| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Holy Roman Empire
Author: Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount, 1838-1922
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Holy Roman Empire" ***
(This file was produced from images generously made
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
THE
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
BY
JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L.
_FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
and
PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_
THIRD EDITION REVISED
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1871
OXFORD:
By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Pickard Hall,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history
of the countries included in the Romano-Germanic Empire--Italy during
the middle ages, Germany from the ninth century to the nineteenth--as
to describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the
wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and traditions which have
almost wholly passed away from the world. Such a description, however,
would not be intelligible without some account of the great events
which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial power; and it has
therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a
narrative than of a dissertation; and to combine with an exposition of
what may be called the theory of the Empire an outline of the
political history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs
of mediæval Italy. To make the succession of events clearer, a
Chronological List of Emperors and Popes has been prefixed[1].
The present edition has been carefully revised and corrected
throughout; and a good many additions have been made to both text and
notes.
LINCOLN'S INN,
August 11, 1870.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete
and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve
as a sort of skeleton history of mediæval Germany and Italy.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Introductory.
CHAPTER II.
The Roman Empire before the Invasion of the Barbarians.
The Empire in the Second Century 5
Obliteration of National distinctions 6
Rise of Christianity 10
Its Alliance with the State 10
Its Influence on the Idea of an Imperial Nationality 13
CHAPTER III.
The Barbarian Invasions.
Relations between the Primitive Germans and the Romans 15
Their Feelings towards Rome and her Empire 16
Belief in its Eternity 20
Extinction by Odoacer of the Western branch of the Empire 26
Theodoric the Ostrogothic King 27
Gradual Dissolution of the Empire 30
Permanence of the Roman Religion and the Roman Law 31
CHAPTER IV.
Restoration of the Empire in the West.
The Franks 34
Italy under Greeks and Lombards 37
The Iconoclastic Schism 38
Alliance of the Popes with the Frankish Kings 39
The Frankish Conquest of Italy 41
Adventures and Plans of Pope Leo III 43
Coronation of Charles the Great 48
CHAPTER V.
Empire and Policy of Charles.
Import of the Coronation at Rome 52
Accounts given in the Annals of the time 53
Question as to the Intentions of Charles 58
Legal Effect of the Coronation 62
Position of Charles towards the Church 64
Towards his German Subjects 67
Towards the other Races of Europe 70
General View of his Character and Policy 72
CHAPTER VI.
Carolingian and Italian Emperors.
Reign of Lewis I 76
Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire 78
Beginnings of the German Kingdom 79
Italian Emperors 80
Otto the Saxon King 84
Coronation of Otto at Rome 87
CHAPTER VII.
Theory of the Mediæval Empire.
The World Monarchy and the World Religion 91
Unity of the Christian Church 94
Influence of the Doctrine of Realism 97
The Popes as heirs to the Roman Monarchy 99
Character of the revived Roman Empire 102
Respective Functions of the Pope and the Emperor 104
Proofs and Illustrations 109
Interpretations of Prophecy 112
Two remarkable Pictures 116
CHAPTER VIII.
The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom.
The German or East Frankish Monarchy 122
Feudality in Germany 123
Reciprocal Influence of the Roman and Teutonic Elements on
the Character of the Empire 127
CHAPTER IX.
Saxon and Franconian Emperors.
Adventures of Otto the Great in Rome 134
Trial and Deposition of Pope John XII 135
Position of Otto in Italy 139
His European Policy 140
Comparison of his Empire with the Carolingian 144
Character and Projects of the Emperor Otto III 146
The Emperors Henry II and Conrad II 150
The Emperor Henry III 151
CHAPTER X.
Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy.
Origin and Progress of Papal Power 153
Relations of the Popes with the early Emperors 155
Quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII 159
Gregory's Ideas 160
Concordat of Worms 163
General Results of the Contest 164
CHAPTER XI.
The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa.
Frederick and the Papacy 167
Revival of the Study of the Roman Law 172
Arnold of Brescia and the Roman Republicans 174
Frederick's Struggle with the Lombard Cities 175
His Policy as German King 178
CHAPTER XII.
Imperial Titles and Pretensions.
Territorial Limits of the Empire--Its Claims of Jurisdiction
over other Countries 182
Hungary 183
Poland 184
Denmark 184
France 185
Sweden 185
Spain 185
England 186
Scotland 187
Naples and Sicily 188
Venice 188
The East 189
Rivalry of the Teutonic and Byzantine Emperors 191
The Four Crowns 193
Origin and Meaning of the title 'Holy Empire' 199
CHAPTER XIII.
Fall of the Hohenstaufen.
Reign of Henry VI 205
Contest of Philip and Otto IV 206
Character and Career of the Emperor Frederick II 207
Destruction of Imperial Authority in Italy 211
The Great Interregnum 212
Rudolf of Hapsburg 213
Change in the Character of the Empire 214
Haughty Demeanour of the Popes 217
CHAPTER XIV.
The Germanic Constitution--the Seven Electors.
Germany in the Fourteenth Century 222
Reign of the Emperor Charles IV 225
Origin and History of the System of Election, and of the
Electoral Body 225
The Golden Bull 230
Remarks on the Elective Monarchy of Germany 233
Results of Charles IV's Policy 236
CHAPTER XV.
The Empire as an International Power.
Revival of Learning 240
Beginnings of Political Thought 241
Desire for an International Power 242
Theory of the Emperor's Functions as Monarch of Europe 244
Illustrations 249
Relations of the Empire and the New Learning 251
The Men of Letters--Petrarch, Dante 254
The Jurists 256
Passion for Antiquity in the Middle Ages: its Causes 258
The Emperor Henry VII in Italy 262
The _De Monarchia_ of Dante 264
CHAPTER XVI.
The City of Rome in the Middle Ages.
Rapid Decline of the City after the Gothic Wars 273
Her Condition in the Dark Ages 274
Republican Revival of the Twelfth Century 276
Character and Ideas of Nicholas Rienzi 278
Social State of Mediæval Rome 280
Visits of the Teutonic Emperors 282
Revolts against them 284
Existing Traces of their Presence in Rome 286
Want of Mediæval, and especially of Gothic Buildings, in
Modern Rome 289
Causes of this; Ravages of Enemies and Citizens 291
Modern Restorations 292
Surviving Features of truly Mediæval Architecture--the
Bell-towers 294
The Roman Church and the Roman City 296
Rome since the Revolution 299
CHAPTER XVII.
The Renaissance: Change in the Character of the Empire.
Weakness of Germany 302
Loss of Imperial Territories 303
Gradual Change in the Germanic Constitution 307
Beginning of the Predominance of the Hapsburgs 310
The Discovery of America 311
The Renaissance and its Effects on the Empire 311
Projects of Constitutional Reform 313
Changes of Title 316
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Reformation and its Effects upon the Empire.
Accession of Charles V 319
His Attitude towards the Reformation 321
Issue of his Attempts at Coercion 322
Spirit and Essence of the Religious Movement 325
Its Influence on the Doctrine of the Visible Church 327
How far it promoted Civil and Religious Liberty 329
Its Effect upon the Mediæval Theory of the Empire 332
Upon the Position of the Emperor in Europe 333
Dissensions in Germany 334
The Thirty Years' War 335
CHAPTER XIX.
The Peace of Westphalia: Last Stage in the Decline
of the Empire.
Political Import of the Peace of Westphalia 337
Hippolytus a Lapide and his Book 339
Changes in the Germanic Constitution 340
Narrowed Bounds of the Empire 341
Condition of Germany after the Peace 342
The Balance of Power 345
The Hapsburg Emperors and their Policy 348
The Emperor Charles VII 351
The Empire in its last Phase 352
Feelings of the German People 354
CHAPTER XX.
Fall of the Empire.
The Emperor Francis II 356
Napoleon as the Representative of the Carolingians 357
The French Empire 360
Napoleon's German Policy 361
The Confederation of the Rhine 362
End of the Empire 363
The German Confederation 364
CHAPTER XXI.
Conclusion: General Summary.
Causes of the Perpetuation of the Name of Rome 366
Parallel instances: Claims now made to represent the Roman
Empire 367
Parallel afforded by the History of the Papacy 369
In how far was the Empire really Roman 374
Imperialism: Ancient and Modern 375
Essential Principles of the Mediæval Empire 377
Influence of the Imperial System in Germany 378
The Claim of Modern Austria to represent the Mediæval Empire 381
Results of the Influence of the Empire upon Europe 383
Upon Modern Jurisprudence 383
Upon the Development of the Ecclesiastical Power 384
Struggle of the Empire with three Hostile Principles 388
Its Relations, Past and Present, to the Nationalities
of Europe 390
Conclusion: Difficulties caused by the Nature of the
Subject 392
APPENDIX.
NOTE A.
On the Burgundies 395
NOTE B.
On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom of Denmark
and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 398
NOTE C.
On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies 400
NOTE D.
Hildebert's Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome 406
INDEX 407
DATES OF
SEVERAL IMPORTANT EVENTS
IN THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE.
B.C.
Battle of Pharsalia 48
A.D.
Council of Nicæa 325
End of the separate Western Empire 476
Revolt of the Italians from the Iconoclastic Emperors 728
Coronation of Charles the Great 800
End of the Carolingian Empire 888
Coronation of Otto the Great 962
Final Union of Italy to the Empire 1014
Quarrel between Henry IV and Gregory VII 1076
The First Crusade 1096
Battle of Legnano 1176
Death of Frederick II 1250
League of the three Forest Cantons of Switzerland 1308
Career of Rienzi 1347-1354
The Golden Bull 1356
Council of Constance 1415
Extinction of the Eastern Empire 1453
Discovery of America 1492
Luther at the Diet of Worms 1521
Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618
Peace of Westphalia 1648
Prussia recognized as a Kingdom 1701
End of the House of Hapsburg 1742
Seven Years' War 1756-1763
Peace of Luneville 1801
Formation of the German Confederation 1815
Establishment of the North German Confederation 1866
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
OF
EMPERORS AND POPES.
A. D. B. C.
Augustus. 27
A. D.
Tiberius. 14
Caligula. 37
Claudius. 41
42 St. Peter, (according
to Jerome).
Nero. 54
67 Linus, (according to
Jerome, Irenæus,
Eusebius).
68 Clement, (according Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
to Tertullian and Vespasian. 68
Rufinus).
78 Anacletus (?).
Titus. 79
Domitian. 81
91 Clement, (according
to later writers).
Nerva. 96
Trajan. 98
100 Evaristus (?).
109 Alexander (?).
Hadrian. 117
119 Sixtus I.
129 Telesphorus.
Antoninus Pius. 138
139 Hyginus.
143 Pius I.
157 Anicetus.
Marcus Aurelius. 161
168 Soter.
177 Eleutherius.
Commodus. 180
Pertinax. 190
Didius Julianus. 191
Niger. 192
193 Victor (?). Septimius Severus. 193
202 Zephyrinus (?).
Caracalla, Geta,
Diadumenian. 211
Opilius Macrinus. 217
Elagabalus. 218
219 Calixtus I.
Alexander Severus. 222
223 Urban I.
230 Pontianus.
235 Anterius or Anteros. Maximin. 235
236 Fabianus.
The two Gordians, Maximus
Pupienus, Balbinus. 237
Gordian the Younger. 238
Philip. 244
Decius. 249
251 Cornelius. Gallus. 251
252 Lucius I. Volusian. 252
253 Stephen I. Æmilian, Valerian,
Gallienus. 253
257 Sixtus II.
259 Dionysius.
Claudius II. 268
269 Felix.
Aurelian. 270
275 Eutychianus. Tacitus. 275
Probus. 276
Carus. 282
283 Caius.
Carinus, Numerian,
Diocletian. 284
Maximian, joint Emperor
with Diocletian. 286
296 Marcellinus. [305(?)
304 Vacancy. Constantius, Galerius. 304(?)
Licinius. or 307]
308 Marcellus I. Maximin. 308
Constantine, Galerius,
Licinius, Maximin,
Maxentius, and Maximian
reigning jointly. 309
310 Eusebius.
311 Melchiades.
314 Sylvester I.
Constantine (the Great)
alone. 323
336 Marcus I.
337 Julius I. Constantine II,
Constantius II,
Constans. 337
Magnentius. 350
352 Liberius.
Constantius alone. 353
356 Felix (Anti-pope).
Julian. 361
Jovian. 363
Valens and Valentinian I. 364
366 Damasus I.
Gratian and Valentinian I. 367
Valentinian II and
Gratian. 375
Theodosius. 379
384 Siricius.
Arcadius (in the East),
Honorius (in the West). 395
398 Anastasius I.
402 Innocent I.
Theodosius II. (E) 408
417 Zosimus.
418 Boniface I.
418 Eulalius (Anti-pope).
422 Celestine I.
Valentinian III. (W) 424
432 Sixtus III.
440 Leo I (the Great).
Marcian. (E) 450
Maximus, Avitus. (W) 455
Majorian. (W) 455
Leo I. (E) 457
461 Hilarius. Severus. (W) 461
Vacancy. (W) 465
Anthemius. (W) 467
468 Simplicius.
Olybrius. (W) 472
Glycerius. (W) 473
Julius Nepos. (W) 474
Leo II, Zeno, Basiliscus
(all E.) 474
Romulus Augustulus. (W) 475
(End of the Western Line
in Romulus Augustus. 476)
(Henceforth, till A.D. 800,
Emperors reigning at
483 Felix III[2]. Constantinople).
Anastasius I. 491
492 Gelasius I.
496 Anastasius II.
498 Symmachus.
498 Laurentius (Anti-pope).
514 Hormisdas.
Justin I. 518
523 John I.
526 Felix IV.
Justinian. 527
530 Boniface II.
530 Dioscorus (Anti-pope).
532 John II.
535 Agapetus I.
536 Silverius.
537 Vigilius.
555 Pelagius I.
560 John III.
Justin II. 565
574 Benedict I.
578 Pelagius II. Tiberius II. 578
Maurice. 582
590 Gregory I (the Great).
Phocas. 602
604 Sabinianus.
607 Boniface III.
607 Boniface IV.
Heraclius. 610
615 Deus dedit.
618 Boniface V.
625 Honorius I.
638 Severinus.
640 John IV.
Constantine III,
Heracleonas,
Constans II. 641
642 Theodorus I.
649 Martin I.
654 Eugenius I.
657 Vitalianus.
Constantine IV (Pogonatus). 668
672 Adeodatus.
676 Domnus or Donus I.
678 Agatho.
682 Leo II.
683(?) Benedict II.
685 John V. Justinian II. 685
685(?) Conon.
687 Sergius I.
687 Paschal (Anti-pope).
687 Theodorus (Anti-pope).
Leontius. 694
Tiberius. 697
701 John VI.
705 John VII. Justinian II restored. 705
708 Sisinnius.
708 Constantine.
Philippicus Bardanes. 711
Anastasius II. 713
715 Gregory II.
Theodosius III. 716
Leo III (the Isaurian). 718
731 Gregory III.
741 Zacharias. Constantine V
(Copronymus). 741
752 Stephen (II).
752 Stephen II (or III).
757 Paul I.
767 Constantine (Anti-pope).
768 Stephen III (IV).
772 Hadrian I.
Leo IV. 775
Constantine VI. 780
795 Leo III.
Deposition of Constantine
VI by Irene. 797
Charles I (the Great). 800
(Following henceforth the
new Western line).
Lewis I (the Pious). 814
816 Stephen IV.
817 Paschal I.
824 Eugenius II.
827 Valentinus.
827 Gregory IV.
Lothar I. 840
844 Sergius II.
847 Leo IV.
855 Benedict III. Lewis II. 855
855 Anastasius (Anti-pope).
858 Nicholas I.
867 Hadrian II.
872 John VIII.
Charles II (the Bald). 875
Charles III (the Fat). 881
882 Martin II.
884 Hadrian III.
885 Stephen V.
891 Formosus. Guido. 891
Lambert. 894
896 Boniface VI. Arnulf. 896
896 Stephen VI.
897 Romanus.
897 Theodore II.
898 John IX.
Lewis (the Child).[+] 899
900 Benedict IV.
Lewis III (of Provence). 901
903 Leo V.
903 Christopher.
904 Sergius III.
911 Anastasius III.
Conrad I.[+] 912(?)
913 Lando.
914 John X.
Berengar. 915
Henry I (the Fowler).[+] 918
928 Leo VI.
929 Stephen VII.
931 John XI.
936 Leo VII. Otto I (the Great).[+] 936
939 Stephen VIII.
941 Martin III.
946 Agapetus II.
955 John XII.
Otto I, crowned at Rome. 962
963 Leo VIII.
964 Benedict V (Anti-Pope?).
965 John XIII.
972 Benedict VI.
Otto II. 973
974 Boniface VII (Anti-pope?).
974 Domnus II (?).
974 Benedict VII.
983 John XIV. Otto III 983
985 John XV.
996 Gregory V.
996 John XVI (Anti-pope).
999 Sylvester II.
Henry II (the Saint). 1002
1003 John XVII.
1003 John XVIII.
1009 Sergius IV.
1012 Benedict VIII.
1024 John XIX. Conrad II (the Salic). 1024
1033 Benedict IX.
Henry III. 1039
1044 Sylvester (Anti-pope).
1045( Gregory VI.
1046 Clement II.
1048 Damasus II.
1048 Leo IX.
1054 Victor II.
Henry IV. 1056
1057 Stephen IX.
1058 Benedict X.
1059 Nicholas II.
1061 Alexander II.
1073 Gregory VII (Hildebrand).
1080 (Clement, Anti-pope).
1086 Victor III.
1087 Urban II.
1099 Paschal II.
Henry V. 1106
1118 Gelasius II.
1118 Gregory, (Anti-pope).
1119 Calixtus II.
1121 (Celestine, Anti-pope).
1124 Honorius II.
Lothar II (the Saxon). 1125
1130 Innocent II.
(Anacletus, Anti-pope).
1138 Victor (Anti-pope). [*]Conrad III. 1138
1143 Celestine II.
1144 Lucius II.
1145 Eugenius III.
Frederick I (Barbarossa). 1152
1153 Anastasius IV.
1154 Hadrian IV.
1159 Alexander III.
1159 (Victor, Anti-pope).
1164 (Paschal, Anti-pope).
1168 (Calixtus, Anti-pope).
1181 Lucius III.
1185 Urban III.
1187 Gregory VIII.
1187 Clement III.
Henry VI. 1190
1191 Celestine III.
1198 Innocent III. [*]Philip, Otto IV
(rivals). 1198
Otto IV. 1208
Frederick II. 1212
1216 Honorius III.
1227 Gregory IX.
1241 Celestine IV.
1241 Vacancy.
1243 Innocent IV.
[*]Conrad IV, [*]William,
(rivals). 1250
1254 Alexander IV. Interregnum. 1254
[*]Richard (earl of
Cornwall).
[*]Alfonso (king of
Castile), (rivals). 1257
1261 Urban IV.
1265 Clement IV.
1269 Vacancy.
1271 Gregory X.
[*]Rudolf I (of Hapsburg). 1272
1276 Innocent V.
1276 Hadrian V.
1277 John XX or XXI.
1277 Nicholas I
1281 Martin IV.
1285 Honorius IV.
1289 Nicholas IV.
1292 Vacancy. [*]Adolf (of Nassau). 1292
1294 Celestine V.
1294 Boniface VIII.
[*]Albert I. 1298
1303 Benedict XI.
1305 Clement V.
Henry VII. 1308
1314 Vacancy. Lewis IV. 1315
(Frederick of Austria,
rival).
1316 John XXI or XXII.
1334 Benedict XII.
1342 Clement VI.
Charles IV. 1347
1352 Innocent VI. (Günther of Schwartzburg,
rival).
1362 Urban V.
1370 Gregory XI.
1378 Urban VI,
Clement VII [*]Wenzel. 1378
(Anti-pope).
1389 Boniface IX.
1394 Benedict (Anti-pope).
[*]Rupert. 1400
1404 Innocent VII.
1406 Gregory XII.
1409 Alexander V.
1410 John XXII or Sigismund. 1410
XXIII. (Jobst of Moravia, rival).
1417 Martin V.
1431 Eugene IV.
[*]Albert II. 1438
1439 Felix V (Anti-pope).
Frederick III. 1440
1447 Nicholas V.
1455 Calixtus IV.
1458 Pius II.
1464 Paul II.
1471 Sixtus IV.
1484 Innocent VIII.
1493 Alexander VI. [*]Maximilian I. 1493
1503 Pius III.
1503 Julius II.
1513 Leo X.
Charles V.[3] 1519
1522 Hadrian VI.
1523 Clement VII.
1534 Paul III.
1550 Julius III.
1555 Marcellus II.
1555 Paul IV.
[*]Ferdinand I. 1558
1559 Pius IV.
[*]Maximilian II. 1564
1566 Pius V.
1572 Gregory XIII.
[*]Rudolf II. 1576
1585 Sixtus V.
1590 Urban VII.
1590 Gregory XIV.
1591 Innocent IX.
1592 Clement VIII.
1604 Leo XI.
1604 Paul V.
[*]Matthias. 1612
[*]Ferdinand II. 1619
1621 Gregory XV.
1623 Urban VIII.
[*]Ferdinand III. 1637
1644 Innocent X.
1655 Alexander VII.
[*]Leopold I. 1658
1667 Clement IX.
1670 Clement X.
1676 Innocent XI.
1689 Alexander VIII.
1691 Innocent XII.
1700 Clement XI.
[*]Joseph I. 1705
[*]Charles VI. 1711
1720 Innocent XIII.
1724 Benedict XIII.
1740 Benedict XIV.
[*]Charles VII. 1742
[*]Francis I. 1745
1758 Clement XII.
[*]Joseph II. 1765
1769 Clement XIII.
1775 Pius VI.
[*]Leopold II. 1790
[*]Francis II. 1792
1800 Pius VII.
Abdication of Francis II. 1806
1823 Leo XII.
1829 Pius VIII.
1831 Gregory XVI.
1846 Pius IX.
[*] Those marked with an asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome.
[+] The names marked with a + are those of German kings who never made any
claim to the imperial title.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Reckoning the Anti-pope Felix (A.D. 356) as Felix II.
[3] Crowned Emperor, but at Bologna, not at Rome.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the
Emperor Francis II had announced to the Diet his resignation of the
imperial crown, there were probably few who reflected that the oldest
political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so.
The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the
Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius
had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the
cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through
eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in
extent, in power, in character, a title and pretensions from which all
meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the
old world to the new--nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts
of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much
of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into
the middle ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognised
centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an
influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. It
is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than
of the external history of the Empire, that the following pages are
designed to treat. That history is indeed full of interest and
brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a
subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail
sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy
with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still
less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire,
would be to write the history of Christendom from the fifth century to
the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth;
while even a narrative of more restricted scope, which should attempt
to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries
the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be
compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining
so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though
not necessarily inferior in interest; to speak less of events than of
principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not as a State but as
an Institution, an institution created by and embodying a wonderful
system of ideas. In pursuance of such a plan, the forms which the
Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline must be
briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great men who
founded, guided, and overthrew it must from time to time be touched
upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on
the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the
fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization: to shew
how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to
revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of
their successors it preserved the memory of its origin, and influenced
the European commonwealth of nations.
Strictly speaking, it is from the year 800 A.D., when a King of the
Franks was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, that the
beginning of the Holy Roman Empire must be dated. But in history there
is nothing isolated, and just as to explain a modern Act of Parliament
or a modern conveyance of lands we must go back to the feudal customs
of the thirteenth century, so among the institutions of the Middle
Ages there is scarcely one which can be understood until it is traced
up either to classical or to primitive Teutonic antiquity. Such a mode
of inquiry is most of all needful in the case of the Holy Empire,
itself no more than a tradition, a fancied revival of departed
glories. And thus, in order to make it clear out of what elements the
imperial system was formed, we might be required to scrutinize the
antiquities of the Christian Church; to survey the constitution of
Rome in the days when Rome was no more than the first of the Latin
cities; nay, to travel back yet further to that Jewish theocratic
polity whose influence on the minds of the mediæval priesthood was
necessarily so profound. Practically, however, it may suffice to begin
by glancing at the condition of the Roman world in the third and
fourth centuries of the Christian era. We shall then see the old
Empire with its scheme of absolutism fully matured; we shall mark how
the new religion, rising in the midst of a hostile power, ends by
embracing and transforming it; and we shall be in a position to
understand what impression the whole huge fabric of secular and
ecclesiastical government which Roman and Christian had piled up made
upon the barbarian tribes who pressed into the charmed circle of the
ancient civilization.
CHAPTER II.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS.
[Sidenote: The Roman Empire in the second century.]
[Sidenote: Obliteration of national distinctions.]
[Sidenote: The Capital.]
That ostentation of humility which the subtle policy of Augustus had
conceived, and the jealous hypocrisy of Tiberius maintained, was
gradually dropped by their successors, till despotism became at last
recognised in principle as the government of the Roman Empire. With an
aristocracy decayed, a populace degraded, an army no longer recruited
from Italy, the semblance of liberty that yet survived might be swept
away with impunity. Republican forms had never been known in the
provinces at all, and the aspect which the imperial administration had
originally assumed there, soon reacted on its position in the capital.
Earlier rulers had disguised their supremacy by making a slavish
senate the instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time
went on, even this veil was withdrawn; and in the age of Septimius
Severus, the Emperor stood forth to the whole Roman world as the
single centre and source of power and political action. The warlike
character of the Roman state was preserved in his title of General;
his provincial lieutenants were military governors; and a more
terrible enforcement of the theory was found in his dependence on the
army, at once the origin and support of all authority. But, as he
united in himself every function of government, his sovereignty was
civil as well as military. Laws emanated from him; all officials acted
under his commission; the sanctity of his person bordered on divinity.
This increased concentration of power was mainly required by the
necessities of frontier defence, for within there was more decay than
disaffection. Few troops were quartered through the country: few
fortresses checked the march of armies in the struggles which placed
Vespasian and Severus on the throne. The distant crash of war from the
Rhine or the Euphrates was scarcely heard or heeded in the profound
quiet of the Mediterranean coasts, where, with piracy, fleets had
disappeared. No quarrels of race or religion disturbed that calm, for
all national distinctions were becoming merged in the idea of a common
Empire. The gradual extension of Roman citizenship through the
_coloniæ_, the working of the equalized and equalizing Roman law, the
even pressure of the government on all subjects, the movement of
population caused by commerce and the slave traffic, were steadily
assimilating the various peoples. Emperors who were for the most part
natives of the provinces cared little to cherish Italy or conciliate
Rome: it was their policy to keep open for every subject a career by
whose freedom they had themselves risen to greatness, and to recruit
the senate from the most illustrious families in the cities of Gaul,
Spain, and Asia. The edict by which Caracalla extended to all natives
of the Roman world the rights of Roman citizenship, though prompted by
no motives of kindness, proved in the end a boon. Annihilating legal
distinctions, it completed the work which trade and literature and
toleration to all beliefs but one were already performing, and left,
so far as we can tell, only two nations still cherishing a national
feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his religion: the Greek boasted his
original intellectual superiority. Speculative philosophy lent her aid
to this general assimilation. Stoicism, with its doctrine of a
universal system of nature, made minor distinctions between man and
man seem insignificant: and by its teachers the idea of
cosmopolitanism was for the first time proclaimed. Alexandrian
Neo-Platonism, uniting the tenets of many schools, first bringing the
mysticism of the East into connection with the logical philosophies of
Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement or controversy for the
minds of all the world. Yet Rome's commanding position was scarcely
shaken. Her actual power was indeed confined within narrow limits.
Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose the sovereign:
more rarely still could they control his policy; neither law nor
custom raised them above other subjects, or accorded to them any
advantage in the career of civil or military ambition. As in time past
Rome had sacrificed domestic freedom that she might be the mistress of
others, so now to be universal, she, the conqueror, had descended to
the level of the conquered. But the sacrifice had not wanted its
reward. From her came the laws and the language that had overspread
the world: at her feet the nations laid the offerings of their labour:
she was the head of the Empire and of civilization, and in riches,
fame, and splendour far outshone as well the cities of that time as
the fabled glories of Babylon or Persepolis.
[Sidenote: Diocletian and Constantine.]
Scarcely had these slowly working influences brought about this unity,
when other influences began to threaten it. New foes assailed the
frontiers; while the loosening of the structure within was shewn by
the long struggles for power which followed the death or deposition of
each successive emperor. In the period of anarchy after the fall of
Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in every part of the
Empire, and ruled great provinces as monarchs apart, owning no
allegiance to the possessor of the capital.
The founding of the kingdoms of modern Europe might have been
anticipated by two hundred years, had the barbarians been bolder, or
had there not arisen in Diocletian a prince active and politic enough
to bind up the fragments before they had lost all cohesion, meeting
altered conditions by new remedies. By dividing and localizing
authority, he confessed that the weaker heart could no longer make its
pulsations felt to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the
supreme power among four persons, and then sought to give it a
factitious strength, by surrounding it with an oriental pomp which his
earlier predecessors would have scorned. The sovereign's person became
more sacred, and was removed further from the subject by the
interposition of a host of officials. The prerogative of Rome was
menaced by the rivalry of Nicomedia, and the nearer greatness of
Milan. Constantine trod in the same path, extending the system of
titles and functionaries, separating the civil from the military,
placing counts and dukes along the frontiers and in the cities, making
the household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more
important, though to a Roman eye degraded by their attachment to the
monarch's person. The crown became, for the first time, the fountain
of honour. These changes brought little good. Heavier taxation
depressed the aristocracy[4]: population decreased, agriculture
withered, serfdom spread: it was found more difficult to raise native
troops and to pay any troops whatever. The removal of the seat of
power to Byzantium, if it prolonged the life of a part of the Empire,
shook it as a whole, by making the separation of East and West
inevitable. By it Rome's self-abnegation that she might Romanize the
world, was completed; for though the new capital preserved her name,
and followed her customs and precedents, yet now the imperial sway
ceased to be connected with the city which had created it. Thus did
the idea of Roman monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its
local centre, it subsisted no longer historically, but, so to speak,
naturally, as a part of an order of things which a change in external
conditions seemed incapable of disturbing. Henceforth the Empire would
be unaffected by the disasters of the city. And though, after the
partition of the Empire had been confirmed by Valentinian, and finally
settled on the death of Theodosius, the seat of the Western government
was removed first to Milan and then to Ravenna, neither event
destroyed Rome's prestige, nor the notion of a single imperial
nationality common to all her subjects. The Syrian, the Pannonian, the
Briton, the Spaniard, still called himself a Roman[5].
[Sidenote: Christianity.]
[Sidenote: Its alliance with the State.]
For that nationality was now beginning to be supported by a new and
vigorous power. The Emperors had indeed opposed it as disloyal and
revolutionary: had more than once put forth their whole strength to
root it out. But the unity of the Empire, and the ease of
communication through its parts, had favoured the spread of
Christianity: persecution had scattered the seeds more widely, had
forced on it a firm organization, had given it martyr-heroes and a
history. When Constantine, partly perhaps from a genuine moral
sympathy, yet doubtless far more in the well-grounded belief that he
had more to gain from the zealous sympathy of its professors than he
could lose by the aversion of those who still cultivated a languid
paganism, took Christianity to be the religion of the Empire, it was
already a great political force, able, and not more able than willing,
to repay him by aid and submission. Yet the league was struck in no
mere mercenary spirit, for the league was inevitable. Of the evils and
dangers incident to the system then founded, there was as yet no
experience: of that antagonism between Church and State which to a
modern appears so natural, there was not even an idea. Among the Jews,
the State had rested upon religion; among the Romans, religion had
been an integral part of the political constitution, a matter far more
of national or tribal or family feeling than of personal[6]. Both in
Israel and at Rome the mingling of religious with civic patriotism had
been harmonious, giving strength and elasticity to the whole body
politic. So perfect a union was now no longer possible in the Roman
Empire, for the new faith had already a governing body of her own in
those rulers and teachers whom the growth of sacramentalism, and of
sacerdotalism its necessary consequence, was making every day more
powerful, and marking off more sharply from the mass of the Christian
people. Since therefore the ecclesiastical organization could not be
identical with the civil, it became its counterpart. Suddenly called
from danger and ignominy to the seat of power, and finding her
inexperience perplexed by a sphere of action vast and varied, the
Church was compelled to frame herself upon the model of the secular
administration. Where her own machinery was defective, as in the case
of doctrinal disputes affecting the whole Christian world, she sought
the interposition of the sovereign; in all else she strove not to sink
in, but to reproduce for herself the imperial system. And just as with
the extension of the Empire all the independent rights of districts,
towns, or tribes had disappeared, so now the primitive freedom and
diversity of individual Christians and local Churches, already
circumscribed by the frequent struggles against heresy, was finally
overborne by the idea of one visible catholic Church, uniform in faith
and ritual; uniform too in her relation to the civil power and the
increasingly oligarchical character of her government. Thus, under the
combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs, there shaped
itself a hierarchy of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops, their
jurisdiction, although still chiefly spiritual, enforced by the laws
of the State, their provinces and dioceses usually corresponding to
the administrative divisions of the Empire. As no patriarch yet
enjoyed more than an honorary supremacy, the head of the Church--so
far as she could be said to have a head--was virtually the Emperor
himself. The inchoate right to intermeddle in religious affairs which
he derived from the office of Pontifex Maximus was readily admitted;
and the clergy, preaching the duty of passive obedience now as it had
been preached in the days of Nero and Diocletian[7], were well pleased
to see him preside in councils, issue edicts against heresy, and
testify even by arbitrary measures his zeal for the advancement of the
faith and the overthrow of pagan rites. But though the tone of the
Church remained humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were occasions
wanting which revealed the future that was in store for her. The
resistance and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society
could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known
before: the abasement of Theodosius the Emperor before Ambrose the
Archbishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority. In the
decrepitude of old institutions, in the barrenness of literature and
the feebleness of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings
of the people sought more and more to attach themselves; and when in
the fifth century the horizon grew black with clouds of ruin, those
who watched with despair or apathy the approach of irresistible foes,
fled for comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes
revered.
[Sidenote: It embraces and preserves the imperial idea.]
But that which we are above all concerned to remark here is, that this
church system, demanding a more rigid uniformity in doctrine and
organization, making more and more vital the notion of a visible body
of worshippers united by participation in the same sacraments,
maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single Roman people
throughout the world. Christianity as well as civilization became
conterminous with the Roman Empire[8].
FOOTNOTES:
[4] According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the
_curiales_ in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when
there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property.
[5] See the eloquent passage of Claudian, _In secundum consulatum
Stilichonis_, 129, _sqq._, from which the following lines are taken
(150-60):--
'Hæc est in gremio victos quæ sola recepit,
Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,
Matris, non dominæ, 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 Oronten,
Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus unquam
Romanæ ditionis erit.'
[6] In the Roman jurisprudence, _ius sacrum_ is a branch of _ius
publicum_.
[7] Tertullian, writing circ. A.D. 200, says: 'Sed quid ego amplius de
religione atque pietate Christiana in imperatorem quem necesse est
suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus noster elegerit. Et merito dixerim,
noster est magis Cæsar, ut a nostro Deo constitutus.'--_Apologet._
cap. 34.
[8] See the book of Optatus, bishop of Milevis, _Contra Donatistas_.
'Non enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica, id
est, in imperio Romano, cum super imperatorem non sit nisi solus
Deus:' (p. 999 of vol. ii. of Migne's _Patrologiæ Cursus completus_.)
The treatise of Optatus is full of interest, as shewing the growth of
the idea of the visible Church, and of the primacy of Peter's chair,
as constituting its centre and representing its unity.
CHAPTER III.
THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.
[Sidenote: The Barbarians.]
[Sidenote: Admitted to Roman titles and honours.]
Upon a world so constituted did the barbarians of the North descend.
From the dawn of history they shew as a dim background to the warmth
and light of the Mediterranean coast, changing little while kingdoms
rise and fall in the South: only thought on when some hungry swarm
comes down to pillage or to settle. It is always as foes that they are
known. The Romans never forgot the invasion of Brennus; and their
fears, renewed by the irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, could not
let them rest till the extension of the frontier to the Rhine and the
Danube removed Italy from immediate danger. A little more perseverance
under Tiberius, or again under Hadrian, would probably have reduced
all Germany as far as the Baltic and the Oder. But the politic or
jealous advice of Augustus[9] was followed, and it was only along the
frontiers that Roman arts and culture affected the Teutonic races.
Commerce was brisk; Roman envoys penetrated the forests to the courts
of rude chieftains; adventurous barbarians entered the provinces,
sometimes to admire, oftener, like the brother of Arminius[10], to
take service under the Roman flag, and rise to a distinction in the
legion which some feud denied them at home. This was found even more
convenient by the hirer than by the employed; till by degrees
barbarian mercenaries came to form the largest, or at least the most
effective, part of the Roman armies. The body-guard of Augustus had
been so composed; the prætorians were generally selected from the
bravest frontier troops, most of them German; the practice could not
but increase with the extinction of the free peasantry, the growth of
villenage, and the effeminacy of all classes. Emperors who were, like
Maximin, themselves foreigners, encouraged a system by whose means
they had risen, and whose advantages they knew. After Constantine, the
barbarians form the majority of the troops; after Theodosius, a Roman
is the exception. The soldiers of the Eastern Empire in the time of
Arcadius are almost all Goths, vast bodies of whom had been settled in
the provinces; while in the West, Stilicho[11] can oppose Rhodogast
only by summoning the German auxiliaries from the frontiers. Along
with this practice there had grown up another, which did still more to
make the barbarians feel themselves members of the Roman state.
Whatever the pride of the old republic might assert, the maxim of the
Empire had always been that birth and race should exclude no subject
from any post which his abilities deserved. This principle, which had
removed all obstacles from the path of the Spaniard Trajan, the
Pannonian Maximin, the Numidian Philip, was afterwards extended to the
conferring of honour and power on persons who did not even profess to
have passed through the grades of Roman service, but remained leaders
of their own tribes. Ariovistus had been soothed by the title of
Friend of the Roman People; in the third century the insignia of the
consulship[12] were conferred on a Herulian chief: Crocus and his
Alemanni entered as an independent body into the service of Rome;
along the Rhine whole tribes received, under the name of Laeti, lands
within the provinces on condition of military service; and the foreign
aid which the Sarmatian had proffered to Vespasian against his rival,
and Marcus Aurelius had indignantly rejected in the war with Cassius,
became the usual, at last the sole support of the Empire, in civil as
well as in external strife.
Thus in many ways was the old antagonism broken down--Romans admitting
barbarians to rank and office, barbarians catching something of the
manners and culture of their neighbours. And thus when the final
movement came, and the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves
through the provinces, they entered not as savage strangers, but as
colonists knowing something of the system into which they came, and
not unwilling to be considered its members; despising the degenerate
provincials who struck no blow in their own defence, but full of
respect for the majestic power which had for so many centuries
confronted and instructed them.
[Sidenote: Their feelings towards the Roman Empire.]
Great during all these ages, but greatest when they were actually
traversing and settling in the Empire, must have been the impression
which its elaborate machinery of government and mature civilization
made upon the minds of the Northern invaders. With arms whose
fabrication they had learned from their foes, these dwellers in the
forest conquered well-tilled fields, and entered towns whose busy
workshops, marts stored with the productions of distant countries, and
palaces rich in monuments of art, equally roused their wonder. To the
beauty of statuary or painting they might often be blind, but the
rudest mind must have been awed by the massive piles with which vanity
or devotion, or the passion for amusement, had adorned Milan and
Verona, Arles, Treves, and Bordeaux. A deeper awe would strike them as
they gazed on the crowding worshippers and stately ceremonial of
Christianity, most unlike their own rude sacrifices. The exclamation
of the Goth Athanaric, when led into the market-place of
Constantinople, may stand for the feelings of his nation: 'Without
doubt the Emperor is a God upon earth, and he who attacks him is
guilty of his own blood[13].'
[Sidenote: Their desire to preserve its institutions.]
The social and political system, with its cultivated language and
literature, into which they came, would impress fewer of the
conquerors, but by those few would be admired beyond all else. Its
regular organization supplied what they most needed and could least
construct for themselves, and hence it was that the greatest among
them were the most desirous to preserve it. The Mongol Attila
excepted, there is among these terrible hosts no destroyer; the wish
of each leader is to maintain the existing order, to spare life, to
respect every work of skill and labour, above all to perpetuate the
methods of Roman administration, and rule the people as the deputy or
successor of their Emperor. Titles conferred by him were the highest
honours they knew: they were also the only means of acquiring
something like a legal claim to the obedience of the subject, and of
turning a patriarchal or military chieftainship into the regular sway
of an hereditary monarch. Civilis had long since endeavoured to govern
his Batavians as a Roman general[14]. Alaric became master-general of
the armies of Illyricum. Clovis exulted in the consulship; his son
Theodebert received Provence, the conquest of his own battle-axe, as
the gift of Justinian. Sigismund the Burgundian king, created count
and patrician by the Emperor Anastasius, professed the deepest
gratitude and the firmest faith to that Eastern court which was
absolutely powerless to help or to hurt him. 'My people is yours,' he
writes, 'and to rule them delights me less than to serve you; the
hereditary devotion of my race to Rome has made us account those the
highest honours which your military titles convey; we have always
preferred what an Emperor gave to all that our ancestors could
bequeath. In ruling our nation we hold ourselves but your lieutenants:
you, whose divinely-appointed sway no barrier bounds, whose blessed
beams shine from the Bosphorus into distant Gaul, employ us to
administer the remoter regions of your Empire: your world is our
fatherland[15].' A contemporary historian has recorded the remarkable
disclosure of his own thoughts and purposes, made by one of the ablest
of the barbarian chieftains, Athaulf the Visigoth, the brother-in-law
and successor of Alaric. 'It was at first my wish to destroy the Roman
name, and erect in its place a Gothic empire, taking to myself the
place and the powers of Cæsar Augustus. But when experience taught me
that the untameable barbarism of the Goths would not suffer them to
live beneath the sway of law, and that the abolition of the
institutions on which the state rested would involve the ruin of the
state itself, I chose the glory of renewing and maintaining by Gothic
strength the fame of Rome, desiring to go down to posterity as the
restorer of that Roman power which it was beyond my power to replace.
Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace[16].'
Historians have remarked how valuable must have been the skill of
Roman officials to princes who from leaders of tribes were become
rulers of wide lands; and in particular how indispensable the aid of
the Christian bishops, the intellectual aristocracy of their new
subjects, whose advice could alone guide their policy and conciliate
the vanquished. Not only is this true; it is but a small part of the
truth; one form of that manifold and overpowering influence which the
old system exercised over its foes not less than its own children. For
it is hardly too much to say that the thought of antagonism to the
Empire and the wish to extinguish it never crossed the mind of the
barbarians[17]. The conception of that Empire was too universal, too
august, too enduring. It was everywhere around them, and they could
remember no time when it had not been so. It had no association of
people or place whose fall could seem to involve that of the whole
fabric; it had that connection with the Christian Church which made it
all-embracing and venerable.
[Sidenote: The belief in its eternity.]
There were especially two ideas whereon it rested, and from which it
obtained a peculiar strength and a peculiar direction. The one was the
belief that as the dominion of Rome was universal, so must it be
eternal. Nothing like it had been seen before. The empire of Alexander
had lasted a short lifetime; and within its wide compass were included
many arid wastes, and many tracts where none but the roving savage had
ever set foot. That of the Italian city had for fourteen generations
embraced all the most wealthy and populous regions of the civilized
world, and had laid the foundations of its power so deep that they
seemed destined to last for ever. If Rome moved slowly for a time, her
foot was always planted firmly: the ease and swiftness of her later
conquests proved the solidity of the earlier; and to her, more justly
than to his own city, might the boast of the Athenian historian be
applied: that she advanced farthest in prosperity, and in adversity
drew back the least. From the end of the republican period her poets,
her orators, her jurists, ceased not to repeat the claim of
world-dominion, and confidently predict its eternity[18]. The proud
belief of his countrymen which Virgil had expressed--
'His ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono:
Imperium sine fine dedi'--
was shared by the early Christians when they prayed for the
persecuting power whose fall would bring Antichrist upon earth.
Lactantius writes: 'When Rome the head of the world shall have fallen,
who can doubt that the end is come of human things, aye, of the earth
itself. She, she alone is the state by which all things are upheld
even until now; wherefore let us make prayers and supplications to the
God of heaven, if indeed his decrees and his purposes can be delayed,
that that hateful tyrant come not sooner than we look for, he for whom
are reserved fearful deeds, who shall pluck out that eye in whose
extinction the world itself shall perish[19].' With the triumph of
Christianity this belief had found a new basis. For as the Empire had
decayed, the Church had grown stronger; and now while the one,
trembling at the approach of the destroyer, saw province after
province torn away, the other, rising in stately youth, prepared to
fill her place and govern in her name, and in doing so, to adopt and
sanctify and propagate anew the notion of a universal and unending
state.
[Sidenote: Sanctity of the imperial name.]
The second chief element in this conception was the association of
such a state with one irresponsible governor, the Emperor. The hatred
to the name of King, which their earliest political struggles had left
in the Romans, by obliging their ruler to take a new and strange
title, marked him off from all the other sovereigns of the world. To
the provincials especially he became an awful impersonation of the
great machine of government which moved above and around them. It was
not merely that he was, like a modern king, the centre of power and
the dispenser of honour: his pre-eminence, broken by no comparison
with other princes, by the ascending ranks of no aristocracy, had in
it something almost supernatural. The right of legislation had become
vested in him alone: the decrees of the people, and resolutions of the
senate, and edicts of the magistrates were, during the last three
centuries, replaced by imperial constitutions; his domestic council,
the consistory, was the supreme court of appeal; his interposition,
like that of some terrestrial Providence, was invoked, and legally
provided so to be, to reverse or overleap the ordinary rules of
law[20]. From the time of Julius and Augustus his person had been
hallowed by the office of chief pontiff[21] and the tribunician power;
to swear by his head was considered the most solemn of all oaths[22];
his effigy was sacred[23], even on a coin; to him or to his Genius
temples were erected and divine honours paid while he lived[24]; and
when, as it was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of
Divus was accorded to him, after a solemn consecration[25]. In the
confused multiplicity of mythologies, the worship of the Emperor was
the only worship common to the whole Roman world, and was therefore
that usually proposed as a test to the Christians on their trial.
Under the new religion the form of adoration vanished, the sentiment
of reverence remained: the right to control Church as well as State,
admitted at Nicæa, and habitually exercised by the sovereigns of
Constantinople, made the Emperor hardly less essential to the new
conception of a world-wide Christian monarchy than he had been to the
military despotism of old. These considerations explain why the men of
the fifth century, clinging to preconceived ideas, refused to believe
in that dissolution of the Empire which they saw with their own eyes.
Because it could not die, it lived. And there was in the slowness of
the change and its external aspect, as well as in the fortunes of the
capital, something to favour the illusion. The Roman name was shared
by every subject; the Roman city was no longer the seat of government,
nor did her capture extinguish the imperial power, for the maxim was
now accepted, Where the Emperor is, there is Rome[26]. But her
continued existence, not permanently occupied by any conqueror,
striking the nations with an awe which the history or the external
splendours of Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna could nowise inspire,
was an ever new assertion of the endurance of the Roman race and
dominion. Dishonoured and defenceless, the spell of her name was still
strong enough to arrest the conqueror in the moment of triumph. The
irresistible impulse that drew Alaric was one of glory or revenge, not
of destruction: the Hun turned back from Aquileia with a vague fear
upon him: the Ostrogoth adorned and protected his splendid prize.
[Sidenote: Last days of the Western Empire.]
[Sidenote: Its extinction by Odoacer, A.D. 476.]
In the history of the last days of the Western Empire, two points
deserve special remark: its continued union with the Eastern branch,
and the way in which its ideal dignity was respected while its
representatives were despised. After Stilicho's death, and Alaric's
invasion, its fall was a question of time. While one by one the
provinces were abandoned by the central government, left either to be
occupied by invading tribes or to maintain a precarious independence,
like Britain and Armorica[27], by means of municipal unions, Italy lay
at the mercy of the barbarian auxiliaries and was governed by their
leaders. The degenerate line of Theodosius might have seemed to reign
by hereditary right, but after their extinction in Valentinian III
each phantom Emperor--Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Anthemius,
Olybrius--received the purple from the haughty Ricimer, general of the
troops, only to be stripped of it when he presumed to forget his
dependence. Though the division between Arcadius and Honorius had
definitely severed the two realms for administrative purposes, they
were still supposed to constitute a single Empire, and the rulers of
the East interfered more than once to raise to the Western throne
princes they could not protect upon it. Ricimer's insolence quailed
before the shadowy grandeur of the imperial title: his ambition, and
Gundobald his successor's, were bounded by the name of patrician. The
bolder genius of Odoacer[28], general of the barbarian auxiliaries,
resolved to abolish an empty pageant, and extinguish the title and
office of Emperor of the West. Yet over him too the spell had power;
and as the Gaulish warrior had gazed on the silent majesty of the
senate in a deserted city, so the Herulian revered the power before
which the world had bowed, and though there was no force to check or
to affright him, shrank from grasping in his own barbarian hand the
sceptre of the Cæsars. When, at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus,
the boy whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native Cæsar of
Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a
deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the
insignia of royalty at the feet of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West,
they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch
sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and
courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was
entreated to confer the title of patrician and the administration of
the Italian provinces[29]. The Emperor granted what he could not
refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of King[30], continued the
consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions
of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of
the Eastern Emperor. There was thus legally no extinction of the
Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form,
and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to
their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that
Byzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The
joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further
by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I and again at the death of
Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway
the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church[31].
To those who lived at the time, this year (476 A.D.) was no such epoch
as it has since become, nor was any impression made on men's minds
commensurate with the real significance of the event. For though it
did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in fact, its
consequences were from the first great. It hastened the development of
a Latin as opposed to Greek and Oriental forms of Christianity: it
emancipated the Popes: it gave a new character to the projects and
government of the Teutonic rulers of the West. But the importance of
remembering its formal aspect to those who witnessed it will be felt
as we approach the era when the Empire was revived by Charles the
Frank.
[Sidenote: Odoacer.]
[Sidenote: Theodoric.]
[Sidenote: Italy reconquered, by Justinian.]
Odoacer's monarchy was not more oppressive than those of his
neighbours in Gaul, Spain, and Africa. But the mercenary _fœderati_
who supported it were a loose swarm of predatory tribes: themselves
without cohesion, they could take no firm root in Italy. During the
eighteen years of his reign no progress seems to have been made
towards the re-organization of society; and the first real attempt to
blend the peoples and maintain the traditions of Roman wisdom in the
hands of a new and vigorous race was reserved for a more famous
chieftain, the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the
forerunner of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
The aim of his reign, though he professed allegiance to the Eastern
court which had favoured his invasion[32], was the establishment of a
national monarchy in Italy. Brought up as a hostage in the court of
Byzantium, he learnt to know the advantages of an orderly and
cultivated society and the principles by which it must be maintained;
called in early manhood to roam as a warrior-chief over the plains of
the Danube, he acquired along with the arts of command a sense of the
superiority of his own people in valour and energy and truth. When the
defeat and death of Odoacer had left the peninsula at his mercy, he
sought no further conquest, easy as it would have been to tear away
new provinces from the Eastern realm, but strove only to preserve and
strengthen the ancient polity of Rome, to breathe into her decaying
institutions the spirit of a fresh life, and without endangering the
military supremacy of his own Goths, to conciliate by indulgence and
gradually raise to the level of their masters the degenerate
population of Italy. The Gothic nation appears from the first less
cruel in war and more prudent in council than any of their Germanic
brethren[33]: all that was most noble among them shone forth now in
the rule of the greatest of the Amali. From his palace at Verona[34],
commemorated in the song of the Nibelungs, he issued equal laws for
Roman and Goth, and bade the intruder, if he must occupy part of the
lands, at least respect the goods and the person of his
fellow-subject. Jurisprudence and administration remained in native
hands: two annual consuls, one named by Theodoric, the other by the
Eastern monarch, presented an image of the ancient state; and while
agriculture and the arts revived in the provinces, Rome herself
celebrated the visits of a master who provided for the wants of her
people and preserved with care the monuments of her former splendour.
With peace and plenty men's minds took hope, and the study of letters
revived. The last gleam of classical literature gilds the reign of the
barbarian. By the consolidation of the two races under one wise
government, Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom
and degradation. It was not so to be. Theodoric was tolerant, but
toleration was itself a crime in the eyes of his orthodox subjects:
the Arian Goths were and remained strangers and enemies among the
Catholic Italians. Scarcely had the sceptre passed from the hands of
Theodoric to his unworthy offspring, when Justinian, who had viewed
with jealousy the greatness of his nominal lieutenant, determined to
assert his dormant rights over Italy; its people welcomed Belisarius
as a deliverer, and in the struggle that followed the race and name of
the Ostrogoths perished for ever. Thus again reunited in fact, as it
had been all the while united in name, to the Roman Empire, the
peninsula was divided into counties and dukedoms, and obeyed the
exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the Byzantine court, till the arrival of
the Lombards in A.D. 568 drove him from some districts, and left him
only a feeble authority in the rest.
[Sidenote: The Transalpine provinces.]
Beyond the Alps, though the Roman population had now ceased to seek
help from the Eastern court, the Empire's rights still subsisted in
theory, and were never legally extinguished. As has been said, they
were admitted by the conquerors themselves: by Athaulf, when he
reigned in Aquitaine as the vicar of Honorius, and recovered Spain
from the Suevi to restore it to its ancient masters; by the Visigothic
kings of Spain, when they permitted the Mediterranean cities to send
tribute to Byzantium; by Clovis, when, after the representatives of
the old government, Syagrius and the Armorican cities, had been
overpowered or absorbed, he received with delight from the Eastern
emperor Anastasius the grant of a Roman dignity to confirm his
possession. Arrayed like a Fabius or Valerius in the consul's
embroidered robe, the Sicambrian chieftain rode through the streets of
Tours, while the shout of the provincials hailed him Augustus[35].
They already obeyed him, but his power was now legalised in their
eyes, and it was not without a melancholy pride that they saw the
terrible conqueror himself yield to the spell of the Roman name, and
do homage to the enduring majesty of their legitimate sovereign[36].
[Sidenote: Lingering influences of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Religion.]
Yet the severed limbs of the Empire forgot by degrees their original
unity. As in the breaking up of the old society, which we trace from
the sixth to the eighth century, rudeness and ignorance grew apace, as
language and manners were changed by the infiltration of Teutonic
settlers, as men's thoughts and hopes and interests were narrowed by
isolation from their fellows, as the organization of the Roman
province and the Germanic tribe alike dissolved into a chaos whence
the new order began to shape itself, dimly and doubtfully as yet, the
memory of the old Empire, its symmetry, its sway, its civilization,
must needs wane and fade. It might have perished altogether but for
the two enduring witnesses Rome had left--her Church and her Law. The
barbarians had at first associated Christianity with the Romans from
whom they learned it: the Romans had used it as their only bulwark
against oppression. The hierarchy were the natural leaders of the
people, and the necessary councillors of the king. Their power grew
with the extinction of civil government and the spread of
superstition; and when the Frank found it too valuable to be abandoned
to the vanquished people, he insensibly acquired the feelings and
policy of the order he entered.
[Sidenote: Jurisprudence.]
As the Empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdoms which the
conquerors had founded themselves began to dissolve, the Church clung
more closely to her unity of faith and discipline, the common bond of
all Christian men. That unity must have a centre, that centre was
Rome. A succession of able and zealous pontiffs extended her influence
(the sanctity and the writings of Gregory the Great were famous
through all the West): never occupied by barbarians, she retained her
peculiar character and customs, and laid the foundations of a power
over men's souls more durable than that which she had lost over their
bodies[37]. Only second in importance to this influence was that which
was exercised by the permanence of the old law, and of its creature
the municipality. The barbarian invaders retained the customs of their
ancestors, characteristic memorials of a rude people, as we see them
in the Salic law or in the ordinances of Ina and Alfred. But the
subject population and the clergy continued to be governed by that
elaborate system which the genius and labour of many generations had
raised to be the most lasting monument of Roman greatness.
The civil law had maintained itself in Spain and Southern Gaul, nor
was it utterly forgotten even in the North, in Britain, on the borders
of Germany. Revised editions of the Theodosian code were issued by the
Visigothic and Burgundian princes. For some centuries it was the
patrimony of the subject population everywhere, and in Aquitaine and
Italy has outlived feudalism. The presumption in later times was that
all men were to be judged by it who could not be proved to be subject
to some other[38]. Its phrases, its forms, its courts, its subtlety
and precision, all recalled the strong and refined society which had
produced it. Other motives, as well as those of kindness to their
subjects, made the new kings favour it; for it exalted their
prerogative, and the submission enjoined by it on one class of their
subjects soon came to be demanded from the other, by their own laws
the equals of the prince. Considering attentively how many of the old
institutions continued to subsist, and studying the feelings of that
time, as they are faintly preserved in its scanty records, it seems
hardly too much to say that in the eighth century the Roman Empire
still existed in the West: existed in men's minds as a power weakened,
delegated, suspended, but not destroyed.
It is easy for those who read the history of an age in the light of
those that followed it, to perceive that in this men erred; that the
tendency of events was wholly different; that society had entered on a
new phase, wherein every change did more to localize authority and
strengthen the aristocratic principle at the expense of the despotic.
We can see that other forms of life, more full of promise for the
distant future, had already begun to shew themselves: they--with no
type of power or beauty, but that which had filled the imagination of
their forefathers, and now loomed on them grander than ever through
the mist of centuries--mistook, as it has been said of Rienzi in later
days, memories for hopes, and sighed only for the renewal of its
strength. Events were at hand by which these hopes seemed destined to
be gratified.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] 'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.'--Tac.
_Ann._ i. 2.
[10] Tac. _Ann._ ii. 9.
[11] Stilicho, the bulwark of the Empire, seems to have been himself a
Vandal by extraction.
[12] Of course not the consulship itself, but the _ornamenta
consularia_.
[13] Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 28.
[14] Tac. _Hist._ i. and iv.
[15] 'Vester quidem est populus meus sed me plus servire vobis quam
illi præesse delectat. Traxit istud a proavis generis mei apud vos
decessoresque vestros semper animo Romana devotio, ut illa nobis magis
claritas putaretur, quam vestra per militiæ titulos porrigeret
celsitudo: cunctisque auctoribus meis semper magis ambitum est quod a
principibus sumerent quam quod a patribus attulissent. Cumque gentem
nostram videamur regere, non aliud nos quam milites vestros credimus
ordinari.... Per nos administratis remotarum spatia regionum: patria
nostra vester orbis est. Tangit Galliam suam lumen orientis, et radius
qui illis partibus oriri creditur, hic refulget. Dominationem vobis
divinitus præstitam obex nulla concludit, nec ullis provinciarum
terminis diffusio felicium sceptrorum limitatur. Salvo divinitatis
honore sit dictum.'--Letter printed among the works of Avitus, Bishop
of Vienne. (Migne's _Patrologia_, vol. lix. p. 285.)
This letter, as its style shews, is the composition not of Sigismund
himself, but of Avitus, writing on Sigismund's behalf. But this makes
it scarcely less valuable evidence of the feelings of the time.
[16] 'Referre solitus est (_sc._ Ataulphus) se in primis ardenter
inhiasse: ut obliterato Romanorum nomine Romanum omne solum Gothorum
imperium et faceret et vocaret: essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia
quod Romania fuisset; fieretque nunc Ataulphus quod quondam Cæsar
Augustus. At ubi multa experientia probavisset, neque Gothos ullo modo
parere legibus posse propter effrenatam barbariem, neque reipublicæ
interdici leges oportere sine quibus respublica non est respublica;
elegisse se saltem, ut gloriam sibi de restituendo in integrum
augendoque Romano nomine Gothorum viribus quæreret, habereturque apud
posteros Romanæ restitutionis auctor postquam esse non potuerat
immutator. Ob hoc abstinere a bello, ob hoc inhiare paci
nitebatur.'--Orosius, vii. 43.
[17] Athaulf formed only to abandon it.
[18] See, among other passages, Varro, _De lingua Latina_, iv. 34;
Cic., _Pro Domo_, 33; and in the _Corpus Iuris Civilis_, Dig. i. 5,
17; l. 1, 33; xiv. 2, 9; quoted by Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem
Luneviller Frieden_. The phrase 'urbs æterna' appears in a novel
issued by Valentinian III.
Tertullian speaks of Rome as 'civitas sacrosancta.'
[19] Lact. _Divin. Instit._ vii. 25: 'Etiam res ipsa declarat lapsum
ruinamque rerum brevi fore: nisi quod incolumi urbe Roma nihil
istiusmodi videtur esse metuendum. At vero cum caput illud orbis
occident, et ῥύμη esse cœperit quod Sibyllæ fore aiunt, quis dubitet
venisse iam finem rebus humanis, orbique terrarum? Illa, illa est
civitas quæ adhuc sustentat omnia, precandusque nobis et adorandus est
Deus cœli si tamen statuta eius et placita differri possunt, ne citius
quam putemus tyrannus ille abominabilis veniat qui tantum facinus
moliatur, ac lumen illud effodiat cuius interitu mundus ipse lapsurus
est.'
Cf. Tertull. _Apolog._ cap. xxxii: 'Est et alia maior necessitas nobis
orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu imperii rebusque
Romanis, qui vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam
sæculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem Romani imperii commeatu
scimus retardari.' Also the same writer, _Ad Scapulam_, cap. ii:
'Christianus sciens imperatorem a Deo suo constitui, necesse est ut
ipsum diligat et revereatur et honoret et salvum velit cum toto Romano
imperio quousque sæculum stabit: tamdiu enim stabit.' So too the
author--now usually supposed to be Hilary the Deacon--of the
Commentary on the Pauline Epistles ascribed to S. Ambrose: 'Non prius
veniet Dominus quam regni Romani defectio fiat, et appareat
antichristus qui interficiet sanctos, reddita Romanis libertate, sub
suo tamen nomine.'--Ad II Thess. ii. 4, 7.
[20] For example, by the 'restitutio natalium,' and the 'adrogatio per
rescriptum principis,' or, as it is expressed, 'per sacrum oraculum.'
[21] Even the Christian Emperors took the title of Pontifex Maximus,
till Gratian refused it: ἀθέμιστον εἶναι Χριστιάνῳ τὸ σχῆμα
νομίσας.--Zosimus, lib. iv. cap. 36.
[22] 'Maiore formidine et callidiore timiditate Cæsarem observatis quam
ipsum ex Olympo Iovem, et merito, si sciatis.... Citius denique apud
vos per omnes Deos quam per unum genium Cæsaris peieratur.'--Tertull.
_Apolog._ c. xxviii.
Cf. Zos. v. 51: εἰ μὲν γὰρ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τετυχήκει διδόμενος ὁρκὸς, ἦν
ἂν ὡς εἰκὸς παριδεῖν ἐνδίδοντας τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ φιλανθρωπίᾳ τὴν ἐπὶ τῇ
ἀσεβείᾳ συγγνώμην. ἐπεὶ δὲ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως ὀμωμόκεσαν κεφαλῆς,
οὐκ εἶναι θεμιτὸν αὐτοῖς εἰς τὸν τοσοῦτον ὅρκον ἐξαμαρτεῖν.
[23] Tac. _Ann._ i. 73; iii. 38, etc.
[24] It is curious that this should have begun in the first years of
the Empire. See, among other passages that might be cited from the
Augustan poets, Virg. _Georg._ i. 42; iv. 462; Hor. _Od._ iii. 3, 11;
Ovid, _Epp. ex Ponto_, iv. 9. 105.
[25] Hence Vespasian's dying jest, 'Ut puto, deus fio.'
[26] ὅπου ἂν ὁ βασιλεὺς ᾖ, ἐκεῖ ἡ Ῥώμη.--Herodian.
[27] If the accounts we find of the Armorican republic can be trusted.
[28] Odoacer or Odovaker, as it seems his name ought to be written, is
usually, but incorrectly, described as a King of the Heruli, who led
his people into Italy and overthrew the Empire of the West; others
call him King of the Rugii, or Skyrri, or Turcilingi. The truth seems
to be that he was not a king at all, but the son of a Skyrrian
chieftain (Edecon, known as one of the envoys whom Attila sent to
Constantinople), whose personal merits made him chosen by the
barbarian auxiliaries to be their leader. The Skyrri were a small
tribe, apparently akin to the more powerful Heruli, whose name is
often extended to them.
[29] Αὔγουστος ὁ Ὀρέστου υἱὸς ἀκούσας Ζήνωνα πάλιν τὴν βασιλείαν
ἀνακεκτῆσθαι τῆς ἕω ... ἠνάγκασε τὴν βουλὴν ἀποστεῖλαι πρεσβεῖαν
Ζήνωνι σημαίνουσαν ὡς ἰδίας μὲν αὐτοῖς βασιλείας οὐ δέοι, κοινὸς δὲ
ἀποχρήσει μόνος ὢν αὐτοκράτωρ ἐπ' ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς πέρασι. τὸν μέντοι
Ὀδόαχον ὑπ' αὐτῶν προβεβλῆσθαι ἱκανὸν ὄντα σώζειν τὰ παρ' αὐτοῖς
πράγματα πολιτικὴν ἐχὼν νοῦν καὶ σύνεσιν ὁμοῦ καὶ μάχιμον. καὶ δεῖσθαι
τοῦ Ζήνωνος πατρικίου τε αὐτῷ ἀποστεῖλαι ἀξίαν καὶ τὴν τῶν Ἰτάλων
τουτῷ ἐφεῖναι διοίκησιν.--Malchus ap. Photium in _Corp. Hist. Byzant._
[30] Not king of Italy, as is often said. The barbarian kings did not
for several centuries employ territorial titles; the title 'king of
France,' for instance, was first used by Henry IV. Jornandes tells us
that Odoacer never so much as assumed the insignia of royalty.
[31] Sismondi, _Histoire de la Chute de l'Empire Occidentale_.
[32] 'Nil deest nobis imperio vestro famulantibus.'--Theodoric to
Zeno: Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 57.
[33] 'Unde et pæne omnibus barbaris Gothi sapientiores exstiterunt
Græcisque pæne consimiles.'--Jorn. cap. 5.
[34] Theodoric (Thiodorich) seems to have resided usually at Ravenna,
where he died and was buried; a remarkable building which tradition
points out as his tomb stands a little way out of the town, near the
railway station, but the porphyry sarcophagus, in which his body is
supposed to have lain, has been removed thence, and may be seen built
up into the wall of the building called his palace, situated close to
the church of Sant' Apollinare, and not far from the tomb of Dante.
There does not appear to be any sufficient authority for attributing
this building to Ostrogothic times; it is very different from the
representation of Theodoric's palace which we have in the contemporary
mosaics of Sant' Apollinare in urbe.
In the German legends, however, Theodoric is always the prince of
Verona (Dietrich von Berne), no doubt because that city was better
known to the Teutonic nations, and because it was thither that he
moved his court when transalpine affairs required his attention. His
castle there stood in the old town on the left bank of the Adige, on
the height now occupied by the citadel; it is doubtful whether any
traces of it remain, for the old foundations which we now see may have
belonged to the fortress erected by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the
fourteenth century.
[35] 'Igitur Chlodovechus ab imperatore Anastasio codicillos de
consulatu accepit, et in basilica beati Martini tunica blatea indutus
est et chlamyde, imponens vertici diadema ... et ab ea die tanquam
consul aut (=et) Augustus est vocitatus.'--Gregory of Tours, ii. 58.
[36] Sir F. Palgrave (_English Commonwealth_) considers this grant as
equivalent to a formal ratification of Clovis' rule in Gaul. Hallam
rates its importance lower (_Middle Ages_, note iii. to chap. i.).
Taken in connection with the grant of south-eastern Gaul to Theodebert
by Justinian, it may fairly be held to shew that the influence of the
Empire was still felt in these distant provinces.
[37] Even so early as the middle of the fifth century, S. Leo the
Great could say to the Roman people, 'Isti (sc. Petrus et Paulus) sunt
qui te ad hanc gloriam provexerunt ut gens sancta, populus electus,
civitas sacerdotalis et regia, per sacram B. Petri sedem caput orbis
effecta latius præsideres religione divina quam dominatione
terrena.'--_Sermon on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul._ (Opp. _ap._
Migne tom. i. p. 336.)
[38] 'Ius Romanum est adhuc in viridi observantia et eo iure
præsumitur quilibet vivere nisi adversum probetur.'--Maranta, quoted
by Marquard Freher.
CHAPTER IV.
RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
It was towards Rome as their ecclesiastical capital that the thoughts
and hopes of the men of the sixth and seventh centuries were
constantly directed. Yet not from Rome, feeble and corrupt, nor on the
exhausted soil of Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we
may suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in the
Western provinces was beginning to vanish away, there appeared in the
furthest corner of Europe, sprung of a race but lately brought within
the pale of civilization, a line of chieftains devoted to the service
of the Holy See, and among them one whose power, good fortune, and
heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity to which
doctrine and tradition had attached a sanctity almost divine.
[Sidenote: The Franks.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 486.]
Of the new monarchies that had risen on the ruins of Rome, that of the
Franks was by far the greatest. In the third century they appear, with
Saxons, Alemanni, and Thuringians, as one of the greatest German tribe
leagues. The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race was
a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid aside their former
hostility to Rome, and her future representatives were thenceforth,
with few intervals, her faithful allies. Many of their chiefs rose to
high place: Malarich receives from Jovian the charge of the Western
provinces; Bauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius and
his sons; Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name) fights under Aetius
against Attila in the great battle of Chalons; his countrymen
endeavour in vain to save Gaul from the Suevi and Burgundians. Not
till the Empire was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the
booty; then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe, leaving
his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the lower Rhine, advances
from Flanders to wrest Gaul from the barbarian nations which had
entered it some sixty years before. Few conquerors have had a career
of more unbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius
he was left master of the northern provinces: the Burgundian kingdom
in the valley of the Rhone was in no long time reduced to dependence:
last of all, the Visigothic power was overthrown in one great battle,
and Aquitaine added to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were the Frankish
arms less prosperous on the other side of the Rhine. The victory of
Tolbiac led to the submission of the Alemanni: their allies the
Bavarians followed, and when the Thuringian power had been broken by
Theodorich I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced all the
tribes of western and southern Germany. The state thus formed,
stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn and the Ems, was of
course in no sense a French, that is to say, a Gallic monarchy. Nor,
although the widest and strongest empire that had yet been founded by
a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a united kingdom
at all, but rather a congeries of principalities, held together by the
predominance of a single nation and a single family, who ruled in Gaul
as masters over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of
hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes. But towards the
middle of the eighth century a change began. Under the rule of Pipin
of Herstal and his son Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the
last feeble Merovingians, the Austrasian Franks in the lower Rhineland
became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were able, while
establishing a firmer government at home, to direct its whole strength
in projects of foreign ambition. The form those projects took arose
from a circumstance which has not yet been mentioned. It was not
solely or even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed their
past greatness and the yet loftier future which awaited them, it was
to the friendship of the clergy and the favour of the Apostolic See.
