prose and verse celebrate the deeds of Charles, not one of whom makes the slightest allusion to it. Lastly, though an industrious search has been often made, no one has ever been able to find a trace of the _tuguriolum_ (necessarily a room of a certain size) in which the corpse was said to have been seated.

In 1165, at the time of the canonization of Charles, his body was taken up by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, removed from the marble sarcophagus, in which it had lain for nearly 352 years, and placed in a wooden coffer in the middle of the church. For this wooden coffer was substituted fifty years later, at the order of Frederick II., a costly shrine, adorned with gold and jewels, in which at the present day, every six years, the relics of “St. Charles the Great,” are exhibited to the people. The head is separated from the body and enclosed in a silver portrait-bust of fourteenth-century workmanship.

[72] See p. 230, note.

[73] The minuscule was a small letter that displaced the awkward uncials used by the monastic scribes of the early centuries. It was the basis of the small letters of the modern Greek and Roman alphabets.

[74] After the law of his own country.

[75] Sixty golden solidi = $307.20.

[76] Of “the famous oath of Strassburg,” by which a dispute between Louis the German and his brother Charles the Bald was adjusted, Professor Freeman says: “That precious document ... shows that in 841 the distinctions of race and language were beginning to make themselves felt. The Austrasian soldiers of King Louis swear in the Old-German tongue, of which the oath is an early monument;” while the Neustrian soldiers of King Charles swear “in the _lingua Romana_ ... a tongue essentially of Roman origin, and yet a tongue which has departed too far from the Roman model to be any longer called Latin. It has ceased to be Latin, but we cannot yet call it French, even Old French.... In the course of the next century it became nationalized as _lingua Gallica_.” See _Historical Essays_, I., 184.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced; some are noted in further detail below.

The illustration on the title page is the publisher’s logo.

Page 71: “In the year 750 [it should be 751]” is in the original book; it is not a note from the Transcribers of this eBook.

Page 93: Missing ending quotation mark for text beginning with “The great distinction”. Transcriber added one after “sometimes assume.”

Page 115: “of so noble” was printed as “of so no noble”; changed here.

Page 202: “(791–842)” was printed as “(791–482)”; changed here.

Page 206: Unbalanced quotation mark in the paragraph beginning “He says:”

Page 269: “pre-eminence over them” was printed as “pre-eminence ever them”; changed here.

Page 329: “he gave the Teutonic race” was printed as “the gave te Teutonic race”; corrected by Transcriber.

Page 332: “Pippin of Landin” was printed as “Pippin of Landiu”; changed here, although modern conventional spelling is “Landen”.