The other Teutonic nations, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Suevians,
Lombards, had been most of them converted by Arian missionaries who
proceeded from the Roman Empire during the short period when Arian
doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks, who were among the latest
converts, were Catholics from the first, and gladly accepted the
clergy as their teachers and allies. Thus it was that while the
hostility of their orthodox subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in
Africa and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, the eager sympathy of the
priesthood enabled the Franks to vanquish their Burgundian and
Visigothic enemies, and made it comparatively easy for them to blend
with the Roman population in the provinces. They had done good service
against the Saracens of Spain; they had aided the English Boniface in
his mission to the heathen of Germany[39]; and at length, as the most
powerful among Catholic nations, they attracted the eyes of the
ecclesiastical head of the West, now sorely bested by domestic foes.
[Sidenote: Italy: the Lombards.]
[Sidenote: The Popes.]
Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication
of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A.D.
568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and
founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the
country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the
Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than
nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders
were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met
with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the
spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we
may believe the evidence of their enemies, than any other of the
Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their
aversion to the clergy, never admitting them to the national councils.
Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from
Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the
Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of
Ravenna. The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they awaited his
confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the
victims of his anger[40]. But as the city became more accustomed in
independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet
legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In
the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom
or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the
orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his
deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished[41].
[Sidenote: Iconoclastic controversy.]
[Sidenote: The Popes appeal to the Franks.]
[Sidenote: Pipin patrician of the Romans, A.D. 754.]
The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer
faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of
idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed
fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt
sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in
Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence
of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain:
the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and
protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he
could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the
Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the
champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he
overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The
Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a
heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a
Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for
Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened
communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual
ruler of the Frankish realm[42]. As the crisis becomes more pressing,
Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to
him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church[43].
Some accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Roman
people, the office of consul and patrician. It is at least certain
that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the
rising German power: here first the pontiff leads a political
movement, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate
sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son
Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with
Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a
monarch's full power: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of
Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock
the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one
then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an
international power, pronounced the deposition of Childeric, and gave
to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto
unknown; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in
raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman diadem
and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact between the chair of
Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was
summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the
Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second
time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter
himself[44]. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed
on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy,
receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician[45].
[Sidenote: Import of this title.]
As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow, this
title requires a passing notice. Introduced by Constantine at a time
when its original meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to
be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank,
the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually
conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time
also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish
to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund,
Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too
in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian
princes[46]. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice
seems to have attached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and
thus, as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of ideas had made men
take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an
extensive though undefined authority, and implying in particular the
duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It
was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop
bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right,
for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the
title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and
defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always
'_Patricius Romanorum_;' not, as in former times, '_Patricius_' alone:
hence it is usually associated with the terms '_defensor_' and
'_protector_.' And since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of
obedience on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been
conceded to the new patrician more or less of the positive authority
in Rome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the
Emperor.
[Sidenote: Extinction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles king of the
Franks.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 774.]
So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a hostile kingdom from
their new allies, this control remained little better than nominal.
But when on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and
menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or
Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of
Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself
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 honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader
and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that
sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to
bow, he was moderate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the
pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, although in
the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and
Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years
before.
[Sidenote: Charles and Hadrian.]
It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of amusement, that
in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise
the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The
Frankish king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two most
powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by
swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it
might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their
words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of
expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an
indelible impress on their own and many succeeding ages. Nevertheless
in them too appears the undercurrent of vulgar human desires and
passions. The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from the
stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be excused, if not
defended, as almost inseparable from an intense and restless genius,
which, be it never so unselfish in its ends, must in pursuing them fix
upon everything its grasp and raise out of everything its monument.
The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less noble. Ever since
the extinction of the Western Empire had emancipated the
ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most
abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of
territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed
a sort of justification--for Rome, a city with neither trade nor
industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to
provide. Yet the pursuit was one which could not fail to pervert the
purposes of the Popes and give a sinister character to all they did.
It was this fear for the lands of the Church far more than for
religion or the safety of the city--neither of which were really
endangered by the Lombard attacks--that had prompted their passionate
appeals to Charles Martel and Pipin; it was now the well-grounded hope
of having these possessions confirmed and extended by Pipin's greater
son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward in his cause. And it
was the same lust after worldly wealth and pomp, mingled with the
dawning prospect of an independent principality, that now began to
seduce them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this is
probably the very time, although the exact date cannot be established,
to which must be assigned the extraordinary forgery of the Donation of
Constantine, whereby it was pretended that power over Italy and the
whole West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to Pope
Sylvester and his successors in the Chair of the Apostle.
[Sidenote: Accession of Pope Leo III, A.D. 796.]
For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of
Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it
does not appear that he sent thither any official representative;
while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to
admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the
years of his reign to date documents. In A.D. 796, Leo the Third
succeeded Pope Hadrian, and signalized his devotion to the Frankish
throne by sending to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of
the holiest of all Rome's shrines, the confession of St. Peter, asking
that some officer should be deputed to the city to receive from the
people their oath of allegiance to the Patrician. He had soon need to
seek the Patrician's help for himself. In A.D. 798 a sedition broke
out: the Pope, going in solemn procession from the Lateran to the
church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by a band of armed men,
headed by two officials of his court, nephews of his predecessor; was
wounded and left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping
to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Frankish lands. Charles
had led his army against the revolted Saxons: thither Leo following
overtook him at Paderborn in Westphalia. The king received with
respect his spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for
some time, and at length sent him back to Rome under the escort of
Angilbert, one of his trustiest ministers; promising to follow ere
long in person. After some months peace was restored in Saxony, and in
the autumn of 799 Charles descended from the Alps once more, while Leo
revolved deeply the great scheme for whose accomplishment the time was
now ripe.
[Sidenote: Belief in the Roman Empire not extinct.]
[Sidenote: Motives of the Pope.]
Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last Cæsar of
the West resigned his power into the hands of the senate, and left to
his Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the
latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject; but it was
only during one brief interval between the death of Totila the last
Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his
power had been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul,
Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire
as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it had been
admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it had been
cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws and customs; was
dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days
when slavery was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have seen
the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system
he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of
consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their
Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant England the
fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used the names of Roman dignities,
and before long began to call themselves _imperatores_ and _basileis_
of Britain. Within the last century and a half the rise of
Mohammedanism[47] had brought out the common Christianity of Europe
into a fuller relief. The false prophet had left one religion, one
Empire, one Commander of the faithful: the Christian commonwealth
needed more than ever an efficient head and centre. Such leadership it
could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorus, growing ever feebler
and more alien to the West. The name of 'respublica,' permanent at the
elder Rome, had never been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its
government was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now
drifted away from its ancient traditions into the forms of an Oriental
despotism. Claudian had already sneered at 'Greek Quirites[48]:' the
general use, since Heraclius's reign, of the Greek tongue, and the
difference of manners and usages, made the taunt now more deserved.
The Pope had no reason to wish well to the Byzantine princes, who
while insulting his weakness had given him no help against the savage
Lombards, and who for nearly seventy years[49] had been contaminated
by a heresy the more odious that it touched not speculative points of
doctrine but the most familiar usages of worship. In North Italy their
power was extinct: no pontiff since Zacharias had asked their
confirmation of his election: nay, the appointment of the intruding
Frank to the patriciate, an office which it belonged to the Emperor to
confer, was of itself an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights
subsisted: they were still, and while they retained the imperial name,
must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Roman city. Nor could
the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal: without
the Roman Empire there could not be a Roman, nor by necessary
consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church[50]. For, as will be shewn
more fully hereafter, men could not separate in fact what was
indissoluble in thought: Christianity must stand or fall along with
the great Christian state: they were but two names for the same thing.
Thus urged, the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors are
said to have already contemplated[51], and towards which the events of
the last fifty years had pointed. The moment was opportune. The
widowed empress Irene, equally famous for her beauty, her talents, and
her crimes, had deposed and blinded her son Constantine VI: a woman,
an usurper, almost a parricide, sullied the throne of the world. By
what right, it might well be asked, did the factions of Byzantium
impose a master on the original seat of empire? It was time to provide
better for the most august of human offices: an election at Rome was
as valid as at Constantinople--the possessor of the real power should
also be clothed with the outward dignity. Nor could it be doubted
where that possessor was to be found. The Frank had been always
faithful to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian
auxiliary. His services against Arian heretics and Lombard marauders,
against the Saracen of Spain and the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him
the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He
was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose subject nations,
Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be called by his name and to
imitate his customs[52]. In Charles, the hero who united under one
sceptre so many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the
pontiff might well see--as later ages saw--the new golden head of a
second image[53], erected on the ruins of that whose mingled iron and
clay seemed crumbling to nothingness behind the impregnable bulwarks
of Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles at Rome, A.D. 800.]
At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The Pope's cause was heard;
his innocence, already vindicated by a miracle, was pronounced by the
Patrician in full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles
remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day, A.D.
800[54], he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter. 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 types of
mediæval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious
sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows 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 the Roman character[55].
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 over the multitude, was placed the
bishop's throne[56], itself the curule chair of some forgotten
magistrate[57]. 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[58]--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[59].' In that shout, echoed by the Franks without,
was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its
consequences, 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] 'Denique gens Francorum multos et fœcundissimos fructus Domino
attulit, non solum credendo, sed et alios salutifere convertendo,'
says the emperor Lewis II in A.D. 871.
[40] Martin, as in earlier times Sylverius.
[41] A singular account of the origin of the separation of the Greeks
and Latins occurs in the treatise of Radulfus de Columna (Ralph
Colonna, or, as some think, de Coloumelle), _De translatione Imperii
Romani_ (circ. 1300). 'The tyranny of Heraclius,' says he, 'provoked a
revolt of the Eastern nations. They could not be reduced, because the
Greeks at the same time began to disobey the Roman Pontiff, receding,
like Jeroboam, from the true faith. Others among these schismatics
(apparently with the view of strengthening their political revolt)
carried their heresy further and founded Mohammedanism.' Similarly,
the Franciscan Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says that Mohammed, 'a
rich Persian,' invented his religion to keep the East from returning
to allegiance to Rome. It is worth remarking that few, if any, of the
earlier historians (from the tenth to the fifteenth century) refer to
the Emperors of the West from Constantine to Augustulus: the very
existence of this Western line seems to have been even in the eighth
or ninth century altogether forgotten.
[42] Anastasius, _Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_ i. _ap._ Muratori.
[43] Letter in _Codex Carolinus_, in Muratori's _Scriptores Rerum
Italicarum_, vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed 'Subregulo Carolo.'
[44] Letter in _Cod. Carol._ (Mur. _R. S. I._ iii. [2.] p. 96), a
strange mixture of earnest adjurations, dexterous appeals to Frankish
pride, and long scriptural quotations: 'Declaratum quippe est quod
super omnes gentes vestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro
exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis per manus
Vicarii mei commendavi.'
[45] The exact date when Pipin received the title cannot be made out.
Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed 'Pipino,
Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.' And so the _Chronicon Casinense_
(Mur. iv. 273) says it was first given to Pipin. Gibbon can hardly be
right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two
documents may be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is
a letter of Pope Gregory II's, the explanation may be that the title
was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted
by him.
[46] The title of Patrician appears even in the remote West: it stands
in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard
of Normandy in A.D. 1015. Ducange, _s.v._
[47] After the _translatio ad Francos_ of A.D. 800, the two Empires
corresponded exactly to the two Khalifates of Bagdad and Cordova.
[48]
'Plaudentem cerne senatum
Et Byzantinos proceres, Graiosque Quirites.'
_In Eutrop._ ii. 135.
[49] Several Emperors during this period had been patrons of images,
as was Irene at the moment of which I write: the stain nevertheless
adhered to their government as a whole.
[50] I should not have thought it necessary to explain that the
sentence in the text is meant simply to state what were (so far as can
be made out) the sentiments and notions of the ninth century, if a
writer in the _Tablet_ (reviewing a former edition) had not understood
it as an expression of the author's own belief.
To a modern eye there is of course no necessary connection between the
Roman Empire and a catholic and apostolic Church; in fact, the two
things seem rather, such has been the impression made on us by the
long struggle of church and state, in their nature mutually
antagonistic. The interest of history lies not least in this, that it
shews us how men have at different times entertained wholly different
notions respecting the relation to one another of the same ideas or
the same institutions.
[51] Monachus Sangallensis, _De Gestis Karoli_; in Pertz, _Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica_.
[52] Monachus Sangallensis; _ut supra_. So Pope Gregory the Great two
centuries earlier: 'Quanto cæteros homines regia dignitas antecedit,
tanto cæterarum gentium regna regni Francorum culmen excellit.' Ep. v.
6.
[53] Alciatus, _De Formula imperii Romani_.
[54] Or rather, according to the then prevailing practice of beginning
the year from Christmas-day, A.D. 801.
[55] An elaborate description of old St. Peter's may be found in
Bunsen's and Platner's _Beschreibung der Stadt Rom_; with which
compare Bunsen's work on the Basilicas of Rome.
[56] The primitive custom was for the bishop to sit in the centre of
the apse, at the central point of the east end of the church (or, as
it would be more correct to say, the end furthest from the door) just
as the judge had done in those law courts on the model of which the
first basilicas were constructed. This arrangement may still be seen
in some of the churches of Rome, as well as elsewhere in Italy;
nowhere better than in the churches of Ravenna, particularly the
beautiful one of Sant' Apollinare in Classe, and in the cathedral of
Torcello, near Venice.
[57] On this chair were represented the labours of Hercules and the
signs of the zodiac. It is believed at Rome to be the veritable chair
of the Apostle himself, and whatever may be thought of such an
antiquity as this, it can be satisfactorily traced back to the third
or fourth century of Christianity. (The story that it is inscribed
with verses from the Koran is, I believe, without foundation.) It is
now enclosed in a gorgeous casing of gilded wood (some say, of
bronze), and placed aloft at the extremity of St. Peter's, just over
the spot where a bishop's chair would in the old arrangement of the
basilica have stood. The sarcophagus in which Charles himself lay,
till the French scattered his bones abroad, had carved on it the rape
of Proserpine. It may still be seen in the gallery of the basilica at
Aachen.
[58] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_.
[59] The coronation scene is described in all the annals of the time,
to which it is therefore needless to refer more particularly.
CHAPTER V.
EMPIRE AND POLICY OF CHARLES.
The coronation of Charles is not only the central event of the Middle
Ages, it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them
singly, it may be said that if they had not happened, the history of
the world would have been different. In one sense indeed it has
scarcely a parallel. The assassins of Julius Cæsar thought that they
had saved Rome from monarchy, but monarchy came inevitable in the next
generation. The conversion of Constantine changed the face of the
world, but Christianity was spreading fast, and its ultimate triumph
was only a question of time. Had Columbus never spread his sails, the
secret of the western sea would yet have been pierced by some later
voyager: had Charles V broken his safe-conduct to Luther, the voice
silenced at Wittenberg would have been taken up by echoes elsewhere.
But if the Roman Empire had not been restored in the West in the
person of Charles, it would never have been restored at all, and the
inexhaustible train of consequences for good and for evil that
followed could not have been. Why this was so may be seen by examining
the history of the next two centuries. In that day, as through all the
Dark and Middle Ages, two forces were striving for the mastery. The
one was the instinct of separation, disorder, anarchy, caused by the
ungoverned impulses and barbarous ignorance of the great bulk of
mankind; the other was that passionate longing of the better minds for
a formal unity of government, which had its historical basis in the
memories of the old Roman Empire, and its most constant expression in
the devotion to a visible and catholic Church. The former tendency, as
everything shews, was, in politics at least, the stronger, but the
latter, used and stimulated by an extraordinary genius like Charles,
achieved in the year 800 a victory whose results were never to be
lost. When the hero was gone, the returning wave of anarchy and
barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate
the past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was, had struck
its roots too deep to be overthrown by force, and when it perished at
last, perished from inner decay. It was just because men felt that no
one less than Charles could have won such a triumph over the evils of
the time, by framing and establishing a gigantic scheme of government,
that the excitement and hope and joy which the coronation evoked were
so intense. Their best evidence is perhaps to be found not in the
records of that time itself, but in the cries of lamentation that
broke forth when the Empire began to dissolve towards the close of the
ninth century, in the marvellous legends which attached themselves to
the name of Charles the Emperor, a hero of whom any exploit was
credible[60], in the devout admiration wherewith his German successors
looked back to, and strove in all things to imitate, their all but
superhuman prototype.
[Sidenote: Import of the coronation.]
As the event of A.D. 800 made an unparalleled impression on those who
lived at the time, so has it engaged the attention of men in
succeeding ages, has been viewed in the most opposite lights, and
become the theme of interminable controversies. It is better to look
at it simply as it appeared to the men who witnessed it. Here, as in
so many other cases, may be seen the errors into which jurists have
been led by the want of historical feeling. In rude and unsettled
states of society men respect forms and obey facts, while careless of
rules and principles. In England, for example, in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, it signified very little whether an aspirant to the
throne was next lawful heir, but it signified a great deal whether he
had been duly crowned and was supported by a strong party. Regarding
the matter thus, it is not hard to see why those who judged the actors
of A.D. 800 as they would have judged their contemporaries should have
misunderstood the nature of that which then came to pass. Baronius and
Bellarmine, Spanheim and Conring, are advocates bound to prove a
thesis, and therefore believing it; nor does either party find any
lack of plausible arguments[61]. But civilian and canonist alike
proceed upon strict legal principles, and no such principles can be
found in the case, or applied to it. Neither the instances cited by
the Cardinal from the Old Testament of the power of priests to set up
and pull down princes, nor those which shew the earlier Emperors
controlling the bishops of Rome, really meet the question. Leo acted
not as having alone the right to transfer the crown; the practice of
hereditary succession and the theory of popular election would have
equally excluded such a claim; he was the spokesman of the popular
will, which, identifying itself with the sacerdotal power, hated the
Greeks and was grateful to the Franks. Yet he was also something more.
The act, as it specially affected his interests, was mainly his work,
and without him would never have been brought about at all. It was
natural that a confusion of his secular functions as leader, and his
spiritual as consecrating priest, should lay the foundation of the
right claimed afterwards of raising and deposing monarchs at the will
of Christ's vicar. The Emperor was passive throughout; he did not, as
in Lombardy, appear as a conqueror, but was received by the Pope and
the people as a friend and ally. Rome no doubt became his capital, but
it had already obeyed him as Patrician, and the greatest fact that
stood out to posterity from the whole transaction was that the crown
was bestowed, was at least imposed, by the hands of the pontiff. He
seemed the trustee and depositary of the imperial authority[62].
[Sidenote: Contemporary accounts.]
The best way of shewing the thoughts and motives of those concerned in
the transaction is to transcribe the narratives of three contemporary,
or almost contemporary annalists, two of them German and one Italian.
The Annals of Lauresheim say:--
'And because the name of Emperor had now ceased among the Greeks, and
their Empire was possessed by a woman, it then seemed both to Leo the
Pope himself, and to all the holy fathers who were present in the
selfsame council, as well as to the rest of the Christian people, that
they ought to take to be Emperor Charles king of the Franks, who held
Rome herself, where the Cæsars had always been wont to sit, and all
the other regions which he ruled through Italy and Gaul and Germany;
and inasmuch as God had given all these lands into his hand, it seemed
right that with the help of God and at the prayer of the whole
Christian people he should have the name of Emperor also. Whose
petition king Charles willed not to refuse, but submitting himself
with all humility to God, and at the prayer of the priests and of the
whole Christian people, on the day of the nativity of our Lord Jesus
Christ he took on himself the name of Emperor, being consecrated by
the lord Pope Leo[63].'
Very similar in substance is the account of the Chronicle of Moissac
(ad ann. 801):--
'Now when the king upon the most holy day of the Lord's birth was
rising to the mass after praying before the confession of the blessed
Peter the Apostle, Leo the Pope, with the consent of all the bishops
and priests and of the senate of the Franks and likewise of the
Romans, set a golden crown upon his head, the Roman people also
shouting aloud. And when the people had made an end of chanting the
Laudes, he was adored by the Pope after the manner of the emperors of
old. For this also was done by the will of God. For while the said
Emperor abode at Rome certain men were brought unto him, who said that
the name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, and that among them
the Empire was held by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid
hold on her son the Emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the
Empire to herself, as it is written of Athaliah in the Book of the
Kings; which when Leo the Pope and all the assembly of the bishops and
priests and abbots heard, and the senate of the Franks and all the
elders of the Romans, they took counsel with the rest of the Christian
people, that they should name Charles king of the Franks to be
Emperor, seeing that he held Rome the mother of empire where the
Cæsars and Emperors were always used to sit; and that the heathen
might not mock the Christians if the name of Emperor should have
ceased among the Christians[64].'
These two accounts are both from a German source: that which follows
is Roman, written probably within some fifty or sixty years of the
event. It is taken from the Life of Leo III in the _Vitæ Pontificum
Romanorum_, compiled by Anastasius the papal librarian.
'After these things came the day of the birth of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and all men were again gathered together in the aforesaid
basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle: and then the gracious and
venerable pontiff did with his own hands crown Charles with a very
precious crown. Then all the faithful people of Rome, seeing the
defence that he gave and the love that he bare to the holy Roman
Church and her Vicar, did by the will of God and of the blessed Peter,
the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, cry with one accord
with a loud voice, 'To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of
God, the great and peacegiving Emperor, be life and victory.' While
he, before the holy confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, was
invoking divers saints, it was proclaimed thrice, and he was chosen by
all to be Emperor of the Romans. Thereon the most holy pontiff
anointed Charles with holy oil, and likewise his most excellent son to
be king, upon the very day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; and
when the mass was finished, then after the mass the most serene lord
Emperor offered gifts[65].'
[Sidenote: Impression which they convey.]
[Sidenote: Later theories respecting the coronation.]
In these three accounts there is no serious discrepancy as to the
facts, although the Italian priest, as is natural, heightens the
importance of the part played by the Pope, while the Germans are too
anxious to rationalize the event, talking of a synod of the clergy, a
consultation of the people, and a formal request to Charles, which the
silence of Eginhard, as well as the other circumstances of the case,
forbid us to accept as literally true. Similarly Anastasius passes
over the adoration rendered by the Pope to the Emperor, upon which
most of the Frankish records insist in a way which puts it beyond
doubt. But the impression which the three narratives leave is
essentially the same. They all shew how little the transaction can be
made to wear a strictly legal character. The Frankish king does not of
his own might seize the crown, but rather receives it as coming
naturally to him, as the legitimate consequence of the authority he
already enjoyed. The Pope bestows the crown, not in virtue of any
right of his own as head of the Church: he is merely the instrument of
God's providence, which has unmistakeably pointed out Charles as the
proper person to defend and lead the Christian commonwealth. The Roman
people do not formally elect and appoint, but by their applause accept
the chief who is presented to them. The act is conceived of as
directly ordered by the Divine Providence which has brought about a
state of things that admits of but one issue, an issue which king,
priest, and people have only to recognise and obey; their personal
ambitions, passions, intrigues, sinking and vanishing in reverential
awe at what seems the immediate interposition of Heaven. And as the
result is desired by all parties alike, they do not think of inquiring
into one another's rights, but take their momentary harmony to be
natural and necessary, never dreaming of the difficulties and
conflicts which were to arise out of what seemed then so simple. And
it was just because everything was thus left undetermined, resting not
on express stipulation but rather on a sort of mutual understanding, a
sympathy of beliefs and wishes which augured no evil, that the event
admitted of being afterwards represented in so many different lights.
Four centuries later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the
mortal struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct
theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found advocated
by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them to some
extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have been
won by their great predecessor as the prize of conquest, and drew the
conclusion that the citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as
against themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to
the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the
voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully created,
he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of
their authority. The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact that Leo
imposed the crown, and argued that as God's earthly vicar it was then
his, and must always continue to be their right to give to whomsoever
they would an office which was created to be the handmaid of their
own. Of these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed,
yet to an impartial eye it cannot claim, any more than do the two
others, to contain the whole truth. Charles did not conquer, nor the
Pope give, nor the people elect. As the act was unprecedented so was
it illegal; it was a revolt of the ancient Western capital against a
daughter who had become a mistress; an exercise of the sacred right of
insurrection, justified by the weakness and wickedness of the
Byzantine princes, hallowed to the eyes of the world by the sanction
of Christ's representative, but founded upon no law, nor competent to
create any for the future.
[Sidenote: Was the coronation a surprise?]
It is an interesting and somewhat perplexing question, how far the
coronation scene, an act as imposing in its circumstances as it was
momentous in its results, was prearranged among the parties. Eginhard
tells us that Charles was accustomed to declare that he would not,
even on so high a festival, have entered the church had he known of
the Pope's intention. Even if the monarch had uttered, the secretary
would hardly have recorded a falsehood long after the motive that
might have prompted it had disappeared. Of the existence of that
motive which has been most commonly assumed, a fear of the discontent
of the Franks who might think their liberties endangered, little or no
proof can be brought from the records of the time, wherein the nation
is represented as exulting in the new dignity of their chief as an
accession of grandeur to themselves. Nor can we suppose that Charles's
disavowal was meant to soothe the offended pride of the Byzantine
princes, from whom he had nothing to fear, and who were none the more
likely to recognise his dignity, if they should believe it to be not
of his own seeking. Yet it is hard to suppose the whole affair a
surprise; for it was the goal towards which the policy of the Frankish
kings had for many years pointed, and Charles himself, in sending
before him to Rome many of the spiritual and temporal magnates of his
realm, in summoning thither his son Pipin from the war against the
Lombards of Benevento, had shewn that he expected some more than
ordinary result from this journey to the imperial city. Alcuin
moreover, Alcuin of York, the prime minister of Charles in matters
religious and literary, appears from one of his extant letters to have
sent as a Christmas gift to his royal pupil a carefully corrected and
superbly adorned copy of the Scriptures, with the words 'ad splendorem
imperialis potentiæ.' This has commonly been taken for conclusive
evidence that the plan had been settled beforehand, and such it would
be were there not some reasons for giving the letter an earlier date,
and looking upon the word 'imperialis' as a mere magniloquent
flourish[66]. More weight is therefore to be laid upon the arguments
supplied by the nature of the case itself. The Pope, whatever his
confidence in the sympathy of the people, would never have ventured on
so momentous a step until previous conferences had assured him of the
feelings of the king, nor could an act for which the assembly were
evidently prepared have been kept a secret. Nevertheless, the
declaration of Charles himself can neither be evaded nor set down to
mere dissimulation. It is more just to him, and on the whole more
reasonable, to suppose that Leo, having satisfied himself of the
wishes of the Roman clergy and people as well as of the Frankish
magnates, resolved to seize an occasion and place so eminently
favourable to his long-cherished plan, while Charles, carried away by
the enthusiasm of the moment and seeing in the pontiff the prophet and
instrument of the divine will, accepted a dignity which he might have
wished to receive at some later time or in some other way. If,
therefore, any positive conclusion be adopted, it would seem to be
that Charles, although he had probably given a more or less vague
consent to the project, was surprised and disconcerted by a sudden
fulfilment which interrupted his own carefully studied designs. And
although a deed which changed the history of the world was in any case
no accident, it may well have worn to the Frankish and Roman
spectators the air of a surprise. For there were no preparations
apparent in the church; the king was not, like his Teutonic successors
in aftertime, led in procession to the pontifical throne: suddenly, at
the very moment when he rose from the sacred hollow where he had knelt
among the ever-burning lamps before the holiest of Christian
relics--the body of the prince of the Apostles--the hands of that
Apostle's representative placed upon his head the crown of glory and
poured upon him the oil of sanctification. There was something in this
to thrill the beholders with the awe of a divine presence, and make
them hail him whom that presence seemed almost visibly to consecrate,
the 'pious and peace-giving Emperor, crowned of God.'
[Sidenote: Theories of the motives of Charles.]
The reluctance of Charles to assume the imperial title is ascribed by
Eginhard to a fear of the jealous hostility of the Greeks, who could
not only deny his claim to it, but might disturb by their intrigues
his dominions in Italy. Accepting this statement, the problem remains,
how is this reluctance to be reconciled with those acts of his which
clearly shew him aiming at the Roman crown? An ingenious and probable,
if not certain solution, is suggested by a recent historian[67], who
argues from a minute examination of the previous policy of Charles,
that while it was the great object of his reign to obtain the crown of
the world, he foresaw at the same time the opposition of the Eastern
Court, and the want of legality from which his title would in
consequence suffer. He was therefore bent on getting from the
Byzantines, if possible, a transference of their crown; if not, at
least a recognition of his own: and he appears to have hoped to win
this by the negotiations which had been for some time kept on foot
with the Empress Irene. Just at this moment came the coronation by
Pope Leo, interrupting these deep-laid schemes, irritating the Eastern
Court, and forcing Charles into the position of a rival who could not
with dignity adopt a soothing or submissive tone. Nevertheless, he
seems not even then to have abandoned the hope of obtaining a peaceful
recognition. Irene's crimes did not prevent him, if we may credit
Theophanes[68], from seeking her hand in marriage. And when the
project of thus uniting the East and West in a single Empire, baffled
for a time by the opposition of her minister Ætius, was rendered
impossible by her subsequent dethronement and exile, he did not
abandon the policy of conciliation until a surly acquiescence in
rather than admission of his dignity had been won from the Byzantine
sovereigns Michael and Nicephorus[69].
[Sidenote: Defect in the title of the Teutonic Emperors.]
Whether, supposing Leo to have been less precipitate, a cession of the
crown, or an acknowledgment of the right of the Romans to confer it,
could ever have been obtained by Charles is perhaps more than
doubtful. But it is clear that he judged rightly in rating its
importance high, for the want of it was the great blemish in his own
and his successors' dignity. To shew how this was so, reference must
be made to the events of A.D. 476. Both the extinction of the Western
Empire in that year and its revival in A.D. 800 have been very
generally misunderstood in modern times, and although the mistake is
not, in a certain sense, of practical importance, yet it tends to
confuse history and to blind us to the ideas of the people who acted
on both occasions. When Odoacer compelled the abdication of Romulus
Augustulus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a separate power,
but caused it to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that
from that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a
single undivided Roman Empire. In A.D. 800 the very memory of the
separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theodosius
till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been long since lost, and
neither Leo nor Charles nor any one among their advisers dreamt of
reviving it. They too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire
to be one and indivisible, and proposed by the coronation of the
Frankish king not to proclaim a severance of the East and West, but to
reverse the act of Constantine, and make Old Rome again the civil as
well as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her name.
Their deed was in its essence illegal, but they sought to give it
every semblance of legality: they professed and partly believed that
they were not revolting against a reigning sovereign, but legitimately
filling up the place of the deposed Constantine the Sixth; the people
of the imperial city exercising their ancient right of choice, their
bishop his right of consecration.
Their purpose was but half accomplished. They could create but they
could not destroy: they set up an Emperor of their own, whose
representatives thenceforward ruled the West, but Constantinople
retained her sovereigns as of yore; and Christendom saw henceforth two
imperial lines, not as in the time before A.D. 476, the conjoint heads
of a single realm, but rivals and enemies, each denouncing the other
as an impostor, each professing to be the only true and lawful head of
the Christian Church and people. Although therefore we must in
practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till A.D. 1453,
when Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a
Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one
which either court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always did
repudiate it; the Latins usually; although, yielding to facts, they
sometimes condescended to employ it themselves. But their theory was
always the same. Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not
of Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius,
and all the Eastern line; and hence it is that in all the annals of
the time and of many succeeding centuries, the name of Constantine VI,
the sixty-seventh in order from Augustus, is followed without a break
by that of Charles, the sixty-eighth.
[Sidenote: Government of Charles as Emperor.]
[Sidenote: His authority in matters ecclesiastical.]
The maintenance of an imperial line among the Greeks was a continuing
protest against the validity of Charles's title. But from their enmity
he had little to fear, and in the eyes of the world he seemed to step
into their place, adding the traditional dignity which had been theirs
to the power that he already enjoyed. North Italy and Rome ceased for
ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium; and while the Eastern princes
paid a shameful tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish Emperor--as the
recognised head of Christendom--received from the patriarch of
Jerusalem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Calvary;
the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of
the Persians[70]. Out of this peaceful intercourse with the great
Khalif the romancers created a crusade. Within his own dominions his
sway assumed a more sacred character. Already had his unwearied and
comprehensive activity made him throughout his reign an ecclesiastical
no less than a civil ruler, summoning and sitting in councils,
examining and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the
smallest points of church discipline and polity. A synod held at
Frankfort in A.D. 794 condemned the decrees of the second council of
Nicæa, which had been approved by Pope Hadrian, censured in violent
terms the conduct of the Byzantine rulers in suggesting them, and
without excluding images from churches, altogether forbade them to be
worshipped or even venerated. Not only did Charles preside in and
direct the deliberations of this synod, although legates from the Pope
were present--he also caused a treatise to be drawn up stating and
urging its conclusions; he pressed Hadrian to declare Constantine VI a
heretic for enouncing doctrines to which Hadrian had himself
consented. There are letters of his extant in which he lectures Pope
Leo in a tone of easy superiority, admonishes him to obey the holy
canons, and bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts
which it is the monarch's duty to make for the subjugation of pagans
and the establishment of sound doctrine throughout the Church. Nay,
subsequent Popes themselves[71] admitted and applauded the despotic
superintendence of matters spiritual which he was wont to exercise,
and which led some one to give him playfully a title that had once
been applied to the Pope himself, 'Episcopus episcoporum.'
[Sidenote: The imperial office in its ecclesiastical relations.]
[Sidenote: Capitulary of A.D. 802.]
Acting and speaking thus when merely king, it may be thought that
Charles needed no further title to justify his power. The inference is
in truth rather the converse of this. Upon what he had done already
the imperial title must necessarily follow: the attitude of protection
and control which he held towards the Church and the Holy See
belonged, according to the ideas of the time, especially and only to
an Emperor. Therefore his coronation was the fitting completion and
legitimation of his authority, sanctifying rather than increasing it.
We have, however, one remarkable witness to the importance that was
attached to the imperial name, and the enhancement which he conceived
his office to have received from it. In a great assembly held at
Aachen, A.D. 802, the lately-crowned Emperor revised the laws of all
the races that obeyed him, endeavouring to harmonize and correct them,
and issued a capitulary singular in subject and tone[72]. All persons
within his dominions, as well ecclesiastical as civil, who have
already sworn allegiance to him as king, are thereby commanded to
swear to him afresh as Cæsar; and all who have never yet sworn, down
to the age of twelve, shall now take the same oath. 'At the same time
it shall be publicly explained to all what is the force and meaning of
this oath, and how much more it includes than a mere promise of
fidelity to the monarch's person. Firstly, it binds those who swear it
to live, each and every one of them, according to his strength and
knowledge, in the holy service of God; since the lord Emperor cannot
extend over all his care and discipline. Secondly, it binds them
neither by force nor fraud to seize or molest any of the goods or
servants of his crown. Thirdly, to do no violence nor treason towards
the holy Church, or to widows, or orphans, or strangers, seeing that
the lord Emperor has been appointed, after the Lord and his saints,
the protector and defender of all such.' Then in similar fashion
purity of life is prescribed to the monks; homicide, the neglect of
hospitality, and other offences are denounced, the notions of sin and
crime being intermingled and almost identified in a way to which no
parallel can be found, unless it be in the Mosaic code. There God, the
invisible object of worship, is also, though almost incidentally, the
judge and political ruler of Israel; here the whole cycle of social
and moral duty is deduced from the obligation of obedience to the
visible autocratic head of the Christian state.
In most of Charles's words and deeds, nor less distinctly in the
writings of his adviser Alcuin, may be discerned the working of the
same theocratic ideas. Among his intimate friends he chose to be
called by the name of David, exercising in reality all the powers of
the Jewish king; presiding over this kingdom of God upon earth rather
as a second Constantine or Theodosius than in the spirit and
traditions of the Julii or the Flavii. Among his measures there are
two which in particular recall the first Christian Emperor. As
Constantine founds so Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection
of Church and State. Bishops and abbots are as essential a part of
rising feudalism as counts and dukes. Their benefices are held under
the same conditions of fealty and the service in war of their vassal
tenants, not of the spiritual person himself: they have similar rights
of jurisdiction, and are subject alike to the imperial _missi_. The
monarch tries often to restrict the clergy, as persons, to spiritual
duties; quells the insubordination of the monasteries; endeavours to
bring the seculars into a monastic life by instituting and regulating
chapters. But after granting wealth and power, the attempt was vain;
his strong hand withdrawn, they laughed at control. Again, it was by
him first that the payment of tithes, for which the priesthood had
long been pleading, was made compulsory in Western Europe, and the
support of the ministers of religion entrusted to the laws of the
state.
[Sidenote: Influence of the imperial title in Germany and Gaul.]
[Sidenote: Action of Charles on Europe.]
In civil affairs also Charles acquired, with the imperial title, a new
position. Later jurists labour to distinguish his power as Roman
Emperor from that which he held already as king of the Franks and
their subject allies: they insist that his coronation gave him the
capital only, that it is absurd to talk of a Roman Empire in regions
whither the eagles had never flown[73]. In such expressions there
seems to lurk either confusion or misconception. It was not the actual
government of the city that Charles obtained in A.D. 800: that his
father had already held as Patrician and he had constantly exercised
in the same capacity: it was far more than the titular sovereignty of
Rome which had hitherto been supposed to be vested in the Byzantine
princes: it was nothing less than the headship of the world, believed
to appertain of right to the lawful Roman Emperor, whether he reigned
on the Bosphorus, the Tiber, or the Rhine. As that headship, although
never denied, had been in abeyance in the West for several centuries,
its bestowal on the king of so vast a realm was a change of the first
moment, for it made the coronation not merely a transference of the
seat of Empire, but a renewal of the Empire itself, a bringing back of
it from faith to sight, from the world of belief and theory to the
world of fact and reality. And since the powers it gave were
autocratic and unlimited, it must swallow up all minor claims and
dignities: the rights of Charles the Frankish king were merged in
those of Charles the successor of Augustus, the lord of the world.
That his imperial authority was theoretically irrespective of place is
clear from his own words and acts, and from all the monuments of that
time. He would not, indeed, have dreamed of treating the free Franks
as Justinian had treated his half-Oriental subjects, nor would the
warriors who followed his standard have brooked such an attempt. Yet
even to German eyes his position must have been altered by the halo of
vague splendour which now surrounded him; for all, even the Saxon and
the Slave, had heard of Rome's glories, and revered the name of Cæsar.
And in his effort to weld discordant elements into one body, to
introduce regular gradations of authority, to control the Teutonic
tendency to localization by his _missi_--officials commissioned to
traverse each some part of his dominions, reporting on and redressing
the evils they found--and by his own oft-repeated personal progresses,
Charles was guided by the traditions of the old Empire. His sway is
the revival of order and culture, fusing the West into a compact
whole, whose parts are never thenceforward to lose the marks of their
connection and their half-Roman character, gathering up all that is
left in Europe of spirit and wealth and knowledge, and hurling it with
the new force of Christianity on the infidel of the South and the
masses of untamed barbarism to the North and East. Ruling the world by
the gift of God, and the transmitted rights of the Romans and their
Cæsar whom God had chosen to conquer it, he renews the original
aggressive movement of the Empire: the civilized world has subdued her
invader[74], and now arms him against savagery and heathendom. Hence
the wars, not more of the sword than of the cross, against Saxons,
Avars, Slaves, Danes, Spanish Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses
and baptism the badge of submission. The overthrow of the
Irminsûl[75], in the first Saxon campaign[76], sums up the changes of
seven centuries. The Romanized Teuton destroys the monument of his
country's freedom, for it is also the emblem of paganism and
barbarism. The work of Arminius is undone by his successor.
[Sidenote: His position as Frankish king.]
This, however, is not the only side from which Charles's policy and
character may be regarded. If the unity of the Church and the shadow
of imperial prerogative was one pillar of his power, the other was the
Frankish nation. The Empire was still military, though in a sense
strangely different from that of Julius or Severus. The warlike Franks
had permeated Western Europe; their primacy was admitted by the
kindred tribes of Lombards, Bavarians, Thuringians, Alemannians, and
Burgundians; the Slavic peoples on the borders trembled and paid
tribute; Alfonso of Asturias found in the Emperor a protector against
the infidel foe. His influence, if not his exerted power, crossed the
ocean: the kings of the Scots sent gifts and called him lord[77]: the
restoration of Eardulf to Northumbria, still more of Egbert to Wessex,
might furnish a better ground for the claim of suzerainty than many to
which his successors had afterwards recourse. As it was by Frankish
arms that this predominance in Europe which the imperial title adorned
and legalized had been won, so was the government of Charles Roman in
semblance rather than in fact. It was not by restoring the effete
mechanism of the old Empire, but by his own vigorous personal action
and that of his great officers, that he strove to administer and
reform. With every effort for a strong central government, there is no
despotism; each nation retains its laws, its hereditary chiefs, its
free popular assemblies. The conditions granted to the Saxons after
such cruel warfare, conditions so favourable that in the next century
their dukes hold the foremost place in Germany, shew how little he
desired to make the Franks a dominant caste.
[Sidenote: General results of his Empire.]
He repeats the attempt of Theodoric to breathe a Teutonic spirit into
Roman forms. The conception was magnificent; great results followed
its partial execution. Two causes forbade success. The one was the
ecclesiastical, especially the Papal power, apparently subject to the
temporal, but with a strong and undefined prerogative which only
waited the occasion to trample on what it had helped to raise. The
Pope might take away the crown he had bestowed, and turn against the
Emperor the Church which now obeyed him. The other was to be found in
the discordance of the component parts of the Empire. The nations were
not ripe for settled life or extensive schemes of polity; the
differences of race, language, manners, over vast and thinly-peopled
lands baffled every attempt to maintain their connection: and when
once the spell of the great mind was withdrawn, the mutually repellent
forces began to work, and the mass dissolved into that chaos out of
which it had been formed. Nevertheless, the parts separated not as
they met, but having all of them undergone influences which continued
to act when political connection had ceased. For the work of
Charles--a genius pre-eminently creative--was not lost in the anarchy
that followed: rather are we to regard his reign as the beginning of a
new era, or as laying the foundations whereon men continued for many
generations to build.
[Sidenote: Personal habits and sympathies.]
No claim can be more groundless than that which the modern French, the
sons of the Latinized Kelt, set up to the Teutonic Charles. At Rome he
might assume the chlamys and the sandals, but at the head of his
Frankish host he strictly adhered to the customs of his country, and
was beloved by his people as the very ideal of their own character and
habits[78]. Of strength and stature almost superhuman, in swimming and
hunting unsurpassed, steadfast and terrible in fight, to his friends
gentle and condescending, he was a Roman, much less a Gaul, in nothing
but his culture and his width of view, otherwise a Teuton. The centre
of his realm was the Rhine; his capitals Aachen[79] and
Engilenheim[80]; his army Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn
in the gathering of the old hero-lays[81], the composition of a German
grammar, the ordinance against confining prayer to the three
languages,--Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,--were all for the race from
which he sprang, and whose advance, represented by the victory of
Austrasia, the true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and Aquitaine,
spread a second Germanic wave over the conquered countries.
[Sidenote: His Empire and character generally.]
There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, two elements; those two
from the union and mutual action and reaction of which modern
civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to
the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were all the
conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still governed almost
exclusively by viceroys and officers of Frankish blood. But the
conception of the Empire, that which made it a State and not a mere
mass of subject tribes like those great Eastern dominions which rise
and perish in a lifetime, the realms of Sesostris, or Attila, or
Timur, was inherited from an older and a grander system, was not
Teutonic but Roman--Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and
precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the
system--Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and human
perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the hope of further
progress. And the bond, too, by which the Empire was held together was
Roman in its origin, although Roman in a sense which would have
surprised Trajan or Severus, could it have been foretold them. The
ecclesiastical body was already organized and centralized, and it was
in his rule over the ecclesiastical body that the secret of Charles's
power lay. Every Christian--Frank, Gaul, or Italian--owed loyalty to
the head and defender of his religion: the unity of the Empire was a
reflection of the unity of the Church.
Into a general view of the government and policy of Charles it is not
possible here to enter. Yet his legislation, his assemblies, his
administrative system, his magnificent works, recalling the projects
of Alexander and Cæsar[82], the zeal for education and literature
which he shewed in the collection of manuscripts, the founding of
schools, the gathering of eminent men from all quarters around him,
cannot be appreciated apart from his position as restorer of the Roman
Empire. Like all the foremost men of our race, Charles was all great
things in one, and was so great just because the workings of his
genius were so harmonious. He was not a mere barbarian warrior any
more than he was an astute diplomatist; there is none of all his
qualities which would not be forced out of its place were we to
characterize him chiefly by it. Comparisons between famous men of
different ages are generally as worthless as they are easy: the
circumstances among which Charles lived do not permit us to institute
a minute parallel between his greatness and that of those two to whom
it is the modern fashion to compare him, nor to say whether he was or
could have become as profound a politician as Cæsar, as skilful a
commander as Napoleon[83]. But neither to the Roman nor to the
Corsican was he inferior in that one quality by which both he and they
chiefly impress our imaginations--that intense, vivid, unresting
energy which swept him over Europe in campaign after campaign, which
sought a field for its workings in theology, science, literature, no
less than in politics and war. As it was this wondrous activity that
made him the conqueror of Europe, so was it by the variety of his
culture that he became her civilizer. From him, in whose wide deep
mind the whole mediæval theory of the world and human life mirrored
itself, did mediæval society take the form and impress which it
retained for centuries, and the traces whereof are among us and upon
us to this day.
The great Emperor was buried at Aachen, in that basilica which it had
been the delight of his later years to erect and adorn with the
treasures of ancient art. His tomb under the dome--where now we see an
enormous slab, with the words 'Carolo Magno'--was inscribed, '_Magnus
atque Orthodoxus Imperator_[84].' Poets, fostered by his own zeal,
sang of him who had given to the Franks the sway of Romulus[85]. The
gorgeous drapery of romance gradually wreathed itself round his name,
till by canonization as a saint he received the highest glory the
world or the Church could confer. For the Roman Church claimed then,
as she claims still, the privilege which humanity in one form or
another seems scarce able to deny itself, of raising to honours almost
divine its great departed; and as in pagan times temples had risen to
a deified Emperor, so churches were dedicated to St. Charlemagne.
Between Sanctus Carolus and Divus Julius how strange an analogy and
how strange a contrast!
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Before the end of the tenth century we find the monk Benedict of
Soracte ascribing to Charles an expedition to Palestine, and other
marvellous exploits. The romance which passes under the name of
Archbishop Turpin is well known. All the best stories about
Charles--and some of them are very good--may be found in the book of
the Monk of St. Gall. Many refer to his dealings with the bishops,
towards whom he is described as acting like a good-humoured
schoolmaster.
[61] Baronius, _Ann._, ad ann. 800; Bellarminus, _De translatione
imperii Romani adversus Illyricum_; Spanhemius, _De ficta translatione
imperii_; Conringius, _De imperio Romano Germanico_.
[62] See especially Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, vol. iii. p. 109.
[63] _Ann. Lauresb. ap._ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
[64] _Apud_ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
[65] _Vitæ Pontif._ in Mur. _S. R. I._ Anastasius in reporting the
shout of the people omits the word 'Romanorum,' which the other
annalists insert after 'imperatori.' The balance of probability is
certainly in his favour.
[66] Lorentz, _Leben Alcuins_. And cf. Döllinger, _Das Kaiserthum
Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_.
[67] See a very learned and interesting tract entitled _Das Kaiserthum
Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_, recently published by Dr. v.
Döllinger of Munich.
[68] Ἀποκρισιάριοι παρὰ Καρούλλου καὶ Λέοντος αἰτούμενοι ζευχθῆναι
αὐτὴν τῷ Καρούλλῳ πρὸς γάμον καὶ ἑνῶσαι τὰ Ἑωὰ καὶ τὰ
Ἑσπερία.--Theoph. _Chron._ in _Corp. Scriptt. Hist. Byz._
[69] Their ambassadors at last saluted him by the desired title
'Laudes ei dixerunt imperatorem eum et basileum appellantes.' Eginh.
_Ann._, ad ann. 812.
[70] Harun er Rashid; Eginh. _Vita Karoli_, c. 16.
[71] So Pope John VIII in a document quoted by Waitz, _Deutsche
Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
[72] Pertz, _M. G. H._ iii. (legg. I.)
[73] Pütter, _Historical Development of the German Constitution_; so
too Conring, and esp. David Blondel, _Adv. Chiffletium_.
[74] 'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit,' is repeated in this conquest
of the Teuton by the Roman.
[75] The notion that once prevailed that the Irminsûl was the 'pillar
of Hermann,' set up on the spot of the defeat of Varus, is now
generally discredited. Some German antiquaries take the pillar to be a
rude figure of the native god Irmin; but nothing seems to be known of
this alleged deity: and it is more probable that the name Irmin is
after all merely an altered form of the Keltic word which appears in
Welsh as Hir Vaen, the long stone (_Maen_, a stone). Thus the pillar,
so far from being the monument of the great Teutonic victory, would
commemorate a pre-Teutonic race, whose name for it the invading tribes
adopted. The Rev. Dr. Scott, of Westminster, to whose kindness I am
indebted for this explanation, informs me that a rude ditty recording
the destruction of the pillar by Charles was current on the spot a few
years ago. It ran thus:--
'Irmin slad Irmin
Sla Pfeifen sla Trommen
Der Kaiser wird kommen
Mit Hammer und Stangen
Wird Irmin uphangen.'
[76] Eginhard, _Ann_.
[77] Most probably the Scots of Ireland--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
16.
[78] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 23.
[79] Aix-la-Chapelle. See the lines in Pertz (_M. G. H._ ii.),
beginning,--
'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis,
Sedes regni principalis,
Prima regum curia.'
This city is commonly called Aken in English books of the seventeenth
century, and probably that ought to be taken as its proper English
name. That name has, however, fallen so entirely into disuse that I do
not venture to use it; and as the employment of the French name
Aix-la-Chapelle seems inevitably to produce the belief that the place
is and was, even in Charles's time, a French town, there is nothing
for it but to fall back upon the comparatively unfamiliar German name.
[80] Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Rhine
between Mentz and Bingen.
[81] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 29.
[82] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 17.
[83] It is not a little curious that of the three whom the modern
French have taken to be their national heroes all should have been
foreigners, and two foreign conquerors.
[84] This basilica was built upon the model of the church of the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and as it was the first church of any size
that had been erected in those regions for centuries past, it excited
extraordinary interest among the Franks and Gauls. In many of its
features it greatly resembles the beautiful church of San Vitale, at
Ravenna (also modelled upon that of the Holy Sepulchre) which was
begun by Theodoric, and completed under Justinian. Probably San Vitale
was used as a pattern by Charles's architects: we know that he caused
marble columns to be brought from Ravenna to deck the church at
Aachen. Over the tomb of Charles, below the central dome (to which the
Gothic choir we now see was added some centuries later), there hangs a
huge chandelier, the gift of Frederick Barbarossa.
[85] 'Romuleum Francis præstitit imperium.'--Elegy of Ermoldus
Nigellus, in Pertz; _M. G. H._, t. i. So too Florus the Deacon,--
'Huic etenim cessit etiam gens Romula genti,
Regnorumque simul mater Roma inclyta cessit:
Huius ibi princeps regni diademata sumpsit
Munere apostolico, Christi munimine fretus.'
CHAPTER VI.
CAROLINGIAN AND ITALIAN EMPERORS.
[Sidenote: Lewis the Pious.]
[Sidenote: Partition of Verdun, A.D. 843.]
Lewis the Pious[86], left by Charles's death sole heir, had been some
years before associated with his father in the Empire, and had been
crowned by his own hands in a way which, intentionally or not,
appeared to deny the need of Papal sanction. But it was soon seen that
the strength to grasp the sceptre had not passed with it. Too mild to
restrain his turbulent nobles, and thrown by over-conscientiousness
into the hands of the clergy, he had reigned few years when
dissensions broke out on all sides. Charles had wished the Empire to
continue one, under the supremacy of a single Emperor, but with its
several parts, Lombardy, Aquitaine, Austrasia, Bavaria, each a kingdom
held by a scion of the reigning house. A scheme dangerous in itself,
and rendered more so by the absence or neglect of regular rules of
succession, could with difficulty have been managed by a wise and firm
monarch. Lewis tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and
Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed,
and forced by the bishops to do penance; again restored, but without
power, a tool in the hands of contending factions. On his death the
sons flew to arms, and the first of the dynastic quarrels of modern
Europe was fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition
treaty of Verdun which followed, the Teutonic principle of equal
division among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission
of an indivisible Empire: the practical sovereignty of all three
brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a barren
precedence only reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he,
as the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important result was the
separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities. Their difference
of feeling, shewn already in the support of Lewis the Pious by the
Germans against the Gallo-Franks and the Church[87], took now a
permanent shape: modern Germany proclaims the era of A.D. 843 the
beginning of her national existence, and celebrated its thousandth
anniversary twenty-seven years ago. To Charles the Bald was given
Francia Occidentalis, that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to
Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two capitals, Rome and Aachen,
a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the North Sea to the
Mediterranean, and including the northern half of Italy: Lewis
(surnamed, from his kingdom, the German) received all east of the
Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible
supremacies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout these regions
German was spoken; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally
removed from Latin and from modern French. Lothar's, being mixed and
having no national basis, was the weakest of the three, and soon
dissolved into the separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy, and
Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine.
[Sidenote: End of the Carolingian Empire of the West, A.D. 888.]
On the tangled history of the period that follows it is not possible
to do more than touch. After passing from one branch of the
Carolingian line to another[88], the imperial sceptre was at last
possessed and disgraced by Charles the Fat, who united all the
dominions of his great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not avail
himself of recovered territory to strengthen or defend the expiring
monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A.D. 887, and his death in 888
has been usually taken as the date of the extinction of the
Carolingian Empire of the West. The Germans, still attached to the
ancient line, chose Arnulf, an illegitimate Carolingian, for their
king: he entered Italy and was crowned Emperor by his partizan Pope
Formosus, in 894. But Germany, divided and helpless, was in no
condition to maintain her power over the southern lands: Arnulf
retreated in haste, leaving Rome and Italy to sixty years of stormy
independence.
That time was indeed the nadir of order and civilization. From all
sides the torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had stemmed was
rushing down upon his empire. The Saracen wasted the Mediterranean
coasts, and sacked Rome herself. The Dane and Norseman swept the
Atlantic and the North Sea, pierced France and Germany by their
rivers, burning, slaying, carrying off into captivity: pouring through
the Straits of Gibraltar, they fell upon Provence and Italy. By land,
while Wends and Czechs and Obotrites threw off the German yoke and
threatened the borders, the wild Hungarian bands, pressing in from the
steppes of the Caspian, dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a
new wave of barbarism, and carried the terror of their battleaxes to
the Apennines and the ocean. Under such strokes the already loosened
fabric swiftly dissolved. No one thought of common defence or wide
organization: the strong built castles, the weak became their
bondsmen, or took shelter under the cowl: the governor--count, abbot,
or bishop--tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an
independent, a personal into a territorial authority, and hardly owned
a distant and feeble suzerain. The grand vision of a universal
Christian empire was utterly lost in the isolation, the antagonism,
the increasing localization of all powers: it might seem to have been
but a passing gleam from an older and better world.
[Sidenote: The German Kingdom.]
[Sidenote: Henry the Fowler.]
In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked at last its cure. When
the male line of the eastern branch of the Carolingians had ended in
Lewis (surnamed the Child), son of Arnulf, the chieftains chose and
the people accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the
Saxon duke, both representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid
the foundations of a firm monarchy, driving back the Magyars and
Wends, recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of orderly
life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He had meant to
claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which Conrad's weakness had
at least asserted by the demand of tribute; but death overtook him,
and the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son.
[Sidenote: Otto the Great.]
The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name in the sense which it commonly
bore in later centuries, as denoting the sovereignty of Germany and
Italy vested in a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great.
Substantially, it is true, as well as technically, it was a
prolongation of the Empire of Charles; and it rested (as will be shewn
in the sequel) upon ideas essentially the same as those which brought
about the coronation of A.D. 800. But a revival is always more or less
a revolution: the one hundred and fifty years that had passed since
the death of Charles had brought with them changes which made Otto's
position in Germany and Europe less commanding and less autocratic
than his predecessor's. With narrower geographical limits, his Empire
had a less plausible claim to be the heir of Rome's universal
dominion; and there were also differences in its inner character and
structure sufficient to justify us in considering Otto (as he is
usually considered by his countrymen) not a mere successor after an
interregnum, but rather a second founder of the imperial throne in the
West.
Before Otto's descent into Italy is described, something must be said
of the condition of that country, where circumstances had again made
possible the plan of Theodoric, permitted it to become an independent
kingdom, and attached the imperial title to its sovereign.
[Sidenote: Italian Emperors.]
The bestowal of the purple on Charles the Great was not really that
'translation of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks,' which it
was afterwards described as having been. It was not meant to settle
the office in one nation or one dynasty: there was but an extension of
that principle of the equality of all Romans which had made Trajan and
Maximin Emperors. The '_arcanum imperii_,' whereof Tacitus speaks,
'_posse principem alibi quam Romæ fieri_[89],' had long before become
_alium quam Romanum_; and now, the names of Roman and Christian having
grown co-extensive, a barbarian chieftain was, as a Roman citizen,
eligible to the office of Roman Emperor. Treating him as such, the
people and pontiff of the capital had in the vacancy of the Eastern
throne asserted their ancient rights of election, and while attempting
to reverse the act of Constantine, had re-established the division of
Valentinian. The dignity was therefore in strictness personal to
Charles; in point of fact, and by consent, hereditarily transmissible,
just as it had formerly become in the families of Constantine and
Theodosius. To the Frankish crown or nation it was by no means legally
attached, though they might think it so; it had passed to their king
only because he was the greatest European potentate, and might equally
well pass to some stronger race, if any such appeared. Hence, when the
line of Carolingian Emperors ended in Charles the Fat, the rights of
Rome and Italy might be taken to revive, and there was nothing to
prevent the citizens from choosing whom they would. At that memorable
era (A.D. 888) the four kingdoms which this prince had united fell
asunder; West France, where Odo or Eudes then began to reign, was
never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Arnulf;
Burgundy[90] split up into two principalities, in one of which
(Transjurane) Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other
(Cisjurane with Provence) submitted to Boso[91]; while Italy was
divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli and Guido of
Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the
latter, and on his speedy death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor
by the Pope. Arnulf's descent chased them away and vindicated the
claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the anti-German
faction at Rome became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy,
and afterwards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his
fealty to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain title
he retained through years of misery and exile, till A.D. 928[92]. None
of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy;
beyond it they were not so much as recognized. The crown had become a
bauble with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of princes
whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed the credulity of their
more honest supporters. The demoralization and confusion of Italy, the
shameless profligacy of Rome and her pontiffs during this period, were
enough to prevent a true Italian kingdom from being built up on the
basis of Roman choice and national unity. Italian indeed it can
scarcely be called, for these Emperors were still in blood and manners
Teutonic, and akin rather to their Transalpine enemies than their
Romanic subjects. But Italian it might soon have become under a
vigorous rule which should have organized it within and knit it
together to resist attacks from without. And therefore the attempt to
establish such a kingdom is remarkable, for it might have had great
consequences; might, if it had prospered, have spared Italy much
suffering and Germany endless waste of strength and blood. He who from
the summit of Milan cathedral sees across the misty plain the gleaming
turrets of its icy wall sweep in a great arc from North to West, may
well wonder that a land which nature has so severed from its
neighbours should, since history begins, have been always the victim
of their intrusive tyranny.
[Sidenote: Adelheid Queen of Italy.]
[Sidenote: Otto's first expedition into Italy, A.D. 951.]
[Sidenote: Invitation sent by the Pope to Otto.]
[Sidenote: Motives for reviving the Empire.]
In A.D. 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom Emperors. After
him Hugh of Burgundy, and Lothar his son, reigned as kings of Italy,
if puppets in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called.
Rome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic[93], who had
renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the
degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city. Lothar
dying, his widow Adelheid[94] was sought in marriage by Adalbert son
of Berengar II, the new Italian monarch. A gleam of romance is shed on
the Empire's revival by her beauty and her adventures. Rejecting the
odious alliance, she was seized by Berengar, escaped with difficulty
from the loathsome prison where his barbarity had confined her, and
appealed to Otto the German king, the model of that knightly virtue
which was beginning to shew itself after the fierce brutality of the
last age. He listened, descended into Lombardy by the Adige valley,
espoused the injured queen, and forced Berengar to hold his kingdom as
a vassal of the East Frankish crown. That prince was turbulent and
faithless; new complaints reached ere long his liege lord, and envoys
from the Pope offered Otto the imperial title if he would re-visit and
pacify Italy. The proposal was well-timed. Men still thought, as they
had thought in the centuries before the Carolingians, that the Empire
was suspended, not extinct; and the desire to see its effective power
restored, the belief that without it the world could never be right,
might seem better grounded than it had been before the coronation of
Charles. Then the imperial name had recalled only the faint memories
of Roman majesty and order; now it was also associated with the golden
age of the first Frankish Emperor, when a single firm and just hand
had guided the state, reformed the church, repressed the excesses of
local power: when Christianity had advanced against heathendom,
civilizing as she went, fearing neither Hun nor Paynim. One annalist
tells us that Charles was elected 'lest the pagans should insult the
Christians, if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the
Christians[95].' The motive would be bitterly enforced by the
calamities of the last fifty years. In a time of disintegration,
confusion, strife, all the longings of every wiser and better soul for
unity, for peace and law, for some bond to bring Christian men and
Christian states together against the common enemy of the faith, were
but so many cries for the restoration of the Roman Empire[96]. These
were the feelings that on the field of Merseburg broke forth in the
shout of 'Henry the Emperor:' these the hopes of the Teutonic host
when after the great deliverance of the Lechfeld they greeted Otto,
conqueror of the Magyars, as 'Imperator Augustus, Pater Patriæ[97].'
[Sidenote: Condition of Italy.]
The anarchy which an Emperor was needed to heal was at its worst in
Italy, desolated by the feuds of a crowd of petty princes. A
succession of infamous Popes, raised by means yet more infamous, the
lovers and sons of Theodora and Marozia, had disgraced the chair of
the Apostle, and though Rome herself might be lost to decency, Western
Christendom was roused to anger and alarm. Men had not yet learned to
satisfy their consciences by separating the person from the office.
The rule of Alberic had been succeeded by the wildest confusion, and
demands were raised for the renewal of that imperial authority which
all admitted in theory[98], and which nothing but the resolute
opposition of Alberic himself had prevented Otto from claiming in 951.
From the Byzantine Empire, whither Italy was more than once tempted to
turn, nothing could be hoped; its dangers from foreign enemies were
aggravated by the plots of the court and the seditions of the capital;
it was becoming more and more alienated from the West by the Photian
schism and the question regarding the Procession of the Holy Ghost,
which that quarrel had started. Germany was extending and
consolidating herself, had escaped domestic perils, and might think of
reviving ancient claims. No one could be more willing to revive them
than Otto the Great. His ardent spirit, after waging a bold and
successful struggle against the turbulent magnates of his German
realm, had engaged him in wars with the surrounding nations, and was
now captivated by the vision of a wider sway and a loftier
world-embracing dignity. Nor was the prospect which the papal offer
opened up less welcome to his people. Aachen, their capital, was the
ancestral home of the house of Pipin: their sovereign, although
himself a Saxon by race, titled himself king of the Franks, in
opposition to the Frankish rulers of the Western branch, whose
Teutonic character was disappearing among the Romans of Gaul; they
held themselves in every way the true representatives of the
Carolingian power, and accounted the period since Arnulf's death
nothing but an interregnum which had suspended but not impaired their
rights over Rome. 'For so long,' says a writer of the time, 'as there
remain kings of the Franks, so long will the dignity of the Roman
Empire not wholly perish, seeing that it will abide in its
kings[99].' The recovery of Italy was therefore to German eyes a
righteous as well as a glorious design: approved by the Teutonic
Church which had lately been negotiating with Rome on the subject of
missions to the heathen; embraced by the people, who saw in it an
accession of strength to their young kingdom. Everything smiled on
Otto's enterprise, and the connection which was destined to bring so
much strife and woe to Germany and to Italy was welcomed by the wisest
of both countries as the beginning of a better era.
[Sidenote: Descent of Otto the Great into Italy.]
[Sidenote: His coronation at Rome, A.D. 962.]
Whatever were Otto's own feelings, whether or not he felt that he was
sacrificing, as modern writers have thought that he did sacrifice, the
greatness of his German kingdom to the lust of universal dominion, he
shewed no hesitation in his acts. Descending from the Alps with an
overpowering force, he was acknowledged as king of Italy at
Pavia[100]; and, having first taken an oath to protect the Holy See
and respect the liberties of the city, advanced to Rome. There, with
Adelheid his queen, he was crowned by John XII, on the day of the
Purification, the second of February, A.D. 962. The details of his
election and coronation are unfortunately still more scanty than in
the case of his great predecessor. Most of our authorities represent
the act as of the Pope's favour[101], yet it is plain that the consent
of the people was still thought an essential part of the ceremony, and
that Otto rested after all on his host of conquering Saxons. Be this
as it may, there was neither question raised nor opposition made in
Rome; the usual courtesies and promises were exchanged between Emperor
and Pope, the latter owning himself a subject, and the citizens swore
for the future to elect no pontiff without Otto's consent.
FOOTNOTES:
[86] Usage has established this translation of 'Hludowicus Pius,' but
'gentle' or 'kind-hearted' would better express the meaning of the
epithet.
[87] Von Ranke discovers in this early traces of the aversion of the
Germans to the pretensions of the spiritual power.--_History of
Germany during the Reformation_: Introduction.
[88] Singularly enough, when one thinks of modern claims, the dynasty
of France (Francia occidentalis) had the least share of it. Charles
the Bald was the only West Frankish Emperor, and reigned a very short
time.
[89] Tac. _Hist._ i. 4.
[90] For an account of the various applications of the name Burgundy,
see Appendix, Note A.
[91] The accession of Boso took place in A.D. 877, eleven years before
Charles the Fat's death. But the new kingdom could not be considered
legally settled until the latter date, and its establishment is at any
rate a part of that general break-up of the great Carolingian empire
whereof A.D. 888 marks the crisis. See Appendix A at the end.
It is a curious mark of the reverence paid to the Carolingian blood,
that Boso, a powerful and ambitious prince, seems to have chiefly
rested his claims on the fact that he was husband of Irmingard,
daughter of the Emperor Lewis II. Baron de Gingins la Sarraz quotes a
charter of his (drawn up when he seems to have doubted whether to call
himself king) which begins, 'Ego Boso Dei gratia id quod sum, et
coniux mea Irmingardis proles imperialis.'
[92] Lewis had been surprised by Berengar at Verona, blinded, and
forced to take refuge in his own kingdom of Provence.
[93] Alberic is called variously senator, consul, patrician, and
prince of the Romans.
[94] Adelheid was daughter of Rudolf, king of Trans-Jurane Burgundy.
She was at this time in her nineteenth year.
[95] _Chron. Moiss._, in Pertz; _M. G. H._ i. 305.
[96] See especially the poem of Florus the Deacon (printed in the
Benedictine collection and in Migne), a bitter lament over the
dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. It is too long for quotation. I
give four lines here:--
'Quid faciant populi quos ingens alluit Hister,
Quos Rhenus Rhodanusque rigant, Ligerisve, Padusve,
Quos omnes dudum tenuit concordia nexos,
Foedere nunc rupto divortia moesta fatigant.'
[97] Witukind, _Annales_, in Pertz. It may, however, be doubted
whether the annalist is not here giving a very free rendering of the
triumphant cries of the German army.
[98] Cf. esp. the '_Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma_,'
in Pertz.
[99] 'Licet videamus Romanorum regnum in maxima parte jam destructum,
tamen quamdiu reges Francorum duraverint qui Romanum imperium tenere
debent, dignitas Romani imperii ex toto non peribit, quia stabit in
regibus suis.'--_Liber de Antichristo_, addressed by Adso, abbot of
Moutier-en-Der, to queen Gerberga (circa A.D. 950).
[100] From the money which Otto struck in Italy, it seems probable
that he did occasionally use the title of king of Italy or of the
Lombards. That he was crowned can hardly be considered quite certain.
[101] 'A papa imperator ordinatur,' says Hermannus Contractus.
'Dominum Ottonem, ad hoc usque vocatum regem, non solum Romano sed et
pœne totius Europæ populo acclamante imperatorem consecravit
Augustum.'--_Annal. Quedlinb._, ad ann. 962. 'Benedictionem a domno
apostolico Iohanne, cuius rogatione huc venit, cum sua coniuge promeruit
imperialem ac patronus Romanæ effectus est ecclesiæ.'--Thietmar.
'Acclamatione totius Romani populi ab apostolico Iohanne, filio
Alberici, imperator et Augustus vocatur et ordinatur.'--Continuator
Reginonis. And similarly the other annalists.
CHAPTER VII.
THEORY OF THE MEDIÆVAL EMPIRE.
[Sidenote: Why the revival of the Empire was desired.]
These were the events and circumstances of the time: let us now look
at the causes. The restoration of the Empire by Charles may seem to be
sufficiently accounted for by the width of his conquests, by the
peculiar connection which already subsisted between him and the Roman
Church, by his commanding personal character, by the temporary vacancy
of the Byzantine throne. The causes of its revival under Otto must be
sought deeper. Making every allowance for the favouring incidents
which have already been dwelt upon, there must have been some further
influence at work to draw him and his successors, Saxon and Frankish
kings, so far from home in pursuit of a barren crown, to lead the
Italians to accept the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make
the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age not what it
seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an institution divine and
necessary, having its foundations in the very nature and order of
things. The empire of the elder Rome had been splendid in its life,
yet its judgment was written in the misery to which it had brought the
provinces, and the helplessness that had invited the attacks of the
barbarian. Now, as we at least can see, it had long been dead, and the
course of events was adverse to its revival. Its actual
representatives, the Roman people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a
profligacy notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for all
this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long ages to stem
the irresistible time-current, fondly believing that they were
breasting it even while it was sweeping them ever faster and faster
away from the old order into a region of new thoughts, new feelings,
new forms of life. Not till the days of the Reformation was the
illusion dispelled.
[Sidenote: Mediæval theories.]
The explanation is to be found in the state of the human mind during
these centuries. The Middle Ages were essentially unpolitical. Ideas
as familiar to the commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas
of the common good as the object of the State, of the rights of the
people, of the comparative merits of different forms of government,
were to them, though sometimes carried out in fact, in their
speculative form unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Feudalism was the
one great institution to which those times gave birth, and feudalism
was a social and a legal system, only indirectly and by consequence a
political one. Yet the human mind, so far from being idle, was in
certain directions never more active; nor was it possible for it to
remain without general conceptions regarding the relation of men to
each other in this world. Such conceptions were neither made an
expression of the actual present condition of things nor drawn from an
induction of the past; they were partly inherited from the system that
had preceded, partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical
theology which was ripening into scholasticism[102]. Now the two great
ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages that followed
were those of a World-Monarchy and a World-Religion.
[Sidenote: The World-Religion.]
Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little knowledge of each
other, with no experience of wide political union[103], had held
differences of race to be natural and irremovable barriers. Similarly,
religion appeared to them a matter purely local and national; and as
there were gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and
of the sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on
the natives of another country who worshipped other gods as Gentiles,
natural foes, unclean beings. Such feelings, if keenest in the East,
frequently shew themselves in the early records of Greece and Italy:
in Homer the hero who wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in
sacking the cities of the stranger[104]; the primitive Latins have the
same word for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of
Egypt, Hindostan, China, are only more vehement expressions of the
belief which made Athenian philosophers look on a state of war between
Greeks and barbarians as natural[105], and defend slavery on the same
ground of the original diversity of the races that rule and the races
that serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech
and law, smote this feeling on its political side; Christianity more
effectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety
of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are
equal[106].
[Sidenote: Coincides with the World-Empire.]
It is on the religious life that nations repose. Because divinity was
divided, humanity had been divided likewise; the doctrine of the unity
of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created in His
image[107]. The first lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was
to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of
race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new
religion a community of the faithful, a Holy Empire, designed to
gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold
polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the
Cæsars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics that
had gone before it. The analogy of the two made them appear parts of
one great world-movement toward unity: the coincidence of their
boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough
after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names
of Roman and Christian convertible[108]. Œcumenical councils, where
the whole spiritual body gathered itself from every part of the
temporal realm under the presidency of the temporal head, presented
the most visible and impressive examples of their connection[109]. The
language of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the
sacred writings and of worship; the greatest mind of his generation
consoled the faithful for the fall of their earthly commonwealth Rome,
by describing to them its successor and representative, the 'city
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God[110].'
[Sidenote: Preservation of the unity of the Church.]
[Sidenote: Mediæval Theology requires One Visible Catholic Church.]
Of these two parallel unities, that of the political and that of the
religious society, meeting in the higher unity of all Christians,
which may be indifferently called Catholicity or Romanism (since in
that day those words would have had the same meaning), that only which
had been entrusted to the keeping of the Church survived the storms of
the fifth century. Many reasons may be assigned for the firmness with
which she clung to it. Seeing one institution after another falling to
pieces around her, seeing how countries and cities were being severed
from each other by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing
difficulty of communication, she strove to save religious fellowship
by strengthening the ecclesiastical organization, by drawing tighter
every bond of outward union. Necessities of faith were still more
powerful. Truth, it was said, is one, and as it must bind into one
body all who hold it, so it is only by continuing in that body that
they can preserve it. Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which
may be traced from the council of Jerusalem to the council of Trent,
there had arisen the idea of supplementing revelation by tradition as
a source of doctrine, of exalting the universal conscience and belief
above the individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only
through the universal consciousness, represented by the sacerdotal
order: principles still maintained by one branch of the Church, and
for some at least of which far weightier reasons could be assigned
then, in the paucity of written records and the blind ignorance of the
mass of the people, than any to which their modern advocates have
recourse. There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and which it
is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly a want of faith in
the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the
universe alone: it was rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind
to realize the idea as an idea and live in it: it was the tendency to
see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the
doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the
essential ceremony; the tendency which intruded earthly Madonnas and
saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could
satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these:
which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as the result of
the direct action of angels and devils: which expressed the strivings
of the soul after purity by the search for the Holy Grail: which in
the Crusades sent myriads to win at Jerusalem by earthly arms the
sepulchre of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor
approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole
fabric of mediæval Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible
Church. Such a Church could be in nowise local or limited. To
acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have
appeared to those men, as it must always appear when scrutinized,
contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius
of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a
temporary resource in the presence of insuperable difficulties. Had
this plan, on which so many have dwelt with complacency in later
times, been proposed either to the primitive Church in its adversity
or to the dominant Church of the ninth century, it would have been
rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no nations, the plan
was one which did not and could not present itself. The Visible Church
was therefore the Church Universal, the whole congregation of
Christian men dispersed throughout the world.
[Sidenote: Idea of political unity upheld by the clergy.]
Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay was the priesthood; and
it was by them, in whom dwelt whatever of learning and thought was
left in Europe, that the second great idea whereof mention has been
made--the belief in one universal temporal state--was preserved. As a
matter of fact, that state had perished out of the West, and it might
seem their interest to let its memory be lost. They, however, did not
so calculate their interest. So far from feeling themselves opposed to
the civil authority in the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came
to do in the twelfth and thirteenth, the clergy were fully persuaded
that its maintenance was indispensable to their own welfare. They
were, be it remembered, at first Romans themselves living by the Roman
law, using Latin as their proper tongue, and imbued with the idea of
the historical connection of the two powers. And by them chiefly was
that idea expounded and enforced for many generations, by none more
earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser of Charles[111]. The
limits of those two powers had become confounded in practice: bishops
were princes, the chief ministers of the sovereign, sometimes even the
leaders of their flocks in war: kings were accustomed to summon
ecclesiastical councils, and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.
[Sidenote: Influence of the metaphysics of the time upon the theory of
a World-State.]
But, like the unity of the Church, the doctrine of a universal
monarchy had a theoretical as well as an historical basis, and may be
traced up to those metaphysical ideas out of which the system we call
Realism developed itself. The beginnings of philosophy in those times
were logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify:
system, subordination, uniformity, appeared to be that which was most
desirable in thought as in life. The search after causes became a
search after principles of classification; since simplicity and truth
were held to consist not in an analysis of thought into its elements,
nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but rather in a
sort of genealogy of notions, a statement of the relations of classes
as containing or excluding each other. These classes, genera or
species, were not themselves held to be conceptions formed by the mind
from phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects grouped
under and called by some common name; they were real things, existing
independently of the individuals who composed them, recognized rather
than created by the human mind. In this view, Humanity is an essential
quality present in all men, and making them what they are: as regards
it they are therefore not many but one, the differences between
individuals being no more than accidents. The whole truth of their
being lies in the universal property, which alone has a permanent and
independent existence. The common nature of the individuals thus
gathered into one Being is typified in its two aspects, the spiritual
and the secular, by two persons, the World-Priest and the
World-Monarch, who present on earth a similitude of the Divine unity.
For, as we have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic
expression that a thought could then be apprehended[112]. Although it
was to unity in religion that the clerical body was both by doctrine
and by practice attached, they found this inseparable from the
corresponding unity in politics. They saw that every act of man has a
social and public as well as a moral and personal bearing, and
concluded that the rules which directed and the powers which rewarded
or punished must be parallel and similar, not so much two powers as
different manifestations of one and the same. That the souls of all
Christian men should be guided by one hierarchy, rising through
successive grades to a supreme head, while for their deeds they were
answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected, mutually
irresponsible potentates, appeared to them necessarily opposed to the
Divine order. As they could not imagine, nor value if they had
imagined, a communion of the saints without its expression in a
visible Church, so in matters temporal they recognized no brotherhood
of spirit without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in the
image of a universal State[113]. In this, as in so much else, the men
of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the letter, unable, with all
their aspirations, to rise out of the concrete, and prevented by the
very grandeur and boldness of their conceptions from carrying them out
in practice against the enormous obstacles that met them.
[Sidenote: The ideal state supposed to be embodied in the Roman
Empire.]
[Sidenote: Constantine's Donation.]
Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might never have risen to
maturity nor sensibly affected the progress of events, had it not
gained in the pre-existence of the monarchy of Rome a definite shape
and a definite purpose. It was chiefly by means of the Papacy that
this came to pass. When under Constantine the Christian Church was
framing her organization on the model of the state which protected
her, the bishop of the metropolis perceived and improved the analogy
between himself and the head of the civil government. The notion that
the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned
upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every
century under the operation of causes already specified. Even before
the Empire of the West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that
to Rome, exalted by the preaching of the chief of the Apostles to be a
holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city, there had
been appointed a spiritual dominion wider than her earthly sway[114].
In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of the Western
countries, and the Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's
power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still
commanded, until by the middle of the eighth, or, at latest, of the
ninth century she had perfected in theory a scheme which made her the
exact counterpart of the departed despotism, the centre of the
hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The character of
that scheme is best set forth in the singular document, most
stupendous of all the mediæval forgeries, which under the name of the
Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the
unquestioning belief of mankind[115]. Itself a portentous falsehood,
it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of
the priesthood which framed it, some time between the middle of the
eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine
the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved,
on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a
new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular
government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he
bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty
over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not all,
although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid
audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the
Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all
of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the
same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The
Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar,
the purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body
of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and
receive the honours and immunities of the senate and patricians[116].
[Sidenote: Interdependence of Papacy and Empire.]
The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of the religious
society must be in every point conformed to his prototype the chief of
the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman
clergy; not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial than
it is in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law was
intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the imperial
jurisprudence; a correspondence was traced between its divisions and
those of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and Gregory IX, who was the first
to consolidate it into a code, sought the fame and received the title
of the Justinian of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always,
even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to imitate
and rival, not to supersede it; since they held it the necessary
complement of their own, and thought the Christian people equally
imperilled by the fall of either. Hence the reluctance of Gregory II
to break with the Byzantine princes[117], and the maintenance of their
titular sovereignty till A.D. 800: hence the part which the Holy See
played in transferring the crown to Charles, the first sovereign of
the West capable of fulfilling its duties; hence the grief with which
its weakness under his successors was seen, the gladness when it
descended to Otto as representative of the Frankish kingdom.
[Sidenote: The Roman Empire revived in a new character.]
Up to the era of A.D. 800 there had been at Constantinople a
legitimate historical prolongation of the Roman Empire. Technically,
as we have seen, the election of Charles, after the deposition of
Constantine VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the old
rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope, though he knew it
not, did far more than effect a change of dynasty when he rejected
Irene and crowned the barbarian chief. Restorations are always
delusive. As well might one hope to stop the earth's course in her
orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement in human affairs
which forbids an old institution, suddenly transplanted into a new
order of things, from filling its ancient place and serving its former
ends. The dictatorship at Rome in the second Punic war was not more
unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Cæsar, nor the States-general of
Louis XIII to the assembly which his unhappy descendant convoked in
1789, than was the imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles
the Frank; and the seal, ascribed to A.D. 800, which bears the legend
'Renovatio Romani Imperii[118],' expresses, more justly perhaps than
was intended by its author, a second birth of the Roman Empire.
It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a proper view of this
new creation can be formed. That period was one of transition, of
fluctuation and uncertainty, in which the office, passing from one
dynasty and country to another, had not time to acquire a settled
character and claims, and was without the power that would have
enabled it to support them. From the coronation of Otto the Great a
new period begins, in which the ideas that have been described as
floating in men's minds took clearer shape, and attached to the
imperial title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is
this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to consider.
[Sidenote: Position and functions of the Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Correspondence and harmony of the spiritual and temporal
powers.]
The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when the only notion
of civil or religious order was submission to authority, required the
World-State to be a monarchy; tradition, as well as the continuance of
certain institutions, gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor. A
king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings: the
Emperor must be, for there had never been but one Emperor; he had in
older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilized world;
the seat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat
of Christendom[119]. His functions will be seen most clearly if we
deduce them from the leading principle of mediæval mythology, the
exact correspondence of earth and heaven. As God, in the midst of the
celestial hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope,
His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans, reigned over
the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as
of heaven, so must he (the _Imperator cœlestis_[t]) be represented by
a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor (_Imperator terrenus_[120]),
whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this
present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the
body is no more than an instrument and means for the soul's
manifestation, so must there be a rule and care of men's bodies as
well as of their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being of
that which is the purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem
of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is
presented to us throughout the Middle Ages[121]. The Pope, as God's
vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the
Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their
dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed
the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end
of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is
to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position
is that of Advocate, a title borrowed from the practice adopted by
churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect
their lands and lead their tenants in war[122]. The functions of
Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to
the priesthood, and to execute their decrees upon heretics and
sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing
to use carnal weapons[123]. Thus does the Emperor answer in every
point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank,
created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been
modelled after the elder Empire. The parallel holds good even in its
details; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and
robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his
own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a
clerical as well as a sacred character, removed his office from all
narrowing associations of birth or country, inaugurated him by rites
every one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their
essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman
Empire are one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism,
the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism;
that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality;
manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two
natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope,
to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor,
commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.
[Sidenote: Union of Church and State.]
In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the
same, differing only in the sphere of its working; and it matters not
whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular
Pope. Nor, though the one office is below the other as far as man's
life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore,
on the older and truer theory, the imperial authority delegated by the
papal. For, as has been said already, God is represented by the Pope
not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits in heaven: as
sovereign of earth, He issues His commission directly to the Emperor.
Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable,
each being bound to aid and foster the other: the co-operation of both
being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large.
This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of the union of
Church and State; for, taking the absolute coincidence of their limits
to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint
government, and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility, the
duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less
than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which,
granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two
powers in that relation which gives each of them its maximum of
strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to find exceptions,
in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to
work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact
worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system which
Constantine founded amid such rejoicings, which culminated so
triumphantly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each
succeeding generation been slowly losing ground, has seen its
brightness dimmed and its completeness marred, and sees now those who
are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend
or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest.
The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this
theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires, was attained only
at a few points in their history[124]. It was finally supplanted by
another view of their relation, which, professing to be a development
of a principle recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of
the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent
churchmen[125]. Declaring the Pope sole representative on earth of the
Deity, it concluded that from him, and not directly from God, must the
Empire be held--held feudally, it was said by many--and it thereby
thrust down the temporal power, to be the slave instead of the sister
of the spiritual[126]. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her meridian, and
under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander,
of Innocent, not seeking to abolish or absorb the civil government,
required only its obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save
herself[127]. It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant
pretensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to
show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of A.D. 1300,
seated on the throne of Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown,
and sceptre, shouting aloud, 'I am Cæsar--I am Emperor[128].'
[Sidenote: Proofs from mediæval documents.]
The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus sketched cannot be
definitely assigned to any point of time; for it was growing and
changing from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise
us that we do not find in any one author a statement of the grounds
whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then
too obvious to be formally explained. No one, however, who examines
mediæval writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct words,
oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such ideas as these are
present to the minds of the authors[129]. That which it is easiest to
prove is the connection of the Empire with religion. From every
record, from chronicles and treatises, proclamations, laws, and
sermons, passages may be adduced wherein the defence and spread of the
faith, and the maintenance of concord among the Christian people, are
represented as the function to which the Empire has been set apart.
The belief expressed by Lewis II, 'Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli
voce sed in gloriosæ pietatis culmine consistit[130],' appears again
in the address of the Archbishop of Mentz to Conrad II[131], as Vicar
of God; is reiterated by Frederick I[132], when he writes to the
prelates of Germany, 'On earth God has placed no more than two powers,
and as there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and
one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman
Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church[133];' is
echoed by jurists and divines down to the days of Charles V[134]. It
was a doctrine which we shall find the friends and foes of the Holy
See equally concerned to insist on, the one to make the transference
(_translatio_) from the Greeks to the Germans appear entirely the
Pope's work, and so establish his right of overseeing or cancelling
his rival's election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head of
the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief bishop of his
realm[135]. His headship was dwelt upon chiefly in the two duties
already noticed. As the counterpart of the Mussulman Commander of the
Faithful, he was leader of the Church militant against her infidel
foes, was in this capacity summoned to conduct crusades, and in later
times recognized chief of the confederacies against the conquering
Ottomans. As representative of the whole Christian people, it belonged
to him to convoke General Councils, a right not without importance
even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far more weighty
when the object of the council was to settle a disputed election, or,
as at Constance, to depose the reigning pontiff himself.
[Sidenote: The Coronation ceremonies.]
No better illustrations can be desired than those to be found in the
office for the imperial coronation at Rome, too long to be transcribed
here, but well worthy of an attentive study[136]. The rites prescribed
in it are rights of consecration to a religious office: the Emperor,
besides the sword, globe, and sceptre of temporal power, receives a
ring as the symbol of his faith, is ordained a subdeacon, assists the
Pope in celebrating mass, partakes as a clerical person of the
communion in both kinds, is admitted a canon of St. Peter and St. John
Lateran. The oath to be taken by an elector begins, 'Ego N. volo regem
Romanorum in Cæsarem promovendum, temporale caput populo Christiano
eligere.' The Emperor swears to cherish and defend the Holy Roman
Church and her bishop: the Pope prays after the reading of the Gospel,
'Deus qui ad prædicandum æterni regni evangelium Imperium Romanum
præparasti, prætende famulo tuo Imperatori nostro arma cœlestia.'
Among the Emperor's official titles there occur these: 'Head of
Christendom,' 'Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church,'
'Temporal Head of the Faithful,' 'Protector of Palestine and of the
Catholic Faith[137].'
[Sidenote: The rights of the Empire proved from the Bible.]
Very singular are the reasonings used by which the necessity and
divine right of the Empire are proved out of the Bible. The mediæval
theory of the relation of the civil power to the priestly was
profoundly influenced by the account in the Old Testament of the
Jewish theocracy, in which the king, though the institution of his
office was a derogation from the purity of the older system, appears
divinely chosen and commissioned, and stood in a peculiarly intimate
relation to the national religion. From the New Testament the
authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage
was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined,
every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to
imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction
which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the
world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by
paying tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldest have no
power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.'
More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct arguments
were those drawn from prophecy, or based on the allegorical
interpretation of Scripture. Very early in Christian history had the
belief formed itself that the Roman Empire--as the fourth beast of
Daniel's vision, as the iron legs and feet of Nebuchadnezzar's
image--was to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From Origen
and Jerome downwards it found unquestioned acceptance[138], and that
not unnaturally. For no new power had arisen to extinguish the Roman,
as the Persian monarchy had been blotted out by Alexander, as the
realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering republic
herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard, Burgundian, had
cherished her memory and preserved her laws; Germany had adopted even
the name of the Empire 'dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,
and diverse from all that were before it.' To these predictions, and
to many others from the Apocalypse, were added those which in the
Gospels and Epistles foretold the advent of Antichrist[139]. He was to
succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more than once warned
that by weakening the Empire they are hastening the coming of the
enemy and the end of the world[140]. It is not only when groping in
the dark labyrinths of prophecy that mediæval authors are quick in
detecting emblems, imaginative in explaining them. Men were wont in
those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did
it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom
they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether
the sense they discovered was one which the language used would
naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy
was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple
text; and, once propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument
all the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of which
Christ said, 'It is enough,' became the spiritual and temporal powers,
and the grant of the spiritual to Peter involves the supremacy of the
Papacy[141]. Thus one writer proves the eternity of Rome from the
seventy-second Psalm, 'They shall fear thee as long as the sun and
moon endure, throughout all generations;' the moon being of course,
since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire, as the sun, or greater light, is
the Popedom. Another quoting, 'Qui tenet teneat donec auferatur[142],'
with Augustine's explanation thereof[143], says, that when 'he who
letteth' is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion, and
the Empire to which God has committed the government of the human race
will be dissolved. From the miseries of his own time (he wrote under
Frederick III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of
symbolism seized on the number of the electors: 'the seven lamps
burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit which illumine the Holy
Empire[144].' Strange legends told how Romans and Germans were of one
lineage; how Peter's staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine,
the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to the Germans to
reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold. So complete does the
scriptural proof appear in the hands of mediæval churchmen, many
holding it a mortal sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we
forget they were all the while only adapting to an existing
institution what they found written already; we begin to fancy that
the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted for centuries, on the
strength of words to which we attach in almost every case a wholly
different meaning.
[Sidenote: Illustrations from Mediæval Art.]
It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to pass on from the
theologians to the poets and artists of the Middle Ages, and endeavour
to trace through their works the influence of the ideas which have
been expounded above. But it is one far too wide for the scope of the
present treatise; and one which would demand an acquaintance with
those works themselves such as only minute and long-continued study
could give. For even a slight knowledge enables any one to see how
much still remains to be interpreted in the imaginative literature and
in the paintings of those times, and how apt we are in glancing over a
piece of work to miss those seemingly trifling indications of the
artist's thought or belief which are all the more precious that they
are indirect or unconscious. Therefore a history of mediæval art which
shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it is to have
any value at all, must be minute in description as well as subtle in
method. But lest this class of illustrations should appear to have
been wholly forgotten, it may be well to mention here two paintings in
which the theory of the mediæval empire is unmistakeably set forth.
One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence; every traveller in
Italy may examine both for himself.
[Sidenote: Mosaic of the Lateran Palace at Rome.]
The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran triclinium,
constructed by Pope Leo III about A.D. 800, and an exact copy of
which, made by the order of Sextus V, may still be seen over against
the façade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state
banqueting-hall of the Popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the
finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill across the
green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves of Tivoli and the
glistering crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine
Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the
Apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one hand is
extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words 'Pax Vobis.'
Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time
sitting: on his right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the
Emperor Constantine; to the one he gives the keys of heaven and hell,
to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the
opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle
Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III and
Charles the Emperor; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown.
Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium of an
archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The
inscription is, 'Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo
regi dona;' while round the arch is written, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,
et in terra pax omnibus bonæ voluntatis.'
The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is sufficiently
clear. First comes the revelation of the Gospel, and the divine
commission to gather all men into its fold. Next, the institution, at
the memorable era of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by
which the Christian people is to be respectively taught and governed.
Thirdly, we are shewn the permanent Vicar of God, the Apostle who
keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers
on a new and firmer basis[145]. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy
he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth, the
banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause
against heretics and infidels.
[Sidenote: Fresco in S. Maria Novella at Florence.]
The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a fresco in the
chapter-house of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella[146] at
Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been
commonly ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of Siena,
but an examination of the dates of his life seems to discredit this
view[147]. Most probably it was executed between A.D. 1340 and 1350.
It is a huge work, covering one whole wall of the chapter-house, and
filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient
authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the
time--Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it
is represented the whole scheme of man's life here and hereafter--the
Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated
side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right and left, in a
descending row, minor spiritual and temporal officials; next to the
Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors; next to the Emperor, the king
of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the
Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their
feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves
(heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the
Dominicans[148]) combat and chase away. From this, the central
foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a
great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers:
they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on
through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the
painting and just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and
Emperor, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and
angels[149].
[Sidenote: Anti-national character of the Empire.]
Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Militant is the perfect
counterpart of the Church Triumphant: her chief danger is from those
who would rend the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of
her heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is the sum of
her faith and the essence of her being, must on earth be rendered to
those two lieutenants whom He has chosen to govern in His name.
A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and
illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The
idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight
of God,--an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood,
where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the
humblest curate,--and in the prevalence of one language for worship
and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or
rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to
the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious
tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as
solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the
kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far
from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the
source and needful condition of their authority in their several
territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The
vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had
concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the
imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the
kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an
undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's
minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that
demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was
or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they
were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual
helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending
all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it.
Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism:
there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy
of life.
The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international;
though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important
aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely
begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise
territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands,
but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] I do not mean to say that the system of ideas which it is
endeavoured to set forth in the following pages was complete in this
particular form, either in the days of Charles or in those of Otto, or
in those of Frederick Barbarossa. It seems to have been constantly
growing and decaying from the fourth century to the sixteenth, the
relative prominence of its cardinal doctrines varying from age to age.
But, just as the painter who sees the ever-shifting lights and shades
play over the face of a wide landscape faster than his brush can place
them on the canvas, in despair at representing their exact position at
any single moment, contents himself with painting the effects that are
broadest and most permanent, and at giving rather the impression which
the scene makes on him than every detail of the scene itself, so here,
the best and indeed the only practicable course seems to be that of
setting forth in its most self-consistent form the body of ideas and
beliefs on which the Empire rested, although this form may not be
exactly that which they can be asserted to have worn in any one
century, and although the illustrations adduced may have to be taken
sometimes from earlier, sometimes from later writers. As the doctrine
of the Empire was in its essence the same during the whole Middle Age,
such a general description as is attempted here may, I venture to
hope, be found substantially true for the tenth as well as for the
fourteenth century.
[103] Empires like the Persian did nothing to assimilate the subject
races, who retained their own laws and customs, sometimes their own
princes, and were bound only to serve in the armies and fill the
treasury of the Great King.
[104] Od. iii. 72:--
ἢ μαψίδιως ἀλάλησθε,
οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ' ἀλόωνται
ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν =ἀλλοδαποῖσι= φέροντες;
Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, I. 274. So in II.
v. 214, ἀλλότριος φώς.
[105] Plato, in the beginning of the Laws, represents it as natural
between all states: πολεμὸς φύσει ὑπάρχει πρὸς ἁπάσας τὰς πόλεις.
[106] See especially Acts xvii. 26; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. ii. 11, sqq.;
iv. 3-6; Col. iii. 11.
[107] This is drawn out by Laurent, _Histoire du Droit des Gens_; and
Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_.
[108] 'Romanos enim vocitant homines nostræ religionis.'--Gregory of
Tours, quoted by Ægidi, from A. F. Pott, _Essay on the Words
'Römisch,' 'Romanisch,' 'Roman,' 'Romantisch.'_ So in the Middle Ages,
Ῥωμαῖοι is used to mean Christians, as opposed to Ἕλληνες, heathens.
Cf. Ducange, 'Romani olim dicti qui alias Christiani vel etiam
Catholici.'
[109] As a reviewer in the _Tablet_ (whose courtesy it is the more
pleasant to acknowledge since his point of view is altogether opposed
to mine) has understood this passage as meaning that 'people imagined
the Christian religion was to last for ever because the Holy Roman
Empire was never to decay,' it may be worth while to say that this is
far from being the purport of the argument which this chapter was
designed to state. The converse would be nearer the truth:--'people
imagined the Holy Roman Empire was never to decay, because the
Christian religion was to last for ever.'
The phenomen may perhaps be stated thus:--Men who were already
disposed to believe the Roman Empire to be eternal for one set of
reasons, came to believe the Christian Church to be eternal for
another and, to them, more impressive set of reasons. Seeing the two
institutions allied in fact, they took their alliance and connection
to be eternal also; and went on for centuries believing in the
necessary existence of the Roman Empire because they believed in its
necessary union with the Catholic Church.
[110] Augustine, in the _De Civitate Dei_. His influence, great
through all the Middle Ages, was greater on no one than on
Charles.--'Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, præcipueque his
qui De Civitate Dei prætitulati sunt.'--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
24.
[111] 'Quapropter universorum precibus fidelium optandum est, ut in
omnem gloriam vestram extendatur imperium, ut scilicet catholica fides
... veraciter in una confessione cunctorum cordibus infigatur,
quatenus summi Regis donante pietate eadem sanctæ pacis et perfectæ
caritatis omnes ubique regat et custodiat unitas.' Quoted by Waitz
(_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_, ii. 182) from an unprinted letter
of Alcuin.
[112] A curious illustration of this tendency of mind is afforded by
the descriptions we meet with of Learning or Theology (_Studium_) as a
concrete existence, having a visible dwelling in the University of
Paris. The three great powers which rule human life, says one writer,
the Popedom, the Empire, and Learning, have been severally entrusted
to the three foremost nations of Europe: Italians, Germans, French.
'His siquidem tribus, scilicet sacerdotio imperio et studio, tanquam
tribus virtutibus, videlicet naturali vitali et scientiali, catholica
ecclesia spiritualiter mirificatur, augmentatur et regitur. His itaque
tribus, tanquam fundamento, pariete et tecto, eadem ecclesia tanquam
materialiter proficit. Et sicut ecclesia materialis uno tantum
fundamento et uno tecto eget, parietibus vero quatuor, ita imperium
quatuor habet parietes, hoc est, quatuor imperii sedes, Aquisgranum,
Arelatum, Mediolanum, Romam.'--_Jordanis Chronica_; _ap._ Schardius
_Sylloge Tractatuum_. And see Döllinger, _Die Vergangenheit und
Gegenwart der katholischen Theologie_, p. 8.
[113] 'Una est sola respublica totius populi Christiani, ergo de
necessitate erit et unus solus princeps et rex illius reipublicæ,
statutus et stabilitus ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani
dilatationem et defensionem. Ex qua ratione concludit etiam Augustinus
(_De Civitate Dei_, lib. xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam fuit nec
potuit nec poterit esse verum imperium, etsi fuerint imperatores
qualitercumque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, qui fuerunt extra
fidem Catholicam et ecclesiam.'--Engelbert (abbot of Admont in Upper
Austria), _De Ortu et Fine imperii Romani_ (circ. 1310).
In this 'de necessitate' everything is included.
[114] See note 37.
[115] This is admirably brought out by Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach
dem Luneviller Frieden_.
[116] See the original forgery (or rather the extracts which Gratian
gives from it) in the _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, _Dist._ xcvi. cc. 13,
14. 'Et sicut nostram terrenam imperialem potentiam, sic sacrosanctam
Romanam ecclesiam decrevimus veneranter honorari, et amplius quam
nostrum imperium et terrenum thronum sedem beati Petri gloriose
exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem et gloriæ dignitatem atque vigorem
et honorificentiam imperialem.... Beato Sylvestro patri nostro summo
pontifici et universali urbis Romæ papæ, et omnibus eius successoribus
pontificibus, qui usque in finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt
sessuri, de præsenti contradimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense,
deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque phrygium,
necnon et superhumerale, verum etiam et chlamydem purpuream et tunicam
coccineam, et omnia imperialia indumenta, sed et dignitatem imperialem
præsidentium equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia sceptra,
simulque cuncta signa atque banda et diversa ornamenta imperialia et
omnem processionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis
nostræ.... Et sicut imperialis militia ornatur ita et clerum sanctæ
Romanæ ecclesiæ ornari decernimus.... Unde ut pontificalis apex non
vilescat sed magis quam terreni imperii dignitas gloria et potentia
decoretur, ecce tam palatium nostrum quam Romanam urbem et omnes
Italiæ seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates
beatissimo papæ Sylvestro universali papæ contradimus atque
relinquimus.... Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum et Christianæ
religionis caput ab imperatore cœlesti constitutum est, iustum non est
ut illic imperator terrenus habeat potestatem.'
The practice of kissing the Pope's foot was adopted in imitation of
the old imperial court. It was afterwards revived by the German
Emperors.
[117] Döllinger has shewn in a recent work (_Die Papst-Fabeln des
Mittelalters_) that the common belief that Gregory II excited the
revolt against Leo the Iconoclast is unfounded.
So Anastasius, 'Ammonebat (_sc._ Gregorius Secundus) ne a fide vel
amore Romani imperii desisterent.'--_Vitæ Pontif. Rom._
[118] Of this curious seal, a leaden one, preserved at Paris, a figure
is given upon the cover of this volume. There are very few monuments
of that age whose genuineness can be considered altogether beyond
doubt; but this seal has many respectable authorities in its favour.
See, among others, Le Blanc, _Dissertation historique sur quelques
Monnoies de Charlemagne_, Paris, 1689; J. M. Heineccius, _De Veteribus
Germanorum aliarumque nationum sigillis_, Lips. 1709; Anastasius,
_Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_, ed. Vignoli, Romæ, 1752; Götz,
_Deutschlands Kayser-Münzen des Mittelalters_, Dresden, 1827; and the
authorities cited by Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
179, n. 4.
[119] 'Præterea mirari se dilecta fraternitas tua quod non Francorum
set Romanorum imperatores nos appellemus; set scire te convenit quia
nisi Romanorum imperatores essemus, utique nec Francorum. A Romanis
enim hoc nomen et dignitatem assumpsimus, apud quos profecto primum
tantæ culmen sublimitatis effulsit,' &c--_Letter of the Emperor Lewis
II to Basil the Emperor at Constantinople_, from _Chron. Salernit.
ap._ Murat. _S. R. I._
[120] 'Illam (_sc._ Romanam ecclesiam) solus ille fundavit, et super
petram fidei mox nascentis erexit, qui beato æternæ vitæ clavigero
terreni simul et cœlestis imperii iura commisit.'--_Corpus Iuris
Canonici_, _Dist._ xxii. c. 1. The expression is not uncommon in
mediæval writers. So 'unum est imperium Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, cuius est pars ecclesia constituta in terris,' in Lewis II's
letter.
[121] 'Merito summus Pontifex Romanus episcopus dici potest rex et
sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non
videtur incongruum suum vocare successorem. Corporale et temporale ex
spirituali et perpetuo dependet, sicut corporis operatio ex virtute
animæ. Sicut ergo corpus per animam habet esse virtutem et
operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio principum per spiritualem
Petri et successorum eius.'--St. Thomas Aquinas, _De Regimine
Principum_.
[122] 'Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur imperatori tanquam suo patrono,
et imperator ecclesiam fovere et defensare tanquam suus vere patronus?
certe sic.... Patronis vero concessum est ut prælatos in ecclesiis sui
patronatus eligant. Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat patronatus, ut qui
tenetur eam defendere, sentire debet honorem et emolumentum.' I quote
this from a curious document in Goldast's collection of tracts
(_Monarchia Imperii_), entitled '_Letter of the four Universities,
Paris, Oxford, Prague, and the "Romana generalitas," to the Emperor
Wenzel and Pope Urban_,' A.D. 1380. The title can scarcely be right,
but if the document is, as in all probability it is, not later than
the fifteenth century, its being misdescribed, or even its being a
forgery, does not make it less valuable as an evidence of men's ideas.
[123] So Leo III in a charter issued on the day of Charles's
coronation: '... actum in præsentia gloriosi atque excellentissimi
filii nostri Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem et provectionem
sanctæ universalis ecclesiæ hodie Augustum sacravimus.'--Jaffé
_Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_, ad ann. 800.
So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans, a contemporary of Charles, ascribes
to the Emperor an almost papal authority over the Church itself:--
'Cœli habet hic (_sc._ Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere;
Tu regis ecclesiæ, nam regit ille poli;
Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas,
Hic te cœlicolas ducet ad usque choros.'
In D. Bouquet, v. 415.
[124] Perhaps at no more than three: in the time of Charles and Leo;
again under Otto III and his two Popes, Gregory V and Sylvester II;
thirdly, under Henry III; certainly never thenceforth.
[125] _The Sachsenspiegel_ (_Speculum Saxonicum_, circ. A.D. 1240),
the great North-German law book, says, 'The Empire is held from God
alone, not from the Pope. Emperor and Pope are supreme each in what
has been entrusted to him: the Pope in what concerns the soul; the
Emperor in all that belongs to the body and to knighthood.' _The
Schwabenspiegel_, compiled half a century later, subordinates the
prince to the pontiff: 'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes daz lihet
der Babest dem Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt daz er
damit richte.'
[126] So Boniface VIII in the bull _Unam Sanctam_, will have but one
head for the Christian people. 'Igitur ecclesiæ unius et unicæ unum
corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum.'
[127] St. Bernard writes to Conrad III: 'Non veniat anima mea in
consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio pacem et libertatem ecclesiæ
vel ecclesiæ prosperitatem et exaltationem imperii nocituram.' So in
the _De Consideratione_: 'Si utrumque simul habere velis, perdes
utrumque,' of the papal claim to temporal and spiritual authority,
quoted by Gieseler.
[128] 'Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus ensem, habensque in capite
Constantini diadema, stricto dextra capulo ensis accincti, ait:
"Numquid ego summus sum pontifex? nonne ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne
possum imperii iura tutari? ego sum Cæsar, ego sum imperator."'--Fr.
Pipinus (ap. Murat. _S. R. I._ ix.) l. iv. c. 47. These words,
however, are by this writer ascribed to Boniface, when receiving the
envoys of the emperor Albert I, in A.D. 1299. I have not been able to
find authority for their use at the jubilee, but give the current
story for what it is worth.
It has been suggested that Dante may be alluding to this sword scene
in a well-known passage of the Purgatorio (xvi. l. 106):--
'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo
Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l' altra strada
Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
L' un l' altro ha spento, ed è giunta la spada
Col pastorale: e l' un coll altro insieme
Per viva forzu mal convien che vada.'
[129] See especially Peter de Andlo (_De Imperio Romano_); Ralph
Colonna (_De translatione Imperii Romani_); Dante (_De Monarchia_);
Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_); Marsilius Patavinus (_De
translatione Imperii Romani_); Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (_De Ortu et
Authoritate Imperii Romani_); Zoannetus (_De Imperio Romano atque ejus
Iurisdictione_); and the writers in Schardius's _Sylloge_, and in
Goldast's Collection of Tracts, entitled _Monarchia Imperii_.
[130] Letter of Lewis II to Basil the Macedonian, in _Chron.
Salernit._ in Mur. _S. R. I._; also given by Baronius, _Ann. Eccl._ ad
ann. 871.
[131] 'Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti: Vicarius es Christi.'--Wippo,
_Vita Chuonradi_ (_ap._ Pertz), c. 3.
[132] Letter in Radewic, _ap._ Murat, _S. R. I._
[133] Lewis IV is styled in one of his proclamations, 'Gentis humanæ,
orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus præesse.'--Pfeffinger,
_Vitriarius Illustratus_.
[134] In a document issued by the Diet of Speyer (A.D. 1529) the
Emperor is called 'Oberst, Vogt, und Haupt der Christenheit.'
Hieronymus Balbus, writing about the same time, puts the question
whether all Christians are subject to the Emperor in temporal things,
as they are to the Pope in spiritual, and answers it by saying, 'Cum
ambo ex eodem fonte perfluxerint et eadem semita incedant, de utroque
idem puto sentiendum.'
[135] 'Non magis ad Papam depositio seu remotio pertinet quam ad
quoslibet regum prælatos, qui reges suos prout assolent, consecrant et
inungunt.'--_Letter of Frederick II_ (lib. i. c. 3).
[136] _Liber Ceremonialis Romanus_, lib. i. sect. 5; with which
compare the _Coronatio Romana_ of Henry VII, in Pertz, and Muratori's
Dissertation in vol. i. of the _Antiquitates Italiæ Medii Ævi_.
[137] See Goldast, _Collection of Imperial Constitutions_; and Moser,
_Römische Kayser_.
[138] The abbot Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_) quotes
Origen and Jerome to this effect, and proceeds himself to explain,
from 2 Thess. ii., how the falling away will precede the coming of
Antichrist. There will be a triple 'discessio,' of the kingdoms of the
earth from the Roman Empire, of the Church from the Apostolic See, of
the faithful from the faith. Of these, the first causes the second;
the temporal sword to punish heretics and schismatics being no longer
ready to work the will of the rulers of the Church.
[139] A full statement of the views that prevailed in the earlier
Middle Age regarding Antichrist--as well as of the singular prophecy
of the Frankish Emperor who shall appear in the latter days, conquer
the world, and then going to Jerusalem shall lay down his crown on the
Mount of Olives and deliver over the kingdom to Christ--may be found
in the little treatise, _Vita Antichristi_, which Adso, monk and
afterwards abbot of Moutier-en-Der, compiled (cir. 950) for the
information of Queen Gerberga, wife of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist is
to be born a Jew of the tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 17), 'non de episcopo
et monacha, sicut alii delirando dogmatizant, sed de immundissima
meretrice et crudelissimo nebulone. Totus in peccato concipietur, in
peccato generabitur, in peccato nascetur.' His birthplace is Babylon:
he is to be brought up in Bethsaida and Chorazin.
Adso's book may be found printed in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290.
[140] S. Thomas explains the prophecy in a remarkable manner, shewing
how the decline of the Empire is no argument against its fulfilment.
'Dicendum quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in
spirituale, ut dicit Leo Papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo
discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a temporali sed
etiam a spirituali, scilicit a fide Catholica Romanæ Ecclesiæ. Est
autem hoc conveniens signum nam Christus venit, quando Romanum
imperium omnibus dominabatur: ita e contra signum adventus Antichristi
est discessio ab eo.'--_Comment. ad 2 Thess._ ii.
[141] See note 149, page 119. The Papal party sometimes insisted that
both swords were given to Peter, while the imperialists assigned the
temporal sword to John. Thus a gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_ says,
'Dat eine svert hadde Sinte Peter, dat het nu de paves: dat andere
hadde Johannes, dat het nu de keyser.'
[142] 2 Thess. ii. 7.
[143] St. Augustine, however, though he states the view (applying the
passage to the Roman Empire) which was generally received in the
Middle Ages, is careful not to commit himself positively to it.
[144] _Jordanis Chronica_ (written towards the close of the thirteenth
century).
[145] Compare with this the words which Pope Hadrian I. had used some
twenty-three years before, of Charles as representative of
Constantine: 'Et sicut temporibus Beati Sylvestri, Romani pontificis,
a sanctæ recordationis piissimo Constantino magno imperatore, per eius
largitatem sancta Dei catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata
atque exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperiæ partibus largiri
dignatus est, ita et in his vestris felicissimis temporibus atque
nostris, sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, beati Petri apostoli germinet
atque exsultet, ut omnes gentes quæ hæc audierint edicere valeant,
'Domine salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die in qua invocaverimus
te;' quia ecce novus Christianissimus Dei Constantinus imperator his
temporibus surrexit, per quem omnia Deus sanctæ suæ ecclesiæ beati
apostolorum principis Petri largiri dignatus est.'--_Letter XLIX of
Cod. Carol._, A.D. 777 (in Mur. _Scriptores Rerum Italicarum_).
This letter is memorable as containing the first allusion, or what
seems an allusion, to Constantine's Donation.
The phrase 'sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, B. Petri apostoli,' is worth
noting.
[146] The church in which the opening scene of Boccaccio's _Decameron_
is laid.
[147] So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i. p. 144), and so also Messrs.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their _New History of Painting in Italy_,
vol. ii. pp. 85 _sqq._
[148] Domini canes. Spotted because of their black-and-white raiment.
[149] There is of course a great deal more detail in the picture,
which it does not appear necessary to describe. St. Dominic is a
conspicuous figure.
It is worth remarking that the Emperor, who is on the Pope's left
hand, and so made slightly inferior to him while superior to every one
else, holds in his hand, instead of the usual imperial globe, a
death's head, typifying the transitory nature of his power.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GERMAN KINGDOM.
[Sidenote: Union of the Roman Empire with the German kingdom.]
This was the office which Otto the Great assumed in A.D. 962. But it
was not his only office. He was already a German king; and the new
dignity by no means superseded the old. This union in one person of
two characters, a union at first personal, then official, and which
became at last a fusion of the two into something different from
either, is the key to the whole subsequent history of Germany and the
Empire.
[Sidenote: Germany and its monarchy.]
Of the German kingdom little need be said, since it differs in no
essential respect from the other kingdoms of Western Europe as they
stood in the tenth century. The five or six great tribes or
tribe-leagues which composed the German nation had been first brought
together under the sceptre of the Carolingians; and, though still
retaining marks of their independent origin, were prevented from
separating by community of speech and a common pride in the great
Frankish Empire. When the line of Charles the Great ended in A.D. 911,
by the death of Lewis the Child (son of Arnulf), Conrad, duke of the
Franconians, and after him Henry (the Fowler), duke of the Saxons, was
chosen to fill the vacant throne. By his vigorous yet conciliatory
action, his upright character, his courage and good fortune in
repelling the Hungarians, Henry laid deep the foundations of royal
power: under his more famous son it rose into a stable edifice. Otto's
coronation feast at Aachen, where the great nobles of the realm did
him menial service, where Franks, Bavarians, Suabians, Thuringians,
and Lorrainers gathered round the Saxon monarch, is the inauguration
of a true Teutonic realm, which, though it called itself not German
but East Frankish, and claimed to be the lawful representative of the
Carolingian monarchy, had a constitution and a tendency in many
respects different.
[Sidenote: Feudalism.]
There had been under those princes a singular mixture of the old
German organization by tribes or districts (the so-called
Gauverfassung), such as we find in the earliest records, with the
method introduced by Charles of maintaining by means of officials,
some fixed, others moving from place to place, the control of the
central government. In the suspension of that government which
followed his days, there grew up a system whose seeds had been sown as
far back as the time of Clovis, a system whose essence was the
combination of the tenure of land by military service with a peculiar
personal relation between the landlord and his tenant, whereby the one
was bound to render fatherly protection, the other aid and obedience.
This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman
soil, nor for shewing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into
Germany, how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet
under Pipin and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the
impress which determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his
successors allowed it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be
possible here to examine its social and moral influence. Politically
it might be defined as the system which made the owner of a piece of
land, whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt
thereon: an annexation of personal to territorial authority more
familiar to Eastern despotism than to the free races of primitive
Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are explained,
feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation, each
tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants
held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so
uniform, the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly
bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society
that grasp which the struggles of more than twenty generations have
scarcely shaken off.
[Sidenote: The feudal king.]
[Sidenote: The nobility.]
[Sidenote: The Germanic feudal polity generally.]
Now by the middle of the tenth century, Germany, less fully committed
than France to feudalism's worst feature, the hopeless bondage of the
peasantry, was otherwise thoroughly feudalized. As for that equality
of all the freeborn save the sacred line which we find in the Germany
of Tacitus, there had been substituted a gradation of ranks and a
concentration of power in the hands of a landholding caste, so had the
monarch lost his ancient character as leader and judge of the people,
to become the head of a tyrannical oligarchy. He was titular lord of
the soil, could exact from his vassals service and aid in arms and
money, could dispose of vacant fiefs, could at pleasure declare war or
make peace. But all these rights he exercised far less as sovereign of
the nation than as standing in a peculiar relation to the feudal
tenants, a relation in its origin strictly personal, and whose
prominence obscured the political duties of prince and subject. And
great as these rights might become in the hands of an ambitious and
politic ruler, they were in practice limited by the corresponding
duties he owed to his vassals, and by the difficulty of enforcing them
against a powerful offender. The king was not permitted to retain in
his own hands escheated fiefs, must even grant away those he had held
before coming to the throne; he could not interfere with the
jurisdiction of his tenants in their own lands, nor prevent them from
waging war or forming leagues with each other like independent
princes. Chief among the nobles stood the dukes, who, although their
authority was now delegated, theoretically at least, instead of
independent, territorial instead of personal, retained nevertheless
much of that hold on the exclusive loyalty of their subjects which had
belonged to them as hereditary leaders of the tribe under the ancient
system. They were, with the three Rhenish archbishops, by far the
greatest subjects, often aspiring to the crown, sometimes not unable
to resist its wearer. The constant encroachments which Otto made upon
their privileges, especially through the institution of the Counts
Palatine, destroyed their ascendancy, but not their importance. It was
not till the thirteenth century that they disappeared with the rise of
the second order of nobility. That order, at this period far less
powerful, included the counts, margraves or marquises and landgraves,
originally officers of the crown, now feudal tenants; holding their
lands of the dukes, and maintaining against them the same contest
which they in turn waged with the crown. Below these came the barons
and simple knights, then the diminishing class of freemen, the
increasing one of serfs. The institutions of primitive Germany were
almost all gone; supplanted by a new system, partly the natural result
of the formation of a settled from a half-nomad society, partly
imitated from that which had arisen upon Roman soil, west of the Rhine
and south of the Alps. The army was no longer the Heerban of the whole
nation, which had been wont to follow the king on foot in distant
expeditions, but a cavalry militia of barons and their retainers,
bound to service for a short period, and rendering it unwillingly
where their own interest was not concerned. The frequent popular
assemblies, whereof under the names of the Mallum, the Placitum, the
Mayfield, we hear so much under Clovis and Charles, were now never
summoned, and the laws that had been promulgated there were, if not
abrogated, practically obsolete. No national council existed, save the
Diet in which the higher nobility, lay and clerical, met their
sovereign, sometimes to decide on foreign war, oftener to concur in
the grant of a fief or the proscription of a rebel. Every district had
its own rude local customs administered by the court of the local
lord: other law there was none, for imperial jurisprudence had in
these lately civilized countries not yet filled the place left empty
by the disuse of the barbarian codes.
[Sidenote: The Roman Empire and the German kingdom.]
This condition of things was indeed better than that utter confusion
which had gone before, for a principle of order had begun to group and
bind the tossing atoms; and though the union into which it drove men
was a hard and narrow one, it was something that they should have
learnt to unite themselves at all. Yet nascent feudality was but one
remove from anarchy; and the tendency to isolation and diversity
continued, despite the efforts of the Church and the Carolingian
princes, to be all-powerful in Western Europe. The German kingdom was
already a bond between the German races, and appears strong and united
when we compare it with the France of Hugh Capet, or the England of
Ethelred II; yet its history to the twelfth century is little else
than a record of disorders, revolts, civil wars, of a ceaseless
struggle on the part of the monarch to enforce his feudal rights, a
resistance by his vassals equally obstinate and more frequently
successful. What the issue of the contest might have been if Germany
had been left to take her own course is matter of speculation, though
the example of every European state except England and Norway may
incline the balance in favour of the crown. But the strife had
scarcely begun when a new influence was interposed: the German king
became Roman Emperor. No two systems can be more unlike than those
whose headship became thus vested in one person: the one centralized,
the other local; the one resting on a sublime theory, the other the
rude offspring of anarchy; the one gathering all power into the hands
of an irresponsible monarch, the other limiting his rights and
authorizing resistance to his commands; the one demanding the equality
of all citizens as creatures equal before Heaven, the other bound up
with an aristocracy the proudest, and in its gradations of rank the
most exact, that Europe had ever seen. Characters so repugnant could
not, it might be thought, meet in one person, or if they met must
strive till one swallowed up the other. It was not so. In the fusion
which began from the first, though it was for a time imperceptible,
each of the two characters gave and each lost some of its attributes:
the king became more than German, the Emperor less than Roman, till,
at the end of six centuries, the monarch in whom two 'persons' had
been united, appeared as a third different from either of the former,
and might not inappropriately be entitled 'German Emperor[150].' The
nature and progress of this change will appear in the after history of
Germany, and cannot be described here without in some measure
anticipating subsequent events. A word or two may indicate how the
process of fusion began.
[Sidenote: Results of this union in one person.]
It was natural that the great mass of Otto's subjects, to whom the
imperial title, dimly associated with Rome and the Pope, sounded
grander than the regal, without being known as otherwise different,
should in thought and speech confound them. The sovereign and his
ecclesiastical advisers, with far clearer views of the new office and
of the mutual relation of the two, found it impossible to separate
them in practice, and were glad to merge the lesser in the greater.
For as lord of the world, Otto was Emperor north as well as south of
the Alps. When he issued an edict, he claimed the obedience of his
Teutonic subjects in both capacities; when as Emperor he led the
armies of the gospel against the heathen, it was the standard of their
feudal superior that his armed vassals followed; when he founded
churches and appointed bishops, he acted partly as suzerain of feudal
lands, partly as protector of the faith, charged to guide the Church
in matters temporal. Thus the assumption of the imperial crown brought
to Otto as its first result an apparent increase of domestic
authority; it made his position by its historical associations more
dignified, by its religious more hallowed; it raised him higher above
his vassals and above other sovereigns; it enlarged his prerogative in
ecclesiastical affairs, and by necessary consequence gave to
ecclesiastics a more important place at court and in the
administration of government than they had enjoyed before. Great as
was the power of the bishops and abbots in all the feudal kingdoms, it
stood nowhere so high as in Germany. There the Emperor's double
position, as head both of Church and State, required the two
organizations to be exactly parallel. In the eleventh century a full
half of the land and wealth of the country, and no small part of its
military strength, was in the hands of Churchmen: their influence
predominated in the Diet; the archchancellorship of the Empire,
highest of all offices, belonged of right to the archbishop of Mentz,
as primate of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude
must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness of the clergy
was thus advanced. He is commonly said to have wished to weaken the
aristocracy by raising up rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have
been so, and the measure was at any rate a disastrous one, for the
clergy soon approved themselves not less rebellious than those whom
they were to restrain. But in accusing Otto's judgment, historians
have often forgotten in what position he stood to the Church, and how
it behoved him, according to the doctrine received, to establish in
her an order like in all things to that which he found already
subsisting in the State.
[Sidenote: Changes in title.]
The style which Otto adopted shewed his desire thus to merge the king
in the Emperor[151]. Charles had called himself 'Imperator Cæsar
Carolus rex Francorum invictissimus;' and again, 'Carolus serenissimus
Augustus, Pius, Felix, Romanorum gubernans Imperium, qui et per
misericordiam Dei rex Francorum atque Langobardorum.' Otto and his
first successors, who until their coronation at Rome had used the
titles of 'Rex Francorum,' or 'Rex Francorum Orientalium,' or oftener
still 'Rex' alone, discarded after it all titles save the highest of
'Imperator Augustus;' seeming thereby, though they too had been
crowned at Aachen and Milan, to claim the authority of Cæsar through
all their dominions. Tracing as we are the history of a title, it is
needless to dwell on the significance of the change[152]. Charles, son
of the Ripuarian allies of Probus, had been a Frankish chieftain on
the Rhine; Otto, the Saxon, successor of the Cheruscan Arminius, would
rule his native Elbe with a power borrowed from the Tiber.
[Sidenote: Imperial power feudalized.]
Nevertheless, the imperial element did not in every respect
predominate over the royal. The monarch might desire to make good
against his turbulent barons the boundless prerogative which he
acquired with his new crown, but he lacked the power to do so; and
they, disputing neither the supremacy of that crown nor his right to
wear it, refused with good reason to let their own freedom be
infringed upon by any act of which they had not been the authors. So
far was Otto from embarking on so vain an enterprise, that his rule
was even more direct and more personal than that of Charles had been.
There was no scheme of mechanical government, no claim of absolutism;
there was only the resolve to make the energetic assertion of the
king's feudal rights subserve the further aims of the Emperor. What
Otto demanded he demanded as Emperor, what he received he received as
king; the singular result was that in Germany the imperial office was
itself pervaded and transformed by feudal ideas. Feudality needing, to
make its theory complete, a lord paramount of the world, from whose
grant all ownership in land must be supposed to have emanated, and
finding such a suzerain in the Emperor, constituted him liege lord of
all kings and potentates, keystone of the feudal arch, himself, as it
was expressed, 'holding' the world from God. There were not wanting
Roman institutions to which these notions could attach themselves.
Constantine, imitating the courts of the East, had made the
dignitaries of his household great officials of the State: these were
now reproduced in the cup-bearer, the seneschal, the marshal, the
chamberlain of the Empire, so soon to become its electoral princes.
The holding of land on condition of military service was Roman in its
origin: the divided ownership of feudal law found its analogies in the
Roman tenure of emphyteusis. Thus while Germany was Romanized the
Empire was feudalized, and came to be considered not the antagonist
but the perfection of an aristocratic system. And it was this
adaptation to existing political facts that enabled it afterwards to
assume an international character. Nevertheless, even while they
seemed to blend, there remained between the genius of imperialism (if
one may use a now perverted word) and that of feudalism a deep and
lasting hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was in a
measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge of what Roman
government had been, but from the necessities of their position,
raised as they were to an unapproachable height above their subjects,
surrounded with a halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus
were they driven to reduce local independence, and assimilate the
various races through their vast territories. It was Otto who made the
Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes, a single people, and welding
them into a strong political body taught them to rise through its
collective greatness to the consciousness of national life, never
thenceforth to be extinguished.
[Sidenote: The Commons.]
One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy which Roman
traditions as well as present needs might have suggested, it was
scarcely possible for Otto to use. He could not invoke the friendship
of the Third Estate, for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of
freemen, which two centuries earlier had formed the bulk of the
population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England all who did
not become thanes were classed as ceorls, and from ceorls sank for the
most part, after the Conquest, into villeins. It was only in the
Alpine valleys and along the shores of the ocean that free democratic
communities maintained themselves. Town-life there was none, till
Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people to dwell in
fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders; and the burgher
class thus beginning to form was too small to be a power in the state.
But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of
its rights as could be saved from the grasp of the nobles; and the
crown thus became what it has been wherever an aristocracy presses
upon both, the ally, though as yet the tacit ally, of the people.
More, too, than the royal could have done, did the imperial name
invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of
its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet
lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious way consecrated to
Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and law, to the restraint
of the strong and the defence of the helpless.
FOOTNOTES:
[150] Although this was of course never his legal title. Till 1806 he
was 'Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus;' 'Römischer Kaiser.'
[151] Pütter, _Dissertationes de Instauratione Imperii Romani_; cf.
Goldast's _Collection of Constitutions_; and the proclamations and
other documents collected in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. I.
[152] Pütter (_De Instauratione Imperii Romani_) will have it that
upon this mistake, as he calls it, of Otto's, the whole subsequent
history of the Empire turned; that if Otto had but continued to style
himself 'Francorum Rex,' Germany would have been spared all her
Italian wars.
CHAPTER IX.
SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS.
He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages is alternately
amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every
step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent
theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who are
stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which,
even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity
of its moral teaching. He is disposed to conclude that such people
must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion would
be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little a man's actions
conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself, and
how many things there are which he believes without realizing:
believes sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be
governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of
theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more
violent and their conduct more reckless than is often witnessed in
modern society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring
spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they
would now do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was, that
while everyone believed in the rights of the Empire as a part of
divine truth, no one would yield to them where his own passions or
interests interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and indeed
was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one which nobody hesitated
to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative
any practical efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the
limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the one spot in
Otto's empire on which feudality had never fixed its grasp, and where
therefore he was forced to rule merely as emperor, and not also as
king, was that in which he and his successors were never safe from
insult and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an account
of what befel the first Saxon emperor in Rome is a not unfitting
comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in
the history of the Apostolic Chair.
[Sidenote: Otto the Great in Rome.]
After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy, where the
partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves
in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless John the Twelfth, who
found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master,
renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and even
scrupled not to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade
Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of
the flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the most
profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara. But
he affected to despise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony,
'He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him.' When, however,
Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a
party within furious against him. John the Twelfth was not only Pope,
but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the
nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor
they had courage enough to stand a siege: John fled into the Campagna
to join Adalbert, and Otto entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's.
Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by
inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a
tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy.
Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list
of them:--'Peter, cardinal-priest, rose and witnessed that he had seen
the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of
Narnia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him
ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper formalities. They
said further that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the
pontifical palace; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting;
had put out the eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to
houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and
hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had
drunk to the devil's health; that in throwing the dice he had invoked
the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated
matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified himself by making
the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not
speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is
to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona interpret
for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they
had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the
clergy and people cried with a loud voice, 'If John the Pope hath not
committed all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and
even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles,
the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and
opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be
bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on
the left hand along with those who have said to the Lord God, "Depart
from us, for we will not know Thy ways."'
The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied Otto and the
council: a letter was despatched to John, couched in respectful terms,
recounting the charges brought against him, and asking him to appear
to clear himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number of
compurgators. John's reply was short and pithy.
'John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the
bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another Pope: if
you do this, by Almighty God I excommunicate you, so that you may not
have power to perform mass or to ordain no one[153].'
[Sidenote: Deposition of John XII.]
To this Otto and the synod replied by a letter of humorous
expostulation, begging the Pope to reform both his morals and his
Latin. But the messenger who bore it could not find John: he had
repeated what seems to have been thought his most heinous sin, by
going into the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search had
been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a decisive step. Otto,
who still led their deliberations, demanded the condemnation of the
Pope; the assembly deposed him by acclamation, 'because of his
reprobate life,' and having obtained the Emperor's consent, proceeded
in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo, the chief secretary and a
layman, to the chair of the Apostle.
[Sidenote: Revolt of the Romans.]
Otto might seem to have now reached a position loftier and firmer than
that of any of his predecessors. Within little more than a year from
his arrival in Rome, he had exercised powers greater than those of
Charles himself, ordering the dethronement of one pontiff and the
installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend themselves
to his will. The submission involved in his oath to protect the Holy
See was more than compensated by the oath of allegiance to his crown
which the Pope and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn
engagement not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the
Emperor's consent[154]. But he had yet to learn what this obedience
and these oaths were worth. The Romans had eagerly joined in the
expulsion of John; they soon began to regret him. They were mortified
to see their streets filled by a foreign soldiery, the habitual
licence of their manners sternly repressed, their most cherished
privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop, grasped by the
strong hand of a master who used it for purposes in which they did not
sympathize. In a fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly
turned to rebellion. One night, Otto's troops being most of them
dispersed in their quarters at a distance, the Romans rose in arms,
blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously upon the Emperor and
his creature the new Pope. Superior valour and constancy triumphed
over numbers, and the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter;
yet this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second time,
after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John the Twelfth
returned to the city, and when his pontifical career was speedily
closed by the sword of an injured husband[155], the people chose a new
Pope in defiance of the Emperor and his nominee. Otto again subdued
and again forgave them, but when they rebelled for a third time, in
A.D. 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial supremacy meant.
Thirteen leaders, among them the twelve tribunes, were executed, the
consuls were banished, republican forms entirely suppressed, the
government of the city entrusted to Pope Leo as viceroy. He, too, must
not presume on the sacredness of his person to set up any claims to
independence. Otto regarded the pontiff as no more than the first of
his subjects, the creature of his own will, the depositary of an
authority which must be exercised according to the discretion of his
sovereign. The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on
papal elections in A.D. 963. Otto obtained from his nominee, Leo VIII,
a confirmation of this privilege, which it was afterwards supposed
that Hadrian I had granted to Charles, in a decree which may yet be
read in the collections of the canon law[156]. The vigorous exercise
of such a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain the
apostolic see; and it was for this purpose, and in noble honesty, that
the Teutonic sovereigns employed it. But the fortunes of Otto in the
city are a type of those which his successors were destined to
experience. Notwithstanding their clear rights and the momentary
enthusiasm with which they were greeted in Rome, not all the efforts
of Emperor after Emperor could gain any firm hold on the capital they
were so proud of. Visiting it only once or twice in their reigns, they
must be supported among a fickle populace by a large army of
strangers, which melted away with terrible rapidity under the sun of
Italy amid the deadly hollows of the Campagna[157]. Rome soon resumed
her turbulent independence.
[Sidenote: Otto's rule in Italy.]
Causes partly the same prevented the Saxon princes from gaining a firm
footing throughout Italy. Since Charles the Bald had bartered away for
the crown all that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised
substantial authority there. The _missi dominici_ had ceased to
traverse the country; the local governors had thrown off control, a
crowd of petty potentates had established principalities by
aggressions on their weaker neighbours. Only in the dominions of great
nobles, like the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of the
cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving the way for a
republican system, could traces of political order be found, or the
arts of peace flourish. Otto, who, though he came as a conqueror,
ruled legitimately as Italian king, found his feudal vassals less
submissive than in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by
progresses and edicts, and stern justice, in doing something to still
the turmoil; on his departure Italy relapsed into that disorganization
for which her natural features are not less answerable than the
mixture of her races. Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was
wildest, that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian
nationality, based partly on geographical position, partly on the use
of a common language and the slow growth of peculiar customs and modes
of thought. But though already jealous of the Tedescan, national
feeling was still very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and
cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he bethink himself
of crushing while it was weak a sentiment whose development threatened
the existence of his empire. Holding Italy equally for his own with
Germany, and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to
keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions nor
sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks, to represent his
government[158].
[Sidenote: Otto's foreign policy.]
[Sidenote: Towards Byzantium.]
The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Roman crown urged him to
resume the plans of foreign conquest which had lain neglected since
the days of Charles: the growing vigour of the Teutonic people, now
definitely separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the
era of the Marks--Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig), placed in his
hands a force to execute those plans which his predecessors had
wanted. In this, as in his other enterprises, the great Emperor was
active, wise, successful. Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and
unwilling to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not ceased to
annoy her German masters by intrigue, and might now, under the
vigorous leadership of Nicephorus and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace
them in arms. Policy, and the fascination which an ostentatiously
legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made Otto, as
Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir the hand of the
princess Theophano. Liudprand's account of his embassy represents in
an amusing manner the rival pretensions of the old and new
Empires[159]. The Greeks, who fancied that with the name they
preserved the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as absurd
as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their prerogative by
reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused him that title altogether;
and when the Pope had, in a letter addressed '_Imperatori Græcorum_,'
asked Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the Romans,
the Eastern was furious. 'You are no Romans,' said he, 'but wretched
Lombards: what means this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome
migrated hither.' The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the Romans,
while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay no claim to their name,
and proceeded to vindicate the Francia and Saxonia of his master.
'"Roman" is the most contemptuous name we can use--it conveys the
reproach of every vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice. But what can be
expected from the descendants of the fratricide Romulus? to his asylum
were gathered the offscourings of the nations: thence came these
κοσμοκράτορες.' Nicephorus demanded the 'theme' or province of Rome as
the price of compliance[160]; Tzimiskes was more moderate, and
Theophano became the bride of Otto II.
[Sidenote: Towards the West Franks.]
Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto might vindicate
the suzerainty over the West Frankish kingdom which it had been meant
that the imperial title should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it
by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his
feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the
same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis
d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul.
These pretensions, however, could have been made effective only by
arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such
instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been.
The star of the Carolingian of Laon was paling before the rising
greatness of the Parisian Capets: a Romano-Keltic nation had formed
itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast
absorbing, and still less willing to submit to a Saxon stranger.
Modern France[161] dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, A.D. 987,
and the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards formally
admitted.
[Sidenote: Lorraine and Burgundy.]
Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent.
Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as little as did England. The
former of these kingdoms had adhered to the West Frankish king,
Charles the Simple, against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as
mostly German in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto,
and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a
separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification
of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first
Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged
itself to be dependent on the German crown. Otto governed it for
thirty years, nominally as the guardian of the young king Conrad (son
of Rudolf II).
[Sidenote: Denmark and the Slaves.]
[Sidenote: England.]
Otto's conquests to the North and East approved him a worthy successor
of the first Emperor. He penetrated far into Jutland, annexed
Schleswig, made Harold the Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes
were obliged to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the
free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The Hungarians he
forced to forsake their nomad life, and delivered Europe from the fear
of Asiatic invasions by strengthening the frontier of Austria. Over
more distant lands, Spain and England, it was not possible to recover
the commanding position of Charles. Henry, as head of the Saxon name,
may have wished to unite its branches on both sides the sea[162], and
it was perhaps partly with this intent that he gained for Otto the
hand of Edith, sister of the English Athelstan. But the claim of
supremacy, if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when,
exaggerating the lofty style assumed by some of his predecessors, he
called himself 'Basileus and imperator of Britain[163],' thereby
seeming to pretend to a sovereignty over all the nations of the island
similar to that which the Roman Emperor claimed over the states of
Christendom.
[Sidenote: Extent of Otto's Empire.]
[Sidenote: Comparison between it and that of Charles.]
This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation of the
Carolingian, was in many respects different. It was less wide,
including, if we reckon strictly, only Germany proper and two-thirds
of Italy; or counting in subject but separate kingdoms, Burgundy,
Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps Hungary. Its character was
less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the spiritual potentates of
his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity among the
heathen: he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman
Church. But religion held a less important place in his mind and his
administration: he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and
did not, like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops. It
was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto associated with that
name anything more than the right to universal dominion and a certain
oversight of matters spiritual, nor how far he believed himself to be
treading in the steps of the Cæsars. He could not speak Latin, he had
few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed the varied
cultivation which had been so fruitful in the mind of Charles.
Moreover, the conditions of his time were different, and did not
permit similar attempts at wide organization. The local potentates
would have submitted to no _missi dominici_; separate laws and
jurisdictions would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the
_placita_ at which those laws were framed or published would not have
been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But what Otto could he
did, and did it to good purpose. Constantly traversing his dominions,
he introduced a peace and prosperity before unknown, and left
everywhere the impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans
became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle
among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome
and Rome's authority. While the political connection with Italy
stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture
hitherto unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object. Germany
became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who
trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their
arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived
Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Empire of the West
had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer and
more lasting, since based on a social force which the other had
wanted. It perpetuated the name, the language, the literature, such as
it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to
represent that concentration for which men cried, and became a power
to unite and civilize Europe.
[Sidenote: Otto II, A.D. 973-983.]
[Sidenote: Otto III, A.D. 983-1002.]
[Sidenote: His ideas. Fascination exercised over him by the name of
Rome.]
[Sidenote: Pope Sylvester II, A.D. 1000.]
The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment, as the era
of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding rulers may be more quickly
dismissed. Yet Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad,
full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek
princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert: through
the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed
the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the
dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To
accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous
blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the venerable rights of
Constantinople? It was his design, now that the solemn millennial era
of the founding of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of
the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire,
victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's, holy as
Constantine's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by
the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was: Germany
rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In A.D. 994, at the
age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of
government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and quell the
turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in
whom modern enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving
the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes
entitling himself Emperor[164]. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps
extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating
successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert,
whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of
Constantine: Gerbert, to his contemporaries a marvel of piety and
learning, in later legend the magician who, at the price of his own
soul, purchased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was at last
carried off in the body. With the substitution of these men for the
profligate priests of Italy, began that Teutonic reform of the Papacy
which raised it from the abyss of the tenth century to the point where
Hildebrand found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their power
by their most disinterested acts.
[Sidenote: Schemes of Otto III: Changes of style and usage.]
With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct him, Otto laboured
on his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense
religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world--in his
proclamations he calls himself 'Servant of the Apostles,' 'Servant of
Jesus Christ[165]'--together with the ambitious antiquarianism of a
fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he
represented. Even the wording of his laws witnesses to the strange
mixture of notions that filled his eager brain. 'We have ordained
this,' says an edict, 'in order that, the church of God being freely
and firmly stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of our
knighthood triumph; that the power of the Roman people may be extended
and the commonwealth be restored; so may we be found worthy after
living righteously in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from
the prison of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.' To
exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title '_Romanorum
Imperator_' instead of the simple '_Imperator_' of his predecessors.
His seals bear a legend resembling that used by Charles, '_Renovatio
Imperii Romanorum_;' even the 'commonwealth,' despite the results that
name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be
re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most
healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised a regular
administrative system of government for his capital--naming a
patrician, a prefect, and a body of judges, who were commanded to
recognize no law but Justinian's. The formula of their appointment has
been preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge a copy
of the code bids him 'with this code judge Rome and the Leonine city
and the whole world.' He introduced into the simple German court the
ceremonious magnificence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to
many of his followers[166]. His father's wish to draw Italy and
Germany more closely together, he followed up by giving the
chancellorship of both countries to the same churchman, by maintaining
a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue
with him through the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and
far-reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived
to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is reasonable to suppose that
whatever power he might have gained in the South he would have lost in
the North. Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in sympathies more a Greek
than a Teuton, he reined in the fierce barons with no such tight hand
as his grandfather had been wont to do; he neglected the schemes of
northern conquest; he released the Polish dukes from the obligation of
tribute. But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more than
conjecture, for Otto III, 'the wonder of the world,' as his own
generation called him, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the
victim, if we may trust a story of the time, of the revenge of
Stephania, widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and
slew him by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps with
laments whose echoes sound faintly yet from the pages of monkish
chroniclers, and buried him in the choir of the basilica at Aachen
some fifty paces from the tomb of Charles beneath the central dome.
Two years had not passed since, setting out on his last journey to
Rome, he had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor, sitting
on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the Gospel-book open
before him; and there, touching the dead hand, unclasping from the
neck its golden cross, had taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire
from his Frankish forerunner. Short as was his life and few his acts,
Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any who went before or
came after him. None save he desired to make the seven-hilled city
again the seat of dominion, reducing Germany and Lombardy and Greece
to their rightful place of subject provinces. No one else so forgot
the present to live in the light of the ancient order; no other soul
was so possessed by that fervid mysticism and that reverence for the
glories of the past, whereon rested the idea of the mediæval Empire.
[Sidenote: Italy independent.]
[Sidenote: Henry II Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Southern Italy.]
The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and though the Franks
might elect and the Saxons accept Henry II[167], Italy was nowise
affected by their acts. Neither the Empire nor the Lombard kingdom
could as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her princes
placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the vacant throne of Pavia, moved
partly by the growing aversion to a Transalpine power, still more by
the desire of impunity under a monarch feebler than any since
Berengar. But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew
him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded by the Pope, invited
Henry[168]; his strong army made opposition hopeless, and at Rome he
received the imperial crown, A.D. 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular
that the Transalpine kings should have clung so pertinaciously to
Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards should have so frequently
attempted to recover their independence. For the former had often
little or no hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at
home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land of treachery
and hatred. But Rome's glittering lure was irresistible, and the
disunion of Italy promised an easy conquest. Surrounded by martial
vassals, these Emperors were generally for the moment supreme: once
their pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things reverted
to their former condition, and Tuscany was little more dependent than
France. In Southern Italy the Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome
was an outpost instead of the centre of Teutonic power. A curious
evidence of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the
Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the confines of the
Greek and Roman realms gave steady obedience to neither. They usually
date by and recognize the princes of Constantinople[169], seldom
mentioning the Franks, till the reign of Conrad II; after him the
Western becomes _Imperator_, the Greek, appearing more rarely, is
_Imperator Constantinopolitanus_. Assailed by the Saracens, masters
already of Sicily, these regions seemed on the eve of being lost to
Christendom, and the Romans sometimes bethought themselves of
returning under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the Greeks
in the South favoured the rise of the Norman kingdom, so did the
liberties of the northern cities shoot up in the absence of the
Emperors and the feuds of the princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were
only the foremost among many populous centres of industry, some of
them self-governing, all quickly absorbing or repelling the rural
nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their aversion to the
Germans.
[Sidenote: Conrad II.]
The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the great Franconian
line, is remarkable for the accession to the Empire of Burgundy, or,
as it is after this time more often called, the kingdom of Arles[170].
Rudolf III, the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II,
and the states were at length persuaded to consent to its reunion to
the crown from which it had been separated, though to some extent
dependent, since the death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). On
Rudolf's death in 1032, Eudes, count of Champagne, endeavoured to
seize it, and entered the north-western districts, from which he was
dislodged by Conrad with some difficulty. Unlike Italy, it became an
integral member of the Germanic realm: its prelates and nobles sat in
imperial diets, and retained till recently the style and title of
Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government was, however,
seldom effective in these outlying territories, exposed always to the
intrigues, finally to the aggressions, of Capetian France.
[Sidenote: Henry III.]
[Sidenote: His reform of the Popedom.]
[Sidenote: Henry IV, A.D. 1056-1106.]
Under Conrad's son Henry the Third the Empire attained the meridian of
its power. At home Otto the Great's prerogative had not stood so high.
The duchies, always the chief source of fear, were allowed to remain
vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who himself
retained, contrary to usual practice, those of Franconia and (for some
years) Swabia. Abbeys and sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine
feuds were repressed by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad,
the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had gained by
conferring the title of King with the hand of his sister Gisela, was
enforced by war, the country made almost a province, and compelled to
pay tribute. In Rome no German sovereign had ever been so absolute. A
disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair had
shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all, and
appointed their successor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore
constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which were the badges
of that office, seeming, one might think, to find in it some further
authority than that which the imperial name conferred. The synod
passed a decree granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme
pontiff; and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of
the world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant corruption
of their manners, were forced to receive German after German as their
bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe, and so
pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own nobles no less than
the Italians, and the reaction, which might have been dangerous to
himself, was fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call
it, determined the course of history. The great Emperor died suddenly
in A.D. 1056, and a child was left at the helm, while storms were
gathering that might have demanded the wisest hand.
FOOTNOTES:
[153] 'Iohannes episcopus, servus servorum Dei, omnibus episcopis. Nos
audivimus dicere quia vos vultis alium papam facere: si hoc facitis,
da Deum omnipotentem excommunico vos, ut non habeatis licentiam missam
celebrare aut nullum ordinare.'--Liudprand, _ut supra_. The 'da' is
curious, as shewing the progress of the change from Latin to Italian.
The answer sent by Otto and the council takes exception to the double
negative.
[154] 'Cives fidelitatem promittunt hæc addentes et firmiter iurantes
nunquam se papam electuros aut ordinaturos præter consensum atque
electionem domini imperatoris Ottonis Cæsaris Augusti filiique ipsius
Ottonis.'--Liudprand, _Gesta Ottonis_, lib. vi.
[155] 'In timporibus adeo a dyabulo est percussus ut infra dierum octo
spacium eodem sit in vulnere mortuus,' says the chronicler, crediting
with but little of his wonted cleverness the supposed author of John's
death, who well might have desired a long life for so useful a
servant.
He adds a detail too characteristic of the time to be omitted--'Sed
eucharistiæ viaticum, ipsius instinctu qui eum percusserat, non
percepit.'
[156] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii., '_In synodo_.' A decree
which is probably substantially genuine, although the form in which we
have it is evidently of later date.
[157] Cf. St. Peter Damiani's lines--
'Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla virorum,
Roma ferax febrium necis est uberrima frugum,
Romanæ febres stabili sunt iure fideles.'
[158] There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the
kingdom of Burgundy.
[159] Liudprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_.
[160] 'Sancti imperii nostri olim servos principes, Beneventanum
scilicet, tradat,' &c. The epithet is worth noticing.
[161] Liudprand calls the Eastern Franks 'Franci Teutonici' to
distinguish them from the Romanized Franks of Gaul or 'Francigenæ,' as
they were frequently called. The name 'Frank' seems even so early as
the tenth century to have been used in the East as a general name for
the Western peoples of Europe. Liudprand says that the Greek Emperor
included 'sub Francorum nomine tam Latinos quam Teutonicos.' Probably
this use dates from the time of Charles.
[162] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_.
[163] Basileus was a favourite title of the English kings before the
Conquest. Titles like this used in these early English charters prove,
it need hardly be said, absolutely nothing as to the real existence of
any rights or powers of the English king beyond his own borders. What
they do prove (over and above the taste for florid rhetoric in the
royal clerks) is the impression produced by the imperial style, and by
the idea of the emperor's throne as supported by the thrones of kings
and other lesser potentates.
[164] The coins of Crescentius are said to exhibit the insignia of the
old Empire.--Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. 715. But probably
some at least of them are forgeries.
[165] Proclamation in Pertz, _M. G. H._ ii.
[166] 'Imperator antiquam Romanorum consuetudinem iam ex magna parte
deletam suis cupiens renovare temporibus multa faciebat quæ diversi
diverse sentiebant.'--Thietmar, _Chron._ ix.; ap. Pertz, _M. G. H._ t.
iii.
[167] _Annales Quedlinb._, ad ann. 1002.
[168] Henry had already entered Italy in 1004.
[169] _Annales Beneventani_, in Pertz, _M. G. H._
[170] See Appendix, Note A.
CHAPTER X.
STRUGGLE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY.
Reformed by the Emperors and their Teutonic nominees, the Papacy had
resumed in the middle of the eleventh century the schemes of polity
shadowed forth by Nicholas I, and which the degradation of the last
age had only suspended. Under the guidance of her greatest mind,
Hildebrand, the archdeacon of Rome, she now advanced to their
completion, and proclaimed that war of the ecclesiastical power
against the civil power in the person of the Emperor, which became the
centre of the subsequent history of both. While the nature of the
struggle cannot be understood without a glance at their previous
connection, the vastness of the subject warns one from the attempt to
draw even its outlines, and restricts our view to those relations of
Popedom and Empire which arise directly out of their respective
positions as heads spiritual and temporal of the universal Christian
state.
[Sidenote: Growth of the Papal power.]
[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
The eagerness of Christianity in the age immediately following her
political establishment to purchase by submission the support of the
civil power, has been already remarked. The change from independence
to supremacy was gradual. The tale we smile at, how Constantine,
healed of his leprosy, granted the West to bishop Sylvester, and
retired to Byzantium that no secular prince might interfere with the
jurisdiction or profane the neighbourhood of Peter's chair, worked
great effects through the belief it commanded for many centuries. Nay
more, its groundwork was true. It was the removal of the seat of
government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus that made the Pope the
greatest personage in the city, and in the prostration after Alaric's
invasion he was seen to be so. Henceforth he alone was a permanent and
effective, though still unacknowledged power, as truly superior to the
revived senate and consuls of the phantom republic as Augustus and
Tiberius had been to the faint continuance of their earlier
prototypes. Pope Leo the First asserted the universal jurisdiction of
his see[171], and his persevering successors slowly enthralled Italy,
Illyricum, Gaul, Spain, Africa, dexterously confounding their
undoubted metropolitan and patriarchal rights with those of œcumenical
bishop, in which they were finally merged. By his writings and the
fame of his personal sanctity, by the conversion of England and the
introduction of an impressive ritual, Gregory the Great did more than
any other pontiff to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority. Yet his
tone to Maurice of Constantinople was deferential, to Phocas
adulatory; his successors were not consecrated till confirmed by the
Emperor or the Exarch; one of them was dragged in chains to the
Bosphorus, and banished thence to Scythia. When the iconoclastic
controversy and the intervention of Pipin broke the allegiance of the
Popes to the East, the Franks, as patricians and Emperors, seemed to
step into the position which Byzantium had lost[172]. At Charles's
coronation, says the Saxon poet,
'Et summus eundem
Præsul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim
Principibus fuit antiquis.'
[Sidenote: Temporal power of the Popes.]
Their relations were, however, no longer the same. If the Frank
vaunted conquest, the priest spoke only of free gift. What Christendom
saw was that Charles was crowned by the Pope's hands, and undertook as
his principal duty the protection and advancement of the Holy Roman
Church. The circumstances of Otto the Great's coronation gave an even
more favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who
summoned him to Rome and a Pope who received from him an oath of
fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three powers, the Emperor, the
pontiff, and the people--represented by their senate and consuls, or
by the demagogue of the hour--the most steady, prudent, and
far-sighted was sure eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no
minorities, as yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its
own army--the host of churchmen through Europe. Boniface's conversion
of Germany under its direct sanction, gave it a hold on the rising
hierarchy of the greatest European state; the extension of the rule of
Charles and Otto diffused in the same measure its emissaries and
pretensions. The first disputes turned on the right of the prince to
confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards supposed to have
been granted by Hadrian I to Charles, in the decree quoted as
'_Hadrianus Papa_[173].' This '_ius eligendi et ordinandi summum
pontificem_,' which Lewis I appears as yielding by the '_Ego
Ludovicus_[174],' was claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt
themselves strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude in the
troublous times of the Italian Emperors, was formally renewed to Otto
the Great by his nominee Leo VIII. We have seen it used, and used in
the purest spirit, by Otto himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of
all, and most despotically, by Henry III. Along with it there had
grown up a bold counter-assumption of the Papal chair to be itself the
source of the imperial dignity. In submitting to a fresh coronation,
Lewis the Pious admitted the invalidity of his former self-performed
one: Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration of John
VIII[175], that to him alone the Emperor owed his crown; and the
council of Pavia[176], when it chose him king of Italy, repeated the
assertion. Subsequent Popes knew better than to apply to the chiefs of
Saxon and Franconian chivalry language which the feeble Neustrian had
not resented; but the precedent remained, the weapon was only hid
behind the pontifical robe to be flashed out with effect when the
moment should come. There were also two other great steps which papal
power had taken. By the invention and adoption of the False Decretals
it had provided itself with a legal system suited to any emergency,
and which gave it unlimited authority through the Christian world in
causes spiritual and over persons ecclesiastical. Canonistical
ingenuity found it easy in one way or another to make this include all
causes and persons whatsoever: for crime is always and wrong is often
sin, nor can aught be anywhere done which may not affect the clergy.
On the gift of Pipin and Charles, repeated and confirmed by Lewis I,
Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the more venerable
authority of the first Christian Emperor, it could found claims to the
sovereignty of Rome, Tuscany, and all else that had belonged to the
exarchate. Indefinite in their terms, these grants were never meant by
the donors to convey full dominion over the districts--that belonged
to the head of the Empire--but only as in the case of other church
estates, a perpetual usufruct or _dominium utile_. They were, in fact,
mere endowments. Nor had the gifts been ever actually reduced into
possession: the Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord, of
the neighbouring barons. They were not, however, denied, and might be
made a formidable engine of attack: appealing to them, the Pope could
brand his opponents as unjust and impious; and could summon nobles and
cities to defend him as their liege lord, just as, with no better
original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors of Naples
and Sicily.
The attitude of the Roman Church to the imperial power at Henry the
Third's death was externally respectful. The right of a German king to
the crown of the city was undoubted, and the Pope was his lawful
subject. Hitherto the initiative in reform had come from the civil
magistrate. But the secret of the pontiff's strength lay in this: he,
and he alone, could confer the crown, and had therefore the right of
imposing conditions on its recipient. Frequent interregna had weakened
the claim of the Transalpine monarch and prevented his power from
taking firm root; his title was never by law hereditary: the holy
Church had before sought and might again seek a defender elsewhere.
And since the need of such defence had originated this transference of
the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks, since to render it was the
Emperor's chief function, it was surely the Pope's duty as well as his
right to see that the candidate was capable of fulfilling his task, to
degrade him if he rejected or misperformed it.
[Sidenote: Hildebrandine reforms.]
The first step was to remove a blemish in the constitution of the
Church, by fixing a regular body to choose the supreme pontiff. This
Nicholas II did in A.D. 1059, feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV
and his successors. Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses
and depravity of the last century, advanced apace. It had two main
objects: the enforcement of celibacy, especially on the secular
clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable freedom, and the
extinction of simony. In the former, the Emperors and a large part of
the laity were not unwilling to join: the latter no one dared to
defend in theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin for
the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a
layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to
the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of
the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots,
who would now be freed from the monarch's control to pass under that
of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be
impossible.
[Sidenote: Henry IV and Gregory VII.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1077.]
Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other: after this decree war
was inevitable. The Pope cited his opponent to appear and be judged at
Rome for his vices and misgovernment. The Emperor[177] replied by
convoking a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory. At once the
dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate, and fixed a day on
which, if still unrepentant, he should cease to reign. Supported by
his own princes, the monarch might have defied a mandate backed by no
external force; but the Saxons, never contented since the first place
had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians, only waited the
signal to burst into a new revolt, whilst through all Germany the
Emperor's tyranny and irregularities of life had sown the seeds of
disaffection. Shunned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into what
seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's mightiest prince,
titular lord of the world, a suppliant before the successor of the
Apostle. Henry soon found that his humiliation had not served him;
driven back into opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an
anti-pope, overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had
raised, and maintained to the end of his sad and chequered life a
power often depressed but never destroyed. Nevertheless had all other
humiliation been spared, that one scene in the yard of the Countess
Matilda's castle, an imperial penitent standing barefoot and
woollen-frocked on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who
sat within should admit and absolve him, was enough to mark a decisive
change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on the crown so abased.
Its wearer could no more, with the same lofty confidence, claim to be
the highest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone.
Gregory had extorted the recognition of that absolute superiority of
the spiritual dominion which he was wont to assert so sternly;
proclaiming that to the Pope, as God's vicar, all mankind are subject,
and all rulers responsible: so that he, the giver of the crown, may
also excommunicate and depose. Writing to William the Conqueror, he
says[178]: 'For as for the beauty of this world, that it may be at
different seasons perceived by fleshly eyes, God hath disposed the sun
and the moon, lights that outshine all others; so lest the creature
whom His goodness hath formed after His own image in this world should
be drawn astray into fatal dangers, He hath provided in the apostolic
and royal dignities the means of ruling it through divers offices....
If I, therefore, am to answer for thee on the dreadful day of judgment
before the just Judge who cannot lie, the creator of every creature,
bethink thee whether I must not very diligently provide for thy
salvation, and whether, for thine own safety, thou oughtest not
without delay to obey me, that so thou mayest possess the land of the
living.'
Gregory was not the inventor nor the first propounder of these
doctrines; they had been long before a part of mediæval Christianity,
interwoven with its most vital doctrines. But he was the first who
dared to apply them to the world as he found it. His was that rarest
and grandest of gifts, an intellectual courage and power of
imaginative belief which, when it has convinced itself of aught,
accepts it fully with all its consequences, and shrinks not from
acting at once upon it. A perilous gift, as the melancholy end of his
own career proved, for men were found less ready than he had thought
them to follow out with unswerving consistency like his the principles
which all acknowledged. But it was the very suddenness and boldness of
his policy that secured the ultimate triumph of his cause, awing men's
minds and making that seem realized which had been till then a vague
theory. His premises once admitted,--and no one dreamt of denying
them,--the reasonings by which he established the superiority of
spiritual to temporal jurisdiction were unassailable. With his
authority, in whose hands are the keys of heaven and hell, whose word
can bestow eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting misery, no other
earthly authority can compete or interfere: if his power extends into
the infinite, how much more must he be supreme over things finite? It
was thus that Gregory and his successors were wont to argue: the
wonder is, not that they were obeyed, but that they were not obeyed
more implicitly. In the second sentence of excommunication which
Gregory passed upon Henry the Fourth are these words:--
'Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed Fathers and Princes,
Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye
are able to bind and to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on
earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away
empires, kingdoms, princedoms, marquisates, duchies, countships, and
the possessions of all men. For if ye judge spiritual things, what
must we believe to be your power over worldly things? and if ye judge
the angels who rule over all proud princes, what can ye not do to
their slaves?'
[Sidenote: Results of the struggle.]
Doctrines such as these do indeed strike equally at all temporal
governments, nor were the Innocents and Bonifaces of later days slow
to apply them so. On the Empire, however, the blow fell first and
heaviest. As when Alaric entered Rome, the spell of ages was broken,
Christendom saw her greatest and most venerable institution
dishonoured and helpless; allegiance was no longer undivided, for who
could presume to fix in each case the limits of the civil and
ecclesiastical jurisdictions? The potentates of Europe beheld in the
Papacy a force which, if dangerous to themselves, could be made to
repel the pretensions and baffle the designs of the strongest and
haughtiest among them. Italy learned how to meet the Teutonic
conqueror by gaining the papal sanction for the leagues of her cities.
The German princes, anxious to narrow the prerogative of their head,
were the natural allies of his enemy, whose spiritual thunders, more
terrible than their own lances, could enable them to depose an
aspiring monarch, or extort from him any concessions they desired.
Their altered tone is marked by the promise they required from Rudolf
of Swabia, whom they set up as a rival to Henry, that he would not
endeavour to make the throne hereditary.
[Sidenote: Concordat of Worms, A.D. 1122.]
It is not possible here to dwell on the details of the great struggle
of the Investitures, rich as it is in the interest of adventure and
character, momentous as were its results for the future. A word or two
must suffice to describe the conclusion, not indeed of the whole
drama, which was to extend over centuries, but of what may be called
its first act. Even that act lasted beyond the lives of the original
performers. Gregory the Seventh passed away at Salerno in A.D. 1087,
exclaiming with his last breath 'I have loved justice and hated
iniquity, therefore I die in exile.' Nineteen years later, in A.D.
1106, Henry IV died, dethroned by an unnatural son whom the hatred of
a relentless pontiff had raised in rebellion against him. But that
son, the emperor Henry the Fifth, so far from conceding the points in
dispute, proved an antagonist more ruthless and not less able than his
father. He claimed for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics
that his predecessors had ever enjoyed, and when at his coronation in
Rome, A.D. 1112, Pope Paschal II refused to complete the rite until he
should have yielded, Henry seized both Pope and cardinals and
compelled them by a rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty which
he dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed his
extorted concessions, and the struggle was protracted for ten years
longer, until nearly half a century had elapsed from the first quarrel
between Gregory VII and Henry IV. The Concordat of Worms, concluded in
A.D. 1122, was in form a compromise, designed to spare either party
the humiliation of defeat. Yet the Papacy remained master of the
field. The Emperor retained but one-half of those rights of
investiture which had formerly been his. He could never resume the
position of Henry III; his wishes or intrigues might influence the
proceedings of a chapter, his oath bound him from open interference.
He had entered the strife in the fulness of dignity; he came out of it
with tarnished glory and shattered power. His wars had been hitherto
carried on with foreign foes, or at worst with a single rebel noble;
now his steadiest ally was turned into his fiercest assailant, and had
enlisted against him half his court, half the magnates of his realm.
At any moment his sceptre might be shivered in his hand by the bolt of
anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from every convent and
cathedral.
[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed.
The Emperor was alienated from the Church at the most unfortunate of
all moments, the era of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war
against the enemies of the faith, to head the church militant in her
carnal as the Popes were accustomed to do in her spiritual strife,
this was the very purpose for which an Emperor had been called into
being; and it was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first
three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth which the
theory of the mediæval Empire proclaimed, was once for all and never
again realized by the combined action of the great nations of Europe.
Had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have
used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that which had
belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry IV's proscription
excluded him from all share in an enterprise which he must otherwise
have led--nay, more, committed it to the guidance of his foes. The
religious feeling which the Crusades evoked--a feeling which became
the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the
two great orders of mendicant friars--turned wholly against the
opponent of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of
the Holy See, which had blessed and organized the project. A century
and a half later the Pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against
the Emperor himself.
Again: it was now that the first seeds were sown of that fear and
hatred wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard
the encroaching Romish court. Branded by the Church and forsaken by
the nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers
of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test of Teutonic patriotism to
resist Italian priestcraft.
[Sidenote: Limitations of imperial prerogative.]
[Sidenote: Lothar II, 1125-1138.]
[Sidenote: Conrad III, 1138-1152.]
The changes in the internal constitution of Germany which the long
anarchy of Henry IV's reign had produced are seen when the nature of
the prerogative as it stood at the accession of Conrad II, the first
Franconian Emperor, is compared with its state at Henry V's death. All
fiefs are now hereditary, and when vacant can be granted afresh only
by consent of the States; the jurisdiction of the crown is less wide;
the idea is beginning to make progress that the most essential part of
the Empire is not its supreme head but the commonwealth of princes and
barons. The greatest triumph of these feudal magnates is in the
establishment of the elective principle, which when confirmed by the
three free elections of Lothar II, Conrad III, and Frederick I, passes
into an undoubted law. The Prince-Electors are mentioned in A.D. 1156
as a distinct and important body[179]. The clergy, too, whom the
policy of Otto the Great and Henry II had raised, are now not less
dangerous than the dukes, whose power it was hoped they would balance;
possibly more so, since protected by their sacred character and their
allegiance to the Pope, while able at the same time to command the
arms of their countless vassals. Nor were the two succeeding Emperors
the men to retrieve those disasters. The Saxon Lothar the Second is
the willing minion of the Pope; performs at his coronation a menial
service unknown before, and takes a more stringent oath to defend the
Holy See, that he may purchase its support against the Swabian faction
in his own dominions. Conrad the Third, the first Emperor of the great
house of Hohenstaufen[180], represents the anti-papal party; but
domestic troubles and an unfortunate crusade prevented him from
effecting anything in Italy. He never even entered Rome to receive the
crown.
FOOTNOTES:
[171] 'Roma per sedem Beati Petri caput orbis effecta.'--See note _i_,
p. 32.
[172] 'Claves tibi _ad regnum_ dimisimus.'--Pope Stephen to Charles
Martel, in _Codex Carolinus_, ap. Muratori, _S. R. I._ iii. Some,
however, prefer to read 'ad rogum.'
[173] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii. c. 22.
[174] Dist. lxiii. c. 30. This decree is, however, in all probability
spurious.
[175] 'Nos elegimus merito et approbavimus una cum annisu et voto
patrum amplique senatus et gentis togatæ,' &c., ap. Baron. _Ann.
Eccl._, ad ann. 876.
[176] 'Divina vos pietas B. principum apostolorum Petri et Pauli
interventione per vicarium ipsorum dominum Ioannem summum pontificem
... ad imperiale culmen S. Spiritus iudicio provexit.'--_Concil.
Ticinense_, in Mur., _S. R. I._ ii.
[177] Strictly speaking, Henry was at this time only king of the
Romans: he was not crowned Emperor at Rome till 1084.
[178] Letter of Gregory VII to William I, A.D. 1080. I quote from
Migne, t. cxlviii. p. 568.
[179] 'Gradum statim post Principes Electores.'--Frederick I's
Privilege of Austria, in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
[180] Hohenstaufen is a castle in what is now the kingdom of
Würtemberg, about four miles from the Göppingen station of the railway
from Stuttgart to Ulm. It stands, or rather stood, on the summit of a
steep and lofty conical hill, commanding a boundless view over the
great limestone plateau of the Rauhe Alp, the eastern declivities of
the Schwartzwald, and the bare and tedious plains of western Bavaria.
Of the castle itself, destroyed in the Peasants' War, there remain
only fragments of the wall-foundations: in a rude chapel lying on the
hill slope below are some strange half-obliterated frescoes; over the
arch of the door is inscribed 'Hic transibat Cæsar.' Frederick
Barbarossa had another famous palace at Kaiserslautern, a small town
in the Palatinate, on the railway from Mannheim to Treves, lying in a
wide valley at the western foot of the Hardt mountains. It was
destroyed by the French and a house of correction has been built upon
its site; but in a brewery hard by may be seen some of the huge
low-browed arches of its lower story.
CHAPTER XI.
THE EMPERORS IN ITALY: FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.
[Sidenote: Frederick of Hohenstaufen, 1152-1189.]
The reign of Frederick the First, better known under his Italian
surname Barbarossa, is the most brilliant in the annals of the Empire.
Its territory had been wider under Charles, its strength perhaps
greater under Henry the Third, but it never appeared in such pervading
vivid activity, never shone with such lustre of chivalry, as under the
prince whom his countrymen have taken to be one of their national
heroes, and who is still, as the half-mythic type of Teutonic
character, honoured by picture and statue, in song and in legend,
through the breadth of the German lands. The reverential fondness of
his annalists and the whole tenour of his life go far to justify this
admiration, and dispose us to believe that nobler motives were joined
with personal ambition in urging him to assert so haughtily and carry
out so harshly those imperial rights in which he had such unbounded
confidence. Under his guidance the Transalpine power made its greatest
effort to subdue the two antagonists which then threatened and were
fated in the end to destroy it--Italian nationality and the Papacy.
[Sidenote: His relations to the Popedom.]
Even before Gregory VII's time it might have been predicted that two
such potentates as the Emperor and the Pope, closely bound together,
yet each with pretensions wide and undefined, must ere long come into
collision. The boldness of that great pontiff in enforcing, the
unflinching firmness of his successors in maintaining, the supremacy
of clerical authority, inspired their supporters with a zeal and
courage which more than compensated the advantages of the Emperor in
defending rights he had long enjoyed. On both sides the hatred was
soon very bitter. But even had men's passions permitted a
reconciliation, it would have been found difficult to bring into
harmony adverse principles, each irresistible, mutually destructive.
As the spiritual power, in itself purer, since exercised over the soul
and directed to the highest of all ends, eternal felicity, was
entitled to the obedience of all, laymen as well as clergy; so the
spiritual person, to whom, according to the view then universally
accepted, there had been imparted by ordination a mysterious sanctity,
could not without sin be subject to the lay magistrate, be installed
by him in office, be judged in his court, and render to him any
compulsory service. Yet it was no less true that civil government was
indispensable to the peace and advancement of society; and while it
continued to subsist, another jurisdiction could not be suffered to
interfere with its workings, nor one-half of the people be altogether
removed from its control. Thus the Emperor and the Pope were forced
into hostility as champions of opposite systems, however fully each
might admit the strength of his adversary's position, however bitterly
he might bewail the violence of his own partisans. There had also
arisen other causes of quarrel, less respectable but not less
dangerous. The pontiff demanded and the monarch refused the lands
which the Countess Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the Holy See;
Frederick claiming them as feudal suzerain, the Pope eager by their
means to carry out those schemes of temporal dominion which
Constantine's donation sanctioned, and Lothar's seeming renunciation
of the sovereignty of Rome had done much to encourage. As feudal
superior of the Norman kings of Naples and Sicily, as protector of the
towns and barons of North Italy who feared the German yoke, the
successor of Peter wore already the air of an independent potentate.
[Sidenote: Contest with Hadrian IV.]
No man was less likely than Frederick to submit to these
encroachments. He was a sort of imperialist Hildebrand, strenuously
proclaiming the immediate dependence of his office on God's gift, and
holding it every whit as sacred as his rival's. On his first journey
to Rome, he refused to hold the Pope's stirrup[181], as Lothar had
done, till Pope Hadrian the Fourth's threat that he would withhold the
crown enforced compliance. Complaints arising not long after on some
other ground, the Pope exhorted Frederick by letter to shew himself
worthy of the kindness of his mother the Roman Church, who had given
him the imperial crown, and would confer on him, if dutiful, benefits
still greater. This word benefits--_beneficia_--understood in its
usual legal sense of 'fief,' and taken in connection with the picture
which had been set up at Rome to commemorate Lothar's homage, provoked
angry shouts from the nobles assembled in diet at Besançon; and when
the legate answered, 'From whom, then, if not from our Lord the Pope,
does your king hold the Empire?' his life was not safe from their
fury. On this occasion Frederick's vigour and the remonstrances of the
Transalpine prelates obliged Hadrian to explain away the obnoxious
word, and remove the picture. Soon after the quarrel was renewed by
other causes, and came to centre itself round the Pope's demand that
Rome should be left entirely to his government. Frederick, in reply,
appeals to the civil law, and closes with the words, 'Since by the
ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in
nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the
Roman city be wrested from my hands.' That such a claim should need
assertion marks the change since Henry III; how much more that it
could not be enforced. Hadrian's tone rises into defiance; he mingles
the threat of excommunication with references to the time when the
Germans had not yet the Empire. 'What were the Franks till Zacharias
welcomed Pipin? What is the Teutonic king now till consecrated at Rome
by holy hands? The chair of Peter has given, and can withdraw its
gifts.'
[Sidenote: With Pope Alexander III.]
The schism that followed Hadrian's death produced a second and more
momentous conflict. Frederick, as head of Christendom, proposed to
summon the bishops of Europe to a general council, over which he
should preside, like Justinian or Heraclius. Quoting the favourite
text of the two swords, 'On earth,' he continues, 'God has placed no
more than two powers: above there is but one God, so here one Pope and
one Emperor. The Divine Providence has specially appointed the Roman
Empire as a remedy against continued schism[182].' The plan failed;
and Frederick adopted the candidate whom his own faction had chosen,
while the rival claimant, Alexander III, appealed, with a confidence
which the issue justified, to the support of sound churchmen
throughout Europe. The keen and long doubtful strife of twenty years
that followed, while apparently a dispute between rival Popes, was in
substance an effort by the secular monarch to recover his command of
the priesthood; not less truly so than that contemporaneous conflict
of the English Henry II and St. Thomas of Canterbury, with which it
was constantly involved. Unsupported, not all Alexander's genius and
resolution could have saved him: by the aid of the Lombard cities,
whose league he had counselled and hallowed, and of the fevers of
Rome, by which the conquering German host was suddenly annihilated, he
won a triumph the more signal, that it was over a prince so wise and
so pious as Frederick. At Venice, who, inaccessible by her position,
maintained a sedulous neutrality, claiming to be independent of the
Empire, yet seldom led into war by sympathy with the Popes, the two
powers whose strife had roused all Europe were induced to meet by the
mediation of the doge Sebastian Ziani. Three slabs of red marble in
the porch of St. Mark's point out the spot where Frederick knelt in
sudden awe, and the Pope with tears of joy raised him, and gave the
kiss of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting have given
an undeserved currency[183], tells how the pontiff set his foot on the
neck of the prostrate king, with the words, 'The lion and the dragon
shalt thou trample under feet[184].' It needed not this exaggeration
to enhance the significance of that scene, even more full of meaning
for the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian crowd
that thronged the church and the piazza. For it was the renunciation
by the mightiest prince of his time of the project to which his life
had been devoted: it was the abandonment by the secular power of a
contest in which it had twice been vanquished, and which it could not
renew under more favourable conditions.
[Sidenote: Revival of the study of the civil law.]
Authority maintained so long against the successor of Peter would be
far from indulgent to rebellious subjects. For it was in this light
that the Lombard cities appeared to a monarch bent on reviving all the
rights his predecessors had enjoyed: nay, all that the law of ancient
Rome gave her absolute ruler. It would be wrong to speak of a
re-discovery of the civil law. That system had never perished from
Gaul and Italy, had been the groundwork of some codes, and the whole
substance, modified only by the changes in society, of many others.
The Church excepted, no agent did so much to keep alive the memory of
Roman institutions. The twelfth century now beheld the study
cultivated with a surprising increase of knowledge and ardour,
expended chiefly upon the Pandects. First in Italy and the schools of
the South, then in Paris and Oxford, they were expounded, commented
on, extolled as the perfection of human wisdom, the sole, true, and
eternal law. Vast as has been the labour and thought expended from
that time to this in the elucidation of the civil law, the most
competent authorities declare that in acuteness, in subtlety, in all
those branches of learning which can subsist without help from
historical criticism, these so-called Glossatores have been seldom
equalled and never surpassed by their successors. The teachers of the
canon law, who had not as yet become the rivals of the civilian, and
were accustomed to recur to his books where their own were silent,
spread through Europe the fame and influence of the Roman
jurisprudence; while its own professors were led both by their feeling
and their interest to give to all its maxims the greatest weight and
the fullest application. Men just emerging from barbarism, with minds
unaccustomed to create and blindly submissive to authority, viewed
written texts with an awe to us incomprehensible. All that the most
servile jurists of Rome had ever ascribed to their despotic princes
was directly transferred to the Cæsarean majesty who inherited their
name. He was 'Lord of the world,' absolute master of the lives and
property of all his subjects, that is, of all men; the sole fountain
of legislation, the embodiment of right and justice. These doctrines,
which the great Bolognese jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and
others who constantly surrounded Frederick, taught and applied, as
matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by the rest of
the world not denied, were accepted in fervent faith by his German and
Italian partisans. 'To the Emperor belongs the protection of the whole
world,' says bishop Otto of Freysing. 'The Emperor is a living law
upon earth[185].' To Frederick, at Roncaglia, the archbishop of Milan
speaks for the assembled magnates of Lombardy: 'Do and ordain
whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is law; as it is written, "Quicquid
principi placuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne
suum imperium et potestatem concesserit[186]." The Hohenstaufen
himself was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of
dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern according
to law rather than override the law, was doubtless roused by them to a
more vehement assertion of a prerogative so hallowed by age and by
what seemed a divine ordinance.
[Sidenote: Frederick in Italy.]
[Sidenote: Rome under Arnold of Brescia.]
That assertion was most loudly called for in Italy. The Emperors might
appear to consider it a conquered country without privileges to be
respected, for they did not summon its princes to the German diets,
and overawed its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the
Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was theirs
whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while the elections on the
banks of the Rhine might be adorned but could not be influenced by the
presence of barons from the southern kingdom[187]. In practice,
however, the imperial power stood lower in Italy than in Germany, for
it had been from the first intermittent, depending on the personal
vigour and present armed support of each invader. The theoretic
sovereignty of the Emperor-king was nowise disputed: in the cities
toll and tax were of right his: he could issue edicts at the Diet, and
require the tenants in chief to appear with their vassals. But the
revival of a control never exercised since Henry IV's time, was felt
as an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard cities, proud of
riches and population equal to that of the duchies of Germany or the
kingdoms of the North, and accustomed for more than a century to a
turbulent independence. For republicanism and popular freedom
Frederick had little sympathy. At Rome the fervent Arnold of Brescia
had repeated, but with far different thoughts and hopes, the part of
Crescentius[188]. The city had thrown off the yoke of its bishop, and
a commonwealth under consuls and senate professed to emulate the
spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive republic. Its
leaders had written to Conrad III[189], asking him to help them to
restore the Empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian;
but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of
the Pope. Filled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they
repeated their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from
Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in highflown language
on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing
the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded, in a manner
hardly consistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the city.
Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end: 'Is this your Roman
wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your
honours and your authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls,
senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and Otto
that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard, and conquered by
their own might the imperial crown. That Frankish might is still the
same: wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the
people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his mandate[190].' This
was Frederick's version of the 'Translation of the Empire[191].'
[Sidenote: The Lombard Cities.]
He who had been so stern to his own capital was not likely to deal
more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by
which Frederick is chiefly known to history, he is commonly painted as
the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor[192],
crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and
industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the
despot liberty is always licence; yet Frederick was the advocate of
admitted claims; the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbours;
the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his
officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of
oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself[193].
Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we
recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization. Their resistance
was at first probably a mere aversion to unused control, and to the
enforcement of imposts less offensive in former days than now, and by
long dereliction apparently obsolete[194]. Republican principles were
not avowed, nor Italian nationality appealed to. But the progress of
the conflict developed new motives and feelings, and gave them clearer
notions of what they fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope
was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the
barons of Romagna and Tuscany for aid; he made 'The Church' ere long
their watchword, and helped them to conclude that league of mutual
support by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed.
Another cry, too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the
last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government--freedom little
understood and terribly abused, self-government which the cities who
claimed it for themselves refused to their subject allies, yet both of
them, through their divine power of stimulating effort and quickening
sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a feudal
monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens rose above the slavish
Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor was the fact that Italians were
resisting a Transalpine invader without its effect; there was as yet
no distinct national feeling, for half Lombardy, towns as well as
rural nobles, fought under Frederick; but events made the cause of
liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and increased
that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which Italy has had such bitter
justification.
[Sidenote: Temporary success of Frederick.]
The Emperor was for a time successful: Tortona was taken, Milan razed
to the ground, her name apparently lost: greater obstacles had been
overcome, and a fuller authority was now exercised than in the days of
the Ottos or the Henrys. The glories of the first Frankish conqueror
were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared by his admirers
to the hero whose canonization he had procured, and whom he strove in
all things to imitate[195]. 'He was esteemed,' says one, 'second only
to Charles in piety and justice.' 'We ordain this,' says a decree: 'Ut
ad Caroli imitationem ius ecclesiarum statum reipublicæ et legum
integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus[196].' But the hold
the name of Charles had on the minds of the people, and the way in
which he had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better
witnesses than grave documents. A rhyming poet sings[197]:--
'Quanta sit potentia vel laus Friderici
Cum sit patens omnibus, non est opus dici;
Qui rebelles lancea fodiens ultrici
Repræsentat Karolum dextera victrici.'
The diet at Roncaglia was a chorus of gratulations over the
re-establishment of order by the destruction of the dens of unruly
burghers.
[Sidenote: Victory of the Lombard league.]
This fair sky was soon clouded. From her quenchless ashes uprose
Milan; Cremona, scorning old jealousies, helped to rebuild what she
had destroyed, and the confederates, committed to an all but hopeless
strife, clung faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the
Empire's banner went down before the carroccio[198] of the free city.
Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius trembled at the
distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new nation had arisen, slowly
reared through suffering into strength, now at last by heroic deeds
conscious of itself. The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of
nature and language that were too strong for his successor, and that
grew henceforth ever firmer, till they made the Empire itself a
delusive name. Frederick, though harsh in war, and now balked of his
most cherished hopes, could honestly accept a state of things it was
beyond his power to change: he signed cheerfully and kept dutifully
the peace of Constance, which left him little but a titular supremacy
over the Lombard towns.
[Sidenote: Frederick as German king.]
At home no Emperor since Henry III had been so much respected and so
generally prosperous. Uniting in his person the Saxon and Swabian
families, he healed the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen: his prelates
were faithful to him, even against Rome: no turbulent rebel disturbed
the public peace. Germany was proud of a hero who maintained her
dignity so well abroad, and he crowned a glorious life with a happy
death, leading the van of Christian chivalry against the Mussulman.
Frederick, the greatest of the Crusaders, is the noblest type of
mediæval character in many of its shadows, in all its lights.
[Sidenote: The German cities.]
Legal in form, in practice sometimes almost absolute, the government
of Germany was, like that of other feudal kingdoms, restrained chiefly
by the difficulty of coercing refractory vassals. All depended on the
monarch's character, and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick
could generally lead the majority with him and terrify the rest. A
false impression of the real strength of his prerogative might be
formed from the readiness with which he was obeyed. He repaired the
finances of the kingdom, controlled the dukes, introduced a more
splendid ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power by
multiplying the nobles of the second rank, afterwards the 'college of
princes,' and by trying to substitute the civil law and Lombard feudal
code for the old Teutonic customs, different in every province. If not
successful in this project, he fared better with another. Since Henry
the Fowler's day towns had been growing up through Southern and
Western Germany, especially where rivers offered facilities for trade.
Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Speyer, Nürnberg, Ulm, Regensburg,
Augsburg, were already considerable cities, not afraid to beard their
lord or their bishop, and promising before long to counterbalance the
power of the territorial oligarchy. Policy or instinct led Frederick
to attach them to the throne, enfranchising many, granting, with
municipal institutions, an independent jurisdiction, conferring
various exemptions and privileges; while receiving in turn their
good-will and loyal aid, in money always, in men when need should
come. His immediate successors trode in his steps, and thus there
arose in the state a third order, the firmest bulwark, had it been
rightly used, of imperial authority; an order whose members, the Free
Cities, were through many ages the centres of German intellect and
freedom, the only haven from the storms of civil war, the surest hope
of future peace and union. In them national congresses to this day
sometimes meet: from them aspiring spirits strive to diffuse those
ideas of Germanic unity and self-government, which they alone have
kept alive. Out of so many flourishing commonwealths, four[199] have
been spared by foreign conquerors and faithless princes. To the
primitive order of German freemen, scarcely existing out of the towns,
except in Swabia and Switzerland, Frederick further commended himself
by allowing them to be admitted to knighthood, by restraining the
licence of the nobles, imposing a public peace, making justice in
every way more accessible and impartial. To the south-west of the
green plain that girdles in the rock of Salzburg, the gigantic mass of
the Untersberg frowns over the road which winds up a long defile to
the glen and lake of Berchtesgaden. There, far up among its limestone
crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the peasants of
the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and
tell him that within Barbarossa lies amid his knights in an enchanted
sleep[200], waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover
round the peak, and the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend
with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany the golden age of peace
and strength and unity. Often in the evil days that followed the fall
of Frederick's house, often when tyranny seemed unendurable and
anarchy endless, men thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day
when the long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his
shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst, a sign of
help to the poor and the oppressed.
FOOTNOTES:
[181] A great deal of importance seems to have been attached to this
symbolic act of courtesy. See Art. I of the Sachsenspiegel.
[182] Letter to the German bishops in Radewic; Mur., _S. R. I._, t.
vi. p. 833.
[183] A picture in the great hall of the ducal palace (the Sala del
Maggio Consiglio) represents the scene. See Rogers' Italy.
[184] Psalm xci.
[185] Document of 1230, quoted by Von Raumer, v. p. 81.
[186] Speech of archbishop of Milan, in Radewic; Mur. vi.
[187] Frederick's election (at Frankfort) was made 'non sine quibusdam
Italiæ baronibus.'--Otto Fris. i. But this was the exception.
[188] See also _post_, Chapter XVI.
[189] 'Senatus Populusque Romanus urbis et orbis totius domino
Conrado.'
[190] Otto of Freysing.
[191] Later in his reign, Frederick condescended to negotiate with
these Roman magistrates against a hostile Pope, and entered into a
sort of treaty by which they were declared exempt from all
jurisdiction but his own.
[192] See the first note to Shelley's _Hellas_. Sismondi is mainly
answerable for this conception of Barbarossa's position.
[193] They say rebelliously, says Frederick, 'Nolumus hunc regnare
super nos ... at nos maluimus honestam mortem quam ut,' &c.--Letter in
Pertz. _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
[194]
'De tributo Cæsaris nemo cogitabat;
Omnes erant Cæsares, nemo censum dabat;
Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troia, stabat,
Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.'
Poems relating to the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by
Grimm.
[195] Charles the Great was canonized by Frederick's anti-pope and
confirmed afterwards.
[196] _Acta Concil. Hartzhem._ iii., quoted by Von Raumer, ii. 6.
[197] Poems relating to Frederick I, _ut supra_.
[198] The carroccio was a waggon with a flagstaff planted on it, which
served the Lombards for a rallying-point in battle.
[199] Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfort.
[Since this was first written Frankfort has been annexed by Prussia,
and her three surviving sisters have, by their entrance into the North
German confederation, lost something of their independence.]
[200] The legend is one which appears under various forms in many
countries.
CHAPTER XII.
IMPERIAL TITLES AND PRETENSIONS.
The era of the Hohenstaufen is perhaps the fittest point at which to
turn aside from the narrative history of the Empire to speak shortly
of the legal position which it professed to hold to the rest of
Europe, as well as of certain duties and observances which throw a
light upon the system it embodied. This is not indeed the era of its
greatest power: that was already past. Nor is it conspicuously the era
when its ideal dignity stood highest: for that remained scarcely
impaired till three centuries had passed away. But it was under the
Hohenstaufen, owing partly to the splendid abilities of the princes of
that famous line, partly to the suddenly-gained ascendancy of the
Roman law, that the actual power and the theoretical influence of the
Empire most fully coincided. There can therefore be no better
opportunity for noticing the titles and claims by which it announced
itself the representative of Rome's universal dominion, and for
collecting the various instances in which they were (either before or
after Frederick's time) more or less admitted by the other states of
Europe.
The territories over which Barbarossa would have declared his
jurisdiction to extend may be classed under four heads:--
First, the German lands, in which, and in which alone, the Emperor
was, up till the death of Frederick the Second, effective sovereign.
Second, the non-German districts of the Holy Empire, where the Emperor
was acknowledged as sole monarch, but in practice little regarded.
Third, certain outlying countries, owing allegiance to the Empire, but
governed by kings of their own.
Fourth, the other states of Europe, whose rulers, while in most cases
admitting the superior rank of the Emperor, were virtually independent
of him.
[Sidenote: Limits of the Empire.]
Thus within the actual boundaries of the Holy Empire were included
only districts coming under the first and second of the above classes,
i.e. Germany, the northern half of Italy, and the kingdom of Burgundy
or Arles--that is to say, Provence, Dauphiné, the Free County of
Burgundy (Franche Comté), and Western Switzerland. Lorraine, Alsace,
and a portion of Flanders were of course parts of Germany. To the
north-east, Bohemia and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and
Pomerania were as yet not integral parts of its body, but rather
dependent outliers. Beyond the march of Brandenburg, from the Oder to
the Vistula, dwelt pagan Lithuanians or Prussians[201], free till the
establishment among them of the Teutonic knights.
[Sidenote: Hungary.]
Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the days of Otto I.
Gregory VII had claimed it as a fief of the Holy See; Frederick wished
to reduce it completely to subjection, but could not overcome the
reluctance of his nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered
from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made for so many years
that at last they became obsolete, and were confessed to be so by the
Constitution of Augsburg, A.D. 1566[202].
[Sidenote: Poland.]
Under Duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto the Great, and
continued, with occasional revolts, to obey the Empire, till the
beginning of the Great Interregnum (as it is called) in 1254. Its duke
was present at the election of Richard, A.D. 1258. Thereafter
Primislas called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the
country became independent, though some of its provinces were long
afterwards reunited to the German state. Silesia, originally Polish,
was attached to Bohemia by Charles IV, and so became part of the
Empire; Posen and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, A.D.
1772. Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of Poland
remained a copy of that which had existed in the German kingdom in the
twelfth century[203].
[Sidenote: Denmark.]
Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the Danish king Harold, on
his baptism at Mentz, A.D. 826; Otto the Great's victories over Harold
Blue Tooth made the country regularly subject, and added the march of
Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire: but the boundary
soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks might be seen the
inscription,--
'Eidora Romani terminus imperii.'
King Peter[204] attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do homage,
and receive from the Emperor, as suzerain, his own crown. Since the
Interregnum Denmark has been always free[205].
[Sidenote: France.]
Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suzerainty the French kings
had admitted; nor were Henry VI and Otto IV successful in their
attempts to enforce it. Boniface VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the
Fair, offered the French throne, which he had pronounced vacant, to
Albert I; but the wary Hapsburg declined the dangerous prize. The
precedence, however, which the Germans continued to assert, irritated
Gallic pride, and led to more than one contest. Blondel denies the
Empire any claim to the Roman name; and in A.D. 1648 the French envoys
at Münster refused for some time to admit what no other European state
disputed. Till recent times the title of the Archbishop of Treves,
'Archicancellarius per Galliam atque regnum Arelatense,' preserved the
memory of an obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of
France might seem to have reversed.
[Sidenote: Sweden.]
No reliance can be placed on the author who tells us that Sweden was
granted by Frederick I to Waldemar the Dane[206]; the fact is
improbable, and we do not hear that such pretensions were ever put
forth before or after.
[Sidenote: Spain.]
Nor does it appear that authority was ever exercised by any Emperor in
Spain. Nevertheless the choice of Alfonso X by a section of the German
electors, in A.D. 1258, may be construed to imply that the Spanish
kings were members of the Empire. And when, A.D. 1053, Ferdinand the
Great of Castile had, in the pride of his victories over the Moors,
assumed the title of 'Hispaniæ Imperator,' the remonstrance of Henry
III declared the rights of Rome over the Western provinces indelible,
and the Spaniard, though protesting his independence, was forced to
resign the usurped dignity[207].
[Sidenote: England.]
No act of sovereignty is recorded to have been done by any of the
Emperors in England, though as heirs of Rome they might be thought to
have better rights over it than over Poland or Denmark[208]. There
was, however, a vague notion that the English, like other kingdoms,
must depend on the Empire: a notion which appears in Conrad III's
letter to John of Constantinople[209]; and which was countenanced by
the submissive tone in which Frederick I was addressed by the
Plantagenet Henry II[210]. English independence was still more
compromised in the next reign, when Richard I, according to Hoveden,
'Consilio matris suæ deposuit se de regno Angliæ et tradidit illud
imperatori (Henrico VIto) sicut universorum domino.' But as Richard
was at the same time invested with the kingdom of Arles by Henry VI,
his homage may have been for that fief only; and it was probably in
that capacity that he voted, as a prince of the Empire, at the
election of Frederick II. The case finds a parallel in the claims of
England over the Scottish king, doubtful, to say the least, as regards
the domestic realm of the latter, certain as regards Cumbria, which he
had long held from the Southern crown[211]. But Germany had no Edward
I. Henry VI is said at his death to have released Richard from his
submission (this too may be compared with Richard's release to the
Scottish William the Lion), and Edward II declared, 'regnum Angliæ ab
omni subiectione imperiali esse liberrimum[212].' Yet the idea
survived: the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, when he named Edward III his
vicar in the great French war, demanded, though in vain, that the
English monarch should kiss his feet[213]. Sigismund[214], visiting
Henry V at London, before the meeting of the council of Constance, was
met by the Duke of Gloucester, who, riding into the water to the ship
where the Emperor sat, required him, at the sword's point, to declare
that he did not come purposing to infringe on the king's authority in
the realm of England[215]. One curious pretension of the imperial
crown called forth many protests. It was declared by civilians and
canonists that no public notary could have any standing, or attach any
legality to the documents he drew, unless he had received his diploma
from the Emperor or the Pope. A strenuous denial of a doctrine so
injurious was issued by the parliament of Scotland under James
III[216].
[Sidenote: Naples.]
The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, although of course claimed as a part
of the Empire, was under the Norman dynasty (A.D. 1060-1189) not
merely independent, but the most dangerous enemy of the German power
in Italy. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa, obtained
possession of it by marrying Constantia the last heiress of the Norman
kings. But both he and Frederick II treated it as a separate
patrimonial state, instead of incorporating it with their more
northerly dominions. After the death of Conradin, the last of the
Hohenstaufen, it passed away to an Angevin, then to an Aragonese
dynasty, continuing under both to maintain itself independent of the
Empire, nor ever again, except under Charles V, united to the Germanic
crown.
[Sidenote: Venice.]
One spot in Italy there was whose singular felicity of situation
enabled her through long centuries of obscurity and weakness, slowly
ripening into strength, to maintain her freedom unstained by any
submission to the Frankish and Germanic Emperors. Venice glories in
deducing her origin from the fugitives who escaped from Aquileia in
the days of Attila: it is at least probable that her population never
received an intermixture of Teutonic settlers, and continued during
the ages of Lombard and Frankish rule in Italy to regard the Byzantine
sovereigns as the representatives of their ancient masters. In the
tenth century, when summoned to submit by Otto, they had said, 'We
wish to be the servants of the Emperors of the Romans' (the
Constantinopolitan), and though they overthrew this very Eastern
throne in A.D. 1204, the pretext had served its turn, and had aided
them in defying or evading the demands of obedience made by the
Teutonic princes. Alone of all the Italian republics, Venice never,
down to her extinction by France and Austria in A.D. 1796, recognized
within her walls any secular authority save her own.
[Sidenote: The East.]
The kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henry VI to confess themselves
his vassals and ask his help. Over remote Eastern lands, where
Frankish foot had never trod, Frederick Barbarossa asserted the
indestructible rights of Rome, mistress of the world. A letter to
Saladin, amusing from its absolute identification of his own Empire
with that which had sent Crassus to perish in Parthia, and had blushed
to see Mark Antony 'consulum nostrum'[217] at the feet of Cleopatra,
is preserved by Hoveden: it bids the Soldan withdraw at once from the
dominions of Rome, else will she, with her new Teutonic defenders, of
whom a pompous list follows, drive him from them with all her ancient
might.
[Sidenote: The Byzantine Emperors.]
[Sidenote: Rivalry of the two Empires.]
Unwilling as were the great kingdoms of Western Europe to admit the
territorial supremacy of the Emperor, the proudest among them never
refused, until the end of the Middle Ages, to recognize his precedence
and address him in a tone of respectful deference. Very different was
the attitude of the Byzantine princes, who denied his claim to be an
Emperor at all. The separate existence of the Eastern Church and
Empire was not only, as has been said above, a blemish in the title of
the Teutonic sovereigns; it was a continuing and successful protest
against the whole system of an Empire Church of Christendom, centering
in Rome, ruled by the successor of Peter and the successor of
Augustus. Instead of the one Pope and one Emperor whom mediæval theory
presented as the sole earthly representatives of the invisible head of
the Church, the world saw itself distracted by the interminable feud
of rivals, each of whom had much to allege on his behalf. It was easy
for the Latins to call the Easterns schismatics and their Emperor an
usurper, but practically it was impossible to dethrone him or reduce
them to obedience: while even in controversy no one could treat the
pretensions of communities who had been the first to embrace
Christianity and retained so many of its most ancient forms, with the
contempt which would have been felt for any Western sectaries.
Seriously, however, as the hostile position of the Greeks seems to us
to affect the claims of the Teutonic Empire, calling in question its
legitimacy and marring its pretended universality, those who lived at
the time seem to have troubled themselves little about it, finding
themselves in practice seldom confronted by the difficulties it
raised. The great mass of the people knew of the Greeks not even by
name; of those who did, the most thought of them only as perverse
rebels, Samaritans who refused to worship at Jerusalem, and were
little better than infidels. The few ecclesiastics of superior
knowledge and insight had their minds preoccupied by the established
theory, and accepted it with too intense a belief to suffer anything
else to come into collision with it: they do not seem to have even
apprehended all that was involved in this one defect. Nor, what is
still stranger, in all the attacks made upon the claims of the
Teutonic Empire, whether by its Papal or its French antagonists, do we
find the rival title of the Greek sovereigns adduced in argument
against it. Nevertheless, the Eastern Church was then, as she is to
this day, a thorn in the side of the Papacy; and the Eastern Emperors,
so far from uniting for the good of Christendom with their Western
brethren, felt towards them a bitter though not unnatural jealousy,
lost no opportunity of intriguing for their evil, and never ceased to
deny their right to the imperial name. The coronation of Charles was
in their eyes an act of unholy rebellion; his successors were
barbarian intruders, ignorant of the laws and usages of the ancient
state, and with no claim to the Roman name except that which the
favour of an insolent pontiff might confer. The Greeks had themselves
long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were indeed become more
than half Orientals in character and manners. But they still continued
to call themselves Romans, and preserved most of the titles and
ceremonies which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian.
They were weak, although by no means so weak as modern historians have
been till lately wont to paint them, and the weaker they grew the
higher rose their conceit, and the more did they plume themselves upon
the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial
splendour wherewith custom had surrounded its wearer. It gratified
their spite to pervert insultingly the titles of the Frankish princes.
Basil the Macedonian reproached Lewis II with presuming to use the
name of 'Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good an
emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, _Basileus_ was only the
Greek for _rex_, and need not mean 'Emperor' at all. Nicephorus would
not call Otto I anything but 'King of the Lombards[218],' Conrad III
was addressed by Calo-Johannes as 'amice imperii mei Rex[219];' Isaac
Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I 'chief prince of
Alemannia[220].' The great Emperor, half-resentful, half-contemptuous,
told the envoys that he was 'Romanorum imperator,' and bade their
master call himself 'Romaniorum' from his Thracian province. Though
these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their weakness,
the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the recovery of their former
capital, and seemed not unlikely to succeed under the leadership of
the conquering Manuel Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the
heat of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of his
rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his synod courteously
declined[221]. The Greeks were, however, too unstable and too much
alienated from Latin feeling to have held Rome, could they even have
seduced her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves the
victims of the French and Venetian crusaders.
[Sidenote: Dignities and titles.]
[Sidenote: The four crowns.]
Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped all titles save
their highest (the tedious lists of imperial dignities were happily
not yet in being), they did not therefore endeavour to unite their
several kingdoms, but continued to go through four distinct
coronations at the four capitals of their Empire[222]. These are
concisely given in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of
Frederick's household[223]:--
'Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post hæc Arelati,
Inde Modoetiæ regali sede locari
Post solet Italiæ summa corona dari:
Cæsar Romano cum vult diademate fungi
Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi.'
By the crowning at Aachen, the old Frankish capital, the monarch
became 'king;' formerly 'king of the Franks,' or, 'king of the Eastern
Franks;' now, since Henry II's time, 'king of the Romans, always
Augustus.' At Monza, (or, more rarely, at Milan) in later times, at
Pavia in earlier times, he became king of Italy, or of the
Lombards[224]; at Rome he received the double crown of the Roman
Empire, 'double,' says Godfrey, as 'urbis et orbis:'--
'Hoc quicunque tenet, summus in orbe sedet;'
though others hold that, uniting the mitre to the crown, it typifies
spiritual as well as secular authority. The crown of Burgundy[225] or
the kingdom of Arles, first gained by Conrad II, was a much less
splendid matter, and carried with it little effective power. Most
Emperors never assumed it at all, Frederick I not till late in life,
when an interval of leisure left him nothing better to do. These four
crowns[226] furnish matter of endless discussion to the old writers;
they tell us that the Roman was golden, the German silver, the Italian
iron, the metal corresponding to the dignity of each realm[227].
Others say that that of Aachen is iron, and the Italian silver, and
give elaborate reasons why it should be so[228]. There seems to be no
doubt that the allegory created the fact, and that all three crowns
were of gold, though in that of Italy there was and is inserted a
piece of iron, a nail, it was believed, of the true Cross.
[Sidenote: Meaning of the four coronations.]
Why, it may well be asked, seeing that the Roman crown made the
Emperor ruler of the whole habitable globe, was it thought necessary
for him to add to it minor dignities which might be supposed to have
been already included in it? The reason seems to be that the imperial
office was conceived of as something different in kind from the regal,
and as carrying with it not the immediate government of any particular
kingdom, but a general suzerainty over and right of controlling all.
Of this a pertinent illustration is afforded by an anecdote told of
Frederick Barbarossa. Happening once to inquire of the famous jurists
who surrounded him whether it was really true that he was 'lord of the
world,' one of them simply assented, another, Bulgarus, answered, 'Not
as respects ownership.' In this dictum, which is evidently conformable
to the philosophical theory of the Empire, we have a pointed
distinction drawn between feudal sovereignty, which supposes the
prince original owner of the soil of his whole kingdom, and imperial
sovereignty, which is irrespective of place, and exercised not over
things but over men, as God's rational creatures. But the Emperor, as
has been said already, was also the East Frankish king, uniting in
himself, to use the legal phrase, two wholly distinct 'persons,' and
hence he might acquire more direct and practically useful rights over
a portion of his dominions by being crowned king of that portion, just
as a feudal monarch was often duke or count of lordships whereof he
was already feudal superior; or, to take a better illustration, just
as a bishop may hold livings in his own diocese. That the Emperors,
while continuing to be crowned at Milan and Aachen, did not call
themselves kings of the Lombards and of the Franks, was probably
merely because these titles seemed insignificant compared to that of
Roman Emperor.
[Sidenote: 'Emperor' not assumed till the Roman coronation.]
[Sidenote: Origin and results of this practice.]
In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser honours were blent
and lost, but custom or prejudice forbade the German king to assume it
till actually crowned at Rome by the Pope[229]. Matters of phrase and
title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and
superstitiously antiquarian: and this restriction had the most
important consequences. The first barbarian kings had been
tribe-chiefs; and when they claimed a dominion which was universal,
yet in a sense territorial, they could not separate their title from
the spot which it was their boast to possess, and by virtue of whose
name they ruled. 'Rome,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'seeing
that she both is and is called the head of the world and the mistress
of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial power, and since
she cherishes in her bosom the body of the Prince of the Apostles, she
ought of right to appoint the Prince of the whole earth[230].' The
crown was therefore too sacred to be conferred by any one but the
supreme Pontiff, or in any city less august than the ancient capital.
Had it become hereditary in any family, Lothar I's, for instance, or
Otto's, this feeling might have worn off; as it was, each successive
transfer, to Guido, to Otto, to Henry II, to Conrad the Salic,
strengthened it. The force of custom, tradition, precedent, is
incalculable when checked neither by written rules nor free
discussion. What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of a
forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments are needed
to discredit the alleged decree of Pope Benedict VIII[231], which
prohibited the German prince from taking the name or office of Emperor
till approved and consecrated by the pontiff, but a doctrine so
favourable to papal pretensions was sure not to want advocacy; Hadrian
IV proclaims it in the broadest terms, and through the efforts of the
clergy and the spell of reverence in the Teutonic princes, it passed
into an unquestioned belief. That none ventured to use the title till
the Pope conferred it, made it seem in some manner to depend on his
will, enabled him to exact conditions from every candidate, and gave a
colour to his pretended suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every
honour and estate is held from some superior, and since the divine
commission has been without doubt issued directly to the Pope, must
not the whole earth be his fief, and he the lord paramount, to whom
even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived
considerable plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and
other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed[232]
authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party:
first distinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the
picture[233] representing Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the
followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in
Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line,--
'Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo.'
Nor was it only by putting him at the pontiff's mercy that this
dependence of the imperial name on a coronation in the city injured
the German sovereign[234]. With strange inconsistency it was not
pretended that the Emperor's rights were any narrower before he
received the rite: he could summon synods, confirm papal elections,
exercise jurisdiction over the citizens: his claim of the crown itself
could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and the Innocents,
be positively denied. For no one thought of contesting the right of
the German nation to the Empire, or the authority of the electoral
princes, strangers though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master.
The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might murmur, but they
could not dispute the truth of the proud lines in which the poet who
sang the glories of Barbarossa[235], describes the result of the
conquest of Charles the Great:--
'Ex quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum
Hostibus expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo
Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni
Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem
Præficit, hunc dives summisso vertice Roma
Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus.'
But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in the
pursuit of a glittering toy: once in his reign each Emperor undertook
a long and dangerous expedition, and dissipated in an inglorious and
ever to be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved
conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at home.
[Sidenote: The title 'Holy Empire.']
At this epoch appears another title, of which more must be said. To
the accustomed 'Roman Empire' Frederick Barbarossa adds the epithet of
'Holy.' Of its earlier origin, under Conrad II (the Salic), which some
have supposed[236], there is no documentary trace, though there is
also no proof to the contrary[237]. So far as is known it occurs first
in the famous Privilege of Austria, granted by Frederick in the fourth
year of his reign, the second of his empire, 'terram Austriæ quæ
clypeus et cor sacri imperii esse dinoscitur[238]:' then afterwards,
in other manifestos of his reign; for example, in a letter to Isaac
Angelus of Byzantium[239], and in the summons to the princes to help
him against Milan: 'Quia ... urbis et orbis gubernacula tenemus ...
sacro imperio et divæ reipublicæ consulere debemus[240];' where the
second phrase is a synonym explanatory of the first. Used occasionally
by Henry VI and Frederick II, it is more frequent under their
successors, William, Richard, Rudolf, till after Charles IV's time it
becomes habitual, for the last few centuries indispensable. Regarding
the origin of so singular a title many theories have been advanced.
Some declared it a perpetuation of the court style of Rome and
Byzantium, which attached sanctity to the person of the monarch: thus
David Blondel, contending for the honour of France, calls it a mere
epithet of the Emperor, applied by confusion to his government[241].
Others saw in it a religious meaning, referring to Daniel's prophecy,
or to the fact that the Empire was contemporary with Christianity, or
to Christ's birth under it[242]. Strong churchmen derived it from the
dependence of the imperial crown on the Pope. There were not wanting
persons to maintain that it meant nothing more than great or splendid.
We need not, however, be in any great doubt as to its true meaning and
purport. The ascription of sacredness to the person, the palace, the
letters, and so forth, of the sovereign, so common in the later ages
of Rome, had been partly retained in the German court. Liudprand calls
Otto 'imperator sanctissimus[243].' Still this sanctity, which the
Greeks above all others lavished on their princes, is something
personal, is nothing more than the divinity that always hedges a king.
Far more intimate and peculiar was the relation of the revived Roman
Empire to the church and religion. As has been said already, it was
neither more nor less than the visible Church, seen on its secular
side, the Christian society organized as a state under a form divinely
appointed, and therefore the name 'Holy Roman Empire' was the needful
and rightful counterpart to that of 'Holy Catholic Church.' Such had
long been the belief, and so the title might have had its origin as
far back as the tenth or ninth century, might even have emanated from
Charles himself. Alcuin in one of his letters uses the phrase
'imperium Christianum.' But there was a further reason for its
introduction at this particular epoch. Ever since Hildebrand had
claimed for the priesthood exclusive sanctity and supreme
jurisdiction, the papal party had not ceased to speak of the civil
power as being, compared with that of their own chief, merely secular,
earthly, profane. It may be conjectured that to meet this reproach, no
less injurious than insulting, Frederick or his advisers began to use
in public documents the expression 'Holy Empire;' thereby wishing to
assert the divine institution and religious duties of the office he
held. Previous Emperors had called themselves 'Catholici,'
'Christiani,' 'ecclesiæ defensores[244];' now their State itself is
consecrated an earthly theocracy. 'Deus Romanum imperium adversus
schisma ecclesiæ præparavit[245],' writes Frederick to the English
Henry II. The theory was one which the best and greatest Emperors,
Charles, Otto the Great, Henry III, had most striven to carry out; it
continued to be zealously upheld when it had long ceased to be
practicable. In the proclamations of mediæval kings there is a
constant dwelling on their Divine commission. Power in an age of
violence sought to justify while it enforced its commands, to make
brute force less brutal by appeals to a higher sanction. This is seen
nowhere more than in the style of the German sovereigns: they delight
in the phrases 'maiestas sacrosancta[246],' 'imperator divina
ordinante providentia,' 'divina pietate,' 'per misericordiam Dei;'
many of which were preserved till, like those used now by other
European kings, like our own 'Defender of the Faith,' they had become
at last more grotesque than solemn. The Emperor Joseph II, at the end
of the eighteenth century, was 'Advocate of the Christian Church,'
'Vicar of Christ,' 'Imperial head of the faithful,' 'Leader of the
Christian army,' 'Protector of Palestine, of general councils, of the
Catholic faith[247].'
The title, if it added little to the power, yet certainly seems to
have increased the dignity of the Empire, and by consequence the
jealousy of other states, of France especially. This did not, however,
go so far as to prevent its recognition by the Pope and the French
king[248], and after the sixteenth century it would have been a breach
of diplomatic courtesy to omit it. Nor have imitators been
wanting[249]: witness such titles as 'Most Christian king,' 'Catholic
king,' 'Defender of the Faith[250].'
FOOTNOTES:
[201] 'Pruzzi,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'quorum Deus est
venter et avaritia iuncta cum morte.'--_M. G. H._ t. iv.
It is curious that this non-Teutonic people should have given their
name to the great German kingdom of the present.
[202] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_. It is hardly necessary to observe
that the connection of Hungary with the Hapsburgs is of comparatively
recent origin, and of a purely dynastic nature. The position of the
archdukes of Austria as kings of Hungary had nothing to do legally
with the fact that many of them were also chosen Emperors, although
practically their possession of the imperial crown had greatly aided
them in grasping and retaining the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia.
[203] Cf. Pfeffel, _Abrégé Chronologique_.
[204] Letter of Frederick I to Otto of Freising, prefixed to the
latter's History. This king is also called Sweyn.
[205] See Appendix, Note B.
[206] Albertus Stadensis apud Conringium, _De Finibus Imperii_.
[207] There is an allusion to this in the poems of the Cid. Arthur
Duck, _De Usu et Authoritate Iuris Civilis_, quotes the view of some
among the older jurists, that Spain having been, as far as the Romans
were concerned, a _res derelicta_, recovered by the Spaniards
themselves from the Moors, and thus acquired by _occupatio_, ought not
to be subject to the Emperors.
[208] One of the greatest of English kings appears performing an act
of courtesy to the Emperor which was probably construed into an
acknowledgment of his own inferior position. Describing the Roman
coronation of the Emperor Conrad II, Wippo (c. 16) tells us 'His ita
peractis in duorum regum præsentia Ruodolfi regis Burgundiæ et
Chnutonis regis Anglorum divino officio finito imperator duorum regum
medius ad cubiculum suum honorifice ductus est.'
[209] Letter in Otto Fris. i.: 'Nobis submittuntur Francia et
Hispania, Anglia et Dania.'
[210] Letter in Radewic says, 'Regnum nostrum vobis exponimus....
Vobis imperandi cedat auctoritas, nobis non deerit voluntas
obsequendi.'
[211] The alleged instances of homage by the Scots to the Saxon and
early Norman kings are almost all complicated in some such way. They
had once held also the earldom of Huntingdon from the English crown,
and some have supposed (but on no sufficient grounds) that homage was
also done by them for Lothian.
[212] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii.
[213] Edward refused upon the ground that he was '_rex inunctus_.'
[214] Sigismund had shortly before given great offence in France by
dubbing knights.
[215] Sigismund answered, 'Nihil se contra superioritatem regis
prætexere.'
[216] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii. Nevertheless,
notaries in Scotland, as elsewhere, continued for a long time to style
themselves 'Ego M. auctoritate imperiali (or papali) notarius.'
[217] It is not necessary to prove this letter to have been the
composition of Frederick or his ministers. If it be (as it doubtless
is) contemporary, it is equally to the purpose as an evidence of the
feelings and ideas of the age. As a reviewer of a former edition of
this book has questioned its authenticity, I may mention that it is to
be found not only in Hoveden, but also in the 'Itinerarium regis
Ricardi,' in Ralph de Diceto, and in the 'Chronicon Terrae Sanctae.'
[See Mr. Stubbs' edition of Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 356.]
[218] Liutprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_. Nicephorus says, 'Vis
maius scandalum quam quod se imperatorem vocat.'
[219] Otto of Freising, i.
[220] 'Isaachius a Deo constitutus Imperator, sacratissimus,
excellentissimus, potentissimus, moderator Romanorum, Angelus totius
orbis, heres coronæ magni Constantini, dilecto fratri imperii sui,
maximo principi Alemanniæ.' A remarkable speech of Frederick's to the
envoys of Isaac, who had addressed a letter to him as 'Rex Alemaniæ'
is preserved by Ansbert (_Historia de Expeditione Friderici
Imperatoris_):--'Dominus Imperator divina se illustrante gratia
ulterius dissimulare non valens temerarium fastum regis (_sc._
Græcorum) et usurpantem vocabulum falsi imperatoris Romanorum, hæc
inter cætera exorsus est:--"Omnibus qui sanæ mentis sunt constat, quia
unus est Monarchus Imperator Romanorum, sicut et unus est pater
universitatis, pontifex videlicet Romanus; ideoque cum ego Romani
imperii sceptrum plusquam per annos XXX absque omnium regum vel
principum contradictione tranquille tenuerim et in Romana urbe a summo
pontifice imperiali benedictione unctus sim et sublimatus, quia
denique Monarchiam prædecessores mei imperatores Romanorum plusquam
per CCCC annos etiam gloriose transmiserint, utpote a Constantinopolitana
urbe ad pristinam sedem imperii, caput orbis Romam, acclamatione
Romanorum et principum imperii, auctoritate quoque summi pontificis et
S. catholicæ ecclesiæ translatam, propter tardum et infructuosum
Constantinopolitani imperatoris auxilium contra tyrannos ecclesiæ,
mirandum est admodum cur frater meus dominus vester Constantinopolitanus
imperator usurpet inefficax sibi idem vocabulum et glorietur stulte
alieno sibi prorsus honore, cum liquido noverit me et nomine dici et
re esse Fridericum Romanorum imperatorem semper Augustum."'
Isaac was so far moved by Frederick's indignation that in his next
letter he addressed him as 'generosissimum imperatorem Alemaniæ,' and
in a third thus:--
'Isaakius in Christo fidelis divinitus coronatus, sublimis, potens,
excelsus, hæres coronæ magni Constantini et Moderator Romeon Angelus
nobilissimo Imperatori antiquæ Romæ, regi Alemaniæ et dilecto fratri
imperii sui, salutem,' &c., &c. (Ansbert, _ut supra_.)
[221] Baronius, ad ann.
[222] See Appendix, Note C.
[223] Godefr. Viterb., _Pantheon_, in Mur., _S. R. I._, tom. vii.
[224] Dönniges, _Deutsches Staatsrecht_, thinks that the crown of
Italy, neglected by the Ottos, and taken by Henry II, was a
recognition of the separate nationality of Italy. But Otto I seems to
have been crowned king of Italy, and Muratori (_Ant. It._ Dissert.
iii.) believes that Otto II and Otto III were likewise.
[225] See Appendix, note A.
[226] Some add a fifth crown, of Germany (making that of Aachen
Frankish), which they say belonged to Regensburg--Marquardus Freherus.
[227] 'Dy erste ist tho Aken: dar kronet men mit der Yseren Krone, so
is he Konig over alle Dudesche Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, de is
Sulvern, so is he Here der Walen. Dy drüdde is tho Rome; dy is guldin,
so is he Keyser over alle dy Werlt.'--Gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_,
quoted by Pfeffinger. Similarly Peter de Andlo.
[228] Cf. Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu imperii Romani_. One would expect
some ingenious allegorizer to have discovered that the crown of
Burgundy must be, and therefore is, of copper or bronze, making the
series complete, like the four ages of men in Hesiod. But I have not
been able to find any such.
[229] Hence the numbers attached to the names of the Emperors are
often different in German and Italian writers, the latter not
reckoning Henry the Fowler nor Conrad I. So Henry III (of Germany)
calls himself 'Imperator Henricus Secundus;' and all distinguish the
years of their _regnum_ from those of the _imperium_. Cardinal
Baronius will not call Henry V anything but Henry III, not recognizing
Henry IV's coronation, because it was performed by an antipope.
[230] Life of S. Adalbert (written at Rome early in the eleventh
century, probably by a brother of the monastery of SS. Boniface and
Alexius) in Pertz, _M. G. H._ iv.
[231] Given by Glaber Rudolphus. It is on the face of it a most
impudent forgery: 'Ne quisquam audacter Romani Imperii sceptrum
præpostere gestare princeps appetat neve Imperator dici aut esse
valeat nisi quem Papa Romanus morum probitate aptum elegerit, eique
commiserit insigne imperiale.'
[232] Universal and undisputed in the West, which, for practical
purposes, meant the world. The denial of the supreme jurisdiction of
Peter's chair by the eastern churches affected very slightly the
belief of Latin Christendom, just as the existence of a rival emperor
at Constantinople with at least as good a legal title as the Teutonic
Cæsar, was readily forgotten or ignored by the German and Italian
subjects of the latter.
[233] Odious especially for the inscription,--
'Rex venit ante fores nullo prius urbis honore;
Post homo fit Papæ, sumit quo dante coronam.'--Radewic.
[234] Mediæval history is full of instances of the superstitious
veneration attached to the rite of coronation (made by the Church
almost a sacrament), and to the special places where, or even utensils
with which it was performed. Everyone knows the importance in France
of Rheims and its sacred _ampulla_; so the Scottish king must be
crowned at Scone, an old seat of Pictish royalty--Robert Bruce risked
a great deal to receive his crown there; so no Hungarian coronation
was valid unless made with the crown of St. Stephen; the possession
whereof is still accounted so valuable by the Austrian court.
Great importance seems to have been attached to the imperial globe
(Reichsapfel) which the Pope delivered to the Emperor at his
coronation.
[235] Whether the poem which passes under the name of Gunther
Ligurinus be his work or that of some scholar in a later age is for
the present purpose indifferent.
[236] Zedler, _Universal Lexicon_, s. v. _Reich_.
[237] It does not occur before Frederick I's time in any of the
documents printed by Pertz; and this is the date which Boeclerus also
assigns in his treatise, _De Sacro Imperio Romano_, vindicating the
terms 'sacrum' and 'Romanum' against the aspersions of Blondel.
[238] Pertz, _M. G. H._, tom. iv. (legum ii.)
[239] Ibid. iv.
[240] Radewic. _ap._ Pertz.
[241] Blondellus adv. Chiffletium. Most of these theories are stated
by Boeclerus. Jordanes (_Chronica_) says, 'Sacri imperii quod non est
dubium sancti Spiritus ordinatione, secundum qualitatem ipsam et
exigentiam meritorum humanorum disponi.'
[242] Marquard Freher's notes to Peter de Andlo, book i. chap. vii.
[243] So in the song on the capture of the Emperor Lewis II by
Adalgisus of Benevento, we find the words, 'Ludhuicum comprenderunt
sancto, pio, Augusto.' (Quoted by Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt
Rom im Mittelalter_, iii. p. 185.)
[244] Goldast, _Constitutiones_.
[245] Pertz, _M. G. H._, legg. ii.
[246] 'Apostolic majesty' was the proper title of the king of Hungary.
The Austrian court has recently revived it.
[247] Moser, _Römische Kayser_.
[248] Urban IV used the title in 1259: Francis I (of France) calls the
Empire 'sacrosanctum.'
[249] Cf. 'Holy Russia.'
[250] It is almost superfluous to observe that the beginning of the
title 'Holy' has nothing to do with the beginning of the Empire
itself. Essentially and substantially, the Holy Roman Empire was, as
has been shewn already, the creation of Charles the Great. Looking at
it more technically, as the monarchy, not of the whole West, like that
of Charles, but of Germany and Italy, with a claim, which was never
more than a claim, to universal sovereignty, its beginning is fixed by
most of the German writers, whose practice has been followed in the
text, at the coronation of Otto the Great. But the title was at least
one, and probably two centuries later.
CHAPTER XIII.
FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN.
In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire has been described in
what is not only the most brilliant but the most momentous period of
its history; the period of its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief
place in Christendom. For it was mainly through their relations with
the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at first, no
less than by their subsequent hostility, that the Teutonic Emperors
influenced the development of European politics. The reform of the
Roman Church which went on during the reigns of Otto I and his
successors down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the efforts
of those monarchs, was the true beginning of the grand period of the
Middle Ages, the first of that long series of movements, changes, and
creations in the ecclesiastical system of Europe which was, so to
speak, the master current of history, secular as well as religious,
during the centuries which followed. The first result of Henry III's
purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand's attempt to subject
all jurisdiction to that of his own chair, and in the long struggle of
the Investitures, which brought out into clear light the opposing
pretensions of the temporal and spiritual powers. Although destined in
the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate effect of this struggle
was to evoke in all classes an intense religious feeling; and, in
opening up new fields of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate
wonderfully their power of political organization. It was this impulse
that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled the Popes, stepping
forth as the rightful leaders of a religious war, to bend it to serve
their own ends: it was thus too that they struck the alliance--strange
as such an alliance seems now--with the rebellious cities of Lombardy,
and proclaimed themselves the protectors of municipal freedom. But the
third and crowning triumph of the Holy See was reserved for the
thirteenth century. In the foundation of the two great orders of
ecclesiastical knighthood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans
and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages culminated:
in the overthrow of the only power which could pretend to vie with her
in antiquity, in sanctity, in universality, the Papacy saw herself
exalted to rule alone over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow,
following with terrible suddenness on the days of strength and glory
which we have just been witnessing, this chapter has now to speak.
[Sidenote: Henry VI, 1190-1197.]
[Sidenote: Philip, 1198-1208.]
[Sidenote: Innocent III and Otto IV.]
[Sidenote: Otto IV, 1208 (1198)-1212.]
It happened strangely enough that just while their ruin was preparing,
the house of Swabia gained over their ecclesiastical foes what seemed
likely to prove an advantage of the first moment. The son and
successor of Barbarossa was Henry VI, a man who had inherited all his
father's harshness with none of his father's generosity. By his
marriage with Constance, the heiress of the Norman kings, he had
become master of Naples and Sicily. Emboldened by the possession of
what had been hitherto the stronghold of his predecessors' bitterest
enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as well as north,
Henry conceived a scheme which might have wonderfully changed the
history of Germany and Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to
lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired countries to the
Empire, to turn their feudal lands into allodial, and to make no
further demands for money on the clergy, on condition that they should
pronounce the crown hereditary in his family. Results of the highest
importance would have followed this change, which Henry advocated by
setting forth the perils of interregna, and which he doubtless meant
to be but part of an entirely new system of polity. Already so strong
in Germany, and with an absolute command of their new kingdom, the
Hohenstaufen might have dispensed with the renounced feudal services,
and built up a firm centralized system, like that which was already
beginning to develope itself in France. First, however, the Saxon
princes, then some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed
the scheme; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry had to
content himself with getting his infant son Frederick the Second
chosen king of the Romans. On Henry's untimely death the election was
set aside, and the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick
and Philip of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry the Sixth, gave the
Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent the Third, an
opportunity of extending its sway at the expense of its antagonist.
The Pope moved heaven and earth on behalf of Otto, whose family had
been the constant rivals of the Hohenstaufen, and who was himself
willing to promise all that Innocent required; but Philip's personal
merits and the vast possessions of his house gave him while he lived
the ascendancy in Germany. His death by the hand of an assassin, while
it seemed to vindicate the Pope's choice, left the Swabian party
without a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized over the
whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive as he felt his throne
more secure. If he was a Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he
had gone to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline,
anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn. The Roman
Church at last deposed and excommunicated her ungrateful son, and
Innocent rejoiced in a second successful assertion of pontifical
supremacy, when Otto was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the
Second, whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the
champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter his life and
extinguish his house.
[Sidenote: Frederick the Second, 1212-1250.]
Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which Emperor and Pope
girded themselves up for the last time, the narrative of Frederick the
Second's career, with its romantic adventures, its sad picture of
marvellous powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a
curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were it even
possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did indeed determine the
fortunes of the German kingdom no less than of the republics of Italy,
but it was upon Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to
Italian history that its details belong. So too of Frederick himself.
Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he is,
with Otto III, the only one who comes before us with a genius and a
frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton[251].
There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of
his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along with these,
and changing their direction, were other gifts, inherited perhaps from
his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the
orange-groves of Palermo--a love of luxury and beauty, an intellect
refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable
it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the
outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the
curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary
personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a
politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth
fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while
himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and
ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one
cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and
succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon
the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the
terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled
from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But
while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy
threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the
imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce
deliver to the flames of hell[252].
[Sidenote: Struggle of Frederick with the Papacy.]
Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible for its head not to
be involved in war with the constantly aggressive Popedom--aggressive
in her claims of territorial dominion in Italy as well as of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the world. But it was
Frederick's peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over
him which they well knew how to use. In a moment of youthful
enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the hands of an eloquent monk,
and his delay to fulfil the vow was branded as impious neglect.
Excommunicated by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and
was excommunicated for going: having concluded an advantageous peace,
he sailed for Italy, and was a third time excommunicated for
returning. To Pope Gregory he was at last after a fashion reconciled,
but with the accession of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon
the special pretexts which kindled the strife it is not worth while to
descant: the real causes were always the same, and could only be
removed by the submission of one or other combatant. Chief among them
was Frederick's possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which
Barbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained for Henry his
son the hand of the Norman heiress. Naples and Sicily had been for
some two hundred years recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the
Pope, who felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of his
rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full and make it the
means of extinguishing imperial authority throughout Italy. But
although the struggle was far more of a territorial and political one
than that of the previous century had been, it reopened every former
source of strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the
spiritual potentate. The old war-cries of Henry and Hildebrand, of
Barbarossa and Alexander, roused again the unquenchable hatred of
Italian factions: the pontiff asserted the transference of the Empire
as a fief, and declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two
keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor appealed to law,
to the indelible rights of Cæsar; and denounced his foe as the
antichrist of the New Testament, since it was God's second vicar whom
he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice
of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity
not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and
heretical prince, offered the imperial crown to Robert of France, to
the heir of Denmark, to Haco the Norse king; succeeded at last in
raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of Holland. Yet
throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked than the
Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the
hereditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lombard independence,
whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from
the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose, so was the
possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of
strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the
false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as
the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no
profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death
than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor;
their heritage destroyed him.
[Sidenote: Conrad IV, 1250-1254.]
With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the
greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a
long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could
never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the
last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its
strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at
last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin--a
hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any
other foe--was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was
done by the minions of Charles of France.
[Sidenote: Italy lost to the Empire.]
The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederick's armies and
the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their strong walls and swarming
population made defeats in the open field hardly felt; and now that
South Italy too had passed away from a German line--first to an
Angevin, afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty--it was plain that the
peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. Why, however, should
they not still be strong beyond the Alps? was their position worse
than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a
Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would
be all the greater in a narrower sphere.
[Sidenote: Decline of imperial power in Germany.]
[Sidenote: The Great Interregnum]
[Sidenote: Double election, of Richard of England and Alfonso of
Castile.]
[Sidenote: State of Germany during the Interregnum.]
[Sidenote: Rudolf of Hapsburg, 1272-1292.]
So indeed it might once have been, but now it was too late. The German
kingdom broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be
universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political
existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and disputes
with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing by concessions the
support of their own princes, the ease with which in their absence the
magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found
in resuming the privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and
set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these
were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that
territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of
the Great Interregnum[253]. Frederick II had by two Pragmatic
Sanctions, A.D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather confirmed, rights
already customary, such as to give the bishops and nobles legal
sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the
Emperor should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became
restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately
dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became
altogether a less necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of
the realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to
fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters of his father
Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland was in the field, but
rejected by the Swabian party: on his death a new election was called
for, and at last set on foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his
brethren to choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, not
strong enough to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the
Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry
III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and
was crowned at Aachen. But three of the electors, finding that his
bribe to them was lower than to the others, seceded in disgust, and
chose Alfonso X of Castile[254], who, shrewder than his competitor,
continued to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his
title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now
and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was
frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes baser than
the prætorians whom they copied, had neither the character nor the
outward power and resources to make himself respected. Every floodgate
of anarchy was opened: prelates and barons extended their domains by
war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery
of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had
not been seen for centuries. Things were even worse than under the
Saxon and Franconian Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been
in some measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the
extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only
in the cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had
already leagued themselves for mutual defence, and maintained a
struggle in the interests of commerce and order against universal
brigandage. At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt
that such things could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no
courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was
the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved
the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany
beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the
electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged, they chose,
in A.D. 1272, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, founder of the house of
Austria[255].
[Sidenote: Change in the position of the Empire.]
From this point there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire
revived in A.D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to
his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A.D. 962, on the
narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the
Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line
of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to
make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy
and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally
and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife with
resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been more
decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the princes. The
Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical utility was
concerned, ought now to have been suffered to expire; nor could it
have ended more gloriously than with the last of the Hohenstaufen.
That it did not so expire, but lived on six hundred years more, till
it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than
ridiculous--till, as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it
was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire--was owing
partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary
part of the world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by
this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans had
confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long, and had
grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a dignity whose
possession appeared to exalt them above the other peoples of Europe,
that it was now too late for them to separate the local from the
universal monarch. If a German king was to be maintained at all, he
must be Roman Emperor; and a German king there must still be. Deeply,
nay, mortally wounded as the event proved his power to have been by
the disasters of the Empire to which it had been linked, the time was
by no means come for its extinction. In the unsettled state of
society, and the conflict of innumerable petty potentates, no force
save feudalism was able to hold society together; and its efficacy for
that purpose depended, as the anarchy of the recent interregnum
shewed, upon the presence of the recognized feudal head.
[Sidenote: Decline of the regal power in Germany as compared with
France and England.]
That head, however, was no longer what he had been. The relative
position of Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that
which they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as
conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III of France, as the
Franconian Emperor Henry III had been stronger than the Capetian
Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency of events had
been to centralize the administration and increase the power of the
monarch, even in England not to diminish it: in Germany alone had
political union become weaker, and the independence of the princes
more confirmed. The causes of this change are not far to seek. They
all resolve themselves into this one, that the German king attempted
too much at once. The rulers of France, where manners were less rude
than in the other Transalpine lands, and where the Third Estate rose
into power more quickly, had reduced one by one the great feudataries
by whom the first Capetians had been scarcely recognized. The English
kings had annexed Wales, Cumbria, and part of Ireland, had obtained a
prerogative great if not uncontrolled, and exercised no doubtful sway
through every corner of their country. Both had won their successes by
the concentration on that single object of their whole personal
activity, and by the skilful use of every device whereby their feudal
rights, personal, judicial, and legislative, could be applied to
fetter the vassal. Meantime the German monarch, whose utmost efforts
it would have needed to tame his fierce barons and maintain order
through wide territories occupied by races unlike in dialect and
customs, had been struggling with the Lombard cities and the Normans
of South Italy, and had been for full two centuries the object of the
unrelenting enmity of the Roman pontiff. And in this latter contest,
by which more than by any other the fate of the Empire was decided, he
fought under disadvantages far greater than his brethren in England
and France. William the Conqueror had defied Hildebrand, William Rufus
had resisted Anselm; but the Emperors Henry the Fourth and Barbarossa
had to cope with prelates who were Hildebrand and Anselm in one; the
spiritual heads of Christendom as well as the primates of their
special realm, the Empire. And thus, while the ecclesiastics of
Germany were a body more formidable from their possessions than those
of any other European country, and enjoying far larger privileges, the
Emperor could not, or could with far less effect, win them over by
invoking against the Pope that national feeling which made the cry of
Gallican liberties so welcome even to the clergy of France.
[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
After repeated defeats, each more crushing than the last, the imperial
power, so far from being able to look down on the papal, could not
even maintain itself on an equal footing. Against no pontiff since
Gregory VII had the monarch's right to name or confirm a pope,
undisputed in the days of the Ottos and of Henry III, been made good.
It was the turn of the Emperor to repel a similar claim of the Holy
See to the function of reviewing his own election, examining into his
merits, and rejecting him if unsound, that is to say, impatient of
priestly tyranny. A letter of Innocent III, who was the first to make
this demand in terms, was inserted by Gregory IX in his digest of the
Canon Law, the inexhaustible armoury of the churchman, and continued
to be quoted thence by every canonist till the end of the sixteenth
century[256]. It was not difficult to find grounds on which to base
such a doctrine. Gregory VII deduced it with characteristic boldness
from the power of the keys, and the superiority over all other
dignities which must needs appertain to the Pope as arbiter of eternal
weal or woe. Others took their stand on the analogy of clerical
ordination, and urged that since the Pope in consecrating the Emperor
gave him a title to the obedience of all Christian men, he must have
himself the right of approving or rejecting the candidate according to
his merits. Others again, appealing to the Old Testament, shewed how
Samuel discarded Saul and anointed David in his room, and argued that
the Pope now must have powers at least equal to those of the Hebrew
prophets. But the ascendancy of the doctrine dates from the time of
Pope Innocent III, whose ingenuity discovered for it an historical
basis. It was by the favour of the Pope, he declared, that the Empire
was taken away from the Greeks and given to the Germans in the person
of Charles[257], and the authority which Leo then exercised as God's
representative must abide thenceforth and for ever in his successors,
who can therefore at any time recall the gift, and bestow it on a
person or a nation more worthy than its present holders. This is the
famous theory of the Translation of the Empire, which plays so large a
part in controversy down till the seventeenth century[258], a theory
with plausibility enough to make it generally successful, yet one
which to an impartial eye appears far removed from the truth of the
facts[259]. Leo III did not suppose, any more than did Charles
himself, that it was by his sole pontifical authority that the crown
was given to the Frank; nor do we find such a notion put forward by
any of his successors down to the twelfth century. Gregory VII in
particular, in a remarkable letter dilating on his prerogative,
appeals to the substitution by papal interference of Pipin for the
last Merovingian king, and even goes back to cite the case of
Theodosius humbling himself before St. Ambrose, but says never a word
about this 'translatio,' excellently as it would have served his
purpose.
Sound or unsound, however, these arguments did their work, for they
were urged skilfully and boldly, and none denied that it was by the
Pope alone that the crown could be lawfully imposed[260]. In some
instances the rights claimed were actually made good. Thus Innocent
III withstood Philip and overthrew Otto IV; thus another haughty
priest commanded the electors to choose the Landgrave of Thuringia
(A.D. 1246), and was by some of them obeyed; thus Gregory X compelled
the recognition of Rudolf. The further pretensions of the Popes to the
vicariate of the Empire during interregna the Germans never
admitted[261]. Still their place was now generally felt to be higher
than that of the monarch, and their control over the three spiritual
electors and the whole body of the clergy was far more effective than
his. A spark of national feeling was at length kindled by the
exactions and shameless subservience to France of the papal court at
Avignon[262]; and the infant democracy of industry and intelligence
represented by the cities and by the English Franciscan Occam,
supported Lewis IV in his conflict with John XXII, till even the
princes who had risen by the help of the Pope were obliged to oppose
him. The same sentiment dictated the reforms of Constance, but the
imperial power which might have floated onwards and higher on the
turning tide of popular opinion lacked men equal to the occasion: the
Hapsburg Frederick the Third, timid and superstitious, abased himself
before the Romish court, and his house has generally adhered to the
alliance then struck.
FOOTNOTES:
[251] I quote from the Liber Augustalis printed among Petrarch's works
the following curious description of Frederick: 'Fuit armorum
strenuus, linguarum peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus, epicurus, nihil
curans vel credens nisi temporale: fuit malleus Romanae ecclesiae.'
As Otto III had been called 'mirabilia mundi,' so Frederick II is
often spoken of in his own time as 'stupor mundi Fridericus.'
[252] 'Quà entro è lo secondo Federico.'--_Inferno_, canto x.
[253] The interregnum is by some reckoned as the two years before
Richard's election; by others, as the whole period from the death of
Frederick II or that of his son Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession in
1273.
[254] Surnamed, from his scientific tastes, 'the Wise.'
[255] Hapsburg is a castle in the Aargau on the banks of the Aar, and
near the line of railway from Olten to Zürich, from a point on which a
glimpse of it may be had. 'Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa,'
says Gibbon, 'the castle of Hapsburg, the abbey of Königsfeld, and the
town of Bruck have successively arisen. The philosophic traveller may
compare the monuments of Roman conquests, of feudal or Austrian
tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious freedom. If he be
truly a philosopher, he will applaud the merit and happiness of his
own time.'
[256] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
_Venerabilem_: 'Ius et authoritas examinandi personam electam in regem
et promovendam ad imperium, ad nos spectat, qui eum inungimus,
consecramus, et coronamus.'
[257] 'Illis principibus,' writes Innocent, 'ius et potestatem
eligendi regem [Romanorum] in imperatorem postmodum promovendum
recognoscimus, ad quos de iure ac antiqua consuetudine noscitur
pertinere, præsertim quum ad eos ius et potestas huiusmodi ab
apostolica sede pervenerit, quæ Romanum imperium in persona magnifici
Caroli a Græcis transtulit in Germanos.'--Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
_Venerabilem_.
[258] Its influence, however, as Döllinger (_Das Kaiserthum Karls des
Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_) remarks, first became great when this
letter, some forty or fifty years after Innocent wrote it, was
inserted in the digest of the canon law.
[259] Vid. supra, pp. 52-58.
[260] Upon this so-called 'Translation of the Empire,' many books
remain to us: many more have probably perished. A good although far
from impartial summary of the controversy may be found in Vagedes, _De
Ludibriis Aulæ Romanæ in transferendo Imperio Romano_.
[261] 'Vacante imperio Romano, cum in illo ad sæcularem iudicem
nequeat haberi recursus, ad summum pontificem, cui in persona B. Petri
terreni simul et cœlestis imperii iura Deus ipse commisit, imperii
prædicti iurisdictio regimen et dispositio devolvitur.'--Bull _Si
fratrum_ (of John XXI, in A.D. 1316), in _Bullar. Rom._ So again:
'Attendentes quod Imperii Romani regimen cura et administratio tempore
quo illud vacare contingit ad nos pertinet, sicut dignoscitur
pertinere.' So Boniface VIII, refusing to recognize Albert I, because
he was ugly and one-eyed ('est homo monoculus et vultu sordido, non
potest esse Imperator'), and had taken a wife from the serpent brood
of Frederick II ('de sanguine viperali Friderici'), declared himself
Vicar of the Empire, and assumed the crown and sword of Constantine.
[262] Avignon was not yet in the territory of France: it lay within
the bounds of the kingdom of Arles. But the French power was nearer
than that of the Emperor; and pontiffs many of them French by
extraction sympathized, as was natural, with princes of their own
race.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN ELECTORS.
[Sidenote: Territorial Sovereignty of the Princes.]
[Sidenote: Adolf, 1292-1298.]
[Sidenote: Albert I, 1298-1308.]
[Sidenote: Henry VII, 1308-1314.]
[Sidenote: Lewis IV, 1314-1347.]
The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to the domestic
power of the German king than to the European supremacy of the
Emperor. His two Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made
the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the
Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify
their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to
coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and
Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign
of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh in Italy, the
civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival
claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the
successful competitor, found himself involved with the Pope--all these
circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the
crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now
became virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full
jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation,
privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and taxes: some were
without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The
numbers of the immediate nobility--those who held directly of the
crown--had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms of
Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single
tower was usually a sovereign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it
was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed
themselves in practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent
were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this
last having acquired Bohemia, A.D. 1309; next came the electors,
already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and
forming for themselves the first considerable principalities.
Brandenburg and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent states
before the end of this period: Bohemia and the three archbishoprics
almost from its beginning.
[Sidenote: Policy of the Emperors.]
The chief object of the magnates was to keep the monarch in his
present state of helplessness. Till the expenses which the crown
entailed were found ruinous to its wearer, their practice was to
confer it on some petty prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of
Nassau and Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to keep it
from settling in one family. They bound the newly-elected to respect
all their present immunities, including those which they had just
extorted as the price of their votes; they checked all his attempts to
recover lost lands or rights: they ventured at last to depose their
anointed head, Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the Emperor sought
only to make the most of his short tenure, using his position to
aggrandize his family and raise money by the sale of crown estates and
privileges. His individual action and personal relation to the subject
was replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he represented order
and legitimate ownership, and so far was still necessary to the
political system. But progresses through the country were abandoned:
unlike his predecessors, who had resigned their patrimony when they
assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own states, often without
the Empire's bounds. Frederick III never entered it for twenty-seven
years.
[Sidenote: Power of the cities.]
[Sidenote: Financial distress.]
How thoroughly the national character of the office was gone is shewn
by the repeated attempts to bestow it on foreign potentates, who could
not fill the place of a German king of the good old vigorous type. Not
to speak of Richard and Alfonso, Charles of Valois was proposed
against Henry VII, Edward III of England actually elected against
Charles IV (his parliament forbade him to accept), George Podiebrad,
king of Bohemia, against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a
Hungarian king. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support
of the cities. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had
increased wonderfully in population, wealth, and boldness: the
Hanseatic confederacy was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed
the Scandinavian kings: the towns of Swabia and the Rhine formed great
commercial leagues, maintained regular wars against the
counter-associations of the nobility, and seemed at one time, by an
alliance with the Swiss, on the point of turning West Germany into a
federation of free municipalities. Feudalism, however, was still too
strong; the cavalry of the nobles was irresistible in the field, and
the thoughtless Wenzel let slip a golden opportunity of repairing the
losses of two centuries. After all, the Empire was perhaps past
redemption, for one fatal ailment paralyzed all its efforts. The
Empire was poor. The crown lands, which had suffered heavily under
Frederick II, were further usurped during the confusion that followed;
till at last, through the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who
sought only their immediate interest, little was left of the vast and
fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon and Franconian
Emperors had drawn the chief part of their revenue. Regalian rights,
the second fiscal resource, had fared no better--tolls, customs,
mines, rights of coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were
either seized or granted away: even the advowsons of churches had been
sold or mortgaged; and the imperial treasury depended mainly on an
inglorious traffic in honours and exemptions. Things were so bad under
Rudolf that the electors refused to make his son Albert king of the
Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public revenue which
with difficulty supported one monarch, could much less maintain two at
the same time[263]. Sigismund told his Diet, 'Nihil esse imperio
spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germaniæ principibus
successurus esset, qui præter patrimonium nihil aliud habuerit, apud
eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum[264].' Patritius,
the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the
Empire scarcely covered the expenses of its ambassadors[265]. Poverty
such as these expressions point to, a poverty which became greater
after each election, not only involved the failure of the attempts
which were sometimes made to recover usurped rights[266], but put
every project of reform within or war without at the mercy of a
jealous Diet. The three orders of which that Diet consisted, electors,
princes, and cities, were mutually hostile, and by consequence
selfish; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from
dying of inanition.
[Sidenote: Charles IV (A.D. 1347-1378), and his electoral
constitution.]
The changes thus briefly described were in progress when Charles the
Fourth, king of Bohemia, son of that blind king John of Bohemia who
fell at Cressy, and grandson of the Emperor Henry VII, was chosen to
ascend the throne. His skilful and consistent policy aimed at settling
what he perhaps despaired of reforming, and the famous instrument
which, under the name of the Golden Bull, became the corner-stone of
the Germanic constitution, confessed and legalized the independence of
the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The most conspicuous
defect of the existing system was the uncertainty of the elections,
followed as they usually were by a civil war. It was this which
Charles set himself to redress.
[Sidenote: German kingdom not originally elective.]
The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic
invaders presented in their original form a rude combination of the
elective with the hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had,
as the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule, but from
among the members of such a family the warriors were free to choose
the bravest or the most popular as king[267]. That the German crown
came to be purely elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England,
and most other European states, the principle of strict hereditary
succession established itself, was due to the failure of heirs male in
three successive dynasties; to the restless ambition of the nobles,
who, since they were not, like the French, strong enough to disregard
the royal power, did their best to weaken it; to the intrigues of the
churchmen, zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by their own
law and observed in capitular elections; to the wish of the Popes to
gain an opening for their own influence and make effective the veto
which they claimed; above all, to the conception of the imperial
office as one too holy to be, in the same manner as the regal,
transmissible by blood. Had the German, like other feudal kingdoms,
remained merely local, feudal, and national, it would without doubt
have ended by becoming a hereditary monarchy. Transformed as it was by
the Roman Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human race
being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of all mankind, could
not be confined to any family, nor pass like a private estate by the
ordinary rules of descent.
[Sidenote: Electoral body in primitive times.]
The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the earliest ages, to
the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage, which must have been very
irregularly exercised, became by degrees vested in their leaders, but
the assent of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed to
complete the ceremony. It was thus that Henry the Fowler, and St.
Henry, and Conrad the Franconian duke were chosen[268]. Though even
tradition might have commemorated what extant records place beyond a
doubt, it was commonly believed, till the end of the sixteenth
century, that the elective constitution had been established, and the
privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by a decree of Gregory
V and Otto III, which a famous jurist describes as 'lex a pontifice de
imperatorum comitiis lata, ne ius eligendi penes populum Romanum in
posterum esset[269].' St. Thomas says, 'Election ceased from the times
of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when Pope Gregory V
established that of the seven princes, which will last as long as the
holy Roman Church, who ranks above all other powers, shall have judged
expedient for Christ's faithful people[270].' Since it tended to exalt
the papal power, this fiction was accepted, no doubt honestly
accepted, and spread abroad by the clergy. And indeed, like so many
other fictions, it had a sort of foundation in fact. The death of Otto
III, the fourth of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly
succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift of the nation,
and was no doubt one of the chief causes why it did not in the end
become hereditary[271].
[Sidenote: Encroachments of the great nobles.]
Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the throne was
theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs and their followers
being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to
an English or a French king; practically hereditary, since both of
these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the
father procuring the son's election during his own lifetime. And so it
might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by
the whole body of the aristocracy. But at the election of Lothar II,
A.D. 1125, we find a certain small number of magnates exercising the
so-called right of prætaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the
future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their
approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will
and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further
exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient
constitution. It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic
throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was purely
elective[272]: nor could the influence and the liberal offers of Henry
VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged the
keystone of their powers. And at the same time the right of
prætaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election,
vested in a small body[273]: the assent of the rest of the nobility
being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the
double choice of Richard and Alfonso, A.D. 1264, the only question was
as to the majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then nor
afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts
and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier.
[Sidenote: The Seven Electors.]
[Sidenote: Golden Bull of Charles IV, A.D. 1356.]
The origin of that college is a matter somewhat intricate and obscure.
It is mentioned A.D. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a
distinct body; but without anything to shew who composed it. First in
A.D. 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by immemorial custom
the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven persons, the
seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and
Alfonso of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of Mentz,
Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine sees,
represented the German church: the other four ought, according to the
ancient constitution, to have been the dukes of the four nations,
Franks, Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the
four great offices of the imperial household. But of these dukedoms
the two first named were now extinct, and their place and power in the
state, as well as the household offices they had held, had descended
upon two principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the
Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Saxon
duke, though with greatly narrowed dominions, retained his vote and
office of arch-marshal, and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would
have been equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he and
the Palsgrave of the Rhine were members of the great house of
Wittelsbach. That one family should hold two votes out of seven seemed
so dangerous to the state that it was made a ground of objection to
the Bavarian duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the king
of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic prince[274], might on
the score of rank and power assert himself the equal of any one of the
electors. The dispute between these rival claimants, as well as all
the rules and requisites of the election, were settled by Charles the
Fourth in the Golden Bull, thenceforward a fundamental law of the
Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of which he was then king;
fixed Frankfort as the place of election; named the archbishop of
Mentz convener of the electoral college; gave to Bohemia the first, to
the Count Palatine the second place among the secular electors. A
majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As to each
electorate there was attached a great office, it was supposed that
this was the title by which the vote was possessed; though it was in
truth rather an effect than a cause. The three prelates were
archchancellors of Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, and Italy respectively:
Bohemia cupbearer, the Palsgrave seneschal, Saxony marshal, and
Brandenburg chamberlain[275].
[Sidenote: Eighth Electorate.]
[Sidenote: Ninth Electorate.]
These arrangements, under which disputed elections became far less
frequent, remained undisturbed till A.D. 1618, when on the breaking
out of the Thirty Years' War the Emperor Ferdinand II by an
unwarranted stretch of prerogative deprived the Palsgrave Frederick
(king of Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of
England) of his electoral vote, and transferred it to his own
partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the peace of Westphalia the
Palsgrave was reinstated as an eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her
place. The sacred number having been once broken through, less scruple
was felt in making further changes. In A.D. 1692, the Emperor Leopold
I conferred a ninth electorate on the house of Brunswick Lüneburg,
which was then in possession of the duchy of Hanover, and succeeded to
the throne of Great Britain in 1714; and in A.D. 1708, the assent of
the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this way that English kings
came to vote at the election of a Roman Emperor.
It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still continues
to entitle himself Elector[276] should be one who never did (and of
course never can now) join in electing an Emperor, having been under
the arrangements of the old Empire a simple Landgrave. In A.D. 1803,
Napoleon, among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution,
procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne and Treves,
annexing their territories to France, and gave the title of Elector,
as the highest after that of king, to the duke of Würtemburg, the
Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop
of Salzburg. Three years afterwards the Empire itself ended, and the
title became meaningless.
As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example of a monarchy
not hereditary that the world has ever seen, it may not be amiss to
consider for a moment what light its history throws upon the character
of elective monarchy in general, a contrivance which has always had,
and will probably always continue to have, seductions for a certain
class of political theorists.
[Sidenote: Objects of an elective monarchy: how far attained in
Germany.]
[Sidenote: Choice of the fittest.]
First of all then it deserves to be noticed how difficult, one might
almost say impossible, it was found to maintain in practice the
elective principle. In point of law, the imperial throne was from the
tenth century to the nineteenth absolutely open to any orthodox
Christian candidate. But as a matter of fact, the competition was
confined to a few very powerful families, and there was always a
strong tendency for the crown to become hereditary in some one of
these. Thus the Franconian Emperors held it from A.D. 1024 till 1125,
the Hohenstaufen, themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a
century or more; the house of Luxemburg (kings of Bohemia) enjoyed it
through three successive reigns, and when in the fifteenth century it
fell into the tenacious grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain
it thenceforth (with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished
out of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which the scheme
of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that of putting the fittest
man in the highest place, was but seldom attained, and attained even
then rather by good fortune than design.
[Sidenote: Restraint of the sovereign.]
No such objection can be brought against the second ground on which an
elective system has sometimes been advocated, its operation in
moderating the power of the crown, for this was attained in the
fullest and most ruinous measure. We are reminded of the man in the
fable, who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his house
swept away by the furious torrent. The power of the crown was not
moderated but destroyed. Each successful candidate was forced to
purchase his title by the sacrifice of rights which had belonged to
his predecessors, and must repeat the same shameful policy later in
his reign to procure the election of his son. Feeling at the same time
that his family could not make sure of keeping the throne, he treated
it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his estate, seeking only to make
out of it the largest present profit. And the electors, aware of the
strength of their position, presumed upon it and abused it to assert
an independence such as the nobles of other countries could never have
aspired to.
[Sidenote: Recognition of the popular will.]
[Sidenote: Conception of the electoral function.]
Modern political speculation supposes the method of appointing a ruler
by the votes of his subjects, as opposed to the system of hereditary
succession, to be an assertion by the people of their own will as the
ultimate fountain of authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that
he is no more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of the
Holy Empire nothing could be more repugnant. This will best appear
when the aspect of the system of election at different epochs in its
history is compared with the corresponding changes in the composition
of the electoral body which have been described as in progress from
the ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the tribe
chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to the most noble
family, no more than the first among his peers, with a power
circumscribed by the will of his subjects. Several ages later, in the
tenth and eleventh centuries, the right of choice had passed into the
hands of the magnates, and the people were only asked to assent. In
the same measure had the relation of prince and subject taken a new
aspect. We must not expect to find, in such rude times, any very clear
apprehension of the technical quality of the process, and the throne
had indeed become for a season so nearly hereditary that the election
was often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been regarded,
not as a delegation of authority by the nobles and people, with a
power of resumption implied, but rather as their subjection of
themselves to the monarch who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and
ill-defined prerogative. In yet later times, when, as has been shewn
above, the assembly of the chieftains and the applauding shout of the
host had been superseded by the secret conclave of the seven electoral
princes, the strict legal view of election became fully established,
and no one was supposed to have any title to the crown except what a
majority of votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the
conception of the imperial office itself had been thoroughly
penetrated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sovereign did
not, like other princes, reign by hereditary right, but by the choice
of certain persons, was supposed to be an enhancement and consecration
of his dignity. The electors, to draw what may seem a subtle, but is
nevertheless a very real distinction, selected, but did not create.
They only named the person who was to receive what it was not theirs
to give. God, say the mediæval writers, not deigning to interfere
visibly in the affairs of this world, has willed that these seven
princes of Germany should discharge the function which once belonged
to the senate and people of Rome, that of choosing his earthly viceroy
in matters temporal. But it is immediately from Himself that the
authority of this viceroy comes, and men can have no relation towards
him except that of obedience. It was in this period, therefore, when
the Emperor was in practice the mere nominee of the electors, that the
belief in this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion
of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of any
notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign people.
[Sidenote: General results of Charles IV's policy.]
Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the institutions of Charles
IV, which removed one fruitful cause of civil war. But these seven
electoral princes acquired, with their extended privileges, a marked
and dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to enjoy full
regalian rights in their territories[277]; causes were not to be
evoked from their courts, save when justice should have been denied:
their consent was necessary to all public acts of consequence. Their
persons were held to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the
Holy Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse, soon
gained much of the Emperor's hold on popular reverence, as well as
that actual power which he lacked. To Charles, who viewed the German
Empire much as Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not
unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving personal ends, and
to them, while appearing to exalt by elaborate ceremonies its ideal
dignity, he deliberately sacrificed what real strength was left. The
object which he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the
Bohemian kingdom, and the advancement of his own house. In the Golden
Bull, whose seal bears the legend,--
'Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi[278],'
there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Germany he was indirectly
a benefactor, by the foundation of the University of Prague, the
mother of all her schools: otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy,
and called it a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the
ratification of the Golden Bull, in procuring the election of his son
Wenzel, in aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense of Germany, had been
amassed by keeping a market in which honours and exemptions, with what
lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid for. In Italy
the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage, their chief hasten to Rome
with a scanty retinue, and return from it as swiftly, at the mandate
of an Avignonese Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the
last rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a power he
could now despise.
Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had become practically
powerless by the loss of his feudal privileges, and saw the authority
that had once been his parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and
tyrannical nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which he
claimed by virtue of the imperial crown?
FOOTNOTES:
[263] Quoted by Moser, _Römische Kayser_, from _Chron. Hirsang._:
'Regni vires temporum iniuria nimium contritæ vix uni alendo regi
sufficerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus in duos reges ferre queant.'
[264] At Rupert's death, under whom the mischief had increased
greatly, there were, we are told, many bishops better off than the
Emperor.
[265] 'Proventus Imperii ita minimi sunt ut legationibus vix
suppetant.'--Quoted by Moser.
[266] Albert I tried in vain to wrest the tolls of the Rhine from the
grasp of the Rhenish electors.
[267] The Æthelings of the line of Cerdic, among the West Saxons, and
the Bavarian Agilolfings, may thus be compared with the Achæmenids of
Persia or the heroic houses of early Greece.
[268] Wippo, describing the election of Conrad the Franconian, says,
'Inter confinia Moguntiæ et Wormatiæ convenerunt cuncti primates et,
ut ita dicam, vires et viscera regni.' So Bruno says that Henry IV was
elected by the '_populus_.' So Gunther Ligurinus of Frederick I's
election:--
'Acturi sacræ de successione coronæ
Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni.'
So Amandus, secretary of Frederick Barbarossa, in describing his
election, says, 'Multi illustres heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi
et aliis Italiæ dominiis, ac maior et potior pars principum ex
Transalpino regno.'--Quoted by Mur. _Antiq._ Diss. iii. And see many
other authorities to the same effect, collected by Pfeffinger,
_Vitriarius illustratus_.
[269] Alciatus, _De Formula Romani Imperii_. He adds that the Gauls
and Italians were incensed at the preference shewn to Germany. So too
Radulfus de Columna.
[270] Quoted by Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu Sacri Imperii Romani_,
himself a violent advocate of Gregory's decree, though living as late
as the days of Ferdinand II. As late as A.D. 1648 we find Pope
Innocent X maintaining that the sacred number _Seven_ of the electors
was 'apostolica auctoritate olim præfinitus.' Bull _Zelo domus_ in
_Bullar. Rom._
[271] Sometimes we hear of a decree made by Pope Sergius IV and his
cardinals (of course equally fabulous with Otto's). So John Villani,
iv. 2.
[272] In 1152 we read, 'Id iuris Romani Imperii apex habere dicitur ut
non per sanguinis propaginem sed per principum electionem reges
creentur.'--Otto Fris. Gulielmus Brito, writing not much later, says
(quoted by Freher),--
'Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum
Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius illum
Eligat unanimis cleri populique voluntas.'
[273] Innocent III, during the contest between Philip and Otto IV,
speaks of 'principes ad quos principaliter spectat regis Romani
electio.'
[274] 'Rex Bohemiæ non eligit, quia non est Teutonicus,' says a writer
early in the fourteenth century.
[275] The names and offices of the seven are concisely given in these
lines, which appear in the treatise of Marsilius of Padua, _De Imperio
Romano_:--
'Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis,
Quilibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum;
Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis,
Marchio præpositus cameræ, pincerna Bohemus,
Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per sæcula summum.'
It is worth while to place beside this the first stanza of Schiller's
ballad, _Der Graf von Hapsburg_, in which the coronation feast of
Rudolf is described:--
'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht
Im alterthümlichen Saale,
Sass König Rudolphs heilige Macht
Beim festlichen Krönungsmahle.
Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins,
Es schenkte der Böhme des perlenden Weins,
Und alle die Wähler, die Sieben,
Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt,
Umstanden geschäftig den Herrscher der Welt,
Die Würde des Amtes zu üben.'
It is a poetical licence, however (as Schiller himself admits), to
bring the Bohemian there, for King Ottocar was far away at home,
mortified at his own rejection, and already meditating war.
[276] The electoral prince (Kurfürst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention
of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily
to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy
(Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the
above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system
has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866,
and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants,
whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to
the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of
Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer
to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the
historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to
associate with the Austrian house.]
[277] Goethe, whose imagination was wonderfully attracted by the
splendours of the old Empire, has given in the second part of _Faust_
a sort of fancy sketch of the origin of the great offices and the
territorial independence of the German princes. Two lines express
concisely the fiscal rights granted by the Emperor to the electors:--
'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll,
Berg-, Salz- und Münz-regal euch angehören soll.'
[278] This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.
CHAPTER XV.
THE EMPIRE AS AN INTERNATIONAL POWER.
[Sidenote: Theory of the Roman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.]
That the Roman Empire survived the seemingly mortal wound it had
received at the era of the Great Interregnum, and continued to put
forth pretensions which no one was likely to make good where the
Hohenstaufen had failed, has been attributed to its identification
with the German kingdom, in which some life was still left. But this
was far from being the only cause which saved it from extinction. It
had not ceased to be upheld in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
by the same singular theory which had in the ninth and tenth been
strong enough to re-establish it in the West. The character of that
theory was indeed somewhat changed, for if not positively less
religious, it was less exclusively so. In the days of Charles and
Otto, the Empire, in so far as it was anything more than a tradition
from times gone by, rested solely upon the belief that with the
visible Church there must be coextensive a single Christian state
under one head and governor. But now that the Emperor's headship had
been repudiated by the Pope, and his interference in matters of
religion denounced as a repetition of the sin of Uzziah; now that the
memory of mutual injuries had kindled an unquenchable hatred between
the champions of the ecclesiastical and those of the civil power, it
was natural that the latter, while they urged, fervently as ever, the
divine sanction given to the imperial office, should at the same time
be led to seek some further basis whereon to establish its claims.
What that basis was, and how they were guided to it, will best appear
when a word or two has been said on the nature of the change that had
passed on Europe in the course of the three preceding centuries, and
the progress of the human mind during the same period.
[Sidenote: Revival of learning and literature, A.D. 1100-1400.]
Such has been the accumulated wealth of literature, and so rapid the
advances of science among us since the close of the Middle Ages, that
it is not now possible by any effort fully to enter into the feelings
with which the relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in
them their only possession. It is indeed true that modern art and
literature and philosophy have been produced by the working of new
minds upon old materials: that in thought, as in nature, we see no new
creation. But with us the old has been transformed and overlaid by the
new till its origin is forgotten: to them ancient books were the only
standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, the only stimulus to
reflection. Hence it was that the most learned man was in those days
esteemed the greatest: hence the creative energy of an age was exactly
proportioned to its knowledge of and its reverence for the written
monuments of those that had gone before. For until they can look
forward, men must look back: till they should have reached the level
of the old civilization, the nations of mediæval Europe must continue
to live upon its memories. Over them, as over us, the common dream of
all mankind had power; but to them, as to the ancient world, that
golden age which seems now to glimmer on the horizon of the future was
shrouded in the clouds of the past. It is to the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries that we are accustomed to assign that new birth of
the human spirit--if it ought not rather to be called a renewal of its
strength and quickening of its sluggish life--with which the modern
time begins. And the date is well chosen, for it was then first that
the transcendently powerful influence of Greek literature began to
work upon the world. But it must not be forgotten that for a long time
previous there had been in progress a great revival of learning, and
still more of zeal for learning, which being caused by and directed
towards the literature and institutions of Rome, might fitly be called
the Roman Renaissance. The twelfth century saw this revival begin with
that passionate study of the legislation of Justinian, whose influence
on the doctrines of imperial prerogative has been noticed already. The
thirteenth witnessed the rapid spread of the scholastic philosophy, a
body of systems most alien, both in subject and manner, to anything
that had arisen among the ancients, yet one to whose development Greek
metaphysics and the theology of the Latin fathers had largely
contributed, and the spirit of whose reasonings was far more free than
the presumed orthodoxy of its conclusions suffered to appear. In the
fourteenth century there arose in Italy the first great masters of
painting and song; and the literature of the new languages, springing
into the fulness of life in the Divina Commedia, adorned not long
after by the names of Petrarch and Chaucer, assumed at once its place
as a great and ever-growing power in the affairs of men.
[Sidenote: Growing freedom of spirit.]
[Sidenote: Influence of thought upon the arrangements of society.]
Now, along with the literary revival, partly caused by, partly causing
it, there had been also a wonderful stirring and uprising in the mind
of Europe. The yoke of church authority still pressed heavily on the
souls of men; yet some had been found to shake it off, and many more
murmured in secret. The tendency was one which shewed itself in
various and sometimes apparently opposite directions. The revolt of
the Albigenses, the spread of the Cathari and other so-called
heretics, the excitement created by the writings of Wickliffe and
Huss, witnessed to the fearlessness wherewith it could assail the
dominant theology. It was present, however skilfully disguised, among
those scholastic doctors who busied themselves with proving by natural
reason the dogmas of the Church: for the power which can forge fetters
can also break them. It took a form more dangerous because of a more
direct application to facts, in the attacks, so often repeated from
Arnold of Brescia downwards, upon the wealth and corruptions of the
clergy, and above all of the papal court. For the agitation was not
merely speculative. There was beginning to be a direct and rational
interest in life, a power of applying thought to practical ends, which
had not been seen before. Man's life among his fellows was no longer a
mere wild beast struggle; man's soul no more, as it had been, the
victim of ungoverned passion, whether it was awed by supernatural
terrors or captivated by examples of surpassing holiness. Manners were
still rude, and governments unsettled; but society was learning to
organize itself upon fixed principles; to recognize, however faintly,
the value of order, industry, equality; to adapt means to ends, and
conceive of the common good as the proper end of its own existence. In
a word, Politics had begun to exist, and with them there had appeared
the first of a class of persons whom friends and enemies may both,
though with different meanings, call ideal politicians; men who,
however various have been the doctrines they have held, however
impracticable many of the plans they have advanced, have been
nevertheless alike in their devotion to the highest interests of
humanity, and have frequently been derided as theorists in their own
age to be honoured as the prophets and teachers of the next.
[Sidenote: Separation of the peoples of Europe into hostile kingdoms:
consequent need of an international power.]
Now it was towards the Roman Empire that the hopes and sympathies of
these political speculators as well as of the jurists and poets of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were constantly directed. The cause
may be gathered from the circumstances of the time. The most
remarkable event in the history of the last three hundred years had
been the formation of nationalities, each distinguished by a peculiar
language and character, and by steadily increasing differences of
habits and institutions. And as upon this national basis there had
been in most cases established strong monarchies, Europe was broken up
into disconnected bodies, and the cherished scheme of a united
Christian state appeared less likely than ever to be realized. Nor was
this all. Sometimes through race-hatred, more often by the jealousy
and ambition of their sovereigns, these countries were constantly
involved in war with one another, violating on a larger scale and with
more destructive results than in time past the peace of the religious
community; while each of them was at the same time torn within by
frequent insurrections, and desolated by long and bloody civil wars.
The new nationalities were too fully formed to allow the hope that by
their extinction a remedy might be applied to these evils. They had
grown up in spite of the Empire and the Church, and were not likely to
yield in their strength what they had won in their weakness. But it
still appeared possible to soften, if not to overcome, their
antagonism. What might not be looked for from the erection of a
presiding power common to all Europe, a power which, while it should
oversee the internal concerns of each country, not dethroning the
king, but treating him as an hereditary viceroy, should be more
especially charged to prevent strife between kingdoms, and to maintain
the public order of Europe by being not only the fountain of
international law, but also the judge in its causes and the enforcer
of its sentences?
[Sidenote: The Popes as international Judges.]
To such a position had the Popes aspired. They were indeed excellently
fitted for it by the respect which the sacredness of their office
commanded; by their control of the tremendous weapons of
excommunication and interdict; above all, by their exemption from
those narrowing influences of place, or blood, or personal interest,
which it would be their chiefest duty to resist in others. And there
had been pontiffs whose fearlessness and justice were worthy of their
exalted office, and whose interference was gratefully remembered by
those who found no other helpers. Nevertheless, judging the Papacy by
its conduct as a whole, it had been tried and found wanting. Even when
its throne stood firmest and its purposes were most pure, one motive
had always biassed its decisions--a partiality to the most submissive.
During the greater part of the fourteenth century it was at Avignon
the willing tool of France: in the pursuit of a temporal principality
it had mingled in and been contaminated by the unhallowed politics of
Italy; its supreme council, the college of cardinals, was distracted
by the intrigues of two bitterly hostile factions. And while the power
of the Popes had declined steadily, though silently, since the days of
Boniface the Eighth, the insolence of the great prelates and the vices
of the inferior clergy had provoked throughout Western Christendom a
reaction against the pretensions of all sacerdotal authority. As there
is no theory at first sight more attractive than that which entrusts
all government to a supreme spiritual power, which, knowing what is
best for man, shall lead him to his true good by appealing to the
highest principles of his nature, so there is no disappointment more
bitter than that of those who find that the holiest office may be
polluted by the lusts and passions of its holder; that craft and
hypocrisy lead while fanaticism follows; that here too, as in so much
else, the corruption of the best is worst. Some such disappointment
there was in Europe now, and with it a certain disposition to look
with favour on the secular power: a wish to escape from the unhealthy
atmosphere of clerical despotism to the rule of positive law, harsher,
it might be, yet surely less corrupting. Espousing the cause of the
Roman Empire as the chief opponent of priestly claims, this tendency
found it, with shrunken territory and diminished resources, fitter in
some respects for the office of an international judge and mediator
than it had been as a great national power. For though far less widely
active, it was losing that local character which was fast gathering
round the Papacy. With feudal rights no longer enforcible, and
removed, except in his patrimonial lands, from direct contact with the
subject, the Emperor was not, as heretofore, conspicuously a German
and a feudal king, and occupied an ideal position far less marred by
the incongruous accidents of birth and training, of national and
dynastic interests.
[Sidenote: Duties attributed to the Empire by the developed theory.]
[Sidenote: Divine right of the Emperor.]
To that position three cardinal duties were attached. He who held it
must typify spiritual unity, must preserve peace, must be a fountain
of that by which alone among imperfect men peace is preserved and
restored, law and justice. The first of these three objects was sought
not only on religious grounds, but also from that longing for a wider
brotherhood of humanity towards which, ever since the barrier between
Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, was broken down, the aspirations
of the higher minds of the world have been constantly directed. Placed
in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes into one
body, reminding them of their common faith, their common blood, their
common interest in each other's welfare. And he was therefore above
all things, professing indeed to be upon earth the representative of
the Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and to redress the
injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon each other; to punish
offenders against the public order of Christendom; to maintain through
the world, looking down as from a serene height upon the schemes and
quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without which neither
arts nor letters, nor the gentler virtues of life, can rise and
flourish. The mediæval Empire was in its essence what the modern
despotisms that mimic it profess themselves: the Empire was
peace[279]: the oldest and noblest title of its head was 'Imperator
pacificus[280].' And that he might be the peacemaker, he must be the
expounder of justice and the author of its concrete embodiment,
positive law; chief legislator and supreme judge of appeal, like his
predecessor the compiler of the Corpus Iuris, the one and only source
of all legitimate authority. In this sense, as governor and
administrator, not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists, Lord
of the world; not that its soil belongs to him in the same sense in
which the soil of France or England belongs to their respective kings:
he is the steward of Him who has received the heathen for his
possession and the uttermost parts of the earth for his inheritance.
It is, therefore, by him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired
not by force but by legitimate devolution from those whom God himself
had set up, is visibly expressed upon earth. To find an external and
positive basis for that idea is a problem which it has at all times
been more easy to evade than to solve, and one peculiarly distressing
to those who could neither explain the phenomena of society by
reducing it to its original principles, nor inquire historically how
its existing arrangements had grown up. Hence the attempt to represent
human government as an emanation from divine: a view from which all
the similar but far less logically consistent doctrines of divine
right which have prevailed in later times are borrowed. As has been
said already, there is not a trace of the notion that the Emperor
reigns by an hereditary right of his own or by the will of the people,
for such a theory would have seemed to the men of the middle ages an
absurd and wicked perversion of the true order. Nor do his powers come
to him from those who choose him, but from God, who uses the electoral
princes as mere instruments of nomination. Having such an origin, his
rights exist irrespective of their actual exercise, and no voluntary
abandonment, not even an express grant, can impair them. Boniface the
Eighth[281] reminds the king of France, and imperialist lawyers till
the seventeenth century repeated the claim, that he, like other
princes, is of right and must ever remain subject to the Roman
Emperor. And the sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the
Emperor in language, and yield to him a precedence, which admitted the
inferiority of their own position[282].
There was in this theory nothing that was absurd, though much that was
impracticable. The ideas on which it rested are still unapproached in
grandeur and simplicity, still as far in advance of the average
thought of Europe, and as unlikely to find men or nations fit to apply
them, as when they were promulgated five hundred years ago. The
practical evil which the establishment of such a universal monarchy
was intended to meet, that of wars and hardly less ruinous
preparations for war between the states of Europe, remains what it was
then. The remedy which mediæval theory proposed has been in some
measure applied by the construction and reception of international
law; the greater difficulty of erecting a tribunal to arbitrate and
decide, with the power of enforcing its decisions, is as far from a
solution as ever.
[Sidenote: Roman Empire why an international power.]
It is easy to see how it was to the Roman Emperor, and to him only,
that the duties and privileges above mentioned could be attributed.
Being Roman, he was of no nation, and therefore fittest to judge
between contending states, and appease the animosities of race. His
was the imperial tongue of Rome, not only the vehicle of religion and
law, but also, since no other was understood everywhere in Europe, the
necessary medium of diplomatic intercourse. As there was no Church but
the Holy Roman Church, and he its temporal head, it was by him that
the communion of the saints in its outward form, its secular side, was
represented, and to his keeping that the sanctity of peace must be
entrusted. As direct heir of those who from Julius to Justinian had
shaped the existing law of Europe[283], he was, so to speak, legality
personified[284]; the only sovereign on earth who, being possessed of
power by an unimpeachable title, could by his grant confer upon others
rights equally valid. And as he claimed to perpetuate the greatest
political system the world had known, a system which still moves the
wonder of those who see before their eyes empires as much wider than
the Roman as they are less symmetrical, and whose vast and complex
machinery far surpassed anything the fourteenth century possessed or
could hope to establish, it was not strange that he and his government
(assuming them to be what they were entitled to be) should be taken as
the ideal of a perfect monarch and a perfect state.
[Sidenote: Illustrations.]
[Sidenote: Right of creating Kings.]
Of the many applications and illustrations of these doctrines which
mediæval documents furnish, it will suffice to adduce two or three. No
imperial privilege was prized more highly than the power of creating
kings, for there was none which raised the Emperor so much above them.
In this, as in other international concerns, the Pope soon began to
claim a jurisdiction, at first concurrent, then separate and
independent. But the older and more reasonable view assigned it, as
flowing from the possession of supreme secular authority, to the
Emperor; and it was from him that the rulers of Burgundy, Bohemia,
Hungary, perhaps Poland and Denmark, received the regal title[285].
The prerogative was his in the same manner in which that of conferring
titles is still held to belong to the sovereign in every modern
kingdom. And so when Charles the Bold, last duke of French Burgundy,
proposed to consolidate his wide dominions into a kingdom, it was from
Frederick III that he sought permission to do so. The Emperor,
however, was greedy and suspicious, the Duke uncompliant; and when
Frederick found that terms could not be arranged between them, he
stole away suddenly, and left Charles to carry back, with
ill-concealed mortification, the crown and sceptre which he had
brought ready-made to the place of interview.
[Sidenote: Chivalry.]
In the same manner, as representing what was common to and valid
throughout all Europe, nobility, and more particularly knighthood,
centred in the Empire. The great Orders of Chivalry were international
institutions, whose members, having consecrated themselves a military
priesthood, had no longer any country of their own, and could
therefore be subject to no one save the Emperor and the Pope. For
knighthood was constructed on the analogy of priesthood, and knights
were conceived of as being to the world in its secular aspect exactly
what priests, and more especially the monastic orders, were to it in
its religious aspect: to the one body was given the sword of the
flesh, to the other the sword of the spirit; each was universal, each
had its autocratic head[286]. Singularly, too, were these notions
brought into harmony with the feudal polity. Cæsar was lord paramount
of the world: its countries great fiefs whose kings were his tenants
in chief, the suitors of his court, owing to him homage, fealty, and
military service against the infidel.
[Sidenote: Persons eligible as Emperors.]
One illustration more of the way in which the empire was held to be
something of and for all mankind, cannot be omitted. Although from the
practical union of the imperial with the German throne none but
Germans were chosen to fill it[287], it remained in point of law
absolutely free from all restrictions of country or birth. In an age
of the most intense aristocratic exclusiveness, the highest office in
the world was the only secular one open to all Christians. The old
writers, after debating at length the qualifications that are or may
be desirable in an Emperor, and relating how in pagan times Gauls and
Spaniards, Moors and Pannonians, were thought worthy of the purple,
decide that two things, and no more, are required of the candidate for
Empire: he must be free-born, and he must be orthodox[288].
[Sidenote: The Empire and the new learning.]
[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Empire's rights and functions never
carried out in fact.]
It is not without a certain surprise that we see those who were
engaged in the study of ancient letters, or felt indirectly their
stimulus, embrace so fervently the cause of the Roman Empire. Still
more difficult is it to estimate the respective influence exerted by
each of the three revivals which it has been attempted to distinguish.
The spirit of the ancient world by which the men who led these
movements fancied themselves animated, was in truth a pagan, or at
least a strongly secular spirit, in many respects inconsistent with
the associations which had now gathered round the imperial office. And
this hostility did not fail to shew itself when at the beginning of
the sixteenth century, in the fulness of the Renaissance, a direct and
for the time irresistible sway was exercised by the art and literature
of Greece, when the mythology of Euripides and Ovid supplanted that
which had fired the imagination of Dante and peopled the visions of
St. Francis; when men forsook the image of the saint in the cathedral
for the statue of the nymph in the garden; when the uncouth jargon of
scholastic theology was equally distasteful to the scholars who formed
their style upon Cicero and the philosophers who drew their
inspiration from Plato. That meanwhile the admirers of antiquity did
ally themselves with the defenders of the Empire, was due partly
indeed to the false notions that were entertained regarding the early
Cæsars, yet still more to the common hostility of both sects to the
Papacy. It was as successor of old Rome, and by virtue of her
traditions, that the Holy See had established so wide a dominion; yet
no sooner did Arnold of Brescia and his republicans arise, claiming
liberty in the name of the ancient constitution of the republic, than
they found in the Popes their bitterest foes, and turned for help to
the secular monarch against the clergy. With similar aversion did the
Romish court view the revived study of the ancient jurisprudence, so
soon as it became, in the hands of the school of Bologna and
afterwards of the jurists of France, a power able to assert its
independence and resist ecclesiastical pretensions. In the ninth
century, Pope Nicholas the First had himself judged in the famous case
of Teutberga, wife of Lothar, according to the civil law: in the
thirteenth, his successors[289] forbade its study, and the canonists
strove to expel it from Europe[290]. And as the current of educated
opinion among the laity was beginning, however imperceptibly at first,
to set against sacerdotal tyranny, it followed that the Empire would
find sympathy in any effort it could make to regain its lost position.
Thus the Emperors became, or might have become had they seen the
greatness of the opportunity and been strong enough to improve it, the
exponents and guides of the political movement, the pioneers, in part
at least, of the Reformation. But the revival came too late to arrest,
if not to adorn, the decline of their office. The growth of a national
sentiment in the several countries of Europe, which had already gone
too far to be arrested, and was urged on by forces far stronger than
the theories of Catholic unity which opposed it, imprinted on the
resistance to papal usurpation, and even on the instincts of political
freedom, that form of narrowly local patriotism which they still
retain. It can hardly be said that upon any occasion, except the
gathering of the council of Constance by Sigismund, did the Emperor
appear filling a truly international place. For the most part he
exerted in the politics of Europe no influence greater than that of
other princes. In actual resources he stood below the kings of France
and England, far below his vassals the Visconti of Milan[291]. Yet
this helplessness, such was men's faith or their timidity, and such
their unwillingness to make prejudice bend to facts, did not prevent
his dignity from being extolled in the most sonorous language by
writers whose imaginations were enthralled by the halo of traditional
glory which surrounded it.
[Sidenote: Attitude of the men of letters.]
We are thus brought back to ask, What was the connection between
imperialism and the literary revival?
[Sidenote: Petrarch.]
To moderns who think of the Roman Empire as the heathen persecuting
power, it is strange to find it depicted as the model of a Christian
commonwealth. It is stranger still that the study of antiquity should
have made men advocates of arbitrary power. Democratic Athens,
oligarchic Rome, suggest to us Pericles and Brutus: the moderns who
have striven to catch their spirit have been men like Algernon Sidney,
and Vergniaud, and Shelley. The explanation is the same in both
cases[292]. The ancient world was known to the earlier middle ages by
tradition, freshest for what was latest, and by the authors of the
Empire. Both presented to them the picture of a mighty despotism and a
civilization brilliant far beyond their own. Writings of the fourth
and fifth centuries, unfamiliar to us, were to them authorities as
high as Tacitus or Livy; yet Virgil and Horace too had sung the
praises of the first and wisest of the Emperors. To the enthusiasts of
poetry and law, Rome meant universal monarchy[293]; to those of
religion, her name called up the undimmed radiance of the Church under
Sylvester and Constantine. Petrarch, the apostle of the dawning
Renaissance, is excited by the least attempt to revive even the shadow
of imperial greatness: as he had hailed Rienzi, he welcomes Charles IV
into Italy, and execrates his departure. The following passage is
taken from his letter to the Roman people asking them to receive back
Rienzi:--'When was there ever such peace, such tranquillity, such
justice, such honour paid to virtue, such rewards distributed to the
good and punishments to the bad, when was ever the state so wisely
guided, as in the time when the world had obtained one head, and that
head Rome; the very time wherein God deigned to be born of a virgin
and dwell upon earth. To every single body there has been given a
head; the whole world therefore also, which is called by the poet a
great body, ought to be content with one temporal head. For every
two-headed animal is monstrous; how much more horrible and hideous a
portent must be a creature with a thousand different heads, biting and
fighting against one another! If, however, it is necessary that there
be more heads than one, it is nevertheless evident that there ought to
be one to restrain all and preside over all, that so the peace of the
whole body may abide unshaken. Assuredly both in heaven and in earth
the sovereignty of one has always been best.'
[Sidenote: Dante.]
His passion for the heroism of Roman conquest and the ordered peace to
which it brought the world, is the centre of Dante's political hopes:
he is no more an exiled Ghibeline, but a patriot whose fervid
imagination sees a nation arise regenerate at the touch of its
rightful lord. Italy, the spoil of so many Teutonic conquerors, is the
garden of the Empire which Henry is to redeem: Rome the mourning
widow, whom Albert is denounced for neglecting[294]. Passing through
purgatory, the poet sees Rudolf of Hapsburg seated gloomily apart,
mourning his sin in that he left unhealed the wounds of Italy[295]. In
the deepest pit of hell's ninth circle lies Lucifer, huge,
three-headed; in each mouth a sinner whom he crunches between his
teeth, in one mouth Iscariot the traitor to Christ, in the others the
two traitors to the first Emperor of Rome, Brutus and Cassius[296]. To
multiply illustrations from other parts of the poem would be an
endless task; for the idea is ever present in Dante's mind, and
displays itself in a hundred unexpected forms. Virgil himself is
selected to be the guide of the pilgrim through hell and purgatory,
not so much as being the great poet of antiquity, as because he 'was
born under Julius and lived beneath the good Augustus;' because he was
divinely charged to sing of the Empire's earliest and brightest
glories. Strange, that the shame of one age should be the glory of
another. For Virgil's melancholy panegyrics upon the destroyer of the
republic are no more like Dante's appeals to the coming saviour of
Italy than is Cæsar Octavianus to Henry count of Luxemburg.
[Sidenote: Attitude of the Jurists.]
The visionary zeal of the man of letters was seconded by the more
sober devotion of the lawyer. Conqueror, theologian, and jurist,
Justinian is a hero greater than either Julius or Constantine, for his
enduring work bears him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's
creed[297]: the phrases 'legibus solutus,' 'lex regia,' whatever else
tended in the same direction, were taken to express the prerogative of
him whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name
of 'Kaiser,' designated the legitimate successor of the compiler of
the Corpus Juris. Since it was upon that legitimacy that his claim to
be the fountain of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and
observe every custom and precedent by which old Rome seemed to be
connected with her representative.
[Sidenote: Imitations of old Rome.]
Of the many instances that might be collected, it would be tedious to
enumerate more than a few. The offices of the imperial household,
instituted by Constantine the Great, were attached to the noblest
families of Germany. The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation
at Rome, were lodged in the chambers called those of Augustus and
Livia[298]; a bare sword was borne before them by the prætorian
prefect; their processions were adorned by the standards, eagles,
wolves and dragons, which had figured in the train of Hadrian or
Theodosius[299]. The constant title of the Emperor himself, according
to the style introduced by Probus, was 'semper Augustus,' or
'perpetuus Augustus,' which erring etymology translated 'at all times
increaser of the Empire[300].' Edicts issued by a Franconian or
Swabian sovereign were inserted as Novels[301] in the Corpus Juris, in
the latest editions of which custom still allows them a place. The
_pontificatus maximus_ of his pagan predecessors was supposed to be
preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon of St. Peter's
at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen[302]. Sometimes we even find him
talking of his consulship[303]. Annalists invariably number the place
of each sovereign from Augustus downwards[304]. The notion of an
uninterrupted succession, which moves the stranger's wondering smile
as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden Hall of Augsburg the
portraits of the Cæsars, laurelled, helmeted, and periwigged, from
Julius the conqueror of Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was
to those generations not an article of faith only because its denial
was inconceivable.
[Sidenote: Reverence for ancient forms and phrases in the Middle
Ages.]
[Sidenote: Absence of the idea of change or progress.]
And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might call it, which
gathers round the Empire, is but one instance, though the most
striking, of that eager wish to cling to the old forms, use the old
phrases, and preserve the old institutions to which the annals of
mediæval Europe bear witness. It appears even in trivial expressions,
as when a monkish chronicler says of evil bishops deposed, _Tribu moti
sunt_, or talks of the 'senate and people of the Franks,' when he
means a council of chiefs surrounded by a crowd of half-naked
warriors. So throughout Europe charters and edicts were drawn up on
Roman precedents; the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a
different source, represented the old _collegia_; villenage was the
offspring of the system of _coloni_ under the later Empire. Even in
remote Britain, the Teutonic invaders used Roman ensigns, and stamped
their coins with Roman devices; called themselves 'Basileis' and
'Augusti[305].' Especially did the cities perpetuate Rome through her
most lasting boon to the conquered, municipal self-government; those
of later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style others
who, like Nismes and Cologne, Zürich and Augsburg, could trace back
their institutions to the _coloniæ_ and _municipia_ of the first
centuries. On the walls and gates of hoary Nürnberg[306] the traveller
still sees emblazoned the imperial eagle, with the words 'Senatus
populusque Norimbergensis,' and is borne in thought from the quiet
provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the middle ages:
thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her greater prototype. For, in
truth, through all that period which we call the Dark and Middle Ages,
men's minds were possessed by the belief that all things continued as
they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be recrossed lay
between them and that ancient world to which they had not ceased to
look back. We who are centuries removed can see that there had passed
a great and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature,
and politics, and society itself: a change whose best illustration is
to be found in the process whereby there arose out of the primitive
basilica the Romanesque cathedral, and from it in turn the endless
varieties of Gothic. But so gradual was the change that each
generation felt it passing over them no more than a man feels that
perpetual transformation by which his body is renewed from year to
year; while the few who had learning enough to study antiquity through
its contemporary records, were prevented by the utter want of
criticism and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing
how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and those whom they
admired. There is nothing more modern than the critical spirit which
dwells upon the difference between the minds of men in one age and in
another; which endeavours to make each age its own interpreter, and
judge what it did or produced by a relative standard. Such a spirit
was, before the last century or two, wholly foreign to art as well as
to metaphysics. The converse and the parallel of the fashion of
calling mediæval offices by Roman names, and supposing them therefore
the same, is to be found in those old German pictures of the siege of
Carthage or the battle between Porus and Alexander, where in the
foreground two armies of knights, mailed and mounted, are charging
each other like Crusaders, lance, in rest, while behind, through the
smoke of cannon, loom out the Gothic spires and towers of the
beleaguered city. And thus, when we remember that the notion of
progress and development, and of change as the necessary condition
thereof, was unwelcome or unknown in mediæval times, we may better
understand, though we do not cease to wonder, how men, never doubting
that the political system of antiquity had descended to them, modified
indeed, yet in substance the same, should have believed that the
Frank, the Saxon, and the Swabian ruled all Europe by a right which
seems to us not less fantastic than that fabled charter whereby
Alexander the Great[307] bequeathed his empire to the Slavic race for
the love of Roxolana.
It is a part of that perpetual contradiction of which the history of
the Middle Ages is full, that this belief had hardly any influence on
practical politics. The more abjectly helpless the Emperor becomes, so
much the more sonorous is the language in which the dignity of his
crown is described. His power, we are told, is eternal, the provinces
having resumed their allegiance after the barbarian irruptions[308];
it is incapable of diminution or injury: exemptions and grants by him,
so far as they tend to limit his own prerogative, are invalid[309]:
all Christendom is still of right subject to him, though it may
contumaciously refuse obedience[310]. The sovereigns of Europe are
solemnly warned that they are resisting the power ordained of
God[311]. No laws can bind the Emperor, though he may choose to live
according to them: no court can judge him, though he may condescend to
be sued in his own: none may presume to arraign the conduct or
question the motives of him who is answerable only to God[312]. So
writes Æneas Sylvius, while Frederick the Third, chased from his
capital by the Hungarians, is wandering from convent to convent, an
imperial beggar; while the princes, whom his subserviency to the Pope
has driven into rebellion, are offering the imperial crown to
Podiebrad the Bohemian king.
[Sidenote: Henry VII, A.D. 1308-1313.]
[Sidenote: Death of Henry VII.]
But the career of Henry the Seventh in Italy is the most remarkable
illustration of the Emperor's position: and imperialist doctrines are
set forth most strikingly in the treatise which the greatest spirit of
the age wrote to herald the advent of that hero, the _De Monarchia_ of
Dante[313]. Rudolf, Adolf of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg, none of them
crossed the Alps or attempted to aid the Italian Ghibelines who
battled away in the name of their throne. Concerned only to restore
order and aggrandize his house, and thinking apparently that nothing
more was to be made of the imperial crown, Rudolf was content never to
receive it, and purchased the Pope's goodwill by surrendering his
jurisdiction in the capital, and his claims over the bequest of the
Countess Matilda. Henry the Luxemburger ventured on a bolder course;
urged perhaps only by his lofty and chivalrous spirit, perhaps in
despair at effecting anything with his slender resources against the
princes of Germany. Crossing from his Burgundian dominions with a
scanty following of knights, and descending from the Cenis upon Turin,
he found his prerogative higher in men's belief after sixty years of
neglect than it had stood under the last Hohenstaufen. The cities of
Lombardy opened their gates; Milan decreed a vast subsidy; Guelf and
Ghibeline exiles alike were restored, and imperial vicars appointed
everywhere: supported by the Avignonese pontiff, who dreaded the
restless ambition of his French neighbour, king Philip IV, Henry had
the interdict of the Church as well as the ban of the Empire at his
command. But the illusion of success vanished as soon as men,
recovering from their first impression, began to be again governed by
their ordinary passions and interests, and not by an imaginative
reverence for the glories of the past. Tumults and revolts broke out
in Lombardy; at Rome the king of Naples held St. Peter's, and the
coronation must take place in St. John Lateran, on the southern bank
of the Tiber. The hostility of the Guelfic league, headed by the
Florentines, Guelfs even against the Pope, obliged Henry to depart
from his impartial and republican policy, and to purchase the aid of
the Ghibeline chiefs by granting them the government of cities. With
few troops, and encompassed by enemies, the heroic Emperor sustained
an unequal struggle for a year longer, till, in A.D. 1313, he sank
beneath the fevers of the deadly Tuscan summer. His German followers
believed, nor has history wholly rejected the tale, that poison was
given him by a Dominican monk, in sacramental wine.
[Sidenote: Later Emperors in Italy.]
Others after him descended from the Alps, but they came, like Lewis
the Fourth, Rupert, Sigismund, at the behest of a faction, which found
them useful tools for a time, then flung them away in scorn; or like
Charles the Fourth and Frederick the Third, as the humble minions of a
French or Italian priest. With Henry the Seventh ends the history of
the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a
prophecy. A sketch of its argument will convey a notion of the
feelings with which the noblest Ghibelines fought, as well as of the
spirit in which the Middle Age was accustomed to handle such subjects.
[Sidenote: Dante's feelings and theories.]
Weary of the endless strife of princes and cities, of the factions
within every city against each other, seeing municipal freedom, the
only mitigation of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic
tyrants, Dante raises a passionate cry for some power to still the
tempest, not to quench liberty or supersede local self-government, but
to correct and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless
Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic: he is
alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic metaphysician:
the poet of the Divina Commedia is betrayed only by the compressed
energy of diction, by his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a
glowing metaphor.
[Sidenote: The 'De Monarchia.']
Monarchy is first proved to be the true and rightful form of
government. Men's objects are best attained during universal peace:
this is possible only under a monarch. And as he is the image of the
Divine unity, so man is through him made one, and brought most near to
God. There must, in every system of forces, be a 'primum mobile;' to
be perfect, every organization must have a centre, into which all is
gathered, by which all is controlled[314]. Justice is best secured by
a supreme arbiter of disputes, himself unsolicited by ambition, since
his dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best and
happiest when he is most free; to be free is to exist for one's own
sake. To this grandest end does the monarch and he alone guide us;
other forms of government are perverted[315], and exist for the
benefit of some class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that
very end appointed[316].
Abstract arguments are then confirmed from history. Since the world
began there has been but one period of perfect peace, and but one of
perfect monarchy, that, namely, which existed at our Lord's birth,
under the sceptre of Augustus; since then the heathen have raged, and
the kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves against
their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince[317]. The universal
dominion, the need for which has been thus established, is then proved
to belong to the Romans. Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt
Rome shewn through her whole history[318]. Her virtues deserved
honour: Virgil is quoted to prove those of Æneas, who by descent and
marriage was the heir of three continents: of Asia through Assaracus
and Creusa; of Africa by Electra (mother of Dardanus and daughter of
Atlas) and Dido; of Europe by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favour was
approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous
deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the hailstorm after
Cannæ. Justice is also the advantage of the state: that advantage was
the constant object of the virtuous Cincinnatus, and the other heroes
of the republic. They conquered the world for its own good, and
therefore justly, as Cicero attests[319]; so that their sway was not
so much 'imperium' as 'patrocinium orbis terrarum.' Nature herself,
the fountain of all right, had, by their geographical position and by
the gift of a genius so vigorous, marked them out for universal
dominion:--
'Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra,
Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus;
Orabunt causas melius, cœlique meatus
Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'
Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ's birth, and death under
Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian doctrine requires
that the procurator should have been a lawful judge[320], which he was
not unless Tiberius was a lawful Emperor.
The relations of the imperial and papal power are then examined, and
the passages of Scripture (tradition being rejected), to which the
advocates of the Papacy appeal, are elaborately explained away. The
argument from the sun and moon[321] does not hold, since both lights
existed before man's creation, and at a time when, as still sinless,
he needed no controlling powers. Else _accidentia_ would have preceded
_propria_ in creation. The moon, too, does not receive her being nor
all her light from the sun, but so much only as makes her more
effective. So there is no reason why the temporal should not be aided
in a corresponding measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult
text disposed of, others fall more easily; Levi and Judah, Samuel and
Saul, the incense and gold offered by the Magi[322]; the two swords,
the power of binding and loosing given to Peter. Constantine's
donation was illegal: no single Emperor nor Pope can disturb the
everlasting foundations of their respective thrones: the one had no
right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a gift. Leo the Third
gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully: '_usurpatio iuris non facit
ius_.' It is alleged that all things of one kind are reducible to one
individual, and so all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in
kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to God, on whom
the Empire immediately depends; for it existed before Peter's see, and
was recognized by Paul when he appealed to Cæsar. The temporal power
of the Papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor divine
ordinance, nor universal consent: nay, it is against its own Form and
Essence, the life of Christ, who said, 'My kingdom is not of this
world.'
Man's nature is twofold, corruptible and incorruptible: he has
therefore two ends, active virtue on earth, and the enjoyment of the
sight of God hereafter; the one to be attained by practice conformed
to the precepts of philosophy, the other by the theological virtues.
Hence two guides are needed, the pontiff and the Emperor, the latter
of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in accordance with the
teachings of philosophy to temporal blessedness, must preserve
universal peace in the world. Thus are the two powers equally ordained
of God, and the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the
secular world, is in some things dependent on the pontiff, since
earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. 'Let Cæsar, therefore,
shew towards Peter the reverence wherewith a firstborn son honours his
father, that, being illumined by the light of his paternal favour, he
may the more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the rule
of which he has been appointed by Him alone who is of all things, both
spiritual and temporal, the King and Governor.' So ends the treatise.
Dante's arguments are not stranger than his omissions. No suspicion is
breathed against Constantine's donation; no proof is adduced, for no
doubt is felt, that the Empire of Henry the Seventh is the legitimate
continuation of that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian.
Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian foes, the elected
of those who had neither part nor share in Italy and her capital.
FOOTNOTES:
[279] See esp. Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_,
and the passages by him quoted.
[280] The archbishop of Mentz addresses Conrad II on his election
thus: 'Deus quum a te multa requirat tum hoc potissimum desiderat ut
facias iudicium et iustitiam et pacem patriæ quæ respicit ad te, ut
sis defensor ecclesiarum et clericorum, tutor viduarum et
orphanorum.'--Wippo, Vita Chuonradi, c. 3, _ap._ Pertz. So Pope Urban
IV writes to Richard: 'Ut consternatis Imperii Romani inimicis, in
pacis pulchritudine sedeat populus Christianus et requie opulenta
quiescat.' Compare also the 'Edictum de crimine læsæ maiestatis'
issued by Henry VII in Italy: 'Ad reprimenda multorum facinora qui
ruptis totius debitæ fidelitatis habenis adversus Romanum imperium, in
cuius tranquillitate totius orbis regularitas requiescit, hostili
animo armati conentur nedum humana, verum etiam divina præcepta,
quibus iubetur quod omnis anima Romanorum principi sit subiecta,
scelestissimis facinoribus et rebellionibus demoliri,' &c.--Pertz, _M.
G. H._, legg. ii. p. 544.
See also a curious passage in the Life of St. Adalbert, describing the
beginning of the reign at Rome of the Emperor Otto III, and his cousin
and nominee Pope Gregory V: 'Lætantur cum primatibus minores
civitatis: cum afflicto paupere exultant agmina viduarum, quia novus
imperator dat iura populis; dat iura novus papa.'
[281] 'Imperator est monarcha omnium regum et principum terrenorum ...
nec insurgat superbia Gallicorum quæ dicat quod non recognoscit
superiorem, mentiuntur, quia de iure sunt et esse debent sub rege
Romanorum et Imperatore.'--Speech of Boniface VIII. It is curious to
compare with this the words addressed nearly five centuries earlier by
Pope John VIII to Lewis, king of Bavaria: 'Si sumpseritis Romanum
imperium, omnia regna vobis subiecta existent.'
[282] So Alfonso, king of Naples, writes to Frederick III: 'Nos reges
omnes debemus reverentiam Imperatori, tanquam summo regi, qui est
Caput et Dux regum.'--Quoted by Pfeffinger, _Vitriarius illustratus_,
i. 379. And Francis I (of France), speaking of a proposed combined
expedition against the Turks, says, 'Cæsari nihilominus principem ea
in expeditione locum non gravarer ex officio cedere.'--For a long time
no European sovereign save the Emperor ventured to use the title of
'Majesty.' The imperial chancery conceded it in 1633 to the kings of
England and Sweden; in 1641 to the king of France.--Zedler, _Universal
Lexicon_, _s. v._ Majestät.
[283] For with the progress of society and the growth of commerce the
old feudal customs were through the greater part of Western Europe,
and especially in Germany, either giving way to or being remodelled
and supplemented by the civil law.
[284] 'Imperator est animata lex in terris.'--Quoted by Von Raumer, v.
81.
[285] Thus we are told of the Emperor Charles the Bald, when he
confirmed the election of Boso, king of Burgundy and Provence, 'Dedit
Bosoni Provinciam (_sc._ Carolus Calvus), et corona in vertice capitis
imposita, eum regem appellari iussit, ut more priscorum imperatorum
regibus videretur dominari.'--_Regin. Chron._ Frederick II made his
son Enzio (that famous Enzio whose romantic history every one who has
seen Bologna will remember) king of Sardinia, and also erected the
duchy of Austria into a kingdom, although for some reason the title
seems never to have been used; and Lewis IV gave to Humbert of
Dauphiné the title of King of Vienne, A.D. 1336.
[286] It is probably for this reason that the _Ordo Romanus_ directs
the Emperor and Empress to be crowned (in St. Peter's) at the altar of
St. Maurice, the patron saint of knighthood.
[287] See especially Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad Auream Bullam_;
and Augustinus Stenchus, _De Imperio Romano_; quoted by Marquard
Freher. It was keenly debated, while Charles V and Francis I (of
France) were rival candidates, whether any one but a German was
eligible. By birth Charles was either a Spaniard or a Fleming; but
this difficulty his partisans avoided by holding that he had been,
according to the civil law, _in potestate_ of Maximilian his
grandfather. However, to say nothing of the Guidos and Berengars of
earlier days, the examples of Richard and Alfonso are conclusive as to
the eligibility of others than Germans. Edward III of England was, as
has been said, actually elected; Henry VIII was a candidate. And
attempts were frequently made to elect the kings of France.
[288] The mediæval practice seems to have been that which still
prevails in the Roman Catholic Church--to presume the doctrinal
orthodoxy and external conformity of every citizen, whether lay or
clerical, until the contrary be proved. Of course when heresy was rife
it went hard with suspected men, unless they could either clear
themselves or submit to recant. But no one was required to pledge
himself beforehand, as a qualification for any office, to certain
doctrines. And thus, important as an Emperor's orthodoxy was, he does
not appear to have been subjected to any test, although the Pope
pretended to the right of catechizing him in the faith and rejecting
him if unsound. In the _Ordo Romanus_ we find a long series of
questions which the Pontiff was to administer, but it does not appear,
and is in the highest degree unlikely, that such a programme was ever
carried out.
The charge of heresy was one of the weapons used with most effect
against Frederick II.
[289] Honorius II in 1229 forbade it to be studied or taught in the
University of Paris. Innocent IV published some years later a still
more sweeping prohibition.
[290] See Von Savigny, _History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol.
iii. pp. 81, 341-347.
[291] Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a potentate incomparably
stronger than the Emperor Frederick III from whom he sought the regal
title.
[292] Cf. Sismondi, _Républiques Italiennes_, iv. chap. xxvii.
[293] See Dante, _Paradiso_, canto vi.
[294]
'Vieni a veder la tua Roma, che piange
Vedova, sola, e di e notte chiama:
"Cesare mio, perchè non m' accompagne?"'
_Purgatorio_, canto vi.
[295] _Purgatorio_, canto vii.
[296] _Inferno_, canto xxxiv.
[297] Not that the doctors of the civil law were necessarily political
partisans of the Emperors. Savigny says that there were on the
contrary more Guelfs than Ghibelines among the jurists of
Bologna.--_Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol. iii. p. 80.
[298] Cf. Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, vol. ii. (of Otto and
Adelheid). The _Ordo Romanus_ talks of a 'Camera Iuliæ' in the Lateran
palace, reserved for the Empress.
[299] See notes to _Chron. Casin._ in Muratori, _S. R. I._ iv. 515.
[300] Zu aller Zeiten Mehrer des Reichs.
[301] _Novellæ Constitutiones_.
[302] Marquard Freher. The question whether the seven electors vote as
_singuli_ or as a _collegium_, is solved by shewing that they have
stepped into the place of the senate and people of Rome, whose duty it
was to choose the Emperor, though (it is naïvely added) the soldiers
sometimes usurped it.--Peter de Andlo, _De Imperio Romano_.
[303] Thus Charles, in a capitulary added to a revised edition of the
Lombard law issued in A.D. 801, says, 'Anno consulatus nostri primo.'
So Otto III calls himself 'Consul Senatus populique Romani.'
[304] Francis II, the last Emperor, was one hundred and twentieth from
Augustus. Some chroniclers call Otto the Great Otto II, counting in
Salvius Otho, the successor of Galba.
[305] See p. 45 and note to p. 143.
[306] Nürnberg herself was not of Roman foundation. But this makes the
imitation all the more curious. The fashion even passed from the
cities to rural communities like some of the Swiss cantons. Thus we
find 'Senatus populusque Uronensis.'
[307] See Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. p. 379.
[308] Æneas Sylvius, _De Ortu et Authoritate Imperii Romani_.
[309] Thus some civilians held Constantine's Donation null; but the
canonists, we are told, were clear as to its legality.
[310] 'Et idem dico de istis aliis regibus et principibus, qui negant
se esse subditos regi Romanorum, ut rex Franciæ, Angliæ, et similes.
Si enim fatentur ipsum esse Dominum universalem, licet ab illo
universali domino se subtrahant ex privilegio vel ex præscriptione vel
consimili, non ergo desunt esse cives Romani, per ea quæ dicta sunt.
Et per hoc omnes gentes quæ obediunt S. matri ecclesiæ sunt de populo
Romano. Et forte si quis diceret dominum Imperatorem non esse dominum
et monarcham totius orbis, esset hæreticus, quia diceret contra
determinationem ecclesiæ et textum S. evangelii, dum dicit, "Exivit
edictum a Cæsare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis." Ita et
recognovit Christus Imperatorem ut dominum.'--Bartolus, _Commentary on
the Pandects_, xlviii. i. 24; _De Captivis et postliminio reversis_.
[311] Peter de Andlo, _multis locis_ (see esp. cap. viii.), and other
writings of the time. Cf. Dante's letter to Henry VII: 'Romanorum
potestas nec metis Italiæ nec tricornis Siciliæ margine coarctatur.
Nam etsi vim passa in angustum gubernacula sua contraxit undique,
tamen de inviolabili iure fluctus Amphitritis attingens vix ab inutili
unda Oceani se circumcingi dignatur. Scriptum est enim
"Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Cæsar,
Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris."'
So Fr. Zoannetus, in the sixteenth century, declares it to be a mortal
sin to resist the Empire, as the power ordained of God.
[312] Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II), _De Ortu et
Authoritate Imperii Romani_. Cf. Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad
Auream Bullam_.
[313] It has hitherto been the common opinion that the _De Monarchia_
was written in the view of Henry's expedition. But latterly weighty
reasons have been advanced for believing that its date must be placed
some years later.
[314] Suggesting the celestial hierarchies of Dionysius the
Areopagite.
[315] Quoting Aristotle's _Politics_.
[316] 'Non enim cives propter consules nec gens propter regem, sed e
converso consules propter cives, rex propter gentem.'
[317] 'Reges et principes in hoc unico concordantes, ut adversentur
Domino suo et uncto suo Romano Principi,' having quoted 'Quare
fremuerunt gentes.'
[318] Especially in the opportune death of Alexander the Great.
[319] Cic., _De Off._, ii. 'Ita ut illud patrocinium orbis terrarum
potius quam imperium poterat nominari.'
[320] 'Si Pilati imperium non de iure fuit, peccatum in Christo non
fuit adeo punitum.'
[321] There is a curious seal of the Emperor Otto IV (figured in J. M.
Heineccius, _De veteribus Germanorum atque aliarum nationum
sigillis_), on which the sun and moon are represented over the head of
the Emperor. Heineccius says he cannot explain it, but there seems to
be no reason why we should not take the device as typifying the accord
of the spiritual and temporal powers which was brought about at the
accession of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the favoured candidate of
Pope Innocent III.
The analogy between the lights of heaven and the princes of earth is
one which mediæval writers are very fond of. It seems to have
originated with Gregory VII.
[322] Typifying the spiritual and temporal powers. Dante meets this by
distinguishing the homage paid to Christ from that which his Vicar can
rightfully demand.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CITY OF ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
'It is related,' says Sozomen in the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical
History, 'that when Alaric was hastening against Rome, a holy monk of
Italy admonished him to spare the city, and not to make himself the
cause of such fearful ills. But Alaric answered, "It is not of my own
will that I do this; there is One who forces me on, and will not let
me rest, bidding me spoil Rome[323]."'
Towards the close of the tenth century the Bohemian Woitech, famous in
after legend as St. Adalbert, forsook his bishopric of Prague to
journey into Italy, and settled himself in the Roman monastery of
Sant' Alessio. After some few years passed there in religious
solitude, he was summoned back to resume the duties of his see, and
laboured for awhile among his half-savage countrymen. Soon, however,
the old longing came over him: he resought his cell upon the brow of
the Aventine, and there, wandering among the ancient shrines, and
taking on himself the menial offices of the convent, he abode happily
for a space. At length the reproaches of his metropolitan, the
archbishop of Mentz, and the express commands of Pope Gregory the
Fifth, drove him back over the Alps, and he set off in the train of
Otto the Third, lamenting, says his biographer, that he should no more
enjoy his beloved quiet in the mother of martyrs, the home of the
Apostles, golden Rome. A few months later he died a martyr among the
pagan Lithuanians of the Baltic[324].
Nearly four hundred years later, and nine hundred after the time of
Alaric, Francis Petrarch writes thus to his friend John Colonna:--
'Thinkest thou not that I long to see that city to which there has
never been any like nor ever shall be; which even an enemy called a
city of kings; of whose people it hath been written, "Great is the
valour of the Roman people, great and terrible their name;" concerning
whose unexampled glory and incomparable empire, which was, and is, and
is to be, divine prophets have sung; where are the tombs of the
apostles and martyrs and the bodies of so many thousands of the saints
of Christ[325]?'
It was the same irresistible impulse that drew the warrior, the monk,
and the scholar towards the mystical city which was to mediæval Europe
more than Delphi had been to the Greek or Mecca to the Islamite, the
Jerusalem of Christianity, the city which had once ruled the earth,
and now ruled the world of disembodied spirits[326]. For there was
then, as there is now, something in Rome to attract men of every
class. The devout pilgrim came to pray at the shrine of the Prince of
the Apostles, too happy if he could carry back to his monastery in the
forests of Saxony or by the bleak Atlantic shore the bone of some holy
martyr; the lover of learning and poetry dreamed of Virgil and Cicero
among the shattered columns of the Forum; the Germanic kings, in spite
of pestilence, treachery and seditions, came with their hosts to seek
in the ancient capital of the world the fountain of temporal dominion.
Nor has the spell yet wholly lost its power. To half the Christian
nations Rome is the metropolis of religion, to all the metropolis of
art. In her streets, and hers alone among the cities of the world, may
every form of human speech be heard: she is more glorious in her decay
and desolation than the stateliest seats of modern power.
But while men thought thus of Rome, what was Rome herself?
The modern traveller, after his first few days in Rome, when he has
looked out upon the Campagna from the summit of St. Peter's, paced the
chilly corridors of the Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of
the Pantheon, when he has passed in review the monuments of regal and
republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for some relics of the
twelve hundred years that lie between Constantine and Pope Julius the
Second. 'Where,' he asks, 'is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of
Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which dug the graves of so
many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked; whence came the
commands at which kings bowed? Where are the memorials of the
brightest age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne
and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the cathedrals of
Tuscany and the wave-washed palaces of Venice?'
To this question there is no answer. Rome, the mother of the arts, has
scarcely a building to commemorate those times, for to her they were
times of turmoil and misery, times in which the shame of the present
was embittered by recollections of a brighter past. Nevertheless a
minute scrutiny may still discover, hidden in dark corners or
disguised under an unbecoming modern dress, much that carries us back
to the mediæval town, and helps us to realize its social and political
condition. Therefore a brief notice of the state of Rome during the
Middle Ages, with especial reference to those monuments which the
visitor may still examine for himself, may not be without its use, and
is at any rate no unfitting pendant to an account of the institution
which drew from the city its name and its magnificent pretensions.
Moreover, as will appear more fully in the sequel, the history of the
Roman people is an instructive illustration of the influence of those
ideas upon which the Empire itself rested, as well in their weakness
as in their strength[327].
[Sidenote: Causes of the rapid decay of the city.]
It is not from her capture by Alaric, nor even from the more
destructive ravages of the Vandal Genseric, that the material and
social ruin of Rome must be dated, but rather from the repeated sieges
which she sustained in the war of Belisarius with the Ostrogoths. This
struggle however, long and exhausting as it was, would not have proved
so fatal had the previous condition of the city been sound and
healthy. Her wealth and population in the middle of the fifth century
were probably little inferior to what they had been in the most
prosperous days of the imperial government. But this wealth was
entirely gathered into the hands of a small and effeminate
aristocracy. The crowd that filled her streets was composed partly of
poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms and debarred from
political rights; partly of a far more numerous herd of slaves,
gathered from all parts of the world, and morally even lower than
their masters. There was no middle class, and no system of municipal
institutions, for although the senate and consuls with many of the
lesser magistracies continued to exist, they had for centuries enjoyed
no effective power, and were nowise fitted to lead and rule the
people. Hence it was that when the Gothic war and the subsequent
inroads of the Lombards had reduced the great families to beggary, the
framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced. In a state
rotten to the core there was no vital force left for reconstruction.
The old forms of political activity had been too long dead to be
recalled to life: the people wanted the moral force to produce new
ones, and all the authority that could be said to exist in the midst
of anarchy tended to centre itself in the chief of the new religious
society.
[Sidenote: Peculiarities in the position of Rome.]
So far Rome's condition was like that of the other great towns of
Italy and Gaul. But in two points her case differed from theirs, and
to these the difference of her after fortunes may be traced. Her
bishop had no temporal potentate to overshadow his dignity or check
his ambition, for the vicar of the Eastern court lived far away at
Ravenna, and seldom interfered except to ratify a papal election or
punish a more than commonly outrageous sedition. Her population
received an all but imperceptible infusion of that Teutonic blood and
those Teutonic customs by whose stern discipline the inhabitants of
northern Italy were in the end renovated. Everywhere the old
institutions had perished of decay: in Rome alone there was nothing
except the ecclesiastical system out of which new ones could arise.
Her condition was therefore the most pitiable in which a community can
find itself, one of struggle without purpose or progress. The citizens
were divided into three orders: the military class, including what was
left of the ancient aristocracy; the clergy, a host of priests, monks
and nuns, attached to the countless churches and convents; and the
people or _plebs_, as they are called, a poverty-stricken rabble
without trade, without industry, without any municipal organization to
bind them together. Of these two latter classes the Pope was the
natural leader, the first was divided into factions headed by some
three or four of the great families, whose quarrels kept the town in
incessant bloodshed. The internal history of Rome from the sixth to
the twelfth century is an obscure and tedious record of the contest of
these factions with each other, and of the aristocracy as a whole with
the slowly growing power of the Church.
[Sidenote: Her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries.]
The revolt of the Romans from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East,
followed as it was by the reception of the Franks as patricians and
emperors, is an event of the highest importance in the history of
Italy and of the popedom. In the domestic constitution of Rome it made
little change. With the instinct of a profound genius, Charles the
Great saw that Rome, though it might be ostensibly the capital, could
not be the real centre of his dominions. He continued to reside in
Germany, and did not even build a palace at Rome. For a time the awe
of his power, the presence of his _missus_ or lieutenant, and the
occasional visits of his successors Lothar and Lewis II to the city,
repressed her internal disorders. But after the death of the prince
last named, and still more after the dissolution of the Carolingian
Empire itself, Rome relapsed into a state of profligacy and barbarism
to which, even in that age, Europe supplied no parallel, a barbarism
which had inherited all the vices of civilization without any of its
virtues. The papal office in particular seems to have lost its
religious character, as it had certainly lost all claim to moral
purity. For more than a century the chief priest of Christendom was no
more than a tool of some ferocious faction among the nobles. Criminal
means had raised him to the throne; violence, sometimes going the
length of mutilation or murder, deprived him of it. The marvel is, a
marvel in which papal historians have not unnaturally discovered a
miracle, that after sinking so low, the Papacy should ever have risen
again. Its rescue and exaltation to the pinnacle of glory was
accomplished not by the Romans but by the efforts of the Transalpine
Church, aiding and prompting the Saxon and Franconian Emperors. Yet
even the religious reform did not abate intestine turmoil, and it was
not till the twelfth century that a new spirit began to work in
politics, which ennobled if it could not heal the sufferings of the
Roman people.
[Sidenote: Growth of a republican feeling: hostility to the Popes.]
[Sidenote: Arnold of Brescia.]
[Sidenote: Short-sighted policy of the Emperors.]
Ever since the time of Alberic their pride had revolted against the
haughty behaviour of the Teutonic emperors. From still earlier times
they had been jealous of sacerdotal authority, and now watched with
alarm the rapid extension of its influence. The events of the twelfth
century gave these feelings a definite direction. It was the time of
the struggle of the Investitures, in which Hildebrand and his
disciples had been striving to draw all the things of this world as
well as of the next into their grasp. It was the era of the revived
study of Roman law, by which alone the extravagant pretensions of the
decretalists could be resisted. The Lombard and Tuscan towns had
become flourishing municipalities, independent of their bishops, and
at open war with their Emperor. While all these things were stirring
the minds of the Romans, Arnold of Brescia came preaching reform,
denouncing the corrupt life of the clergy, not perhaps, like some
others of the so-called schismatics of his time, denying the need of a
sacerdotal order, but at any rate urging its restriction to purely
spiritual duties. On the minds of the Romans such teaching fell like
the spark upon dry grass; they threw off the yoke of the Pope[328],
drove out the imperial prefect, reconstituted the senate and the
equestrian order, appointed consuls, struck their own coins, and
professed to treat the German Emperors as their nominees and
dependants. To have successfully imitated the republican constitution
of the cities of northern Italy would have been much, but with this
they were not content. Knowing in a vague ignorant way that there had
been a Roman republic before there was a Roman empire, they fed their
vanity with visions of a renewal of all their ancient forms, and saw
in fancy their senate and people sitting again upon the Seven Hills
and ruling over the kings of the earth. Stepping, as it were, into the
arena where Pope and Emperor were contending for the headship of the
world, they rejected the one as a priest, and declaring the other to
be only their creature, they claimed as theirs the true and lawful
inheritance of the world-dominion which their ancestors had won.
Antiquity was in one sense on their side, and to us now it seems less
strange that the Roman people should aspire to rule the earth than
that a German barbarian should rule it in their name. But practically
the scheme was absurd, and could not maintain itself against any
serious opposition. As a modern historian aptly expresses it, 'they
were setting up ruins:' they might as well have raised the broken
columns that strewed their Forum and hoped to rear out of them a
strong and stately temple. The reverence which the men of the Middle
Ages felt for Rome was given altogether to the name and to the place,
nowise to the people. As for power, they had none: so far from holding
Italy in subjection, they could scarcely maintain themselves against
the hostility of Tusculum. But it would have been well worth the while
of the Teutonic Emperors to have made the Romans their allies, and
bridled by their help the temporal ambition of the Popes. The offer
was actually made to them, first to Conrad the Third, who seems to
have taken no notice of it; and afterwards, as has been already
stated, to Frederick the First, who repelled in the most contumelious
fashion the envoys of the senate. Hating and fearing the Pope, he
always respected him: towards the Romans he felt all the contempt of a
feudal king for burghers, and of a German warrior for Italians. At the
demand of Pope Hadrian, whose foresight thought no heresy so dangerous
as one which threatened the authority of the clergy, Arnold of Brescia
was seized by the imperial prefect, put to death, and his ashes cast
into the Tiber, lest the people should treasure them up as relics. But
the martyrdom of their leader did not quench the hopes of his
followers. The republican constitution continued to exist, and rose
from time to time, during the weakness or the absence of the Popes,
into a brief and fitful activity[329]. Once awakened, the idea,
seductive at once to the imagination of the scholar and the vanity of
the Roman citizen, could not wholly disappear, and two centuries after
Arnold's time it found a more brilliant if less disinterested exponent
in the tribune Nicholas Rienzi.
[Sidenote: Character and career of the tribune Rienzi.]
The career of this singular personage is misunderstood by those who
suppose him to have been possessed of profound political insight, a
republican on modern principles. He was indeed, despite his
overweening conceit, and what seems to us his charlatanry, both a
patriot and a man of genius, in temperament a poet, filled with
soaring ideas. But those ideas, although dressed out in gaudier
colours by his lively fancy, were after all only the old ones,
memories of the long-faded glories of the heathen republic, and a
series of scornful contrasts levelled at her present oppressors, both
of them shewing no vista of future peace except through the revival of
those ancient names to which there were no things to correspond. It
was by declaiming on old texts and displaying old monuments that the
tribune enlisted the support of the Roman populace, not by any appeal
to democratic principles; and the whole of his acts and plans, though
they astonished men by their boldness, do not seem to have been
regarded as novel or impracticable[330]. In the breasts of men like
Petrarch, who loved Rome even more than they hated her people, the
enthusiasm of Rienzi found a sympathetic echo: others scorned and
denounced him as an upstart, a demagogue, and a rebel. Both friends
and enemies seem to have comprehended and regarded as natural his
feelings and designs, which were altogether those of his age. Being,
however, a mere matter of imagination, not of reason, having no
anchor, so to speak, in realities, no true relation to the world as it
then stood, these schemes of republican revival were as transient and
unstable as they were quick of growth and gay of colour. As the
authority of the Popes became consolidated, and free municipalities
disappeared elsewhere throughout Italy, the dream of a renovated Rome
at length withered up and fell and died. Its last struggle was made in
the conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, in the time of Pope Nicholas the
Fifth; and from that time onward there was no question of the
supremacy of the bishop within his holy city.
[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the struggle for independence.]
It is never without a certain regret that we watch the disappearance
of a belief, however illusive, around which the love and reverence for
mankind once clung. But this illusion need be the less regretted that
it had only the feeblest influence for good on the state of mediæval
Rome. During the three centuries that lie between Arnold of Brescia
and Porcaro, the disorders of Rome were hardly less violent than they
had been in the Dark Ages, and to all appearance worse than those of
any other European city. There was a want not only of fixed authority,
but of those elements of social stability which the other cities of
Italy possessed. In the greater republics of Lombardy and Tuscany the
bulk of the population were artizans, hard working orderly people;
while above them stood a prosperous middle class, engaged mostly in
commerce, and having in their system of trade-guilds an organization
both firm and flexible. It was by foreign trade that Genoa, Venice,
and Pisa became great, as it was the wealth acquired by manufacturing
industry that enabled Milan and Florence to overcome and incorporate
the territorial aristocracies which surrounded them.
[Sidenote: Internal condition of the city.]
[Sidenote: The people.]
[Sidenote: The nobility.]
[Sidenote: The bishop.]
Rome possessed neither source of riches. She was ill-placed for trade;
having no market she produced no goods to be disposed of, and the
unhealthiness which long neglect had brought upon her Campagna made
its fertility unavailable. Already she stood as she stands now, lonely
and isolated, a desert at her very gates. As there was no industry, so
there was nothing that deserved to be called a citizen class. The
people were a mere rabble, prompt to follow the demagogue who
flattered their vanity, prompter still to desert him in the hour of
danger. Superstition was with them a matter of national pride, but
they lived too near sacred things to feel much reverence for them:
they ill-treated the Pope and fleeced the pilgrims who crowded to
their shrines: they were probably the only community in Europe who
sent no recruit to the armies of the Cross. Priests, monks, and all
the nondescript hangers on of an ecclesiastical court formed a large
part of the population; while of the rest many were supported in a
state of half mendicancy by the countless religious foundations,
themselves enriched by the gifts or the plunder of Latin Christendom.
The noble families were numerous, powerful, ferocious; they were
surrounded by bands of unruly retainers, and waged a constant war
against each other from their castles in the adjoining country or in
the streets of the city itself. Had things been left to take their
natural course, one of these families, the Colonna, for instance, or
the Orsini, would probably have ended by overcoming its rivals, and
have established, as was the case in the republics of Romagna and
Tuscany, a 'signoria' or local tyranny, like those which had once
prevailed in the cities of Greece. But the presence of the sacerdotal
power, as it had hindered the growth of feudalism, so also it stood in
the way of such a development as this, and in so far aggravated the
confusion of the city. Although the Pope was not as yet recognized as
legitimate sovereign, he was not only the most considerable person in
Rome, but the only one whose authority had anything of an official
character. But the reign of each pontiff was short; he had no military
force, he was frequently absent from his see. He was, moreover, very
often a member of one of the great families, and, as such, no better
than a faction leader at home, while venerated by the rest of Europe
as the universal priest.
[Sidenote: The Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Visits of the Emperors to Rome.]
It remains only to speak of the person who should have been to Rome
what the national king was to the cities of France, or England, or
Germany, that is to say, of the Emperor. As has been said already, his
power was a mere chimera, chiefly important as furnishing a pretext to
the Colonna and other Ghibeline chieftains for their opposition to the
papal party. Even his abstract rights were matter of controversy. The
Popes, whose predecessors had been content to govern as the
lieutenants of Charles and Otto, now maintained that Rome as a
spiritual city could not be subject to any temporal jurisdiction, and
that she was therefore no part of the Roman Empire, though at the same
time its capital. Not only, it was urged, had Constantine yielded up
Rome to Sylvester and his successors, Lothar the Saxon had at his
coronation formally renounced his sovereignty by doing homage to the
pontiff and receiving the crown as his vassal. The Popes felt then as
they feel now, that their dignity and influence would suffer if they
should even appear to admit in their place of residence the
jurisdiction of a civil potentate, and although they could not secure
their own authority, they were at least able to exclude any other.
Hence it was that they were so uneasy whenever an Emperor came to them
to be crowned, that they raised up difficulties in his path, and
endeavoured to be rid of him as soon as possible. And here something
must be said of the programme, as one may call it, of these imperial
visits to Rome, and of the marks of their presence which the Germans
left behind them, remembering always that after the time of Frederick
the Second it was rather the exception than the rule for an Emperor to
be crowned in his capital at all.
[Sidenote: Their approach.]
The traveller who enters Rome now, if he comes, as he most commonly
does, by way of Civita Vecchia, slips in by the railway before he is
aware, is huddled into a vehicle at the terminus, and set down at his
hotel in the middle of the modern town before he has seen anything at
all. If he comes overland from Tuscany along the bleak road that
passes near Veii and crosses the Milvian bridge, he has indeed from
the slopes of the Ciminian range a splendid prospect of the sea-like
Campagna, girdled in by glittering hills, but of the city he sees no
sign, save the pinnacle of St. Peter's, until he is within the walls.
Far otherwise was it in the Middle Ages. Then travellers of every
grade, from the humble pilgrim to the new-made archbishop who came in
the pomp of a lengthy train to receive from the Pope the pallium of
his office, approached from the north or north-east side; following a
track along the hilly ground on the Tuscan side of the Tiber until
they halted on the brow of Monte Mario[331]--the Mount of Joy--and saw
the city of their solemnities lie spread before them, from the great
pile of the Lateran far away upon the Cœlian hill, to the basilica of
St. Peter's at their feet. They saw it not, as now, a sea of billowy
cupolas, but a mass of low red-roofed houses, varied by tall brick
towers, and at rarer intervals by masses of ancient ruin, then larger
far than now; while over all rose those two monuments of the best of
the heathen Emperors, monuments that still look down, serenely
changeless, on the armies of new nations and the festivals of a new
religion--the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
[Sidenote: Their entrance.]
[Sidenote: Hostility of Pope and people to the Germans.]
From Monte Mario the Teutonic host descended, when they had paid their
orisons, into the Neronian field, the piece of flat land that lies
outside the gate of St. Angelo. Here it was the custom for the elders
of the Romans to meet the elected Emperor, present their charters for
confirmation, and receive his oath to preserve their good
customs[332]. Then a procession was formed: the priests and monks, who
had come out with hymns to greet the Emperor, led the way; the knights
and soldiers of Rome, such as they were, came next; then the monarch,
followed by a long array of Transalpine chivalry. Passing into the
city they advanced to St. Peter's, where the Pope, surrounded by his
clergy, stood on the great staircase of the basilica to welcome and
bless the Roman king. On the next day came the coronation, with
ceremonies too elaborate for description[333], ceremonies which, we
may well believe, were seldom duly completed. Far more usual were
other rites, of which the book of ritual makes no mention, unless they
are to be counted among the 'good customs of the Romans;' the clang of
war bells, the battle cry of German and Italian combatants. The Pope,
when he could not keep the Emperor from entering Rome, required him to
leave the bulk of his host without the walls, and if foiled in this,
sought his safety in raising up plots and seditions against his too
powerful friend. The Roman people, on the other hand, violent as they
often were against the Pope, felt nevertheless a sort of national
pride in him. Very different were their feelings towards the Teutonic
chieftain, who came from a far land to receive in their city, yet
without thanking them for it, the ensign of a power which the prowess
of their forefathers had won. Despoiled of their ancient right to
choose the universal bishop, they clung all the more desperately to
the belief that it was they who chose the universal prince; and were
mortified afresh when each successive sovereign contemptuously scouted
their claims, and paraded before their eyes his rude barbarian
cavalry. Thus it was that a Roman sedition was the all but invariable
accompaniment of a Roman coronation. The three revolts against Otto
the Great have been already described. His grandson Otto the Third, in
spite of his passionate fondness for the city, was met by the same
faithlessness and hatred, and departed at last in despair at the
failure of his attempts at conciliation[334]. A century afterwards
Henry the Fifth's coronation produced violent tumults, which ended in
his seizing the Pope and cardinals in St. Peter's, and keeping them
prisoners till they submitted to his terms. Remembering this, Pope
Hadrian the Fourth would fain have forced the troops of Frederick
Barbarossa to remain without the walls, but the rapidity of their
movements disconcerted his plans and anticipated the resistance of the
Roman populace. Having established himself in the Leonine city[335],
Frederick barricaded the bridge over the Tiber, and was duly crowned
in St. Peter's. But the rite was scarcely finished when the Romans,
who had assembled in arms on the Capitol, dashed over the bridge, fell
upon the Germans, and were with difficulty repulsed by the personal
efforts of Frederick. Into the city he did not venture to pursue them,
nor was he at any period of his reign able to make himself master of
the whole of it. Finding themselves similarly baffled, his successors
at last accepted their position, and were content to take the crown on
the Pope's conditions and depart without further question.
[Sidenote: Memorials of the Germanic Emperors in Rome.]
[Sidenote: Of Otto the Third.]
Coming so seldom and remaining for so short a time, it is not
wonderful that the Teutonic Emperors should, in the seven centuries
from Charles the Great to Charles the Fifth, have left fewer marks of
their presence in Rome than Titus or Hadrian alone have done; fewer
and less considerable even than those which tradition attributes to
those whom it calls Servius Tullius and the elder Tarquin. Those
monuments which do exist are just sufficient to make the absence of
all others more conspicuous. The most important dates from the time of
Otto the Third, the only Emperor who attempted to make Rome his
permanent residence. Of the palace, probably nothing more than a
tower, which he built on the Aventine, no trace has been discovered;
but the church, founded by him to receive the ashes of his friend the
martyred St. Adalbert, may still be seen upon the island in the Tiber.
Having received from Benevento relics supposed to be those of
Bartholomew the Apostle[336], it became dedicated to that saint, and
is now the church of San Bartolommeo in Isola, whose quaintly
picturesque bell-tower of red brick, now grey with extreme age, looks
out from among the orange trees of a convent garden over the
swift-eddying yellow waters of the Tiber.
[Sidenote: Of Otto the Second.]
[Sidenote: Of Frederick the Second.]
Otto the Second, son of Otto the Great, died at Rome, and lies buried
in the crypt of St. Peter's, the only Emperor who has found a
resting-place among the graves of the Popes[337]. His tomb is not far
from that of his nephew Pope Gregory the Fifth: it is a plain one of
roughly chiselled marble. The lid of the superb porphyry sarcophagus
in which he lay for a time now serves as the great font of St.
Peter's, and may be seen in the baptismal chapel, on the left of the
entrance of the church, not far from the tombs of the Stuarts. Last of
all must be mentioned a curious relic of the Emperor Frederick the
Second, the prince whom of all others one would least expect to see
honoured in the city of his foes. It is an inscription in the palace
of the Conservators upon the Capitoline hill, built into the wall of
the great staircase, and relates the victory of Frederick's army over
the Milanese, and the capture of the carroccio[338] of the rebel city,
which he sends as a trophy to his faithful Romans. These are all or
nearly all the traces of her Teutonic lords that Rome has preserved
till now. Pictures indeed there are in abundance, from the mosaic of
the Scala Santa at the Lateran[339] and the curious frescoes in the
church of Santi Quattro Incoronati[340], down to the paintings of the
Sistine antechapel and the Stanze of Raphael in the Vatican, where the
triumphs of the Popedom over all its foes are set forth with matchless
art and equally matchless unveracity. But these are mostly long
subsequent to the events they describe, and these all the world knows.
Associations of the highest interest would have attached to the
churches in which the imperial coronation was performed--a ceremony
which, whether we regard the dignity of the performers or the
splendour of the adjuncts, was probably the most imposing that modern
Europe has known. But old St. Peter's disappeared in the end of the
fifteenth century, not long after the last Roman coronation, that of
Frederick the Third, while the basilica of St. John Lateran, in which
Lothar the Saxon and Henry the Seventh were crowned, has been so
wofully modernized that we can hardly figure it to ourselves as the
same building[341].
[Sidenote: Causes of the want of mediæval monuments in Rome.]
[Sidenote: Barbarism of the aristocracy.]
Bearing in mind what was the social condition of Rome during the
middle ages, it becomes easier to understand the architectural
barrenness which at first excites the visitor's surprise. Rome had no
temporal sovereign, and there were therefore only two classes who
could build at all, the nobles and the clergy. Of these, the former
had seldom the wealth, and never the taste, which would have enabled
them to construct palaces graceful as the Venetian or massively grand
as the Florentine and Genoese. Moreover, the constant practice of
domestic war made defence the first object of a house, beauty and
convenience the second. The nobility, therefore, either adapted
ancient edifices to their purpose or built out of their materials
those huge square towers of brick, a few of which still frown over the
narrow streets in the older parts of Rome. We may judge of their
number from the statement that the senator Brancaleone destroyed one
hundred and forty of them. With perhaps no more than one exception,
that of the so-called House of Rienzi, these towers are the only
domestic buildings in the city older than the middle of the fifteenth
century. The vast palaces to which strangers now flock for the sake of
the picture galleries they contain, have been most of them erected in
the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, some even later. Among the
earliest is that Palazzo Cenci[342], whose gloomy low-browed arch so
powerfully affected the imagination of Shelley.
[Sidenote: Ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy.]
It was no want of wealth that hampered the architectural efforts of
the clergy, for vast revenues flowed in upon them from every corner of
Christendom. A good deal was actually spent upon the erection or
repairs of churches and convents, although with a less liberal hand
than that of such great Transalpine prelates as Hugh of Lincoln or
Conrad of Cologne. But the Popes always needed money for their
projects of ambition, and in times when disorder or corruption were at
their height the work of building stopped altogether. Thus it was that
after the time of the Carolingians scarcely a church was erected until
the beginning of the twelfth century, when the reforms of Hildebrand
had breathed new zeal into the priesthood. The Babylonish captivity of
Avignon, as it was called, with the great schism of the West that
followed upon it, was the cause of a second similar intermission,
which lasted nearly a century and a half.
[Sidenote: Tendency of the Roman builders to adhere to the ancient
manner.]
[Sidenote: Absence of Gothic in Rome.]
At every time, however, even when his work went on most briskly, the
labours of the Roman architect took the direction of restoring and
readorning old churches rather than of erecting new ones. While the
Transalpine countries, except in a few favoured spots, such as
Provence and part of the Rhineland, remained during several ages with
few and rudely built stone churches, Rome possessed, as the
inheritance of the earlier Christian centuries, a profusion of houses
of worship, some of them still unsurpassed in splendour, and far more
than adequate to the needs of her diminished population. In repairing
these from time to time, their original form and style of work were
usually as far as possible preserved, while in constructing new ones,
the abundance of models beautiful in themselves and hallowed as well
by antiquity as by religious feeling, enthralled the invention of the
workman, bound him down to be at best a faithful imitator, and forbade
him to deviate at pleasure from the old established manner. Thus it
befel that while his brethren throughout the rest of Europe were
passing by successive steps from the old Roman and Byzantine styles to
Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Gothic, the Roman architect
scarcely departed from the plan and arrangements of the primitive
basilica. This is one chief reason why there is so little of Gothic
work in Rome, so little even of Romanesque like that of Pisa. What
there is appears chiefly in the pointed window, more rarely in the
arch, seldom or never in spire or tower or column. Only one of the
existing churches of Rome is Gothic throughout, and that, the
Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, was built by foreign
monks. In some of the other churches, and especially in the cloisters
of the convents, instances may be observed of the same style: in
others slight traces, by accident or design almost obliterated[343].
[Sidenote: Destruction and alteration of the old buildings:]
[Sidenote: By invaders.]
[Sidenote: By the Romans of the Middle Ages.]
[Sidenote: By modern restorers of churches.]
The mention of obliteration suggests a third cause of the comparative
want of mediæval buildings in the city--the constant depredations and
changes of which she has been the subject. Ever since the time of
Constantine Rome has been a city of destruction, and Christians have
vied with pagans, citizens with enemies, in urging on the fatal work.
Her siege and capture by Robert Guiscard[344], the ally of Hildebrand
against Henry the Fourth, was far more ruinous than the attacks of the
Goths or Vandals: and itself yields in atrocity to the sack of Rome in
A.D. 1526 by the soldiers of the Catholic king and most pious Emperor
Charles the Fifth[345]. Since the days of the first barbarian
invasions the Romans have gone on building with materials taken from
the ancient temples, theatres, law-courts, baths and villas, stripping
them of their gorgeous casings of marble, pulling down their walls for
the sake of the blocks of travertine, setting up their own hovels on
the top or in the midst of these majestic piles. Thus it has been with
the memorials of paganism: a somewhat different cause has contributed
to the disappearance of the mediæval churches. What pillage, or
fanaticism, or the wanton lust of destruction did in the one case, the
ostentatious zeal of modern times has done in the other. The era of
the final establishment of the Popes as temporal sovereigns of the
city, is also that of the supremacy of the Renaissance style in
architecture. After the time of Nicholas the Fifth, the pontiff
against whom, it will be remembered, the spirit of municipal freedom
made its last struggle in the conspiracy of Porcaro, nothing was built
in Gothic, and the prevailing enthusiasm for the antique produced a
corresponding dislike to everything mediæval, a dislike conspicuous in
men like Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, from whom the grandeur
of modern Rome may be said to begin. Not long after their time the
great religious movement of the sixteenth century, while triumphing in
the north of Europe, was in the south met and overcome by a
counter-reformation in the bosom of the old church herself, and the
construction or restoration of ecclesiastical buildings became again
the passion of the devout[346]. No employment, whether it be called an
amusement or a duty, could have been better suited to the court and
aristocracy of Rome. They were indolent; wealthy, and fond of
displaying their wealth; full of good taste, and anxious, especially
when advancing years had chased away youth's pleasures, to be full of
good works also. Popes and cardinals and the heads of the great
families vied with one another in building new churches and restoring
or enlarging those they found till little of the old was left; raising
over them huge cupolas, substituting massive pilasters for the
single-shafted columns, adorning the interior with a profusion of rare
marbles, of carving and gilding, of frescoes and altar-pieces by the
best masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. None but a
bigoted mediævalist can refuse to acknowledge the warmth of tone, the
repose, the stateliness, of the churches of modern Rome; but even in
the midst of admiration the sated eye turns away from the wealth of
ponderous ornament, and we long for the clear pure colour, the simple
yet grand proportions that give a charm to the buildings of an earlier
age.
[Sidenote: Existing relics of the Dark and Middle Ages.]
[Sidenote: The Mosaics.]
[Sidenote: The Bell-towers.]
Few of the ancient churches have escaped untouched; many have been
altogether rebuilt. There are also some, however, in which the
modernizers of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries have spared two
features of the old structure, its round apse or tribune and its
bell-tower. The apse has its interior usually covered with mosaics,
exceedingly interesting, both from the ideas they express and as the
only monuments of pictorial art that remain to us from the Dark Ages.
To speak of them, however, as they deserve to be spoken of, would
involve a digression for which there is no space here. The campanile
or bell-tower is a quaint little square brick tower, of no great
height, usually standing detached from the church, and having in its
topmost, sometimes also in its other upper stories, several arcade
windows, divided by tiny marble pillars[347]. What with these
campaniles, then far more numerous than they are now, and with the
huge brick fortresses of the nobles, towers must have held in the
landscape of the mediæval city very much the part which domes do now.
Although less imposing, they were probably more picturesque, the
rather as in the earlier part of the Middle Ages the houses and
churches, which are now mostly crowded together on the flat of the
Campus Martius, were scattered over the heights and slopes of the
Cœlian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills[348]. Modern Rome lies chiefly
on the opposite or north-eastern side of the Capitol, and the change
from the old to the new site of the city, which can hardly be said to
have distinctly begun before the destruction of the south-western part
of the town by Robert Guiscard, was not completed until the sixteenth
century. In A.D. 1536 the Capitol was rebuilt by Michael Angelo, in
anticipation of the entry of Charles the Fifth, upon foundations that
had been laid by the first Tarquin; and the palace of the Senator, the
greatest municipal edifice of Rome, which had hitherto looked towards
the Forum and the Coliseum, was made to front in the direction of St.
Peter's and the modern town.
[Sidenote: Changed aspect of the city of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Analogy between her architecture and her civil and
ecclesiastical constitution.]
[Sidenote: Preservation of an antique character in both.]
The Rome of to-day is no more like the city of Rienzi than she is to
the city of Trajan; just as the Roman church of the nineteenth century
differs profoundly, however she may strive to disguise it, from the
church of Hildebrand. But among all their changes, both church and
city have kept themselves wonderfully free from the intrusion of
foreign, at least of Teutonic, elements, and have faithfully preserved
at all times something of an old Roman character. Latin Christianity
inherited from the imperial system of old that firmly knit yet
flexible organization, which was one of the grand secrets of its
power: the great men whom mediæval Rome gave to or trained up for the
Papacy were, like their progenitors, administrators, legislators,
statesmen; seldom enthusiasts themselves, but perfectly understanding
how to use and guide the enthusiasm of others--of the French and
German crusaders, of men like Francis of Assisi and Dominic and
Ignatius. Between Catholicism in Italy and Catholicism in Germany or
England there was always, as there is still, a very perceptible
difference. So also, if the analogy be not too fanciful, was it with
Rome the city. Socially she seemed always drifting towards feudalism;
yet she never fell into its grasp. Materially, her architecture was at
one time considerably influenced by Gothic forms, yet Gothic never
became, as in the rest of Europe, the dominant style. It approached
Rome late, and departed from her early, so that we scarcely notice its
presence, and seem to pass almost without a break from the old
Romanesque[349] to the Græco-Roman of the Renaissance. Thus regarded,
the history of the city, both in her political state and in her
buildings, is seen to be intimately connected with that of the Holy
Empire itself. The Empire in its title and its pretensions expressed
the idea of the permanence of the institutions of the ancient world;
Rome the city had, in externals at least, carefully preserved their
traditions: the names of her magistracies, the character of her
buildings, all spoke of antiquity, and gave it a strange and shadowy
life in the midst of new races and new forms of faith.
[Sidenote: Relation of the City and the Empire.]
In its essence the Empire rested on the feeling of the unity of
mankind; it was the perpetuation of the Roman dominion by which the
old nationalities had been destroyed, with the addition of the
Christian element which had created a new nationality that was also
universal. By the extension of her citizenship to all her subjects
heathen Rome had become the common home, and, figuratively, even the
local dwelling-place of the civilized races of man. By the theology of
the time Christian Rome had been made the mystical type of humanity,
the one flock of the faithful scattered over the whole earth, the holy
city whither, as to the temple on Moriah, all the Israel of God should
come up to worship. She was not merely an image of the mighty world,
she was the mighty world itself in miniature. The pastor of her local
church is also the universal bishop; the seven suffragans who
consecrate him are the overseers of petty sees in Ostia, Antium, and
the like, towns lying close round Rome: the cardinal priests and
deacons who join these seven in electing him derive their title to be
princes of the Church, the supreme spiritual council of the Christian
world, from the incumbency of a parochial cure within the precincts of
the city. Similarly, her ruler, the Emperor, is ruler of mankind; he
is chosen by the acclamations of her people[350]: he can be lawfully
crowned nowhere but in one of her basilicas. She is, like Jerusalem of
old, the mother of us all.
[Sidenote: Extinction of the Florentine republic, A.D. 1530.]
There is yet another way in which the record of the domestic contests
of Rome throws light upon the history of the Empire. From the eleventh
century to the fifteenth her citizens ceased not to demand in the name
of the old republic their freedom from the tyranny of the nobles and
the Pope, and their right to rule over the world at large. These
efforts--selfish and fantastic we may call them, yet men like Petrarch
did not disdain to them their sympathy--issued from the same theories
and were directed to the same ends as those which inspired Otto the
Third and Frederick Barbarossa and Dante himself. They witness to the
same incapacity to form any ideal for the future except a revival of
the past; the same belief that one universal state is both desirable
and possible, but possible only through the means of Rome: the same
refusal to admit that a right which has once existed can ever be
extinguished. In the days of the Renaissance these notions were
passing silently away: the succeeding century brought with it
misfortunes that broke the spirit of the nation. Italy was the
battle-field of Europe: her wealth became the prey of a rapacious
soldiery: the last and greatest of her republics was enslaved by an
unfeeling Emperor, and handed over as the pledge of amity to a selfish
Medicean Pope. When the hope of independence had been lost, the people
turned away from politics to live for art and literature, and found,
before many generations had passed, how little such exclusive devotion
could compensate for the departure of freedom, and a national spirit,
and the activity of civic life. A century after the golden days of
Ariosto and Raphael, Italian literature had become frigid and
affected, while Italian art was dying of mannerism.
[Sidenote: Feelings of the modern Italians towards Rome.]
At length, after long ages of sloth, the stagnant waters were
troubled. The Romans, who had lived in listless contentment under the
paternal sway of the Popes, received new ideas from the advent of the
revolutionary armies of France, and have found the Papal system, since
its re-establishment fifty years ago as a modern bureaucratic
despotism, far less tolerable than it was of yore. Our own days have
seen the name of Rome become again a rallying-cry for the patriots of
Italy, but in a sense most unlike the old one. The contemporaries of
Arnold and Rienzi desired freedom only as a step to universal
domination: their descendants, more wisely, yet not more from
patriotism than from a pardonable civic pride, seek only to be the
capital of the Italian kingdom. Dante prayed for a monarchy of the
world, a reign of peace and Christian brotherhood: those who invoke
his name as the earliest prophet of their creed strive after an idea
that never crossed his mind--the national union of Italy[351].
Plain common-sense politicians in other countries do not understand
this passion for Rome as a capital, and think it their duty to lecture
the Italians on their flightiness. The latter do not themselves
pretend that the shores of the Tiber are a suitable site for a
capital: Rome is lonely, unhealthy, and in a bad strategical position;
she has no particular facilities for trade: her people, with some fine
qualities, are less orderly and industrious than the Tuscans or the
Piedmontese. Nevertheless all Italy cries with one voice for Rome,
firmly believing that national life can never thrill with a strong and
steady pulsation till the ancient capital has become the nation's
heart. They feel that it is owing to Rome--Rome pagan as well as
Christian--that they once played so grand a part in the drama of
European history, and that they have now been able to attain that
fervid sentiment of unity which has brought them at last together
under one government. Whether they are right, whether if right they
are likely to be successful, need not be inquired here. But it
deserves to be noted that this enthusiasm for a famous name--for it is
nothing more--is substantially the same feeling as that which created
and hallowed the Holy Empire of the Middle Ages. The events of the
last few years on both sides of the Atlantic have proved that men are
not now, any more than they ever were, chiefly governed by
calculations of material profit and loss. Sentiments, fancies,
theories, have not lost their power; the spirit of poetry has not
wholly passed away from politics. And strange as seems to us the
worship paid to the name of mediæval Rome by those who saw the sins
and the misery of her people, it can hardly have been an intenser
feeling than is the imaginative reverence wherewith the Italians of
to-day look on the city whence, as from a fountain, all the streams of
their national life have sprung, and in which, as in an ocean, they
are all again to mingle.
FOOTNOTES:
[323] Hist. Eccl. l. ix. c. 6: τὸν δὲ φάναι, ὡς οὐχ ἑκὼν τάδε
ἐπιχειρεῖ, ἀλλά τις συνεχῶς ἐνοχλῶν αὐτὸν βιάζεται, καὶ ἐπιτάττει τὴν
Ῥώμην πορθεῖν.
[324] See the two Lives of St. Adalbert in Pertz, _M. G. H._, iv.,
evidently compiled soon after his death.
[325] Another letter of Petrarch's to John Colonna, written
immediately after his arrival in the city, deserves to be quoted, it
is so like what a stranger would now write off after his first day in
Rome:--'In præsens nihil est quod inchoare ausim, miraculo rerum
tantarum et stuporis mole obrutus ... præsentia vero, mirum dictu,
nihil imminuit sed auxit omnia: vere maior fuit Roma maioresque sunt
reliquiæ quam rebar: iam non orbem ab hac urbe domitum sed tam sero
domitum miror. Vale.'
[326] The idea of the continuance of the sway of Rome under a new
character is one which mediæval writers delight to illustrate. In
Appendix, Note D, there is quoted as a specimen a poem upon Rome, by
Hildebert (bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of Tours),
written in the beginning of the twelfth century.
[327] In writing this chapter I have derived much assistance from the
admirable work of Ferdinand Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im
Mittelalter_. Unfortunately no English translation of it exists; but I
am informed by the author that one is likely ere long to appear.
[328] Republican forms of some sort had existed before Arnold's
arrival, but we hear the name of no other leader mentioned; and
doubtless it was by him chiefly that the spirit of hostility to the
clerical power was infused into the minds of the Romans.
[329] The series of papal coins is interrupted (with one or two slight
exceptions) from A.D. 984 (not long after the time of Alberic) to A.D.
1304. In their place we meet with various coins struck by the
municipal authorities, some of which bear on the obverse the head of
the Apostle Peter, with the legend Roman. Pricipe: on the reverse the
head of the Apostle Paul, legend, Senat. Popul. Q. R. Gregorovius, _ut
supra_.
[330] Rienzi called himself Augustus as well as tribune; 'tribuno
Augusto de Roma.' (He pretended, or his friends pretended for him--it
was at any rate believed--that he was an illegitimate son of the
Emperor Henry the Seventh.) He cited, on his appointment, the Pope and
cardinals to appear before the people of Rome and give an account of
their conduct; and after them the Emperor. 'Ancora citao lo Bavaro
(Lewis the Fourth). Puoi citao li elettori de lo imperio in Alemagna,
e disse "Voglio vedere che rascione haco nella elettione," che
trovasse scritto che passato alcuno tempo la elettione recadeva a li
Romani.'--_Vita di Cola di Rienzi_, c. xxvi (written by a
contemporary). I give the spelling as it stands in Muratori's edition.
[331] The Germans called this hill, which is the highest in or near
Rome, conspicuous from a beautiful group of stone-pines upon its brow,
Mons Gaudii; the origin of the Italian name, Monte Mario, is not
known, unless it be, as some think, a corruption of Mons Malus.
It was on this hill that Otto the Third hanged Crescentius and his
followers.
[332] I quote this from the _Ordo Romanus_ as it stands in Muratori's
third Dissertation in the _Antiquitates Italiæ medii ævi_.
[333] Great stress was laid on one part of the procedure,--the holding
by the Emperor of the Pope's stirrup for him to mount, and the leading
of his palfrey for some distance. Frederick Barbarossa's omission of
this mark of respect when Pope Hadrian IV met him on his way to Rome,
had nearly caused a breach between the two potentates, Hadrian
absolutely refusing the kiss of peace until Frederick should have gone
through the form, which he was at last forced to do in a somewhat
ignominious way.
[334] A remarkable speech of expostulation made by Otto III to the
Roman people (after one of their revolts) from the tower of his house
on the Aventine has been preserved to us. It begins thus: 'Vosne estis
mei Romani? Propter vos quidem meam patriam, propinquos quoque
reliqui; amore vestro Saxones et cunctos Theotiscos, sanguinem meum,
proieci; vos in remotas partes imperii nostri adduxi, quo patres
vestri cum orbem ditione premerent numquam pedem posuerunt; scilicet
ut nomen vestrum et gloriam ad fines usque dilatarem; vos filios
adoptavi: vos cunctis prætuli.'--_Vita S. Bernwardi_; in Pertz, _M. G.
H._, t. iv.
(It is from this form 'Theotiscus' that the Italian 'Tedesco' seems to
have been derived.)
[335] The Leonine city, so called from Pope Leo IV, lay between the
Vatican and St. Peter's and the river.
[336] It would seem that Otto was deceived, and that in reality they
are the bones of St. Paulinus of Nola.
[337] The only other of the Teutonic Emperors buried in Italy were, so
far as I know, Lewis the Second (whose tomb, with an inscription
commemorating his exploits, is built into the wall of the north aisle
of the famous church of S. Ambrose at Milan), Henry the Sixth and
Frederick the Second, who lie at Palermo, Conrad IV, buried at Foggia,
and Henry the Seventh, whose sarcophagus may be seen in the Campo
Santo of Pisa, a city always conspicuous for her zeal on the imperial
side.
Six Emperors lie buried at Speyer, three or four at Prague, two at
Aachen, two at Bamberg, one at Innsbruck, one at Magdeburg, one at
Quedlinburg, two at Munich, and most of the later ones at Vienna.
[338] See note 198, p. 178.
[339] See p. 117.
[340] These highly curious frescoes are in the chapel of St. Sylvester
attached to the very ancient church of Quattro Santi on the Cœlian
hill, and are supposed to have been executed in the time of Pope
Innocent III. They represent scenes in the life of the Saint, more
particularly the making of the famous donation to him by Constantine,
who submissively holds the bridle of his palfrey.
[341] The last imperial coronation, that of Charles the Fifth, took
place in the church of St. Petronius at Bologna, Pope Clement VII
being unwilling to receive Charles in Rome. It is a grand church, but
the choir, where the ceremony took place, seems to have been
'restored,' that is to say modernized, since Charles' time.
[342] The name of Cenci is a very old one at Rome: it is supposed to
be an abbreviation of Crescentius. We hear in the eleventh century of
a certain Cencius, who on one occasion made Gregory VII prisoner.
[343] Thus in the church of San Lorenzo without the walls there are
several pointed windows, now bricked up; and similar ones may be seen
in the church of Ara Cœli on the summit of the Capitol. So in the apse
of St. John Lateran there are three or four windows of Gothic form:
and in its cloister, as well as in that of St. Paul without the walls,
a great deal of beautiful Lombard work. The elegant porch of the
church of Sant' Antonio Abate is Lombard. In the apse of the church of
San Giovanni e Paolo on the Cœlian hill there is an external arcade
exactly like those of the Duomo at Pisa. Nor are these the only
instances.
The ruined chapel attached to the fortress of the Caetani family--the
family to which Boniface the Eighth belonged, and whose head is now
the first of the Roman nobility--is a pretty little building, more
like northern Gothic than anything within the walls of Rome. It stands
upon the Appian Way, opposite the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, which the
Caetani used as a stronghold.
[344] A good deal of the mischief done by Robert Guiscard, from which
the parts of the city lying beyond the Coliseum towards the river and
St. John Lateran never recovered, is attributed to the Saracenic
troops in his service. Saracen pirates are said to have once before
sacked Rome. Genseric was not a heathen, but he was a furious Arian,
which, as far as respect to the churches of the orthodox went, was
nearly the same thing. He is supposed to have carried off the
seven-branched candlestick and other vessels of the Temple, which
Titus had brought from Jerusalem to Rome.
[345] We are told that one cause of the ferocity of the German part of
the army of Charles was their anger at the ruinous condition of the
imperial palace.
[346] Under the influence, partly of this anti-pagan spirit, partly of
his own restless vanity, partly of a passion to be doing something,
Pope Sixtus the Fifth did a great deal of mischief in the way of
destroying or spoiling the monuments of antiquity.
[347] These campaniles are generally supposed to date from the ninth
and tenth centuries. I am informed, however, by Mr. J. H. Parker, of
Oxford, whose antiquarian skill is well known, that he is led to
believe by an examination of their mouldings that few or none, unless
it be that of San Prassede, are older than the twelfth century.
This of course applies only to the existing buildings. The type of
tower may be, and indeed no doubt is, older.
Somewhat similar towers may be observed in many parts of the Italian
Alps, especially in the wonderful mountain land north of Venice, where
such towers are of all dates from the eleventh or twelfth down to the
nineteenth century, the ancient type having in these remote valleys
been adhered to because the builder had no other models before him. In
the valley of Cimolais I have seen such a campanile in course of
erection, precisely similar to others in the neighbouring villages
some eight centuries old.
The very curious round towers of Ravenna, some four or five of which
are still standing, seem to have originally had similar windows,
though these have been all, or nearly all, stopped up. The Roman
towers are all square.
[348] The Palatine hill seems to have been then, as it is for the most
part now, a waste of stupendous ruins. In the great imperial palace
upon its northern and eastern sides was the residence of an official
of the Eastern court in the beginning of the eighth century. In the
time of Charles, some seventy years later, this palace was no longer
habitable.
[349] Such as we see it in the later and lesser churches of basilica
form.
[350] It was thus that most of the earlier Teutonic Emperors, and
notably Charles and Otto, professed to have obtained the crown;
although practically it was partly a matter of conquest and partly of
private arrangement with the Pope. In later times, the seven Germanic
princes were recognized as the legally qualified electoral body, but
their appearance on the stage was a result of the confusion of the
German kingdom with the Roman Empire, and in strictness they had
nothing to do with the Roman crown at all. The right to bestow it
could only--on principle--belong to some Roman authority, and those
who felt the difficulty were driven to suppose a formal cession of
their privilege by the Roman people to the seven electors. See p. 227
_supra_: and cf. Matthew Villani (iv. 77), 'Il popolo Romano, non da
se, ma la chiesa per lui, concedette la elezione degli Imperadori a
sette principi della Magna.'
[351] That which Dante, Arnold of Brescia, and the rest really have in
common with the modern Italian 'party of movement' is their hostility
to the temporal power of the Popes.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE RENAISSANCE: CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE.
[Sidenote: Wenzel, 1378-1400.]
[Sidenote: Rupert, 1400-1410.]
[Sidenote: Sigismund, 1410-1438.]
[Sidenote: Council of Constance.]
In Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank to its lowest point. It
had shot forth a fitful gleam under Sigismund, who in convoking and
presiding over the council of Constance had revived one of the highest
functions of his predecessors. The precedents of the first great
œcumenical councils, and especially of the council of Nicæa, had
established the principle that it belonged to the Emperor, even more
properly than to the Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from
the whole Christian world[352]. The tenet commended itself to the
reforming party in the church, headed by Gerson, the chancellor of
Paris, whose aim it was, while making no changes in matters of faith,
to correct the abuses which had grown up in discipline and government,
and limit the power of the Popes by exalting the authority of general
councils, to whom there was now attributed an immunity from error
superior even to that which resided in the successor of Peter. And
although it was only the sacerdotal body, not the whole Christian
people, who were thus made the exponents of the universal religious
consciousness, the doctrine was nevertheless a foreshadowing of that
fuller freedom which was soon to follow. The existence of the Holy
Empire and the existence of general councils were, as has been already
remarked, necessary parts of one and the same theory[353], and it was
therefore more than a coincidence that the last occasion on which the
whole of Latin Christendom met to deliberate and act as a single
commonwealth[354] was also the last on which that commonwealth's
lawful temporal head appeared in the exercise of his international
functions. Never afterwards was he, in the eyes of Europe, anything
more than a German monarch.
[Sidenote: Weakness of Germany as compared with the other states of
Europe.]
[Sidenote: Albert II. 1438-1440. Frederick III. 1440-1493.]
It might seem doubtful whether he would long remain a monarch at all.
When in A.D. 1493 the calamitous reign of Frederick the Third ended,
it was impossible for the princes to see with unconcern the condition
into which their selfishness and turbulence had brought the Empire.
The time was indeed critical. Hitherto the Germans had been protected
rather by the weakness of their enemies than by their own strength.
From France there had been little to fear while the English menaced
her on one side and the Burgundian dukes on the other: from England
still less while she was torn by the strife of York and Lancaster. But
now throughout Western Europe the power of the feudal oligarchies was
broken; and its chief countries were being, by the establishment of
fixed rules of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the
larger principalities, rapidly built up into compact and aggressive
military monarchies. Thus Spain became a great state by the union of
Castile and Aragon, and the conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in
England there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. Thus France,
enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the Eleventh and his successors,
began to acquire that predominant influence on the politics of Europe
which her commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of her
people, and, it must be added, the unscrupulous ambition of her
rulers, have secured to her in every succeeding century. Meantime
there had appeared in the far East a foe still more terrible. The
capture of Constantinople gave Turks a firm hold on Europe, and
inspired them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century what
Abderrahman and his Saracens had so nearly effected in the eighth--of
establishing the faith of Islam through all the provinces that obeyed
the Western as well as the Eastern Cæsars. The navies of the Ottoman
Sultans swept the Mediterranean; their well-appointed armies pierced
Hungary and threatened Vienna.
[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
Nor was it only that formidable enemies had arisen without: the
frontiers of Germany herself were exposed by the loss of those
adjoining territories which had formerly owned allegiance to the
Emperors. Poland, once tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the
interregnum, and had recently wrested Prussia and Lusatz from the
Teutonic knights. Bohemia, where German culture had struck deeper
roots, remained a member of the Empire; but the privileges she had
obtained from Charles the Fourth, and the subsequent acquisition of
Silesia and Moravia, made her virtually independent. The restless
Hungarians avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent
inroads on her eastern border.
[Sidenote: Italy.]
Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of Henry the Seventh.
Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it was as the hireling of
Florence; Frederick the Third received the Lombard crown, but it no
longer conveyed the slightest power. In the beginning of the
fourteenth century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country
from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. Some fifty years later
Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not and cannot reign to any
purpose south of the Alps[355]. Nevertheless the phantom of imperial
authority lingers on for a time. It is put forward by the Ghibeline
tyrants of the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic
neighbours: even resolute republicans like the Florentines do not yet
venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling to permit its
exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the names of
Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to have any sense or meaning; the Pope
was no longer the protector nor the Emperor the assailant of municipal
freedom, for municipal freedom itself had well-nigh disappeared. But
the old war-cries of the Church and the Empire were still repeated as
they had been three centuries before, and the rival principles that
had once enlisted the noblest spirits of Italy on one or other side
had now sunk into a pretext for wars of aggrandizement or of mere
unmeaning hate. That which had been remarked long before in Greece was
seen to be true here; the spirit of faction outlived the cause of
faction, and became itself the new and prolific source of a useless,
endless strife.
[Sidenote: Burgundy.]
After Frederick the Third no Emperor was crowned in Rome, and almost
the only trace of that connection between Germany and Italy to
maintain which so much had been risked and lost, was to be found in
the obstinate belief of the Hapsburg Emperors, that their own claims,
though often purely dynastic and personal, could be enforced by an
appeal to the imperial rights of their predecessors. Because
Barbarossa had overrun Lombardy with a Transalpine host they fancied
themselves entitled to demand duchies for themselves and their
relatives, and to entangle the Empire in wars wherein no interest but
their own was involved.
The kingdom of Arles, if it had never added much strength to the
Empire, had been useful as an outwork against France. And thus its
loss--Dauphiné passing over, partly in A.D. 1350, finally in 1457,
Provence in 1486--proved a serious calamity, for it brought the French
nearer to Switzerland, and opened to them a tempting passage into
Italy. The Emperors did not for a time expressly renounce their feudal
suzerainty over these lands, but if it was hard to enforce a feudal
claim over a rebellious landgrave in Germany, how much harder to
control a vassal who was also the mightiest king in Europe.
On the north-west frontier, the fall in A.D. 1477 of the great
principality which the dukes of French Burgundy were building up, was
seen with pleasure by the Rhinelanders whom Charles the last duke had
incessantly alarmed. But the only effect of its fall was to leave
France and Germany directly confronting each other, and it was soon
seen that the balance of strength lay on the side of the less numerous
but better organized and more active nation.
[Sidenote: Switzerland.]
Switzerland, too, could no longer be considered a part of the Germanic
realm. The revolt of the Forest Cantons, in A.D. 1313, was against the
oppressions practised in the name of Albert count of Hapsburg, rather
than against the legitimate authority of Albert the Emperor. But
although several subsequent sovereigns, and among them conspicuously
Henry the Seventh and Sigismund, favoured the Swiss liberties, yet
while the antipathy between the Confederates and the territorial
nobility gave a peculiar direction to their policy, the accession of
new cantons to their body, and their brilliant success against Charles
the Bold in A.D. 1477, made them proud of a separate national
existence, and not unwilling to cast themselves loose from the
stranded hulk of the Empire. Maximilian tried to reconquer them, but
after a furious struggle, in which the valleys of Western Tyrol were
repeatedly laid waste by the peasants of the Engadin, he was forced to
give way, and in A.D. 1500 recognized them by treaty as practically
independent. Not, however, till the peace of Westphalia, in A.D. 1648,
was the Swiss Confederation in the eye of public law a sovereign
state, and even after that date some of the towns continued to stamp
their coins with the double eagle of the Empire.
[Sidenote: Internal weakness.]
If those losses of territory were serious, far more serious was the
plight in which Germany herself lay. The country had now become not so
much an empire as an aggregate of very many small states, governed by
sovereigns who would neither remain at peace with each other nor
combine against a foreign enemy, under the nominal presidency of an
Emperor who had little lawful authority, and could not exert what he
had[356].
[Sidenote: Influence of the theory of the Empire as an international
power upon the Germanic constitution.]
[Sidenote: Position of the Emperor in Germany, compared with that of
his predecessors in Europe.]
There was another cause, besides those palpable and obvious ones
already enumerated, to which this state of things must be ascribed.
That cause is to be found in the theory which regarded the Empire as
an international power, supreme among Christian states. From the day
when Otto the Great was crowned at Rome, the characters of German king
and Roman Emperor were united in one person, and it has been shewn how
that union tended more and more to become a fusion. If the two
offices, in their nature and origin so dissimilar, had been held by
different persons, the Roman Empire would most probably have soon
disappeared, while the German kingdom grew into a robust national
monarchy. Their connection gave a longer life to the one and a feebler
life to the other, while at the same time it transformed both. So long
as Germany was only one of the many countries that bowed beneath their
sceptre it was possible for the Emperors, though we need not suppose
they troubled themselves with speculations on the matter, to
distinguish their imperial authority, as international and more than
half religious, from their royal, which was, or was meant to be,
exclusively local and feudal. But when within the narrowed bounds of
Germany these international functions had ceased to have any meaning,
when the rulers of England, Spain, France, Denmark, Hungary, Poland,
Italy, Burgundy, had in succession repudiated their control, and the
Lord of the World found himself obeyed by none but his own people, he
would not sink from being lord of the world into a simple Teutonic
king, but continued to play in the more contracted theatre the part
which had belonged to him in the wider. Thus did Germany instead of
Europe become the sphere of his international jurisdiction; and her
electors and princes, originally mere vassals, no greater than a Count
of Champagne in France, or an Earl of Chester in England, stepped into
the place which it had been meant that the several monarchs of
Christendom should fill. If the power of their head had been what it
was in the eleventh century, the additional dignity so assigned to
them might have signified very little. But coming in to confirm and
justify the liberties already won, this theory of their relation to
the sovereign had a great though at the time scarcely perceptible
influence in changing the German Empire, as we may now begin to call
it, from a state into a sort of confederation or body of states,
united indeed for some of the purposes of government, but separate and
independent for others more important. Thus, and that in its
ecclesiastical as well as its civil organization, Germany became a
miniature of Christendom[357]. The Pope, though he retained the wider
sway which his rival had lost, was in an especial manner the head of
the German clergy, as the Emperor was of the laity: the three Rhenish
prelates sat in the supreme college beside the four temporal electors:
the nobility of prince-bishops and abbots was as essential a part of
the constitution and as influential in the deliberations of the Diet
as were the dukes, counts, and margraves of the Empire. The
world-embracing Christian state was to have been governed by a
hierarchy of spiritual pastors, whose graduated ranks of authority
should exactly correspond with those of the temporal magistracy, who
were to be like them endowed with worldly wealth and power, and to
enjoy a jurisdiction co-ordinate although distinct. This system, which
it was in vain attempted to establish in Europe during the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, was in its main features that which prevailed
in the Germanic Empire from the fourteenth century onwards. And
conformably to the analogy which may be traced between the position of
the archdukes of Austria in Germany and the place which the four Saxon
and the two first Franconian Emperors had held in Europe, both being
recognized as leaders and presidents in all that concerned the common
interest, in the one case of the Christian, in the other of the whole
German people, while neither of them had any power of direct
government in the territories of local kings and lords; so the plan by
which those who chose Maximilian emperor sought to strengthen their
national monarchy was in substance that which the Popes had followed
when they conferred the crown of the world on Charles and Otto. The
pontiffs then, like the electors now, finding that they could not give
with the title the power which its functions demanded, were driven to
the expedient of selecting for the office persons whose private
resources enabled them to sustain it with dignity. The first Frankish
and the first Saxon Emperors were chosen because they were already the
mightiest potentates in Europe; Maximilian because he was the
strongest of the German princes. The parallel may be carried one step
further. Just as under Otto and his successors the Roman Empire was
Teutonized, so now under the Hapsburg dynasty, from whose hands the
sceptre departed only once thenceforth, the Teutonic Empire tends more
and more to lose itself in an Austrian monarchy.
[Sidenote: Beginning of the Hapsburg influence in Germany.]
Of that monarchy and of the power of the house of Hapsburg, Maximilian
was, even more than Rudolph his ancestor, the founder[358]. Uniting in
his person those wide domains through Germany which had been dispersed
among the collateral branches of his house, and claiming by his
marriage with Mary of Burgundy most of the territories of Charles the
Bold, he was a prince greater than any who had sat on the Teutonic
throne since the death of Frederick the Second. But it was as archduke
of Austria, count of Tyrol, duke of Styria and Carinthia, feudal
superior of lands, in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland, that he was
great, not as Roman Emperor. For just as from him the Austrian
monarchy begins, so with him the Holy Empire in its old meaning ends.
That strange system of doctrines, half religious half political, which
had supported it for so many ages, was growing obsolete, and the
theory which had wrought such changes on Germany and Europe, passed
ere long so completely from remembrance that we can now do no more
than call up a faint and wavering image of what it must once have
been.
[Sidenote: Character of the epoch of Maximilian.]
[Sidenote: The discovery of America.]
For it is not only in imperial history that the accession of
Maximilian is a landmark. That time--a time of change and movement in
every part of human life, a time when printing had become common, and
books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were
replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing
the face of war--was especially marked by one event, to which the
history of the world offers no parallel before or since, the discovery
of America. The cloud which from the beginning of things had hung
thick and dark round the borders of civilization was suddenly lifted:
the feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm
plain of earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer,
vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an
insignificant globe, which, so far from being the centre of the
universe, was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least of
its countless systems. The notions that had hitherto prevailed
regarding the life of man and his relations to nature and the
supernatural, were rudely shaken by the knowledge that was soon gained
of tribes in every stage of culture and living under every variety of
condition, who had developed apart from all the influences of the
Eastern hemisphere. In A.D. 1453 the capture of Constantinople and
extinction of the Eastern Empire had dealt a fatal blow to the
prestige of tradition and an immemorial name: in A.D. 1492 there was
disclosed a world whither the eagles of all-conquering Rome had never
winged their flight. No one could now have repeated the arguments of
the _De Monarchia_.
[Sidenote: The Renaissance.]
Another movement, too, widely different, but even more momentous, was
beginning to spread from Italy beyond the Alps. Since the barbarian
tribes settled in the Roman provinces, no change had come to pass in
Europe at all comparable to that which followed the diffusion of the
new learning in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Enchanted by
the beauty of the ancient models of art and poetry, more particularly
those of the Greeks, men came to regard with aversion and contempt all
that had been done or produced from the days of Trajan to those of
Pope Nicholas the Fifth. The Latin style of the writers who lived
after Tacitus was debased: the architecture of the Middle Ages was
barbarous: the scholastic philosophy was an odious and unmeaning
jargon: Aristotle himself, Greek though he was, Aristotle who had been
for three centuries more than a prophet or an apostle, was hurled from
his throne, because his name was associated with the dismal quarrels
of Scotists and Thomists. That spirit, whether we call it analytical
or sceptical, or earthly, or simply secular, for it is more or less
all of these--the spirit which was the exact antithesis of mediæval
mysticism, had swept in and carried men away, with all the force of a
pent-up torrent. People were content to gratify their tastes and their
senses, caring little for worship, and still less for doctrine: their
hopes and ideas were no longer such as had made their forefathers
crusaders or ascetics: their imagination was possessed by associations
far different from those which had inspired Dante: they did not revolt
against the church, but they had no enthusiasm for her, and they had
enthusiasm for whatever was fresh and graceful and intelligible. From
all that was old and solemn, or that seemed to savour of feudalism or
monkery, they turned away, too indifferent to be hostile. And so, in
the midst of the Renaissance, so, under the consciousness that former
things were passing from the earth, and a new order opening, so, with
the other beliefs and memories of the Middle Age, the shadowy rights
of the Roman Empire melted away in the fuller modern light. Here and
there a jurist muttered that no neglect could destroy its universal
supremacy, or a priest declaimed to listless hearers on its duty to
protect the Holy See; but to Germany it had become an ancient device
for holding together the discordant members of her body, to its
possessors an engine for extending the power of the house of Hapsburg.
[Sidenote: Empire henceforth German.]
Henceforth, therefore, we must look upon the Holy Roman Empire as lost
in the German; and after a few faint attempts to resuscitate
old-fashioned claims, nothing remains to indicate its origin save a
sounding title and a precedence among the states of Europe. It was not
that the Renaissance exerted any direct political influence either
against the Empire or for it; men were too busy upon statues and coins
and manuscripts to care what befel Popes or Emperors. It acted rather
by silently withdrawing the whole system of doctrines upon which the
Empire had rested, and thus leaving it, since it had previously no
support but that of opinion, without any support at all.
[Sidenote: Attempts to reform the Germanic Constitution.]
[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the projects of reform.]
During Maximilian's eventful reign several efforts were made to
construct a new constitution, but it is to German, rather than to
imperial history that they properly belong. Here, indeed, the history
of the Holy Empire might close, did not the title unchanged beckon us
on, and were it not that the events of these later centuries may in
their causes be traced back to times when the name of Roman was not
wholly a mockery. It may be enough to remark that while the
preservation of peace and the better administration of justice were in
some measure attained by the Public Peace and Imperial Chamber,
established in A.D. 1495, schemes still more important failed through
the bad constitution of the Diet, and the unconquerable jealousy of
the Emperor and the Estates. Maximilian refused to have his
prerogative, indefinite though weak, restricted by the appointment of
an administrative council[359], and when the Estates extorted it from
him, did his best to ensure its failure. In the Diet, which consisted
of three colleges, electors, princes, and cities, the lower nobility
and knights of the Empire were unrepresented, and resented every
decree that affected their position, refusing to pay taxes in voting
which they had no voice. The interests of the princes and the cities
were often irreconcilable, while the strength of the crown would not
have been sufficient to make its adhesion to the latter of any effect.
The policy of conciliating the commons, which Sigismund had tried,
succeeding Emperors seldom cared to repeat, content to gain their
point by raising factions among the territorial magnates, and so to
stave off the unwelcome demand for reform. After many earnest attempts
to establish a representative system, such as might resist the
tendency to local independence and cure the evils of separate
administration, the hope so often baffled died away. Forces were too
nearly balanced: the sovereign could not extend his personal control,
nor could the reforming party limit him by a strong council of
government, for such a measure would have equally trenched on the
independence of the states. So ended the first great effort for German
unity, interesting from its bearing on the events and aspirations of
our own day; interesting, too, as giving the most convincing proof of
the decline of the imperial office. For the projects of reform did not
propose to effect their objects by restoring to Maximilian the
authority his predecessors had once enjoyed, but by setting up a body
which would resemble far more nearly the senate of a federal state
than the administrative council which surrounds a monarch. The
existing system developed itself further: relieved from external
pressure, the princes became more despotic in their own territories:
distinct codes were framed, and new systems of administration
introduced: the insurgent peasantry were crushed down with more
confident harshness. Already had leagues of princes and cities been
formed[360] (that of Swabia was one of the strongest forces in
Germany, and often the monarch's firmest support); now alliances begin
to be contracted with foreign powers, and receive a direction of
formidable import from the rivalry which the pretensions on Naples and
Milan of Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth of France kindled
between their house and the Austrian. It was no slight gain to have
friends in the heart of the enemy's country, such as French intrigue
found in the Elector Palatine and the count of Würtemberg.
[Sidenote: Germanic nationality.]
[Sidenote: Change of Titles.]
[Sidenote: The title 'Imperator Electus.']
Nevertheless this was also the era of the first conscious feeling of
German nationality, as distinct from imperial. Driven in on all hands,
with Italy and the Slavic lands and Burgundy hopelessly lost,
Teutschland learnt to separate itself from Welschland[361]. The Empire
became the representative of a narrower but more practicable national
union. It is not a mere coincidence that at this date there appear
several notable changes of style. 'Nationis Teutonicæ' (Teutscher
Nation) is added to the simple 'sacrum imperium Romanum.' The title of
'Imperator electus,' which Maximilian obtains leave from Pope Julius
the Second to assume, when the Venetians prevent him from reaching his
capital, marks the severance of Germany from Rome. No subsequent
Emperor received his crown in the ancient capital (Charles the Fifth
was indeed crowned by the Pope's hands, but the ceremony took place at
Bologna, and was therefore of at least questionable validity); each
assumed after his German coronation[362] the title of Emperor
Elect[363], and employed this in all documents issued in his name. But
the word 'elect' being omitted when he was addressed by others, partly
from motives of courtesy, partly because the old rules regarding the
Roman coronation were forgotten, or remembered only by antiquaries, he
was never called, even when formality was required, anything but
Emperor. The substantial import of another title now first introduced
is the same. Before Otto the First, the Teutonic king had called
himself either 'rex' alone, or 'Francorum orientalium rex,' or
'Francorum atque Saxonum rex:' after A.D. 962, all lesser dignities
had been merged in the 'Romanorum Imperator[364].' To this Maximilian
appended 'Germaniæ rex,' or, adding Frederick the Second's
bequest[365], 'König in Germanien und Jerusalem.' It has been thought
that from a mixture of the title King of Germany, and that of Emperor,
has been formed the phrase 'German Emperor,' or less correctly,
'Emperor of Germany[366].' But more probably the terms 'German
Emperor' and 'Emperor of Germany' are nothing but convenient
corruptions of the technical description of the Germanic
sovereign[367].
That the Empire was thus sinking into a merely German power cannot be
doubted. But it was only natural that those who lived at the time
should not discern the tendency of events. Again and again did the
restless and sanguine Maximilian propose the recovery of Burgundy and
Italy,--his last scheme was to adjust the relations of Papacy and
Empire by becoming Pope himself: nor were successive Diets less
zealous to check private war, still the scandal of Germany, to set
right the gear of the imperial chamber, to make the imperial officials
permanent, and their administration uniform throughout the country.
But while they talked the heavens darkened, and the flood came and
destroyed them all.
FOOTNOTES:
[352] See Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the History of the Eastern
Church_, Lecture II.
[353] It is not without interest to observe that the council of Basel
shewed signs of reciprocating imperial care by claiming those very
rights over the Empire to which the Popes were accustomed to pretend.
[354] The councils of Basel and Florence were not recognized from
first to last by all Europe, as was the council of Constance. When the
assembly of Trent met, the great religious schism had already made a
general council, in the true sense of the word, impossible.
[355] 'E pero venendo gl'imperadori della Magna col supremo titolo, e
volendo col senno e colla forza della Magna reggiere gli Italiani, non
lo fanno e non lo possono fare.'--M. Villani, iv. 77.
Matthew Villani's etymology of the two great faction names of Italy is
worth quoting, as a fair sample of the skill of mediævals in such
matters:--'La Italia tutta e divisa mistamente in due parti, l'una che
seguita ne' fatti del mondo la santa chiesa--e questi son dinominati
Guelfi; cioè, guardatori di fè. E l'altra parte seguitano lo 'mperio o
fedele o enfedele che sia delle cose del mondo a santa chiesa. E
chiamansi Ghibellini, quasi guida belli; cioè, guidatori di
battaglie.'
[356] 'Nam quamvis Imperatorem et regem et dominum vestrum esse
fateamini, precario tamen ille imperare videtur: nulla ei potentia
est; tantum ei paretis quantum vultis, vultis autem minimum.'--Æneas
Sylvius to the princes of Germany, quoted by Hippolytus a Lapide.
[357] See Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_; a book
which throws more light than any other with which I am acquainted on
the inner nature of the Empire.
[358] The two immediately preceding Emperors, Albert II (1438-1439)
and Frederick III, father of Maximilian (1439-1493), had been
Hapsburgs. It is nevertheless from Maximilian that the ascendancy of
that family must be dated.
[359] Reichsregiment.
[360] Wenzel had encouraged the leagues of the cities, and incurred
thereby the hatred of the nobles.
[361] The Germans, like our own ancestors, called foreign, _i. e._
non-Teutonic nations, Welsh. Yet apparently not all such nations, but
only those which they in some way associated with the Roman Empire,
the Cymry of Roman Britain, the Romanized Kelts of Gaul, the Italians,
the Roumans or Wallachs of Transylvania and the Principalities. It
does not appear that either the Magyars or any Slavonic people were
called by any form of the name Welsh.
[362] The German crown was received at Aachen, the ancient Frankish
capital, where may still be seen, in the gallery of the basilica, the
marble throne on which the Emperors from the days of Charles to those
of Ferdinand I were crowned. It was upon this chair that Otto III had
found the body of Charles seated, when he opened his tomb in A.D.
1001. After Ferdinand I, the coronation as well as the election took
place at Frankfort. An account of the ceremony may be found in
Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_. Aachen, though it remained and
indeed is still a German town, lay in too remote a corner of the
country to be a convenient capital, and was moreover in dangerous
proximity to the West Franks, as stubborn old Germans continue to call
them. As early as A.D. 1353 we find bishop Leopold of Bamberg
complaining that the French had arrogated to themselves the honours of
the Frankish name, and called themselves 'reges Franciæ,' instead of
'reges Franciæ occidentalis.'--Lupoldus Bebenburgensis, apud
Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
[363] Erwählter Kaiser. See Appendix, Note C.
[364] Romanorum rex (after Henry II) till the coronation at Rome.
[365] But the Emperor was only one of many claimants to this kingdom;
they multiplied as the prospect of regaining it died away.
[366] The latter does not occur, even in English books, till
comparatively recent times. English writers of the seventeenth century
always call him 'The Emperor,' pure and simple, just as they
invariably say 'the French king.' But the phrase 'Empereur d'Almayne'
may be found in very early French writers.
[367] See Moser, _Römische Kayser_; Goldast's and other collections of
imperial edicts and proclamations.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE REFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS UPON THE EMPIRE.
The Reformation falls to be mentioned here, of course not as a
religious movement, but as the cause of political changes, which still
further rent the Empire, and struck at the root of the theory by which
it had been created and upheld. Luther completed the work of
Hildebrand. Hitherto it had seemed not impossible to strengthen the
German state into a monarchy, compact if not despotic; the very Diet
of Worms, where the monk of Wittenberg proclaimed to an astonished
church and Emperor that the day of spiritual tyranny was past, had
framed and presented a fresh scheme for the construction of a central
council of government. The great religious schism put an end to all
such hopes, for it became a source of political disunion far more
serious and permanent than any that had existed before, and it taught
the two factions into which Germany was henceforth divided to regard
each other with feelings more bitter than those of hostile nations.
[Sidenote: Accession of Charles V (1519-1558).]
The breach came at the most unfortunate time possible. After an
election, more memorable than any preceding, an election in which
Francis the First of France and Henry the Eighth of England had been
his competitors, a prince had just ascended the imperial throne who
united dominions vaster than any Europe had seen since the days of his
great namesake. Spain and Naples, Flanders, and other parts of the
Burgundian lands, as well as large regions in Eastern Germany, obeyed
Charles: he drew inexhaustible revenues from a new empire beyond the
Atlantic. Such a power, directed by a mind more resolute and profound
than that of Maximilian his grandfather, might have well been able,
despite the stringency of his coronation engagements[368], and the
watchfulness of the electors[369], to override their usurped
privileges, and make himself practically as well as officially the
head of the nation. Charles the Fifth, though from the coldness of his
manner[370] and his Flemish speech never a favourite among the
Germans, was in point of fact far stronger than Maximilian or any
other Emperor who had reigned for three centuries. In Italy he
succeeded, after long struggles with the Pope and the French, in
rendering himself supreme: England he knew how to lead, by flattering
Henry and cajoling Wolsey: from no state but France had he serious
opposition to fear. To this strength his imperial dignity was indeed a
mere accident: its sources were the infantry of Spain, the looms of
Flanders, the sierras of Peru. But the conquest once achieved, might
could lose itself in right; and as an earlier Charles had veiled the
terror of the Frankish sword under the mask of Roman election, so
might his successor sway a hundred provinces with the sole name of
Roman Emperor, and transmit to his race a dominion as wide and more
enduring.
[Sidenote: Attitude of Charles towards the religious movement.]
One is tempted to speculate as to what might have happened had Charles
espoused the reforming cause. His reverence for the Pope's person is
sufficiently seen in the sack of Rome and the captivity of Clement;
the traditions of his office might have led him to tread in the steps
of the Henrys and the Fredericks, into which even the timid Lewis the
Fourth and the unstable Sigismund had sometimes ventured; the
awakening zeal of the German people, exasperated by the exactions of
the Romish court, would have strengthened his hands, and enabled him,
while moderating the excesses of change, to fix his throne on the deep
foundations of national love. It may well be doubted--Englishmen at
least have reason for the doubt--whether the Reformation would not
have lost as much as it could have gained by being entangled in the
meshes of royal patronage. But, setting aside Charles's personal
leaning to the old faith, and forgetting that he was king of the most
bigoted race of Europe, his position as Emperor made him almost
perforce the Pope's ally. The Empire had been called into being by
Rome, had vaunted the protection of the Apostolic See as its highest
earthly privilege, had latterly been wont, especially in Hapsburg
hands, to lean on the papacy for support. Itself founded entirely on
prescription and the traditions of immemorial reverence, how could it
abandon the cause which the longest prescription and the most solemn
authority had combined to consecrate? With the German clergy, despite
occasional quarrels, it had been on better terms than with the lay
aristocracy; their heads had been the chief ministers of the crown;
the advocacies of their abbeys were the last source of imperial
revenue to disappear. To turn against them now, when furiously
assailed by heretics; to abrogate claims hallowed by antiquity and a
hundred laws, would be to pronounce its own sentence, and the fall of
the eternal city's spiritual dominion must involve the fall of what
still professed to be her temporal. Charles would have been glad to
see some abuses corrected; but a broad line of policy was called for,
and he cast in his lot with the Catholics[371].
[Sidenote: Ultimate failure of the repressive policy of Charles.]
[Sidenote: Ferdinand I, 1558-1564.]
[Sidenote: Maximilian II, 1564-1576.]
[Sidenote: Destruction of the Germanic state-system.]
Of many momentous results only a few need be noticed here. The
reconstruction of the old imperial system, upon the basis of Hapsburg
power, proved in the end impossible. Yet for some years it had seemed
actually accomplished. When the Smalkaldic league had been dissolved
and its leaders captured, the whole country lay prostrate before
Charles. He overawed the Diet at Augsburg by the Spanish soldiery: he
forced formularies of doctrine upon the vanquished Protestants: he set
up and pulled down whom he would throughout Germany, amid the muttered
discontent of his own partisans. Then, as in the beginning of the year
1552, he lay at Innsbruck, fondly dreaming that his work was done,
waiting the spring weather to cross to Trent, where the Catholic
fathers had again met to settle the world's faith for it, news was
suddenly brought that North Germany was in arms, and that the revolted
Maurice of Saxony had seized Donauwerth, and was hurrying through the
Bavarian Alps to surprise his sovereign. Charles rose and fled
southwards over the snows of the Brenner, then eastwards, under the
blood-red cliffs of dolomite that wall in the Pusterthal, far away
into the valleys of Carinthia: the council of Trent broke up in
consternation: Europe saw and the Emperor acknowledged that in his
fancied triumph over the spirit of revolution he had done no more than
block up for the moment an irresistible torrent. When this last effort
to produce religious uniformity by violence had failed as hopelessly
as the previous devices of holding discussions of doctrine and calling
a general council, a sort of armistice was agreed to in 1554, which
lasted in mutual fear and suspicion for more than sixty years. Four
years after this disappointment of the hopes and projects which had
occupied his busy life, Charles, weighed down by cares and with the
shadow of coming death already upon him, resigned the sovereignty of
Spain and the Indies, of Flanders and Naples, into the hands of his
son Philip the Second; while the imperial sceptre passed to his
brother Ferdinand, who had been some time before chosen King of the
Romans. Ferdinand was content to leave things much as he found them,
and the amiable Maximilian II, who succeeded him, though personally
well inclined to the Protestants, found himself fettered by his
position and his allies, and could do little or nothing to quench the
flame of religious and political hatred. Germany remained divided into
two omnipresent factions, and so further than ever from harmonious
action, or a tightening of the long-loosened bond of feudal
allegiance. The states of either creed being gathered into a league,
there could no longer be a recognized centre of authority for judicial
or administrative purposes. Least of all could a centre be sought in
the Emperor, the leader of the papal party, the suspected foe of every
Protestant. Too closely watched to do anything of his own authority,
too much committed to one party to be accepted as a mediator by the
other, he was driven to attain his own objects by falling in with the
schemes and furthering the selfish ends of his adherents, by becoming
the accomplice or the tool of the Jesuits. The Lutheran princes
addressed themselves to reduce a power of which they had still an
over-sensitive dread, and found when they exacted from each successive
sovereign engagements more stringent than his predecessor's, that in
this, and this alone, their Catholic brethren were not unwilling to
join them. Thus obliged to strip himself one by one of the ancient
privileges of his crown, the Emperor came to have little influence on
the government except that which his intrigues might exercise. Nay, it
became almost impossible to maintain a government at all. For when the
Reformers found themselves outvoted at the Diet, they declared that in
matters of religion a majority ought not to bind a minority. As the
measures were few which did not admit of being reduced to this
category, for whatever benefited the Emperor or any other Catholic
prince injured the Protestants, nothing could be done save by the
assent of two bitterly hostile factions. Thus scarce anything was
done; and even the courts of justice were stopped by the disputes that
attended the appointment of every judge or assessor.
[Sidenote: Alliance of the Protestants with France.]
In the foreign politics of Germany another result followed. Inferior
in military force and organization, the Protestant princes at first
provided for their safety by forming leagues among themselves. The
device was an old one, and had been employed by the monarch himself
before now, in despair at the effete and cumbrous forms of the
imperial system. Soon they began to look beyond the Vosges, and found
that France, burning heretics at home, was only too happy to smile on
free opinions elsewhere. The alliance was easily struck; Henry the
Second assumed in 1552 the title of 'Protector of the Germanic
liberties,' and a pretext for interference was never wanting in
future.
[Sidenote: The Reformation spirit, and its influence upon the Empire.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the Reformation on the doctrines regarding the
Visible Church.]
These were some of the visible political consequences of the great
religious schism of the sixteenth century. But beyond and above them
there was a change far more momentous than any of its immediate
results. There is perhaps no event in history which has been represented
in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. It has been called
a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of the Teutonic races
against the Italians, or of the kingdoms of Europe against the
universal monarchy of the Popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of
long-repressed anger at the luxury of the prelates and the manifold
abuses of the ecclesiastical system; others a renewal of the youth of
the church by a return to primitive forms of doctrine. All these
indeed to some extent it was; but it was also something more profound,
and fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It was in its
essence the assertion of the principle of individuality--that is to
say, of true spiritual freedom. Hitherto the personal consciousness
had been a faint and broken reflection of the universal; obedience had
been held the first of religious duties; truth had been conceived as a
something external and positive, which the priesthood who were its
stewards were to communicate to the passive layman, and whose saving
virtue lay not in its being felt and known by him to be truth, but in
a purely formal and unreasoning acceptance. The great principles which
mediæval Christianity still cherished were obscured by the limited,
rigid, almost sensuous forms which had been forced on them in times of
ignorance and barbarism. That which was in its nature abstract, had
been able to survive only by taking a concrete expression. The
universal consciousness became the Visible Church: the Visible Church
hardened into a government and degenerated into a hierarchy. Holiness
of heart and life was sought by outward works, by penances and
pilgrimages, by gifts to the poor and to the clergy, wherein there
dwelt often little enough of a charitable mind. The presence of divine
truth among men was symbolized under one aspect by the existence on
earth of an infallible Vicar of God, the Pope; under another, by the
reception of the present Deity in the sacrifice of the mass; in a
third, by the doctrine that the priest's power to remit sins and
administer the sacraments depended upon a transmission of miraculous
gifts which can hardly be called other than physical. All this system
of doctrine, which might, but for the position of the church as a
worldly and therefore obstructive power, have expanded, renewed, and
purified itself during the four centuries that had elapsed since its
completion[372], and thus remained in harmony with the growing
intelligence of mankind, was suddenly rent in pieces by the convulsion
of the Reformation, and flung away by the more religious and more
progressive peoples of Europe. That which was external and concrete,
was in all things to be superseded by that which was inward and
spiritual. It was proclaimed that the individual spirit, while it
continued to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had nevertheless an
independent existence as a centre of self-issuing force, and was to be
in all things active rather than passive. Truth was no longer to be
truth to the soul until it should have been by the soul recognized,
and in some measure even created; but when so recognized and felt, it
is able under the form of faith to transcend outward works and to
transform the dogmas of the understanding; it becomes the living
principle within each man's breast, infinite itself, and expressing
itself infinitely through his thoughts and acts. He who as a spiritual
being was delivered from the priest, and brought into direct relation
with the Divinity, needed not, as heretofore, to be enrolled a member
of a visible congregation of his fellows, that he might live a pure
and useful life among them. Thus by the Reformation the Visible Church
as well as the priesthood lost that paramount importance which had
hitherto belonged to it, and sank from being the depositary of all
religious tradition, the source and centre of religious life, the
arbiter of eternal happiness or misery, into a mere association of
Christian men, for the expression of mutual sympathy and the better
attainment of certain common ends. Like those other doctrines which
were now assailed by the Reformation, this mediæval view of the nature
of the Visible Church had been naturally, and so, it may be said,
necessarily developed between the third and the twelfth century, and
must therefore have represented the thoughts and satisfied the wants
of those times. By the Visible Church the flickering lamp of knowledge
and literary culture, as well as of religion, had been fed and tended
through the long night of the Dark Ages. But, like the whole
theological fabric of which it formed a part, it was now hard and
unfruitful, identified with its own worst abuses, capable apparently
of no further development, and unable to satisfy minds which in
growing stronger had grown more conscious of their strength. Before
the awakened zeal of the northern nations it stood a cold and lifeless
system, whose organization as a hierarchy checked the free activity of
thought, whose bestowal of worldly power and wealth on spiritual
pastors drew them away from their proper duties, and which by
maintaining alongside of the civil magistracy a co-ordinate and rival
government, maintained also that separation of the spiritual element
in man from the secular, which had been so complete and so pernicious
during the Middle Ages, which debases life, and severs religion from
morality.
[Sidenote: Consequent effect upon the Empire.]
The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious movement: and it is
the Empire, not the Church, that we have here to consider. The
distinction is only apparent. The Holy Empire is but another name for
the Visible Church. It has been shewn already how mediæval theory
constructed the State on the model of the Church; how the Roman Empire
was the shadow of the Popedom--designed to rule men's bodies as the
pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike claimed obedience on the ground
that Truth is One, and that where there is One faith there must be One
government[373]. And, therefore, since it was this very principle of
Formal Unity that the Reformation overthrew, it became a revolt
against despotism of every kind; it erected the standard of civil as
well as of religious liberty, since both of them are needed, though
needed in a different measure, for the worthy development of the
individual spirit. The Empire had never been conspicuously the
antagonist of popular freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth,
far less formidable to the commonalty than were the petty princes of
Germany. But submission, and submission on the ground of indefeasible
transmitted right, upon the ground of Catholic traditions and the duty
of the Christian magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as
the parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant
claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius Cæsar it had passed
through many phases, but in none of them had it ever been a
constitutional monarchy, pledged to the recognition of popular rights.
And hence the indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the
province of government and exalt the privileges of the subject was as
plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant claim of the right of
private judgment was to the pretensions of the Papacy and the
priesthood.
[Sidenote: Immediate influence of the Reformation on political and
religious liberty.]
[Sidenote: Conduct of the Protestant States.]
The remark must not be omitted in passing, how much less than might
have been expected the religious movement did at first actually effect
in the way of promoting either political progress or freedom of
conscience. The habits of centuries were not to be unlearnt in a few
years, and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence and
activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a time. By a few
inflammable minds liberty was carried into antinomianism, and produced
the wildest excesses of life and doctrine. Several fantastic sects
arose, refusing to conform to the ordinary rules without which human
society could not subsist. But these commotions neither spread widely
nor lasted long. Far more pervading and more remarkable was the other
error, if that can be called an error which was the almost unavoidable
result of the circumstances of the time. The principles which had led
the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have
taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from
the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with
the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have
enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own
shewing, had no value save when it was freely given. A church which
does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of
the truth may possibly be with its adversaries: a church which permits
or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation has no right
first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not
convinced. But whether it was that men only half saw what they had
done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they
welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that
religion, or rather religious creeds, began to be involved with
politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the
greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or
more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy
continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost
every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself
with the state, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages,
while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. It
was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the
several countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to
the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be
co-extensive with its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and
exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive
powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of
theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest,
for they could not, like the old church, point to the historical
transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any
one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could
not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it
may be worth, '_Securus iudicat orbis terrarum_.' But in practice
these difficulties were soon got over, for the dominant party in each
state, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it
was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to
nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England,
or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland,
imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the
practices of mediæval intolerance without their justification.
Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible Catholic
and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practised by those
who were not catholic, who were no more apostolic than their
neighbours, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and
venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to
others. If union with the visible church by participation in a
material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be
held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of
heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be
possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external
forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly. Therefore the
intolerance of Protestants, if the forms it took were less cruel than
those practised by the Roman Catholics, was also far less defensible;
for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf than motives
of political expediency, or, more often, the mere headstrong passion
of a ruler or a faction to silence the expressions of any opinions but
their own. To enlarge upon this theme, did space permit it, would not
be to digress from the proper subject of this narrative. For the
Empire, as has been said more than once already, was far less an
institution than a theory or doctrine. And hence it is not too much to
say, that the ideas which have but recently ceased to prevail
regarding the duty of the magistrate to compel uniformity in doctrine
and worship by the civil arm, may all be traced to the relation which
that doctrine established between the Roman Church and the Roman
Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an Empire Church itself.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Reformation on the name and associations
of the Empire.]
Two of the ways in which the Reformation affected the Empire have been
now described: its immediate political results, and its far more
profound doctrinal importance, as implanting new ideas regarding the
nature of freedom and the province of government. A third, though
apparently almost superficial, cannot be omitted. Its name and its
traditions, little as they retained of their former magic power, were
still such as to excite the antipathy of the German reformers. The
form which the doctrine of the supreme importance of one faith and one
body of the faithful had taken was the dominion of the ancient capital
of the world through her spiritual head, the Roman bishop, and her
temporal head, the Emperor. As the names of Roman and Christian had
been once convertible, so long afterwards were those of Roman and
Catholic. The Reformation, separating into its parts what had hitherto
been one conception, attacked Romanism but not Catholicity, and formed
religious communities which, while continuing to call themselves
Christian, repudiated the form with which Christianity had been so
long identified in the West. As the Empire was founded upon the
assumption that the limits of Church and State are exactly
co-extensive, a change which withdrew half of its subjects from the
one body while they remained members of the other, transformed it
utterly, destroyed the meaning and value of its old arrangements, and
forced the Emperor into a strange and incongruous position. To his
Protestant subjects he was merely the head of the administration, to
the Catholics he was also the Defender and Advocate of their church.
Thus from being chief of the whole state he became the chief of a
party within it, the Corpus Catholicorum, as opposed to the Corpus
Evangelicorum; he lost what had been hitherto his most holy claim to
the obedience of the subject; the awakened feeling of German
nationality was driven into hostility to an institution whose title
and history bound it to the centre of foreign tyranny. After exulting
for seven centuries in the heritage of Roman rule, the Teutonic
nations cherished again the feelings with which their ancestors had
resisted Julius Cæsar and Germanicus. Two mutually repugnant systems
could not exist side by side without striving to destroy one another.
The instincts of theological sympathy overcame the duties of political
allegiance, and men who were subjects both of the Empire and of their
local prince, gave all their loyalty to him who espoused their
doctrines and protected their worship. For in North Germany, princes
as well as people were mostly Lutheran: in the southern and especially
the south-eastern lands, where the magnates held to the old faith,
Protestants were scarcely to be found except in the free cities. The
same causes which injured the Emperor's position in Germany swept away
the last semblance of his authority through other countries. In the
great struggle which followed, the Protestants of England and France,
of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as the ally of Spain, of
the Vatican, of the Jesuits; and he of whom it had been believed a
century before that by nothing but his existence was the coming of
Antichrist on earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines
either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion. The
earthquake that opened a chasm in Germany was felt through Europe; its
states and peoples marshalled themselves under two hostile banners,
and with the Empire's expiring power vanished that united Christendom
it had been created to lead[374].
[Sidenote: Troubles of Germany.]
[Sidenote: Rudolf II, 1576-1612.]
[Sidenote: Matthias, 1612-1619.]
Some of the effects thus sketched began to shew themselves as early as
that famous Diet of Worms, from Luther's appearance at which, in A.D.
1521, we may date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as the
end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be placed earlier
than the Revolution of 1688, nor in France than the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685, so it was not till after more than a century
of doubtful strife that the new order of things was fully and finally
established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg, like most
treaties on the basis of _uti possidetis_, were no better than a
hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously made to be broken.
The church lands which Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors
urged the Catholic princes to reclaim, furnished an unceasing ground
of quarrel: neither party yet knew the strength of its antagonists
sufficiently to abstain from insulting or persecuting their modes of
worship, and the smouldering hate of half a century was kindled by the
troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War.
[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648.]
[Sidenote: Ferdinand II, A.D. 1619-37.]
[Sidenote: Plans of Ferdinand II.]
[Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus.]
[Sidenote: Ferdinand III, 1637-1658.]
[Sidenote: The peace of Westphalia.]
The imperial sceptre had now passed from the indolent and vacillating
Rudolf II (1576-1612), the corrupt and reckless policy of whose
ministers had done much to exasperate the already suspicious minds of
the Protestants, into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand the Second[375].
Jealous, bigoted, implacable, skilful in forming and concealing his
plans, resolute to obstinacy in carrying them out in action, the house
of Hapsburg could have had no abler and no more unpopular leader in
their second attempt to turn the German Empire into an Austrian
military monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the
accomplishment of the project as Charles the Fifth had been. Leagued
with Spain, backed by the Catholics of Germany, served by such a
leader as Wallenstein, Ferdinand proposed nothing less than the
extension of the Empire to its old limits, and the recovery of his
crown's full prerogative over all its vassals. Denmark and Holland
were to be attacked by sea and land: Italy to be reconquered with the
help of Spain: Maximilian of Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded
with principalities in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general
was all but master of Northern Germany when the successful resistance
of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of the war. Soon after (A.D.
1630), Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an
impending reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand's high-handed proceedings
had already alarmed even the Catholic princes. Of his own authority he
had put the Elector Palatine and other magnates to the ban of the
Empire: he had transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria; had treated
the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war, to be portioned
out at his pleasure; had unsettled all possession by requiring the
restitution of church property occupied since A.D. 1555. The
Protestants were helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of
the flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose it:
the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish king. In four
campaigns he destroyed the armies and the prestige of the Emperor;
devastated his lands, emptied his treasury, and left him at last so
enfeebled that no subsequent successes could make him again
formidable. Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the
Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the Lutheran and
the Calvinist party--some, like the Saxon elector, most inglorious of
his inglorious house, bribed by the cunning Austrian; others afraid to
stir lest a reverse should expose them unprotected to his
vengeance--that the issue of the long protracted contest would have
gone against them but for the interference of France. It was the
leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress the house of
Hapsburg and keep Germany disunited: hence he fostered Protestantism
abroad while trampling it down at home. The triumph he did not live to
see was sealed in A.D. 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the
combatants, and the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück were
thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.
FOOTNOTES:
[368] The so-called 'Wahlcapitulation.'
[369] The electors long refused to elect Charles, dreading his great
hereditary power, and were at last induced to do so only by their
overmastering fear of the Turks.
[370] Nearly all the Hapsburgs seem to have wanted that sort of genial
heartiness which, apt as it is to be stifled by education in the
purple, has nevertheless been possessed by several other royal lines,
greatly contributing to their vitality; as for instance by more than
one prince of the houses of Brunswick and Hohenzollern.
[371] See this brought out with great force in the very interesting
work of Padre Tosti, _Prolegomeni alla Storia Universale della
Chiesa_, from which I quote one passage, which bears directly on the
matter in hand: 'Il grido della riforma clericale aveva un eco
terribile in tutta la compagnia civile dei popoli: essa percuoteva le
cime del laicale potere, e rimbalzava per tutta la gerarchia sociale.
Se l'imperadore Sigismondo nel concilio di Costanza non avesse
fiutate queste consequenze nella eresia di Hus e di Girolamo di Praga,
forse non avrebbe con tanto zelo mandati alle fiamme que' novatori.
Rotto da Lutero il vincolo di suggezione al Papa ed ai preti in fatti
di religione, avvenne che anche quello che sommetteva il vassallo al
barone, il barone al imperadore si allentasse. Il popolo con la Bibbia
in mano era prete, vescovo, e papa; e se prima contristato della
prepotenza di chi gli soprastava, ricorreva al successore di San
Pietro, ora ricorreva a se stesso, avendogli commesse Fra Martino le
chiavi del regno dei Cieli.'--vol. ii. pp. 398, 9.
[372] It was not till the end of the eleventh century that
transubstantiation was definitely established as a dogma.
[373] See the passages quoted in note 113, p. 98; and note 132, p. 110.
[374] Henry VIII of England when he rebelled against the Pope called
himself King of Ireland (his predecessors had used only the title
'Dominus Hiberniæ') without asking the Emperor's permission, in order
to shew that he repudiated the temporal as well as the spiritual
dominion of Rome.
So the Statute of Appeals is careful to deny and reject the authority
of 'other foreign potentates,' meaning, no doubt, the Emperor as well
as the Pope.
[375] Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 1612 till 1619.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA: LAST STAGE IN THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE.
The Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with the exception perhaps
of the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, the most important of those
attempts to reconstruct by diplomacy the European states-system which
have played so large a part in modern history. It is important,
however, not as marking the introduction of new principles, but as
winding up the struggle which had convulsed Germany since the revolt
of Luther, sealing its results, and closing definitively the period of
the Reformation. Although the causes of disunion which the religious
movement called into being had now been at work for more than a
hundred years, their effects were not fully seen till it became
necessary to establish a system which should represent the altered
relations of the German states. It may thus be said of this famous
peace, as of the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the
Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things
already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new
importance. To all parties alike the result of the Thirty Years' War
was thoroughly unsatisfactory: to the Protestants, who had lost
Bohemia, and still were obliged to hold an inferior place in the
electoral college and in the Diet: to the Catholics, who were forced
to permit the exercise of heretical worship, and leave the church
lands in the grasp of sacrilegious spoilers: to the princes, who could
not throw off the burden of imperial supremacy: to the Emperor, who
could turn that supremacy to no practical account. No other conclusion
was possible to a contest in which every one had been vanquished and
no one victorious; which had ceased because while the reasons for war
continued the means of war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial
advantage remained with the German princes, for they gained the formal
recognition of that territorial independence whose origin may be
placed as far back as the days of Frederick the Second, and the
maturity of which had been hastened by the events of the last
preceding century. It was, indeed, not only recognized but justified
as rightful and necessary. For while the political situation, to use a
current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years, the
eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more. Never by their
fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by the Popes or Lombard
republicans in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and
Swabian Cæsars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings,
or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant
jurists of the sixteenth or rather of the seventeenth century were the
first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the
world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German
monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need
prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for
themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections
made him the friend of their enemies.
[Sidenote: The treatise of Hippolytus a Lapide.]
[Sidenote: Rights of the Emperor and the Diet, as settled in A.D.
1648.]
It is very instructive to turn suddenly from Dante or Peter de Andlo
to a book published shortly before A.D. 1648, under the name of
Hippolytus a Lapide[376], and notice the matter-of-fact way, the
almost contemptuous spirit in which, disregarding the traditional
glories of the Empire, he comments on its actual condition and
prospects. Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist Chemnitz
assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous, that the Germanic
constitution must be treated entirely as a native growth: that the
'lex regia' (so much discussed and so often misunderstood) and the
whole system of Justinianean absolutism which the Emperor had used so
dexterously, were in their applications to Germany not merely
incongruous but positively absurd. With eminent learning, Chemnitz
examines the early history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing
contests of the monarch with the nobility the unexpected moral that
the power of the former has been always dangerous, and is now more
dangerous than ever, and then launches out into a long invective
against the policy of the Hapsburgs, an invective which the ambition
and harshness of the late Emperor made only too plausible. The one
real remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states
concisely--'domus Austriacæ extirpatio:' but, failing this, he would
have the Emperor's prerogative restricted in every way, and provide
means for resisting or dethroning him. It was by these views, which
seem to have made a profound impression in Germany, that the states,
or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the
negotiations of Osnabrück and Münster. By extorting a full recognition
of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics and Protestants
alike, in their respective territories, they bound the Emperor from
any direct interference with the administration, either in particular
districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of public importance,
including the rights of making war or peace, of levying contributions,
raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting laws,
were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. The
Aulic Council, which had been sometimes the engine of imperial
oppression, and always of imperial intrigue, was so restricted as to
be harmless for the future. The 'reservata' of the Emperor were
confined to the rights of granting titles and confirming tolls. In
matters of religion, an exact though not perfectly reciprocal equality
was established between the two chief ecclesiastical bodies, and the
right of 'Itio in partes,' that is to say, of deciding questions in
which religion was involved by amicable negotiations between the
Protestant and Catholic states, instead of by a majority of votes in
the Diet, was definitely conceded. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic
prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped,
the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had existed
was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and recognized as its
members persons who formed a visible body at open war with the Holy
Roman Church; and its constitution admitted schismatics to a full
share in all those civil rights which, according to the doctrines of
the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the
communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was
therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory
of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated. And in
this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent the Tenth, who commanded
his legate to protest against it, and subsequently declared it void by
the bull 'Zelo domus Dei[377].'
[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
The transference of power within the Empire, from its head to its
members, was a small matter compared with the losses which the Empire
suffered as a whole. The real gainers by the treaties of Westphalia
were those who had borne the brunt of the battle against Ferdinand the
Second and his son. To France were ceded Brisac, the Austrian part of
Alsace, and the lands of the three bishoprics in Lorraine--Metz, Toul,
and Verdun, which her armies had seized in A.D. 1552: to Sweden,
northern Pomerania, Bremen, and Verden. There was, however, this
difference between the position of the two, that whereas Sweden became
a member of the German Diet for what she received (as the king of
Holland was, until 1866-7, a member for Dutch Luxemburg, and as the
kings of Denmark, up till the accession of the present sovereign, were
for Holstein), the acquisitions of France were delivered over to her
in full sovereignty, and for ever severed from the Germanic body. And
as it was by their aid that the liberties of the Protestants had been
won, these two states obtained at the same time what was more valuable
than territorial accessions--the right of interfering at imperial
elections, and generally whenever the provisions of the treaties of
Osnabrück and Münster, which they had guaranteed, might be supposed to
be endangered. The bounds of the Empire were further narrowed by the
final separation of two countries, once integral parts of Germany, and
up to this time legally members of her body. Holland and Switzerland
were, in A.D. 1648, declared independent.
[Sidenote: Germany after the Peace.]
[Sidenote: Number of petty independent states: effects of such a
system on Germany.]
The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly
marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of
Frederick the Second. As from the days of Maximilian it had borne a
mixed or transitional character, well expressed by the name
Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in everything but title purely
and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an
Empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the loosest sort. For
it had no common treasury, no efficient common tribunals[378], no
means of coercing a refractory member[379]; its states were of
different religions, were governed according to different forms, were
administered judicially and financially without any regard to each
other. The traveller in Central Germany now is amused to find, every
hour or two, by the change in the soldiers' uniforms, and the colour
of the stripes on the railway fences, that he has passed out of one
and into another of its miniature kingdoms. Much more surprised and
embarrassed would he have been a century ago, when, instead of the
present thirty-two there were three hundred petty principalities
between the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws, its own
courts (in which the ceremonious pomp of Versailles was faintly
reproduced), its little armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and
custom-houses on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic
officials, presided over by a prime minister who was generally the
unworthy favourite of his prince and the pensioner of some foreign
court. This vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature,
and the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some
time, but did not become fully established until the Peace of
Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial control, had
made them despots in their own territories. The impoverishment of the
inferior nobility and the decline of the commercial cities caused by a
war that had lasted a whole generation, removed every counterpoise to
the power of the electors and princes, and made absolutism supreme
just where absolutism wants all its justification, in states too small
to have any public opinion, states in which everything depends on the
monarch, and the monarch depends on his favourites. After A.D. 1648
the provincial estates or parliaments became obsolete in most of these
principalities, and powerless in the rest. Germany was forced to drink
to its very dregs the cup of feudalism, feudalism from which all the
feelings that once ennobled it had departed.
[Sidenote: Feudalism in France, England, Germany.]
It is instructive to compare the results of the system of feudality in
the three chief countries of modern Europe. In France, the feudal head
absorbed all the powers of the state, and left to the aristocracy only
a few privileges, odious indeed, but politically worthless. In
England, the mediæval system expanded into a constitutional monarchy,
where the oligarchy was still strong, but the commons had won the full
recognition of equal civil rights. In Germany, everything was taken
from the sovereign, and nothing given to the people; the
representatives of those who had been fief-holders of the first and
second rank before the Great Interregnum were now independent
potentates; and what had been once a monarchy was now an aristocratic
federation. The Diet, originally an assembly of magnates meeting from
time to time like our early English Parliaments, became in A.D. 1654 a
permanent body, at which the electors, princes, and cities were
represented by their envoys. In other words, it was now not a national
council, but an international congress of diplomatists.
[Sidenote: Causes of the continuance of the Empire.]
Where the sacrifice of imperial, or rather federal, rights to state
rights was so complete, we may wonder that the farce of an Empire
should have been retained at all. A mere German Empire would probably
have perished; but the Teutonic people could not bring itself to
abandon the venerable heritage of Rome. Moreover, the Germans were of
all European peoples the most slow-moving and long-suffering; and as,
if the Empire had fallen, something must have been erected in its
place, they preferred to work on with the clumsy machine so long as it
would work at all. Properly speaking, it has no history after this;
and the history of the particular states of Germany which takes its
place is one of the dreariest chapters in the annals of mankind. It
would be hard to find, from the Peace of Westphalia to the French
Revolution, a single grand character or a single noble enterprise; a
single sacrifice made to great public interests, a single instance in
which the welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish passions of
their princes. The military history of those times will always be read
with interest; but free and progressive countries have a history of
peace not less rich and varied than that of war; and when we ask for
an account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth century,
we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling
of diplomatists at never-ending congresses.
[Sidenote: The Empire and the Balance of power.]
Useless and helpless as the Empire had become, it was not without its
importance to the neighbouring countries, with whose fortunes it had
been linked by the Peace of Westphalia. It was the pivot on which the
political system of Europe was to revolve: the scales, so to speak,
which marked the equipoise of power that had become the grand object
of the policy of all states. This modern caricature of the plan by
which the theorists of the fourteenth century had proposed to keep the
world at peace, used means less noble and attained its end no better
than theirs had done. No one will deny that it was and is desirable to
prevent a universal monarchy in Europe. But it may be asked whether a
system can be considered successful which allowed Frederick of Prussia
to seize Silesia, which did not check the aggressions of Russia and
France upon their neighbours, which was for ever bartering and
exchanging lands in every part of Europe without thought of the
inhabitants, which permitted and has never been able to redress that
greatest of public misfortunes, the partitionment of Poland. And if it
be said that bad as things have been under this system, they would
have been worse without it, it is hard to refrain from asking whether
any evils could have been greater than those which the people of
Europe have suffered through constant wars with each other, and
through the withdrawal, even in time of peace, of so large a part of
their population from useful labour to be wasted in maintaining a
standing army.
[Sidenote: Position of the Empire in Europe.]
[Sidenote: Weakness and stagnation of Germany.]
The result of the extended relations in which Germany now found
herself to Europe, with two foreign kings never wanting an occasion,
one of them never the wish, to interfere, was that a spark from her
set the Continent ablaze, while flames kindled elsewhere were sure to
spread hither. Matters grew worse as her princes inherited or created
so many thrones abroad. The Duke of Holstein acquired Denmark, the
Count Palatine Sweden, the Elector of Saxony Poland, the Elector of
Hanover England, the Archduke of Austria Hungary and Bohemia, while
the Elector (originally Margrave) of Brandenburg obtained, on the
strength of non-imperial territories to the north-eastward which had
come into his hands, the style and title of King of Prussia. Thus the
Empire seemed again about to embrace Europe; but in a sense far
different from that which those words would have expressed under
Charles and Otto. Its history for a century and a half is a dismal
list of losses and disgraces. The chief external danger was from
French influence, for a time supreme, always menacing. For though
Lewis the Fourteenth, on whom, in A.D. 1658, half the electoral
college wished to confer the imperial crown, was before the end of his
life an object of intense hatred, officially entitled 'Hereditary
enemy of the Holy Empire[380],' France had nevertheless a strong party
among the princes always at her beck. The Rhenish and Bavarian
electors were her favourite tools. The '_réunions_' begun in A.D.
1680, a pleasant euphemism for robbery in time of peace, added
Strasburg and other places in Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comté to
the monarchy of Lewis, and brought him nearer the heart of the Empire;
his ambition and cruelty were witnessed to by repeated wars, and by
the devastation of the Rhine countries; the ultimate though
short-lived triumph of his policy was attained when Marshal Belleisle
dictated the election of Charles VII in A.D. 1742. In the Turkish
wars, when the princes left Vienna to be saved by the Polish Sobieski,
the Empire's weakness appeared in a still more pitiable light. There
was, indeed, a complete loss of hope and interest in the old system.
The princes had been so long accustomed to consider themselves the
natural foes of a central government, that a request made by it was
sure to be disregarded; they aped in their petty courts the pomp and
etiquette of Vienna or Paris, grumbling that they should be required
to garrison the great frontier fortresses which alone protected them
from an encroaching neighbour. The Free Cities had never recovered the
famines and sieges of the Thirty Years' War: Hanseatic greatness had
waned, and the southern towns had sunk into languid oligarchies. All
the vigour of the people in a somewhat stagnant age either found its
sphere in rising states like the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or
turned away from politics altogether into other channels. The Diet had
become contemptible from the slowness with which it moved, and its
tedious squabbles on matters the most frivolous. Many sittings were
consumed in the discussion of a question regarding the time of keeping
Easter, more ridiculous than that which had distracted the Western
churches in the seventh century, the Protestants refusing to reckon by
the reformed calendar because it was the work of a Pope. Collective
action through the old organs was confessed impossible, when the
common object of defence against France was sought by forming a league
under the Emperor's presidency, and when at European congresses the
Empire was not represented at all[381]. No change could come from the
Emperor, whom the capitulation of A.D. 1658 deposed _ipso facto_ if he
violated its provisions. As Dohm[382] said, to keep him from doing
harm, he was kept from doing anything.
[Sidenote: Leopold I, 1658-1705.]
[Sidenote: Joseph I, 1705-1711.]
[Sidenote: Charles VI, 1711-1742.]
[Sidenote: The Hapsburg Emperors and their policy.]
[Sidenote: Causes of the long retention of the throne by Austria.]
[Sidenote: Charles VII, 1742-1745.]
[Sidenote: Francis I, 1745-1765.]
[Sidenote: Seven Years' War.]
[Sidenote: Joseph II, 1765-1790.]
[Sidenote: Leopold II, 1790-1792. Last phase of the Empire.]
[Sidenote: The Diet.]
Yet little was lost by his inactivity, for what could have been hoped
from his action? From the election of Albert the Second, A.D. 1437, to
the death of Charles the Sixth, A.D. 1742, the sceptre had remained in
the hands of one family. So far from being fit subjects for
undistinguishing invective, the Hapsburg Emperors may be contrasted
favourably with the contemporary dynasties of France, Spain, or
England. Their policy, viewed as a whole from the days of Rudolf
downwards, had been neither conspicuously tyrannical, nor faltering,
nor dishonest. But it had been always selfish. Entrusted with an
office which might, if there be any power in those memories of the
past to which the champions of hereditary monarchy so constantly
appeal, have stirred their sluggish souls with some enthusiasm for the
heroes on whose throne they sat, some wish to advance the glory and
the happiness of Germany, they had cared for nothing, sought nothing,
used the Empire as an instrument for nothing but the attainment of
their own personal or dynastic ends. Placed on the eastern verge of
Germany, the Hapsburgs had added to their ancient lands in Austria
proper and Tyrol, non-German territories far more extensive, and had
thus become the chiefs of a separate and independent state. They
endeavoured to reconcile its interests with the interests of the
Empire, so long as it seemed possible to recover part of the old
imperial prerogative. But when such hopes were dashed by the defeats
of the Thirty Years' War, they hesitated no longer between an elective
crown and the rule of their hereditary states, and comported
themselves thenceforth in European politics not as the representatives
of Germany, but as heads of the great Austrian monarchy. There would
have been nothing culpable in this had they not at the same time
continued to entangle Germany in wars with which she had no concern:
to waste her strength in tedious combats with the Turks, or plunge her
into a new struggle with France, not to defend her frontiers or
recover the lands she had lost, but that some scion of the house of
Hapsburg might reign in Spain or Italy. Watching the whole course of
their foreign policy, marking how in A.D. 1736 they had bartered away
Lorraine for Tuscany, a German for a non-German territory, and seeing
how at home they opposed every scheme of reform which could in the
least degree trench upon their own prerogative, how they strove to
obstruct the imperial chamber lest it should interfere with their own
Aulic council, men were driven to separate the body of the Empire from
the imperial office and its possessors[383], and when plans for
reinvigorating the one failed, to leave the others to their fate.
Still the old line clung to the crown with that Hapsburg gripe which
has almost passed into a proverb. Odious as Austria was, no one could
despise her, or fancy it easy to shake her commanding position in
Europe. Her alliances were fortunate: her designs were steadily
pursued: her dismembered territories always returned to her. Though
the throne continued strictly elective, it was impossible not to be
influenced by long prescription. Projects were repeatedly formed to
set the Hapsburgs aside by electing a prince of some other line[384],
or by passing a law that there should never be more than two, or four,
successive Emperors of the same house. France[385] ever and anon
renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom was passing
from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary in one haughty family.
But it was felt that a change would be difficult and disagreeable, and
that the heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required to
be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most German princes
possessed. The heads of states like Prussia and Hanover, states whose
size and wealth would have made them suitable candidates, were
Protestants, and so excluded both by the connexion of the imperial
office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman Catholics in the
electoral college[386], who, however jealous they might be of Austria,
were led both by habit and sympathy to rally round her in moments of
peril. The one occasion on which these considerations were disregarded
shewed their force. On the extinction of the male line of Hapsburg in
the person of Charles the Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy,
Marshal Belleisle, procured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
who stood first among the Catholic princes. His reign was a succession
of misfortunes and ignominies. Driven from Munich by the Austrians,
the head of the Holy Empire lived in Frankfort on the bounty of
France, cursed by the country on which his ambition had brought the
miseries of a protracted war[387]. The choice in 1745 of Duke Francis
of Lorraine, husband of the archduchess of Austria and queen of
Hungary, Maria Theresa, was meant to restore the crown to the only
power capable of wearing it with dignity: in Joseph the Second, her
son, it again rested on the brow of a Hapsburg[388]. In the war of the
Austrian succession, which followed on the death of Charles the Sixth,
the Empire as a body took no part; in the Seven Years' War its whole
might broke in vain against one resolute member. Under Frederick the
Great Prussia approved herself at least a match for France and Austria
leagued against her, and the semblance of unity which the predominance
of a single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced by the
avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The Emperor Joseph the
Second, a sort of philosopher-king, than whom few have more narrowly
missed greatness, made a desperate effort to set things right,
striving to restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the
Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renounced the intolerant policy of his
ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope[389], and presumed to visit Rome,
whose streets heard once more the shout that had been silent for three
centuries, 'Evviva il nostro imperatore! Siete a casa vostra: siete il
padrone[390].' But his indiscreet haste was met by a sullen
resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for which the time was
not yet ripe, leaving no result save the league of princes which
Frederick the Great had formed to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His
successor, Leopold the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, and a
calm, the calm before the hurricane, settled down again upon Germany.
The existence of the Empire was almost forgotten by its subjects:
there was nothing to remind them of it but a feudal investiture now
and then at Vienna (real feudal rights were obsolete[391]); a
concourse of solemn old lawyers at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable
suits[392]; and some thirty diplomatists at Regensburg[393], the
relics of that Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a
Henry, enthroned amid mitred prelates and steel-clad barons, had
issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic[394].
The solemn triflings of this so-called 'Diet of Deputation' have
probably never been equalled elsewhere[395]. Questions of precedence
and title, questions whether the envoys of princes should have chairs
of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of the less
honourable green, whether they should be served on gold or on silver,
how many hawthorn boughs should be hung up before the door of each on
May-day; these, and such as these, it was their chief employment not
to settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old Germany passed
that of Spaniards or Turks; it had now crushed under a mountain of
rubbish whatever meaning or force its old institutions had contained.
It is the penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its
substance: that gilding and trappings should remain when that which
they were meant to deck and clothe has departed. So our sloth or our
timidity, not seeing that whatever is false must be also bad,
maintains in being what once was good long after it has become
helpless and hopeless: so now at the close of the eighteenth century,
strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the Empire which
Charles had founded, and Frederick adorned, and Dante sung.
[Sidenote: Feelings of the German people.]
The German mind, just beginning to put forth the blossoms of its
wondrous literature, turned away in disgust from the spectacle of
ceremonious imbecility more than Byzantine. National feeling seemed
gone from princes and people alike. Lessing, who did more than any one
else to create the German literary spirit, says, 'Of the love of
country I have no conception: it appears to me at best a heroic
weakness which I am right glad to be without[396].' The Emperor Joseph
II writes to his brother of France: 'You must know that the
annihilation of German nationality is a necessary leading principle of
my policy[397].' There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal
such a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people's soul.
Speaking of the union of princes formed by Frederick of Prussia to
preserve the existing condition of things, Johannes von Müller
writes[398]: 'If the German Union serves for nothing better than to
maintain the _status quo_, it is against the eternal order of God, by
which neither the physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in
the _status quo_, but all is life and motion and progress. To exist
without law or justice, without security from arbitrary imposts,
doubtful whether we can preserve from day to day our honours, our
liberties, our rights, our lives, helpless before superior force,
without a beneficial connexion between our states, without a national
spirit at all, this is the _status quo_ of our nation. And it was this
that the Union was meant to confirm. If it be this and nothing more,
then bethink you how when Israel saw that Rehoboam would not hearken,
the people gave answer to the king and spake, "What portion have we in
David, or what inheritance in the son of Jesse? to your tents, O
Israel: David, see to thine own house." See then to your own houses,
ye princes.'
Nevertheless, though the Empire stood like a corpse brought forth from
some Egyptian sepulchre, ready to crumble at a touch, there seemed no
reason why it should not stand so for centuries more. Fate was kind,
and slew it in the light.
FOOTNOTES:
[376] _De Ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico_.
[377] Even then the Roman pontiffs had lapsed into that scolding,
anile tone (so unlike the fiery brevity of Hildebrand, or the stern
precision of Innocent III) which is now seldom absent from their
public utterances. Pope Innocent the Tenth pronounces the provisions
of the treaty, 'ipso iure nulla, irrita, invalida, iniqua, iniusta,
damnata, reprobata, inania, viribusque et effectu vacua, omnino
fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore.' In spite of which they were observed.
This bull may be found in vol. xvii. of the _Bullarium_. It bears date
Nov. 20th, A.D. 1648.
[378] The Imperial Chamber (Kammergericht) continued, with frequent
and long interruptions, to sit while the Empire lasted. But its
slowness and formality passed that of any other legal body the world
has yet seen, and it had no power to enforce its sentences. The Aulic
council was little more efficient, and was generally disliked as the
tool of imperial intrigue.
[379] The 'matricula' specifying the quota of each state to the
imperial army could not be any longer employed.
[380] _Erbfeind des heiligen Reichs._
[381] Only the envoys of the several states were present at Utrecht in
1713.
[382] Quoted by Ludwig Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_.
[383] The distinction is well expressed by the German 'Reich' and
'Kaiserthum,' to which we have unfortunately no terms to correspond.
[384] So the Elector of Saxony proposed in 1532 that Albert II,
Frederick III, and Maximilian having been all of one house, Charles
V's successor should be chosen from some other.--Moser, _Römische
Kayser_. See the various attempts of France in Moser. The coronation
engagements (Wahlcapitulation) of every Emperor bound him not to
attempt to make the throne hereditary in his family.
[385] In 1658 France offered to subsidize the Elector of Bavaria if he
would become Emperor.
[386] Whether an Evangelical was eligible for the office of Emperor
was a question often debated, but never actually raised by the
candidature of any but a Roman Catholic prince. The 'exacta æqualitas'
conceded by the Peace of Westphalia might appear to include so
important a privilege. But when we consider that the peculiar relation
in which the Emperor stood to the Holy Roman Church was one which no
heretic could hold, and that the coronation oaths could not have been
taken by, nor the coronation ceremonies (among which was a sort of
ordination) performed upon a Protestant, the conclusion must be
unfavourable to the claims of any but a Catholic.
[387]
'The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,
Tries the dread summits of Cæsarian power.
With unexpected legions bursts away,
And sees defenceless realms receive his sway....
The baffled prince in honour's flattering bloom
Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom;
His foes' derision and his subjects' blame,
And steals to death from anguish and from shame.'
JOHNSON, _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
[388] The following nine reasons for the long continuance of the
Empire in the House of Hapsburg are given by Pfeffinger (_Vitriarius
Illustratus_), writing early in the eighteenth century:--
1. The great power of Austria.
2. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor.
3. The majority of Catholics among the electors.
4. Her fortunate matrimonial alliances.
5. Her moderation.
6. The memory of benefits conferred by her.
7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from
the blood of former Cæsars.
8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she were
deprived of the crown.
9. Her own eagerness to have it.
[389] The Pope undertook a journey to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and
met with a sufficiently cold reception. When he saw the famous
minister Kaunitz and gave him his hand to kiss, Kaunitz took it and
shook it.
[390] 'You are in your own house: be the master.'
[391] Joseph II was foiled in his attempt to assert them.
[392] Goethe spent some time in studying law at Wetzlar among those
who practised in the Kammergericht.
[393] Cf. Pütter, _Historical Developement of the Political
Constitution of the German Empire_, vol. iii.
[394] Frederick the Great said of the Diet, 'Es ist ein Schattenbild,
eine Versammlung aus Publizisten die mehr mit Formalien als mit Sachen
sich beschäftigen, und, wie Hofhunde, den Mond anbellen.'
[395] Cf. Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_; Introduction.
[396] Quoted by Haüsser.
[397] Rotteck and Welcker, _Staats Lexikon_, s. v. 'Deutsches Reich.'
[398] _Deutschlands Erwartungen vom Fürstenbunde_, quoted in the
_Staats Lexikon_.
CHAPTER XX.
FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
[Sidenote: Francis II, 1792-1806.]
[Sidenote: Napoleon, Emperor of the West.]
[Sidenote: Belief of Napoleon that he was the successor of
Charlemagne.]
[Sidenote: Attitude of the Papacy towards Napoleon.]
Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in the days of his
childhood, the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the
Roman Hall covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till
space was left for few, at last for one[399]. In A.D. 1792 Francis the
Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled.
Three years before there had arisen on the western horizon a little
cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with
storms of ruin. There was a prophecy[400], dating from the first days
of the Empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin,
and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should
rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back peace and purify
religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the
West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive
the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It
were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute
historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in A.D. 1804, the
parallel between the heir of a long line of fierce Teutonic
chieftains, whose vigorous genius had seized what it could of the
monkish learning of the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican
lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute
profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the
ideas of the Encyclopædists, swept up into the seat of absolute power
by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more
unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper
of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in
this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on
conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity
between their positions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike
nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods,
the other drunk with revolutionary fury. Both aspired to found, and
seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies.
Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if
it sometimes overbore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and
highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the
kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome,
so the other thought to model himself after Cæsar and Charlemagne.
For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of
the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to
be king after the fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a
connexion to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it was no
studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon to remind his
subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who
reads the records of his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as
he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France the
centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne
and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe
from Paris, as the Cæsars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this
belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to
receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he
talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had
formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed
the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to
Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and
inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he
summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten
centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last
Merovingian[402]. The same desire to be regarded as lawful Emperor of
the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at
Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the
Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French
Emperors, have made[403];' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he
bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the
Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention
to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead.
Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the
position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which
Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Cæsars of Byzantium. It was
curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his
ancient ally to the reviving power of France--France, where the
Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before--just as he
had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard
enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings
wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,'
and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First
with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the
principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy
that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is
much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for
catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the
protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and
gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406].
[Sidenote: The French Empire.]
[Sidenote: Napoleon in Germany.]
[Sidenote: The Confederation of the Rhine.]
[Sidenote: Abdication of the Emperor Francis II.]
[Sidenote: End of the Empire.]
A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still
preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign
of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old
Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new title
when he began to mark a distinction between 'la France' and 'l'Empire
Française.' France had, since A.D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and,
by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French
Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent
states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities,
the allies of France in the same sense in which the 'socii populi
Romani' were allies of Rome[407]. When the last of Pitt's coalitions
had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission
by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come.
He had now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia,
claiming to represent the old and the new Rome respectively, and had
in eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the
Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to
sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of
that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court
presented a grotesque imitation[408]. The task was an easy one after
what had been already accomplished. Previous wars and treaties had so
redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the
Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but
name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the
rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order: the author of a
code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who dethroned him
were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution,
and conquered only to destroy. It was his mission--a mission more
beneficent in its result than in its means[409]--to break up in
Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken
the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete
feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and
better forms of political life. Since A.D. 1797, when Austria at Campo
Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of
destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns west of the
Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with
France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the
arrangements of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,' dictated
by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected,
electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized,
the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring
potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the
dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the
old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a
spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis,
partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to
meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name
of its peculiar meaning, began in A.D. 1805 to style himself
'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his
former title[410]. The next act of the drama was one in which we may
more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the
traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of
ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the
Confederation[411] of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806,
Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all,
withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on
August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that
his master, who had consented to become Protector of the Confederate
princes, no longer recognized the existence of the Empire. Francis the
Second resolved at once to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a
declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity.
His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of
things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitulation, he
considers as dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic
body, releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and
retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under the title
of 'Emperor of Austria[412].' Throughout, the term 'German Empire'
(_Deutsches Reich_) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of
Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid
down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of
its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years after Leo
the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and
fifty-eight years after Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy
Roman Empire came to its end.
[Sidenote: Congress of Vienna.]
There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that
the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change
that had bewildered men since A.D. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed.
No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new
order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon's
universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves
again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the
Empire would be re-established on its former footing[413]. Such was
indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover,
representing Great Britain[414]. Though a simple revival of the old
Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, it still
appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency
of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining
peace among the members of the confederation. But the new kingdoms,
Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a superior; Prussia,
elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have
disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to
resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform
and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore
made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting
Germany by a federative bond[415], and the Congress of Vienna was
decided by the wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus
was brought about the present German federal constitution, which is
itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a
mere temporary expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, and
useless for the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school of
liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by the princes
after the enthusiastic uprising of A.D. 1814, has aspired to the
restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the
Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a
head elected by the people[416]. The obstacles in the way of such
plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear
than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it[417].
FOOTNOTES:
[399] _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book i. The Römer Saal is still one of
the sights of Frankfort. The portraits, however, which one now sees in
it, seem to be all or nearly all of them modern; and few have any
merit as works of art.
[400] _Jordanis Chronica_, ap. Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
[401] In an address by Napoleon to the Senate in 1804, bearing date
10th Frimaire (1st Dec.), are the words, 'Mes descendans conserveront
longtemps ce trône, le premier de l'univers.' Answering a deputation
from the department of the Lippe, Aug. 8th, 1811, 'La Providence, qui
a voulu que je rétablisse le trône de Charlemagne, vous a fait
naturellement rentrer, avec la Hollande et les villes anséatiques,
dans le sein de l'Empire.'--_Œuvres de Napoléon_, tom. v. p. 521.
'Pour le Pape, je suis Charlemagne, parce que, comme Charlemagne, je
réunis la couronne de France à celle des Lombards, et que mon Empire
confine avec l'Orient.' (Quoted by Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii.
417.)
'Votre Sainteté est souveraine de Rome, mais j'en suis l'Empereur.'
(Letter of Napoleon to Pope Pius, Feb. 13th, 1806. Lanfrey.)
'Dites bien,' says Napoleon to Cardinal Fesch, 'que je suis
Charlemagne, leur Empereur [of the Papal Court] que je dois être
traité de même. Je fais connaitre au Pape mes intentions en peu de
mots, s'il n'y acquiesce pas, je le réduirai à la même condition qu'il
était avant Charlemagne.' (Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii. 420.)
[402] Napoleon said on one occasion, 'Je n'ai pas succédé a Louis
Quatorze, mais à Charlemagne.'--Bourrienne, _Vie de Napoléon_, iv. In
1804, shortly before he was crowned, he had the imperial insignia of
Charles brought from the old Frankish capital, and exhibited them in a
jeweller's shop in Paris, along with those which had just been made
for his own coronation;--(Bourrienne, _ut supra_.) Somewhat in the
same spirit in which he displayed the Bayeux tapestry, in order to
incite his subjects to the conquest of England.
[403] 'Je n'ai pu concilier ces grands interêts (of political order
and the spiritual authority of the Pope) qu'en annulant les donations
des Empereurs Français, mes predecesseurs, et en réunissant les états
romains à la France.'--Proclamation issued in 1809: _Œuvres_, iv.
[404] See Appendix, Note C.
[405] Pope Pius VII wrote to the First Consul, 'Carissime in Christo
Fili noster ... tam perspecta sunt nobis tuæ voluntatis studia erga
nos, ut _quotiescunque_ ope aliqua in rebus nostris indigemus, eam a
te fidenter petere non dubitare debeamus.'--Quoted by Ægidi.
[406] Let us place side by side the letters of Hadrian to Charles in
the _Codex Carolinus_, and the following preamble to the Concordat of
A.D. 1801, between the First Consul and the Pope (which I quote from
the _Bullarium Romanum_), and mark the changes of a thousand years.
'Gubernium reipublicæ [Gallicæ] recognoscit religionem Catholicam
Apostolicam Romanam eam esse religionem quam longe maxima pars civium
Gallicæ reipublicæ profitetur.
'Summus pontifex pari modo recognoscit eandem religionem maximam
utilitatem maximumque decus percepisse et hoc quoque tempore
præstolari ex catholico cultu in Gallia constituto, necnon ex
peculiari eius professione quam faciunt reipublicæ consules.'
[407] Cf. Heeren, _Political System_, vol. iii. 273.
[408] He had arch-chancellors, arch-treasurers, and so forth. The
Legion of Honour, which was thought important enough to be mentioned
in the coronation oath, was meant to be something like the mediæval
orders of knighthood: whose connexion with the Empire has already been
mentioned.
[409] Napoleon's feelings towards Germany may be gathered from the
phrase he once used, 'Il faut depayser l'Allemagne.'
[410] Thus in documents issued by the Emperor during these two years
he is styled 'Roman Emperor Elect, Hereditary Emperor of Austria'
(erwählter Römischer Kaiser, Erbkaiser von Oesterreich).
[411] This Act of Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) is printed in
Koch's _Traités_ (continued by Schöll), vol. viii., and Meyer's
_Corpus Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ_, vol. i. It has every
appearance of being a translation from the French, and was no doubt
originally drawn up in that language. Napoleon is called in one place
'Der nämliche Monarch, dessen Absichten sich stets mit den wahren
Interessen Deutschlands übereinstimmend gezeigt haben.' The phrase
'Roman Empire' does not occur: we hear only of the 'German Empire,'
'body of German states' (Staatskörper), and so forth. This
Confederation of the Rhine was eventually joined by every German State
except Austria, Prussia, Electoral Hesse, and Brunswick.
[412] _Histoire des Traités_, vol. viii. The original may be found in
Meyer's _Corpus Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ_, vol. i. p. 70. It is
a document in no way remarkable, except from the ludicrous resemblance
which its language suggests to the circular in which a tradesman,
announcing the dissolution of an old partnership, solicits, and hopes
by close attention to merit, a continuance of his customers' patronage
to his business, which will henceforth be carried on under the name
of, &c., &c.
[413] Koch (Schöll), _Histoire des Traités_, vol. xi. p. 257, sqq.;
Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. iv.
[414] Great Britain had refused in 1806 to recognize the dissolution
of the Empire. And it may indeed be maintained that in point of law
the Empire was never extinguished at all, but lives on as a
disembodied spirit to this day. For it is clear that, technically
speaking, the abdication of a sovereign can destroy only his own
rights, and does not dissolve the state over which he presides.
[415] 'Les états d'Allemagne seront independans et unis par un lien
federatif.'--_Histoire des Traités_, xi. p. 257.
[416] The late king of Prussia was actually elected Emperor by the
revolutionary Diet at Frankfort in 1848. He refused the crown.
[417] [Since the above was written (in A.D. 1865) sudden and momentous
changes have been effected in Germany by the war of 1866; the Prussian
kingdom has been enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Hessen-Cassel,
Nassau, and Frankfort; the establishment of the North German
Confederation has brought all the states north of the Main under
Prussian control; while even the potentates of the south have
virtually accepted the hegemony of the house of Hohenzollern. It was
the author's intention to have added here a chapter examining these
changes by the light of the past history of Germany and the Empire,
and tracing out the causes to which the success of Prussia is to be
ascribed. But at this moment (July 15th, 1870) the French Emperor
declares war against Prussia, and there rises to meet the challenge an
united German people,--united for the time, at least, by the folly of
the enemy who has so long plotted for and profited by its disunion.
Whatever the result of the struggle may be, it is almost certain to
alter still further the internal constitution of Germany; and there is
therefore little use in discussing the existing system, and tracing
the progress hitherto of a development which, if not suddenly
arrested, is likely to be greatly accelerated by the events which we
see passing.]
CHAPTER XXI.
CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: General summary.]
[Sidenote: Perpetuation of the name of Rome.]
After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the
phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its
nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help
being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are
as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during
which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the
Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was
extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint
imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a
city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal
weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as
a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes
of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they
found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering
confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor
raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more.
Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German
successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European
chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and after
promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks
at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an
international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions
so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first
sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious
mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever
based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during
three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her
empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen
with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the
destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so
limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its
power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races
whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the
weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal
rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of
honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city
had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the
theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new
religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology,
her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had
never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes
on the Ganges and the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: Parallel instances.]
[Sidenote: Claims to represent the Roman Empire.]
[Sidenote: Austria.]
[Sidenote: France.]
[Sidenote: Russia.]
[Sidenote: Greece.]
[Sidenote: The Turks.]
Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions
by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political
history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not
insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason.
It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine
the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the
Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria
clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in
Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position
there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more
legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might
pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire,
and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as
the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the
self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the
sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European
politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called
Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed
of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Cæsars, and
trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand
years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an
imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable
engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism.
Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political
combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has
embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived
Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the
intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has
more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern
Cæsars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent
assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his
successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by
twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the
consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the
Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent
legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction
of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto[419].
[Sidenote: Parallel of the Papacy.]
These examples, however, are minor parallels: the complement and
illustration of the history of the Empire is to be found in that of
the Holy See. The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the
offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her
parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age
once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of
her own approaching doom[420].
Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the human spirit was
utterly prostrated before authority and tradition, when the exercise
of private judgment was impossible to most and sinful to all. Those
who believed the miracles recorded in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and did
not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained
of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded, as it seemed to be, on
so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of
undisputed possession.
Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle Ages for
unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of
that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something
which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of
sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in
the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise
above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true
difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible
Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and
strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for
itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from
the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful
than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in
heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church
militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church
triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of
traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great
is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases
we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the
world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its
feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is
necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading
one. Obedience, almost the first of mediæval virtues, is now often
spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of
praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual
will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the
belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be
a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an
abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not,
cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one
all-pervading church exercised upon their mediæval forefathers. A life
in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she
blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper
hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus
of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by
penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for
contemplation and worship,--this was the life which they of the Middle
Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life
of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed
to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier
between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the
portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already
self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediæval
document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the
feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven.
For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely,
heaven for the sake of the church[421].'
Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on
physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came,
the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was
firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the
death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and
Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a
single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the
Swabian Cæsars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the
principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they
resisted the spiritual power.
[Sidenote: Papacy and Empire compared as perpetuations of a name.]
Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power
of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been
said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances,
but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the
character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly,
was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of
Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous
peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by
controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by
being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its
old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of
both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also
within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it
sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the
substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of
the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never
weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist
unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for
them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for
ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often
useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as
when it leads men who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors,
to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than
their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by
the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that
which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that
no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to
preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under
conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed
save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle
Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in
common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though
it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a
new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and
represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a
power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring,
because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its
contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great
ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular
life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages
sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is
that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed
the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights
which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And
as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays
of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone
with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
[Sidenote: In what sense was the Empire Roman?]
The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly mediæval. Was it
then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better
than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a
comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew
nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century
every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a
strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of
those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable
even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could
scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether
judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it
existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had
persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the
strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The
thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and
drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It
has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for
many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian
was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages,
that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek
their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the
palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had
floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken
legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would
have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus;
but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the
childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palæologus was installed! It
was not in purple buskins that the dignity of the Luxemburger
lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death
lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it
had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans
is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might
muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient
contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.
[Sidenote: 'Imperialism:' Roman, French, and mediæval.]
[Sidenote: Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races.]
The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic
representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed
of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Cæsar and his subtle
nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome
has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a
certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or
rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the
name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the
concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of
the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the
maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of
the influence of public opinion for the control of representative
assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to
characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before
now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of
aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that
may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in
the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and
Antonine Cæsars of old, and at the beginning of this century by
Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and
government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Cæsars and
the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate
upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley
of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left
them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none
of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the
strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the
administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social
uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no
one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the
imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle
Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In
the political character of the French people, whether it be the result
of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the
original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a
claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the
Romans[423] of the modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is
to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion,
if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted
with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is
more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common
idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states
have been little more successful than their neighbours in the
establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote,
and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure
without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable
French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of
government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a
freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of
politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like
that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at
Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or
the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which
the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours
somewhat different from his.
[Sidenote: Essential principles of the mediæval Empire.]
There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediæval imperialism, a
theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government,
which has been described once already, and need not be described
again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its
properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the
existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact
coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its
workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was
its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political
organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local
authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But
although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a
despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and
blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on
municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for
religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which
constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who
was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic
power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an
unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it
now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because
he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed
him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a
time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those
ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when
thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free
from the bonds of sense.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Holy Empire on Germany.]
The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be
more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether
unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry
crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the
deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she
suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people
forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of
the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a
compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the
race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth
century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of
intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled
and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all
the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted
Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty
from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still,
cannot be attributed to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous
as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no
greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians,
and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so
great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the
decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife
with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for
universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring
countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his
feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation
from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation
of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish,
justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own
liberty--liberty to oppress the subject--and ready on the least
occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the
people were deprived of all political training, and have found the
lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.
For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some
compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the
ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can
never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful
in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power,
submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments
of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories
of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul
and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received
a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought,
and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had
not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the
German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman
conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire
flowed all the richness of their mediæval life and literature: it
first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history
has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent
politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the
future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion.
When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the
harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival
displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety
which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed
the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue
of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed
the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as
gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn
that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a
capital.
[Sidenote: Austria as heir of the Holy Empire.]
The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a
brisk controversy among several German professors of history[425]. The
spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten
years ago was not less powerful in some of the minor South German
States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg monarchy the honour of
being the legitimate representative of the mediæval Empire, and
declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could
Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The
North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they
replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true
daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less
aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of
priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national
feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and
anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and
Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest.
The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is
possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the
Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in
some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and
Swabian Cæsars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian
people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians
themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the
races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of
spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of
pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her,
they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it
when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like
her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were
composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of
peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task
of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of
another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned
in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze
of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediæval faith and
simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and
is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle
Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in
some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more
recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings
have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the
ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the
treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes
wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military
monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of
modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the
old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial
greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the
throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from
Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog
and incumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not
how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old
Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any
harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those
of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems
to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is
wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of
modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of mediæval chivalry,
the noblest creation of mediæval thought.
[Sidenote: Bearing of the Empire upon the progress of European
civilization.]
[Sidenote: Influence upon modern jurisprudence.]
We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend or state
rightly its bearing on European progress. The mountain lies behind us,
but miles must be traversed before we can take in at a glance its
peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its
height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts
and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only
less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many
ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and
through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of
modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally
and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other
monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same
origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the
prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical importance
in our own days. For while in Southern France and Central Italy, where
the subject population greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old
system would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted that in
Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have
grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch
was the legitimate successor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be
binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a
faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy, who naturally
disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could
not but admit its validity, and before the end of the Middle Ages
Roman law prevailed through all Germany[426]. When it is considered
how great are the services which German writers have rendered and
continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this
result will appear far from insignificant. But another of still wider
import followed. When by the Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty
principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the
need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That
code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the
private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the
system of international jurisprudence has been built up during the
last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German
creation, and could have arisen in no country where the law of Rome
had not been the fountain of legal ideas and the groundwork of
positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice,
and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only,
title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind.
Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived
unmolested beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the
Germanic body feeling that the rights of the weakest of his brethren
were also his own.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Empire upon the history of the Church.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and
the Popes.]
The most important chapter in the history of the Empire is that which
describes its relation to the Church and the Papacy. Of the
ecclesiastical power it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In
the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of
Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss
of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The
struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political
rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to
the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended, with the
death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a
victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat.
The anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern
nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a violence which
alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors
once more the allies of the Popedom, and the partners of its declining
fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which
had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but not
the less a serious error to suppose, as modern writers often seem to
do, that the pretensions of the Empire and the Popedom were mutually
exclusive; that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular, of
a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find
mediæval writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves,
expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government--two
potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in
things eternal, Cæsar in things temporal. The relative position of the
two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the
days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and
could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was
practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries
later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas
had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to
its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance
inclined the other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being
of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil
administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration
nor to degrade its head: the great struggle of the eleventh and two
following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other
power, but turns solely upon the character of their connexion.
Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the
obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal
responsibility for the souls of their common subjects: he demands, not
that the functions of temporal government shall be directly committed
to himself, but that they shall be exercised in conformity with the
will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no
means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny the spiritual
supremacy of the Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal
salvation. They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being
also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and remind
the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There was in truth no
way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever
things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the
world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most
pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to
extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the
same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when
the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came
when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other; from
the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for
supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes
with every blast.
[Sidenote: Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.]
Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less
momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward
dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the
Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the
formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the
concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious
state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire.
Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the
connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and
the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it
took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually
rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by
it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness,
and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier
civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight
upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that
mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not
the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman
Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so
by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a
brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose
sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
[Sidenote: Principles adverse to the Empire.]
As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic
Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of
which their forerunners of the elder Rome had triumphed,--those of
Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles
were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the
emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary,
Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism,
menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded,
after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in
Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent
principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few
military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal
kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on
physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the
hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than
necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to
crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free
towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere
of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the
necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the
same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld
from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial
absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual
tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the
proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the
liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning
the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet,
should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
[Sidenote: Change marked by its fall.]
[Sidenote: Relations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.]
Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed the face of
Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of
every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old
forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the
most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the
Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has
been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest
province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so
long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom
Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the
possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the
Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since
Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of
the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has
now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize,
with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy--efforts
confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all
but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general
reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may
be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent
intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the
character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant
prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common
interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the
history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who
studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible
for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to
repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome: to gather into one
vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more
and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great
measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that
the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler
than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after
summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his
treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Cæsar found it
the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless
abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste,
and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world,
and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The
blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet
with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a
tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical
night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher
aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Cæsar had sprung
up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national
individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great
founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second
founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The
work of the mediæval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered,
while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to
replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them
within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature
of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its
subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose
watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national
hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth.
And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a
centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable
of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to
that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above
law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it
is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what
has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how
many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions
of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire
gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to
those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its
existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian
theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it
perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and
the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
[Sidenote: Difficulties arising from the nature of the subject.]
This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost
inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its extent but from its
profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue
we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of
expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least
possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single
institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries--whose
outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly
changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the
difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to
explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as
it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which
we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a
heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able
to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts
and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who
see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition,
planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from
entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political
philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth,
analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures
the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of
tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the
Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is
impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but
that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by
men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations
are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we
should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Cæsar
when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when
he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when
they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding
generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than
we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is
mediæval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and
understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much
as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things
less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the
horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey
onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it
can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was
gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[418] See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the
object of the expedition to Mexico.
[419] One may also compare the retention of the office of consul at
Rome till the time of Justinian: indeed it even survived his formal
abolition. The relinquishment of the title 'King of Great Britain,
France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed many excellent persons.
[420] I speak, of course, of the Papacy as an autocratic power
claiming a more than spiritual authority.
[421] 'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior Deo est quam cœlum. Non enim propter
cœlum ecclesia, sed e converso propter ecclesiam cœlum.' From the
tract entitled 'A Letter of the four Universities to Wenzel and Urban
VIII,' quoted in an earlier chapter.
[422] Von Raumer, _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen_, v.
[423] Meaning thereby not the citizens of Rome in her republican days,
but the Italo-Hellenic subjects of the Roman Empire.
[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht,
_Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit_; and Rotteck and Welcker's _Staats Lexikon_.
The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
[425] See especially Von Sybel, _Die Deutsche Nation und das
Kaiserreich_; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the
feudal law of land.
[427] Mommsen, _Römische Geschichte_, iii. _sub. fin._
APPENDIX.
NOTE A.
ON THE BURGUNDIES.
It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its
application at different times to different districts, has caused, and
continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may,
therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of
those applications. Without going into the minutiæ of the subject, the
following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most
frequently to be met with:--
I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (_regnum Burgundionum_), founded
A.D. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone,
from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half
of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.D. 534.
II. The kingdom of Burgundy (_regnum Burgundiæ_), mentioned
occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality,
confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of
the older kingdom last named.
III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (_regnum Provinciæ seu
Burgundiæ_)--also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of
Cis-Jurane Burgundy--was founded by Boso in A.D. 877, and included
Provence, Dauphiné, the southern part of Savoy, and the country
between the Saone and the Jura.
IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (_regnum Iurense_, _Burgundia
Transiurensis_), founded by Rudolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same
year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and
all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (_regnum Burgundiæ_, _regnum
Arelatense_), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in A.D.
937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in
1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by
bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II
(the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the
thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now
(since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss
portion of it.
VI. The Lesser Duchy (_Burgundia Minor_), (Klein Burgund),
corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the
Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) _minus_
the parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears
from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the
thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till A.D. 1648,
though practically independent long before that date.
VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comté),
(Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of
Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the
Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a
fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were invested with it
in A.D. 1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western
Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It
was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned
after the thirteenth century.
IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division
of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the
Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the
Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary,
daughter of Charles the Bold.
X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most
northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a
fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the
Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles
the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
* * * * *
The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure
history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in
the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois
historian, to the _Archiv für Schweizer Geschichte_. See also an
admirable article in the _National Review_ for October 1860, entitled
'The Franks and the Gauls.'
NOTE B.
ON THE RELATIONS TO THE EMPIRE OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, AND THE
DUCHIES OF SCHLESWIG AND HOLSTEIN.
The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the
Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great
Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up
with two questions properly quite distinct,--the first, as to the
relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish
crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish
kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,--it has
borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and
interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half.
Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as
follows:--
I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish
Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their
independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the
Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and
Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of
Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time
Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the
treaty of A.D. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for
Holstein.
II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as
Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana
(Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum (wherein lay the town of
Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great
conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the
southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire,
erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad
II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his
suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time
the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since
the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined,
and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to
sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at
this day of the North German Bund.
NOTE C.
ON CERTAIN IMPERIAL TITLES AND CEREMONIES.
This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more
than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use;
for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time
to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some
clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of
title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is
very far from being a barren or a dull one.
I. TITLES OF EMPERORS. Charles the Great styled himself 'Carolus
serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator,
Romanum (_or_ Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam
Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply
'Imperator Augustus.' Sometimes 'rex Francorum et Langobardorum' was
added[428].
Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome, 'rex,' or 'rex
Francorum Orientalium,' or 'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;' after it,
simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Otto III is usually said to have
introduced the form 'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,' but some
authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor
till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion
which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the
sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown,
began to call themselves 'reges Romanorum.' The title did not,
however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose
proclamations it occurs constantly.
From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice
was for the monarch to be called 'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,' till
his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it, 'Romanorum Imperator
semper Augustus.'
In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the
Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call
himself 'Imperator electus' (erwählter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I
(brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately
upon their German coronation, and it was till A.D. 1806 their strict
legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in
proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was
however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was
addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice
he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
Maximilian added the title 'Germaniæ rex,' which had never been known
before, although the phrase 'rex Germanorum' may be found employed
once or twice in early times. 'Rex Teutonicorum,' 'regnum
Teutonicum[430],' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A
great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time.
Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in
virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the
same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It
is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous
than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is
given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and
Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by
new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with
Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of
King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times
there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with
a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and
associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His
office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature
elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or
the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War
could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people
could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of
God.
II. THE CROWNS.
Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were
those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy,
sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at
Rome.
The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the
Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the
Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it
would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick
I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most
Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who
obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal
manner. But down to A.D. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his
capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was
necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have
been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For
as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son
of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany,
so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not
kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings
of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save
the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider
rights remained in full force, and were never subsequently
relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and
absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself
crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
III. THE KING OF THE ROMANS (RÖMISCHER KÖNIG).
It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the
German monarch began to entitle himself 'Romanorum rex.' Now it was
not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to
be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the
latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be
remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not
only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.)
This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as
Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and
dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed
against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as
the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on
the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor
during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his
successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and
took the title of 'King of the Romans.' During the presence of the
Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of
Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at
once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after
the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before
Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be
crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch
generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near
relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts
to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's
death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of
an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of
Rome.
NOTE D.
LINES CONTRASTING THE PAST AND PRESENT OF ROME.
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:
At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,
Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,
Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;
Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;
Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:
Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,
Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,
Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of
Tours (born A.D. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne,
_Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_[436].
FOOTNOTES:
[428] Waitz (_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_) says that the phrase
'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but
not in official documents.
[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire
people had begun to fancy that 'erwählter' did not mean 'elect,' but
'elective.' Cf. note 410, p. 362.
[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the
kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or
Gallicized Franks (Francigenæ), which having been for some time
'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum
Franciæ,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as
only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among
even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the
forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine
documents of the early Empire. Goldast's _Collections_, for instance,
are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be
found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Pütter, and in the host of writers to
whom they refer.
[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement
in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three
Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from
the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss
Confederation.
[434] Nevertheless, Otto II was crowned Emperor, and reigned for some
time along with his father, under the title of 'Co-Imperator.' So
Lothar I was associated in the Empire with Lewis the Pious, as Lewis
himself had been crowned in the lifetime of Charles. Many analogies to
the practice of the Romano-Germanic Empire in this respect might be
adduced from the history of the old Roman, as well as of the Byzantine
Empire.
[435] Maximilian had obtained this title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the
Pope. Ferdinand took it as of right, and his successors followed the
example.
[436] See note 326, p. 270.
INDEX.
A.
Aachen, 72, 77, 86, 148, 212, 316 note, 403.
ADALBERT (St.), 245; the church founded at Rome to receive
his ashes, 286.
ADELHEID (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 83.
ADOLF of Nassau, 221, 222, 262.
ADSO, his _Vita Antichristi_, 114 note.
AISTULF the Lombard, 39.
ALARIC, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
Empire, 17, 19.
ALBERIC (consul or senator), 83.
ALBERT I (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), 221, 224, 262.
Albigenses, revolt of the, 241.
ALBOIN, his invasion of Italy, 36.
ALCUIN of York, 59, 66, 96, 201.
ALEXANDER III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 170;
their meeting at Venice, 171.
ALFONSO of Castile, his double election with Richard of
England, 212, 229.
America, discovery of, 311.
ANASTASIUS, his account of the coronation of Charles, 55.
ANGELO (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, 295.
Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages,
114 note; in later times, 334.
Architecture, Roman, 48, 290; analogy between it and the
civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; preservation of
an antique character in both, 296.
ARDOIN (Marquis of Ivrea), 149.
Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, 289;
struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, 388.
Arles; _see_ Burgundy.
ARNOLD of Brescia, Rome under, 174, 252, 276; put to death
at the instance of Pope Hadrian, 278, 299 note.
ARNULF (Emperor), 78.
ATHANARIC, 17.
ATHANASIUS, the triumph of, 12.
ATHAULF the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting
the Roman Empire, 19, 30.
Augsburg, 259; treaty of, 334.
AUGUSTINE, 94.
Aulic Council, the, 340, 342 note.
Austria, privilege of, 199; her claim to represent the
Roman Empire, 368, 381.
Austrian succession, war of the, 352.
Avignon, exactions of the court of, 219; its subservience
to France, 219, 243.
AVITUS, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, 18.
B.
Barbarians, feared by the Romans, 14; Roman armies largely
composed of, 14; admitted to Roman titles and honours, 15;
their feelings towards the Roman Empire, 16; their desire
to preserve its institutions, 17; value of the Roman
officials and Christian bishops to the, 19.
BARTOLOMMEO (San), the church of, 287.
BASIL the Macedonian and Lewis II, 191.
'Basileus,' the title of, 143, 191.
Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, 76 note.
BELISARIUS, his war with the Ostrogoths, 29, 273.
Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 294.
BENEDICT of Soracte, 51 note.
BENEDICT VIII (Pope), alleged decree of, 197.
Benevento, the Annals of, 150.
BERENGAR of Friuli, 82; his death, 83.
BERENGAR II (King of Italy), 83.
BERNARD (St.), 109 note.
Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 112;
perversion of its meaning, 114.
Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 222; the king
of, an elector, 230.
BONIFACE VIII (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, 109,
247; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 219 note.
BOSO, 81, 395.
Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 154.
Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, 24; Roman Civil
Law not forgotten in, at a late date, 32; Roman ensigns and
devices in, 258.
Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by
invaders, 291; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 292; by
modern restorers of churches, 292.
Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, 143; added
to the Empire under Conrad II, 151; effect of its loss on
the Empire, 305; confusion caused by the name, 395; ten
senses in which it is met with, 395-7.
Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to,
9; Otto's policy towards, 141; attitude towards Emperor,
189.
C.
Campanile; _see_ Bell-tower.
Canon law, correspondence between it and the Corpus Juris
Civilis, 101; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 112, 217.
CAPET (Hugh), 142.
Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 295.
Capitulary of A. D. 802, 65.
CARACALLA (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
Carolingian Emperors, 76.
Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in A. D. 888, 78;
Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 85 note.
Carroccio, the, 178 note, 328.
Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 241.
Catholicity or Romanism, 94, 106.
Celibacy, enforcement of, 158.
Cenci, name of, 289 note.
CHARLEMAGNE; _see_ Charles I.
CHARLES I (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom,
41; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the
people, 41; his personal ambition, 42; his treatment of
Pope Leo III, 44; title of 'Champion of the Faith and
Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 47; crowned at
Rome, 48; important consequences of his coronation, 50, 52;
its real meaning, 52, 80, 81; contemporary accounts, 53,
64, 65, 84; their uniformity, 56; illegality of the
transaction, 56; three theories respecting it held four
centuries after, 57; was the coronation a surprise? 58; his
reluctance to assume the imperial title, 60; solution
suggested by Döllinger, 60; seeks the hand of Irene, 61;
defect of his imperial title, 61; theoretically the
successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, 62, 63;
has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, 63; his
authority in matters ecclesiastical, 64; presses Hadrian to
declare Constantine VI a heretic, 64; his spiritual
despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 64; importance
attached by him to the Imperial name, 65; issues a
Capitulary, 65; draws closer the connexion of Church and
State, 66; new position in civil affairs acquired with the
Imperial title, 67, 68, 69; his position as Frankish king,
69, 70; partial failure of his attempt to breathe a
Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, 70, 71; his personal
habits and sympathies, 71; groundlessness of the claims of
the modern French to, 71; the conception of his Empire
Roman, not Teutonic, 72; his Empire held together by the
Church, 73; appreciation of his character generally, 73,
74; impress of his mind on mediæval society, 74; buried at
Aachen, 74; inscription on his tomb, 74; canonised as a
saint, 75; his plan of Empire, 76.
CHARLES II (the BALD), 77, 156, 157.
CHARLES III (the FAT), 78, 81.
CHARLES IV, 223; his electoral constitution, 225; his
Golden Bull, 225, 236; general results of his policy, 236;
his object through life, 236; the University of Prague
founded by, 237; welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, 254.
CHARLES V, accession of, 319; casts in his lot with the
Catholics, 321; the momentous results, 322; failure of his
repressive policy, 322.
CHARLES VI, 348, 351, 352.
CHARLES VII, his disastrous reign, 351.
CHARLES VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples
and Milan, 315.
CHARLES MARTEL, 36, 38.
CHARLES of Valois, 223.
CHARLES the BOLD and Frederick III, 249.
CHEMNITZ, his comments on the condition and prospects of
the Empire, 339.
CHILDERIC, his deposition by the Holy See, 39.
Chivalry, the orders of, 250.
Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, 10; growth of, 10;
alliance of, with the State, 10, 66, 107, 387; organization
of, framed on the model of the secular administration, 11;
the Emperor the head of, 12; maintains the Imperial idea,
13; attitude of Charles the Great towards, 65, 66; the bond
that holds together the Empire of Charles, 73; first gives
men a sense of unity, 92; how regarded in Middle Ages, 92,
370; draws tighter all bonds of outward union, 94; unity
of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, 93; becomes
the exact counterpart of the Empire, 99, 101, 107, 328;
position of, in Germany, 128; Otto's position towards, 129;
effect of the Reformation upon, 327; influence of the
Empire upon the history of, 384.
Churches, national, 95, 330.
Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern
restorers of, 292; mosaics and bell-tower in the, 294.
Cities, in Lombardy, 175; growth of in Germany, 179; their
power, 223.
Civil law, revival of the study of, 172; its study
forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 253.
CIVILIS, the Batavian, 17.
Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 37; their idea of
political unity, 96; their power in the eleventh century,
128; Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to
the, 158; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle
Age, 290.
CLOVIS, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
Empire, 17, 30; his unbroken success, 35.
Coins, papal, 278 note.
COLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 270 and note; the
family of, 281.
Commons, the, 132, 314.
Concordat of Worms, 163.
Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, 362.
CONRAD I (King of the East Franks), 122, 226.
CONRAD II, the reign of, 151; comparison between the
prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V,
165; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 194.
CONRAD III, 165, 277.
CONRAD IV, 210.
CONRADIN (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, 211.
Constance, the Council of, 220, 253, 301; the peace of,
signed by Frederick I, 178.
CONSTANTINE, his vigorous policy, 8; the Donation of, 43,
100, 288 note.
Constantinople, capture of, 303, 311.
Coronations, ceremonies at, 112; the four, gone through by
the Emperors, 193, 403; their meaning, 195; churches in
which they were performed, 284, 288.
Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon
Law, 101.
Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, 111.
Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 125.
CRESCENTIUS, 146.
Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, 57, 61, 81; not
legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, 81; how
treated by the Popes, 82.
Crowns, the four, 193, 403.
Crusades, the, 164, 166, 179, 193, 205, 209.
D.
DANTE, 208; his attitude towards the Empire, 255; his
treatise _De Monarchia_, 262; sketch of its argument, 264
et seq.; its omissions, 268, 299.
Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 294.
Decretals, the False, 156.
Denmark, and the Slaves, 143; imperial authority in, 184;
its relations to the Empire, 398.
Diet, the, 126, 314, 353; its rights as settled A. D. 1648,
340; its altered character A. D. 1654, 344; its triflings,
353.
DIOCLETIAN, his vigorous policy, 8.
Divine right of the Emperor, 246.
DÖLLINGER (Dr.), 60 note.
Dominicans, the order of, 205.
Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 43, 100, 118 note,
261 note.
Dukes, the, in Germany, 125.
E.
East, imperial pretensions in the, 189.
Eastern Church, the, 191.
Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 24, 25;
decay of its power in the West, 45; how regarded by the
Popes, 46.
Edict of Caracalla, 6.
EDWARD II (King of England), his declaration of England's
independence of the Empire, 187.
EDWARD III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 187;
his election against Charles IV, 223.
EGINHARD, his statement respecting Charles's coronation,
58, 60.
Elective constitution, the, 227; difficulty of maintaining
the principle in practice, 233; its object the choice of
the fittest man, 233; restraint of the sovereign, 233;
recognition of the popular will, 234.
Elector, the title of, its advantage, 232 note; personages
upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 232.
Electoral body in primitive times, 226.
Electoral function, conception of the, 235.
Electorate, the Eighth, 231; the Ninth, 231.
Electors, the Seven, 165, 229; their names and offices, 230
note; the question of their vote, 257 note.
Emperor, the position of, in the second century, 5, 6; the
head of the Church, 12, 23, 111; sanctity of the name, 22,
120; correspondence between his position and functions and
those of the Pope, 104; proofs from mediæval documents,
109; and from the coronation ceremonies, 112; illustrations
from mediæval art, 116; nature of his power, 120; fusion of
his functions with those of German King, 127; his office
feudalized, 130; attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards,
189; his dignities and titles, 193, 257, 261, 400; the
title not assumed till the Roman coronation, 196; origin
and results of this practice, 196; policy of, 222; his
office as peace-maker, 244, 245; divine right of the, 246;
his right of creating kings, 249; his international place
at the Council of Constance, 253; change in titles of, 316;
his rights as settled A.D. 1648, 340; altered meaning of
the word now-a-days, 402.
Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 193, 195, 403;
persons eligible as, 251; after Henry VII, 263; their
short-sighted policy towards Rome, 277; their visits to
Rome, 282; their approach, 283; their entrance, 284;
hostility of the Pope and people to the, 284; their
burial-places, 287 note; nature of the question at issue
between the Popes and the, 385; their titles, 400.
Emperors, Carolingian, 76.
Emperors, Franconian, 133.
Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in
Germany, 310; their policy, 305, 348; repeated attempts to
set them aside, 350; causes of the long retention of the
throne by the, 349; modern pretensions of, 368, 381.
Emperors, Italian, 80.
Emperors, Saxon, 133.
Emperors, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, 57, 165, 167.
Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 61; their
short-sighted policy, 277; their memorials in Rome, 286;
names of those buried in Italy, 287 note; their struggles
against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, 388.
Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, 5; obliteration
of national distinctions in, 6; unity of, threatened from
without and from within, 7, 8; preserved for a time by the
policy of Diocletian and Constantine, 8, 9; partition of,
9; influence of the Church in supporting, 13; armies of,
composed of barbarians, 15; how regarded by the barbarians,
16; belief in eternity of, 20; reunion of Italy to, 29; its
influence in the Transalpine provinces, 30; influence of
religion and jurisprudence in supporting, 31, 32; belief
in, not extinct in the eighth century, 44; restoration of
by Charles the Great, 48; the 'translation' of the, 52,
111, 175, 218; divided between the grandsons of Charles,
77; dissolution of, 78; ideal state supposed to be embodied
in, 99; never, strictly speaking, restored, 102.
Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, 80, 103;
a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, 80; wherein it
differed therefrom, 80; motives for establishment of, 84;
identical with Holy Roman Church, 106; its rights proved
from the Bible, 112; its anti-national character, 120; its
union with the German kingdom, 122; dissimilarity between
the two, 127; results of the union, 128; its pretensions in
Hungary, 183; in Poland, 184; in Denmark, 184; in France,
185; in Sweden, 185; in Spain, 185; in England, 186; in
Naples, 188; in Venice, 188; in the East, 189; the epithet
'Holy' applied by Frederick I, 199; origin and meaning of
epithet, 200; its fall with Frederick II, 210; Italy lost
to, 211; change in its position, 214; its continuance due
to its connexion with the German kingdom, 214; its
relations with the Papacy, 153, 155, 216; its financial
distress, 223; theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, 238; its duties as an international judge and
mediator, 244; why an international power, 248;
illustrations, 249; attitude of new learning towards, 251,
254, 256; doctrine of its rights and functions never
carried out in fact, 253; end of its history in Italy, 263,
304; relation between it and the city, 297; reaches its
lowest point in Frederick III's reign, 301; its loss of
Burgundy, 305, and of Switzerland, 306; change in its
character, 308, 313; effects of the Renaissance upon, 312;
effects of the Reformation upon, 319, 325; its influence
upon the name and associations of, 332; narrowing of its
bounds, 341; causes of the continuance of, 344; its
relation to the balance of power, 345; its position in
Europe, 346; its last phase, 352; signs of its approaching
fall, 356; its end, 363; the desire for its
re-establishment, 364; unwillingness of certain states,
364; technically never extinguished, 364 note; summary of
its nature and results, 366; claim of Austria to represent,
368; of France, 368; of Russia, 368; of Greece, 368; of the
Turks, 368; parallel between the Papacy and, 369, 373;
never truly mediæval, 373; sense in which it was Roman,
374; its condition in the tenth century, 374; essential
principles of, 377; its influence on Germany, 378; Austria
as heir of, 381; its bearing on the progress of Europe,
383; ways in which it affected the political institutions
of the Middle Ages, 383; its influence upon modern
jurisprudence, 383; upon the history of the Church, 384;
influence of its inner life on the minds of men, 387;
principles adverse to, 388; change marked by its fall, 389;
its relations to the nationalities of Europe, 390;
difficulty of fully understanding, 392.
Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, 101; consequences,
102; struggle between, 153; their relations, 155, 216;
parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name,
372.
Empire Western, last days of the, 24; its extinction by
Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
Empire, French, under Napoleon, 360.
ENGELBERT, 113 note.
England, 45; Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
exercised by any Emperors in, 186; vague notion that it
must depend on the Empire, 186; imperial pretensions
towards, 187; position of the regal power in, as compared
with Germany, 215; feudalism in, 343.
Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great,
132.
EUDES (Count of Champagne), 151.
Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 383; on
the nationalities of, 390.
F.
False Decretals, the, 156.
FERDINAND I, 316 note, 323, 401.
FERDINAND II, accession of, 335; his plans, 335; deprives
the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, 231.
Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 221.
Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 124.
Feudalism, 90, 123; reason of its firm grasp upon society,
124; hostility between it and imperialism, 131; its results
in France, 343; in England, 343; in Germany, 344; struggles
of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
Financial distress of the Empire, 223.
FLORUS the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the
Carolingian Empire, 85 note.
Fontenay, battle of, 77.
France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, 142; imperial
authority exercised in, 185; her irritation at Germany's
precedence, 185; growth of the regal power in, as compared
with Germany, 215; alliance of the Protestants with, 325;
territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, 341; feudalism
in, 343; under Napoleon, 360; her claim to represent the
Roman Empire, 368, 376.
Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, 77.
FRANCIS I, reign of, 351.
FRANCIS II, accession of, 356; resignation of imperial
crown by, 1, 363.
Franciscans, the order of, 205.
Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
Franconian Emperors, 133.
'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, 142 note.
Franks, rise of the, 34; success of their arms, 35;
Catholics from the first, 36; their greatness chiefly due
to the clergy, 36; enter Rome, 48.
Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 142.
Frankfort, synod held at, 64; coronations at, 316 note,
404.
FREDERICK I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 167, 179;
his relations to the Popedom, 167; his contest with Pope
Hadrian IV, 169, 316; incident at their meeting on the way
to Rome, 314 note; his contest with Pope Alexander III,
170; their meeting at Venice, 171; magnificent ascriptions
of dignity to, 173; assertion of his prerogative in Italy,
174; his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' 175;
his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 175; his
temporary success, 177; victory of the Lombards over, 178;
his prosperity as German king, 178; his glorious life and
happy death, 179; legend respecting him, 180; extent of his
jurisdiction, 182; his dominion in the East, 189; his
letter to Saladin, 189; anecdote of, 214.
FREDERICK II, character of, 207; events of his struggle
with the Papacy, 209; results of his reign, 221; the charge
of heresy against, 251 note; memorials left by, in Rome,
287.
FREDERICK III, abases himself before the Romish court, 220;
Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, 249; his
calamitous reign, 301.
FREDERICK (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by
Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, 231.
FREDERICK of Prussia (the Great), 347, 352, 353 note.
Freedom popular, growth of, 240; struggles of the Teutonic
Emperors against, 388.
G.
Gallic race, political character of the, 376.
Gauverfassung, the so-called, 123.
GERBERT (Pope Sylvester II), 146.
'German Emperor,' the title of, 127, 317.
Germanic constitution, the, 221; influence upon, of the
theory of the Empire as an international power, 307;
attempted reforms of, 313; means by which it was proposed
to effect them, 314; causes of their failure, 314.
Germany, beginning of the national existence of, 77;
chooses Arnulf as king, 78; overrun by Hungarians, 79;
establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, 79;
desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, 86;
position of in the tenth century, 122; union of the Empire
with, 122; results of the union, 128; dissimilarity of the
two systems, 127; feudalism in, 123; the feudal polity of,
generally, 125; nature of the history of, till the twelfth
century, 126; princes of, ally themselves with the Pope
against the Emperor, 162; its hatred of the Romish Court,
169; the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, 179;
growth of towns in, 179, 223; decline of imperial power in,
211; state of during Great Interregnum, 213; decline of
regal power in, 215; encroachments of nobles in, 221, 228;
kingdom of, not originally elective, 225; how it ultimately
became elective, 226; changes in the constitution of, 228;
its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 302;
its loss of imperial territories, 303; its internal
weakness, 306; position of the Emperor in, compared with
that of his predecessors in Europe, 309; beginning of the
Hapsburg influence in, 310; first consciousness of its
nationality, 315; destruction of its State-system, 324; its
troubles, 324; finally severed from Rome, 340; after the
peace of Westphalia, 342; effect of a number of petty
independent states upon, 343; feudalism in, 343; its
political life in the eighteenth century, 345; foreign
thrones acquired by its princes, 346; French aggression
upon, 346; its weakness and stagnation, 347; popular
feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, 354;
Napoleon in, 361; changes in, by war of 1866, 365 note;
influence of the Holy Empire on, 378.
GERSON, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 301.
Ghibeline, the name of, 304.
GOETHE, 236 note, 316 note, 356.
Golden Bull of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, 28;
Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, 29.
Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, 240, 252; her claim to represent the Roman
Empire, 368.
Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, 37 note.
Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire,
210.
GREGORY THE GREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 31;
means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority,
154.
GREGORY II (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with
the Byzantine princes, 102.
GREGORY III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour
against the Lombards, 39.
GREGORY V (Pope), 146.
GREGORY VII (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures
to the clergy, 158; war between him and Henry IV, 159; his
letter to William the Conqueror, 160; passage in his second
excommunication of Henry, 161; results of the struggle
between them, 162; his death, 162; his theory as to the
rights of the Pope with respect to the election of
Emperors, 217; his silence about the Translation of the
Empire, 218; his simile between the Empire and the Popedom,
373; his demands on the Emperor, 386.
GREGORY IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 102; receives
the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' 102.
GREGORY X (Pope), 219.
GROTIUS, 384.
Guelf, the name of, 304.
GUIDO, or GUY, of Spoleto, 82.
GUISCARD, Robert, 292.
GUNDOBALD the Burgundian, 25.
GUNTHER of Schwartzburg, 222.
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 336.
H.
HADRIAN I (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the
Lombards, 41; motives of his policy, 42; his allusion to
Constantine's Donation, 118 note.
HADRIAN IV (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 169, 285;
his pretensions, 197.
HALLAM, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis,
30 note.
Hanseatic Confederacy, 223, 347.
Hapsburg, the castle of, 213 note.
HAROLD the BLUE-TOOTHED, 143.
HENRY I (the Fowler), 79, 122, 132, 226.
HENRY II crowned Emperor, 149.
HENRY II (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector
of the German Liberties,' 325.
HENRY II (King of England), his submissive tone towards
Frederick I, 186.
HENRY III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 151;
his reform of the Popedom, 152; fatal results of his
encroachments, 152; his death, 152.
HENRY IV, election of, 226 note; war between him and
Gregory VII, 159; his humiliation, 159; results of the
struggle, 162; his death, 162.
HENRY V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 163; his
quarrel with Pope Paschal II, 163; his perilous position,
163; comparison between the prerogative at his death and
that at the accession of Conrad II, 165; tumults produced
by his coronation, 285.
HENRY V (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor
Sigismund, 187.
HENRY VI, 188; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to
the Empire, 206; opposition to the scheme, 206; his
untimely death, 206.
HENRY VII, 221, 223; in Italy, 262; his death, 263.
HENRY VIII (King of England), 334 note.
Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, 232.
HILARY, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, 21 note.
HILDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past
and present of Rome, 406.
HILDEBRAND; _see_ Gregory VII.
HIPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise of, 339.
Hohenstaufen; _see_ Emperors, Swabian.
Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 165 note.
Holland, declared independent, 342.
Holstein, its relations to the Empire, 398.
HUGH CAPET, 42.
HUGH of Burgundy, 83.
Hungarians, the, 143.
Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, 183; its
connexion with the Hapsburgs, 184 note.
HUSS, the writings of, 241.
I.
Iconoclastic controversy, 38.
'Imperator electus,' the title of, 316, 405.
Imperialism, Roman, French, and Mediæval, 375.
Imperial titles and ceremonies, 193, 400.
INNOCENT III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV,
206; his pretensions, 209, 217; his struggle with Frederick
II, 208.
INNOCENT X and the sacred number Seven of the electors, 227
note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 341.
International power, the need of an, 242; why the Roman
Empire an, 248.
Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during,
213; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power,
221.
Investitures, the struggle of the, 162.
IRENE (Empress), behaviour of, 47, 61, 68.
Irminsûl, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, 69; meaning
of term, 69 note.
Italian Emperors, 80.
Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments
appeared, 140.
Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, 299.
Italy, under Odoacer, 26, 27; attempt of Theodoric to
establish a national monarchy in, 27; reconquered by
Justinian, 29; harassed by the Lombards, 37; condition of,
previous to Otto's descent into, 80; Otto the Great's first
expedition into, 84; its connexion with Germany, 87; Otto's
rule in, 139; liberties of the northern cities of, 150;
Frederick I in, 174; Henry VII in, 263; lost to the Empire,
211, 304; names of Emperors buried in, 287 note; the nation
at the present day, 389.
Italy, Southern, 150.
J.
JOHN VIII (Pope), 156.
JOHN XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 87; plots against
him, 134; his reprobate life, 134; Liudprand's list of the
charges against, 135; letter recounting them sent to him,
136; his reply, 136; Otto's answer, 136; deposed by Otto,
137; regret of the Romans at his expulsion, 137; his return
and death, 138.
JOHN XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 220.
JOSEPH II, reign of, 352.
JULIUS CÆSAR, 390, 392.
JULIUS II (Pope), 316.
Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31;
aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, 252; influence
of the Empire on modern, 383.
Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, 256.
JUSTINIAN, Italy reconquered by, 29; study of the
legislation of, 240, 256.
'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory
IX, 102.
Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 143.
K.
Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, 249.
Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 250.
L.
LACTANTIUS, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire,
21.
LAMBERT (son of Guido of Spoleto), 82.
Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the
Pope, 219.
Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, 117, 288.
Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 37 note.
Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of
Charles, 53.
Law, old, the influence exercised by, 32; era of the
revived study of, 276.
Learning, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
imperialism, 254.
LEO I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 154.
LEO the ISAURIAN (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the
worship of images, 38.
LEO III (Pope), his accession, 43; his adventures, 44;
crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, 3, 49;
charter of, issued on same day, 106; relation of, to the
act of coronation, 52, 53; lectured by Charles, 64.
LEO VIII (Pope), 138.
Leonine city, the, 286 note.
LEOPOLD I, ninth electorate conferred by, 231.
LEOPOLD II, 352.
LEWIS I (the Pious), 76, 77.
LEWIS II, 77, 104 note, 191, 403.
LEWIS III (son of Boso), 82.
LEWIS IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 220.
LEWIS XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and
Milan, 315.
LEWIS XIV (King of France), 346.
LEWIS (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), 77.
LEWIS the CHILD (son of Arnulf), 121.
Literature, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
imperialism, 254.
LIUDPRAND (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations
against John XII, 135; account of his embassy to the
princess Theophano, 141.
LIUDPRAND (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the
exarchate, 38.
Lombard cities, 175; their victory over Frederick I, 178.
Lombards, arrival of the, A.D. 568, 29, 37; their aversion
to the clergy, 37; the Popes seek help from the Franks
against the, 39; extinction of their kingdom by
Charlemagne, 41.
LOTHAR I (son of Lewis the Pious), 77, 403.
LOTHAR II, election of, 165, 228.
LOTHAR (son of Hugh of Burgundy), 83.
Lotharingia or Lorraine, 78, 79, 143, 183, 341, 349.
Luneville, the Peace of, 361.
LUTHER, 319.
M.
Majesty, the title of, 247 note.
Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
MANUEL COMNENUS, 193.
Mario (Monte), 283.
MARSILIUS of Padua, his 'de Imperio Romano,' 231 note.
MAXIMILIAN I, 231, 310; character of his epoch, 310; events
of his reign, 313; his title of 'Imperator electus,' 316,
405; his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 317.
MAXIMILIAN II, 323.
Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 126.
Mediæval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 116.
Mediæval monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, 289.
MICHAEL, 61.
MICHAEL ANGELO, capital rebuilt by, 295.
Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, 90; theology
of, 95; philosophy of, 97; relations of Church and State
during, 107, 387; mode of interpreting Scriptures in, 114;
art of, 116; opposition of theory and practice in, 133,
261; real beginning of, 204; reverence for ancient forms
and phrases in, 258; absence of the idea of change or
progress in, 259; the city of Rome in, 269; barbarism of
the aristocracy in, 289; ambition and corruption of the
clergy in the latter, 290; destruction of old buildings by
the Romans of, 292; existing relics of, 294; aspiration for
unity during, 370; the Visible Church in the, 370; ferocity
of the heroes of, 382; ways in which the Empire affected the
political institutions of, 383; idea of the communion of
saints during, 387.
Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 125; the
rebuilding of, 178; victory of Frederick II over, 287;
pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on,
315.
Mahommedanism, rise of, 45.
Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of
Charles, 54, 84.
MOMMSEN, 390.
Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, 91, 97.
Monarchy, elective, 232.
Mosaics in the churches of Rome, 294.
MÜLLER, Johannes von, 354.
Münster, the treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
N.
Naples, imperial authority in, 188, 205; pretensions of
Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
NAPOLEON, as compared with Charles the Great, 74;
extinction of Electorates by, 232; Emperor of the West,
357; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne,
358; attitude of the Papacy towards, 359; his mission in
Germany, 361.
Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, 242; relations
of the Empire to the, 390.
Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against,
388.
Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, 7.
Nicæa, first council of, 23, 301; second council of, 64.
NICEPHORUS, 61, 192.
NICHOLAS I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 252.
NICHOLAS II (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope,
158.
NICHOLAS V (Pope), 279, 292, 312.
Nobles, the, in feudal times, 125, 221; encroachments of
the, 228.
Nürnberg, 259.
O.
OCCAM, the English Franciscan, 220.
ODO, 81.
ODOACER, extinction of the Western Empire by, A.D. 476, 25;
his original position, 25 note; his assumption of the title
of King, 26; nature of his government, 27.
OPTATUS (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise _Contra
Donatistas_, 13 note.
Orsini, the family of, 281.
Osnabrück, treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
Ostrogoths, 24; war between Belisarius and the, 273.
OTTO I, the GREAT, appealed to by Adelheid, 83; his first
expedition into Italy, 84; invitation sent by the Pope to,
84; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; crowned king of
Italy at Rome, 87; his coronation a favourable opening to
sacerdotal claims, 155; causes of the revival of the Empire
under, 84; his coronation feast the inauguration of the
Teutonic realm, 123; consequences of his assumption of the
imperial title, 128; his position towards the Church, 128;
changes in title, 129; his imperial office feudalized, 130;
the Germans made a single people by, 131; incidents which
befel him in Rome, 134; inquires into the character and
manners of Pope John XII, 135; his letters to John, 136;
deposes John, 136; appoints Leo in his stead, 137; his
suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of
John, 138; his rule in Italy, 139; resumes Charles's plans
of foreign conquest, 140; his policy towards Byzantium,
141; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano,
141; his policy towards the West Franks, 142; his Northern
and Eastern conquests, 143; extent of his empire, 144;
comparison between it and that of Charles, 144; beneficial
results of his rule, 145; how styled by Nicephorus, 211.
OTTO II, 142; memorials left by, in Rome, 317.
OTTO III, his plans and ideas, 146, 147, 148; his intense
religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 147; his reason
for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' 147; his early
death, 148, 228; his burial at Aachen, 148; respect in
which his life was so memorable, 149; compared with
Frederick II, 207; his expostulation with the Roman people,
285 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 286.
OTTO IV, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, 206;
overthrown by Innocent, 207; explanation of a curious seal
of, 266 note.
P.
PALGRAVE (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity
to Clovis, 30 note.
PALSGRAVE, deprived of his vote, 231; reinstated, 231.
Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, 368.
Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 146; Frederick I's bad
relations with, 168; Henry III's purification of, 152, 204;
growth of its power, 153; its relations with the Empire,
153, 155, 216; its condition after the dissolution of the
Carolingian Empire, 275; its attitude towards Napoleon,
359.
Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, 101; its
consequences, 102; struggle between them, 153; their
relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as
perpetuation of a name, 372.
Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, 138, 155.
Partition treaty of Verdun, 77.
PASCHAL II (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, 163.
Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, 40; date when
it was bestowed on Pipin, 40 note.
PATRITIUS, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of
the Empire, 224.
Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 156.
Persecution, Protestant, 330.
Peter's (St.), old, 48.
PETRARCH, his feelings towards the Empire, 254; towards the
city of Rome, 270.
PFEFFINGER, 351 note.
PHILIP of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick
and, 206; his assassination, 206.
Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth
century, 240.
PIPIN of Herstal, 35.
PIPIN the SHORT appointed successor to Childeric, 39; twice
rescues Rome from the Lombards, 39; receives the title of
Patrician of the Romans, 40; import of this title, 40; date
at which it was bestowed, 40 note.
PIUS VII (Pope), 359.
Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
PODIEBRAD (George), (King of Bohemia), 223.
Poland, imperial authority in, 184; partition of, 345.
Politics, beginning of the existence of, 241.
Popes, emancipation of the, 27, 37, 281, 282; appeal to the
Franks for succour against the Lombards, 39; their reasons
for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, 45, 46;
their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 57;
their profligacy in the tenth century, 82, 85, 275; their
theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, 99; their
position and functions, 104; growth of their pretensions,
108, 156, 217; and power, 153; their relations to the
Emperor, 155; their temporal power, 157; their position as
international judges, 243; reaction against their
pretensions, 243, 275; their aversion to the study of
ancient jurisprudence, 252; hostility of, to the Germans,
284; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors
and, 385.
PORCARO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 279.
Prætaxation, the so-called right of, 228, 229.
Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 212, 221.
Prague, University of, 237.
Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad
II and death of Henry V, 165.
Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, 250.
Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, 352.
Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation,
330.
Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, 325.
Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the,
313.
R.
RADULFUS DE COLONNA, his account of the origin of the
separation of Greeks and Latins, 37 note.
Ravenna, exarch of, 27.
Reformation, dawnings of the, 240; Charles V's attitude
towards the, 321; influence of its spirit on the Empire,
319, 325; its real meaning, 325; its effect on the
doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 327; consequent
effect upon the Empire, 328; its small immediate influence
on political and religious liberty, 329; conduct of the
Protestant States after the, 330; its influence on the name
and associations of the Empire, 332.
Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; wars
of, 330.
Renaissance, the, 240, 311.
'Renovatio Romani Imperii,' signification of the seal
bearing legend of, 103.
Rhine, towns of the, 223; provisions of the Confederation
of the, 362.
RICHARD I (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor
Henry VI, 186; his release, 187.
RICHARD (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with
Alfonso X of Castile, 212, 229.
RICHELIEU, policy of, 336.
RICIMER (patrician), 25.
RIENZI, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting,
255; his character and career, 278.
Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII,
137, 138; Otto's vigorous measures against the, 138; their
revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 274; the
title of King of the, 404.
Romanism or Catholicity, 94, 106.
Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, 7;
prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire,
9; lingering influences of her Church and Law, 31, 32;
claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown,
57, 61, 81; republican institutions of, renewed, 83;
profligacy of, in the tenth century, 82, 85; under Arnold
of Brescia, 174; imitations of old, 257; in the Middle
Ages, 269; absence of Gothic in, 271; the modern traveller
in, 271, 283; causes of her rapid decay, 273; peculiarities
of her position, 274; her internal history from the sixth
to the twelfth century, 274; her condition in the ninth and
tenth centuries, 274; growth of a republican feeling in,
276; short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, 277;
causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in,
280; her internal condition, 280; her people, 280; her
nobility, 281; her bishop, 281; relation of the Emperor to,
282; the Emperors' visits to, 282; dislike of, to the
Germans, 285; memorials of Otto III in, 286; of Otto II,
287; of Frederick II, 287; causes of the want of mediæval
monuments in, 289; barbarism of the aristocracy of, 289;
ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, 290;
tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner,
290; destruction and alteration of old buildings in, 291;
her modern churches, 293; existing relics of Dark and
Middle Ages in, 291; changed aspect of, 295; analogy
between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution, 296; relation of, to the Empire, 297;
feelings of modern Italians towards, 299; perpetuation of
the name of, 367; parallel instances, 367; Hildebert's
lines contrasting the past and present of, 406.
ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding,
25.
RUDOLF (King of Transjurane), 81.
RUDOLF of Hapsburg, 213, 219, 221, 222; financial distress
under, 224; Schiller's description of the coronation feast
of, 231 note, 262.
RUDOLF II, 335.
RUDOLF III, 151.
RUDOLF of Swabia, 162.
RUDOLF III (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath
Burgundy to Henry II, 151.
Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
S.
Sachsenspiegel, the, 108 note.
SALADIN (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, 189.
Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, 118.
Saxon Emperors, 133.
Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, 143; its relation to the
Empire, 398.
Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth
century, 240.
Seal, ascribed to A. D. 800, 103.
SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, concentration of power in his hands, 5,
6.
SERGIUS IV (Pope), 228 note.
Seven Years' War, 352.
Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation,
34.
Sicily, imperial authority in, 188, 205.
SIGISMUND (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the
institutions of the Empire, 18.
SIGISMUND (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, 187; at the
Council of Constance, 253, 301.
Simony, measures taken against, 158.
Slavic races, the, 27, 143, 260, 378.
Smalkaldic league, the, 322.
Southern Italy, 150.
Spain, Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
exercised by any Emperor in, 185; compared with Germany,
303.
Speyer, Diet of, 111 note.
STEPHANIA (widow of Crescentius), 148.
Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222; the towns of,
223, 313; theory of the Emperors of the house of,
respecting the coronation of Charles, 57.
Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, 185.
Swiss Confederation, the, 306; her gains by treaties of
Westphalia, 341.
Switzerland lost to the Empire, 306, 342.
SYLVESTER (Pope), 43.
T.
Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, 9 note.
TERTULLIAN, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, 21
note, 23 note.
TEUTBERGA (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, 252.
Teutonic race, political character of the, 376.
THEODEBERT (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the
institutions of the Empire, 18.
THEODORIC the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a
national monarchy in Italy, 27, 28; its failure, 29; his
usual place of residence, 28 note; prosperity under his
reign, 29.
THEODOSIUS (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose,
12.
THEOPHANO (princess), 141.
Thirty Years' War, 335; its unsatisfactory results, 336;
its substantial advantage to the German princes, 338.
THOMAS (St.), his statement respecting the election of
Emperors, 227.
Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, 67.
Titles, change of, 129, 316, 400.
Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, 175.
Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, 30.
'Translation of the Empire,' 52, 111, 175, 218.
Transubstantiation, 326 note.
Turks, the, 303; their claim to represent the Roman Empire,
368.
TURPIN (Archbishop), 51 note.
U.
University of Prague, foundation of, 237.
Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 96.
URBAN IV (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king,
229.
V.
Venice, her attitude, 171; imperial pretensions towards,
188; maintains her independence, 188.
Verdun, partition treaty of, 77.
VESPASIAN, his dying jest, 23 note.
Vienna, Congress of, 364.
VILLANI (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 304;
his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, 304 note.
Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by
the, 30.
W.
WALLENSTEIN, 335.
WENZEL of Bohemia, 223.
Western Empire, its last days, 24, 25; its extinction by
Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
Westphalia, the Peace of, 336; its advantages to France,
341; to Sweden, 341; its importance in imperial history,
342.
WICKLIFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 241.
WILLIAM the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, 160.
WIPPO, 227 note.
WITUKIND, 85 note.
WOITECH (St. Adalbert), 269.
World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 91; influence of metaphysics
upon the theory, 97.
World-Religion, the idea of a, 91; coincides with the
World-Empire, 92.
Worms, Concordant of, 163; Diet of, 319, 334.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Holy Roman Empire" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.