A Source Book of Mediaeval History Part 1

A Source Book of Mediaeval History.

Edited by Frederic Austin Ogg.

PREFACE

This book has been prepared in consequence of a conviction, derived from some years of teaching experience, (1) that sources, of proper kind and in carefully regulated amount, can profitably be made use of by teachers and students of history in elementary college cla.s.ses, in academies and preparatory schools, and in the more advanced years of the average high school, and (2) that for mediaeval history there exists no published collection which is clearly adapted to practical conditions of work in such cla.s.ses and schools.

It has seemed to me that a source book designed to meet the requirements of teachers and cla.s.ses in the better grade of secondary schools, and perhaps in the freshman year of college work, ought to comprise certain distinctive features, first, with respect to the character of the selections presented, and, secondly, in regard to general arrangement and accompanying explanatory matter. In the choice of extracts I have sought to be guided by the following considerations: (1) that in all cases the materials presented should be of real value, either for the historical information contained in them or for the more or less indirect light they throw upon mediaeval life or conditions; (2) that, for the sake of younger students, a relatively large proportion of narrative (annals, chronicles, and biography) be introduced and the purely doc.u.mentary material be slightly subordinated; (3) that, despite this principle, doc.u.ments of vital importance, such as _Magna Charta_ and _Unam Sanctam_, which cannot be ignored in even the most hasty or elementary study, be presented with some fulness; and (4) that, in general, the rule should be to give longer pa.s.sages from fewer sources, rather than more fragmentary ones from a wider range.

With respect to the manner of presenting the selections, I have sought: (1) to offer careful translations--some made afresh from the printed originals, others adapted from good translations already available--but with as much simplification and modernization of language as close adherence to the sense will permit. Literal, or nearly literal, translations are obviously desirable for maturer students, but, because of the involved character of mediaeval writings, are rarely readable, and are as a rule positively repellent to the young mind; (2) to provide each selection, or group of selections, with an introductory explanation, containing the historical setting of the extract, with perhaps some comment on its general significance, and also a brief sketch of the writer, particularly when he is an authority of exceptional importance, as Einhard, Joinville, or Froissart; and (3) to supply, in foot-notes, somewhat detailed aid to the understanding of obscure allusions, omitted pa.s.sages, and especially place names and technical terms.

For permission to reprint various translations, occasionally verbatim but usually in adapted form, I am under obligation to the following: Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., publishers of Miss Henry's translation of Dante's _De Monarchia_; Messrs. Henry Holt and Co., publishers of Lee's _Source Book of English History_; Messrs. Ginn and Co., publishers of Robinson's _Readings in European History_; Messrs.

Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of Thatcher and McNeal's _Source Book for Mediaeval History_; Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers of Robinson and Rolfe's _Petrarch_; and Professor W. E. Lingelbach, of the University of Pennsylvania, representing the University of Pennsylvania _Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History_.

In the preparation of the book I have received invaluable a.s.sistance from numerous persons, among whom the following, at least, should be named: Professor Samuel B. Harding, of the University of Indiana, who read the entire work in ma.n.u.script and has followed its progress from the first with discerning criticism; Professor Charles H. Haskins, of Harvard University, who has read most of the proof-sheets, and whose scholarship and intimate acquaintance with the problems of history teaching have contributed a larger proportion of whatever merits the book possesses than I dare attempt to reckon up; and Professors Charles Gross and Ephraim Emerton, likewise of Harvard, whose instruction and counsel have helped me over many hard places.

The final word must be reserved for my wife, who, as careful amanuensis, has shared the burden of a not altogether easy task.

FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG.

CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.s.

INTRODUCTION

THE NATURE AND USE OF HISTORICAL SOURCES

[Sidenote: The question of authority in a book of history]

If one proposes to write a history of the times of Abraham Lincoln, how shall one begin, and how proceed? Obviously, the first thing needed is information, and as much of it as can be had. But how shall information, accurate and trustworthy, be obtained? Of course there are plenty of books on Lincoln, and histories enough covering the period of his career to fill shelf upon shelf. It would be quite possible to spread some dozens of these before one's self and, drawing simply from them, work out a history that would read well and perhaps have a wide sale. And such a book might conceivably be worth while.

But if you were reading it, and were a bit disposed to query into the accuracy of the statements made, you would probably find yourself wondering before long just where the writer got his authority for this or that a.s.sertion; and if, in foot-note or appendix, he should seem to satisfy your curiosity by citing some other biography or history, you would be quite justified in feeling that, after all, your inquiry remained unanswered,--for whence did this second writer get _his_ authority? If you were thus persistent you would probably get hold of the volume referred to and verify, as we say, the statements of fact or opinion attributed to it. When you came upon them you might find it there stated that the point in question is clearly established from certain of Lincoln's own letters or speeches, which are thereupon cited, and perhaps quoted in part. At last you would be satisfied that the thing must very probably be true, for there you would have the words of Lincoln himself upon it; or, on the other hand, you might discover that your first writer had merely adopted an opinion of somebody else which did not have behind it the warrant of any first-hand authority. In either case you might well wonder why, instead of using and referring only to books of other later authors like himself, he did not go directly to Lincoln's own works, get his facts from them, and give authority for his statements at first hand.

And if you pushed the matter farther it would very soon occur to you that there are some books on Lincoln and his period which are not carefully written, and therefore not trustworthy, and that your author may very well have used some of these, falling blindly into their errors and at times wholly escaping the correct interpretation of things which could be had, in incontrovertible form, from Lincoln's own pen, or from the testimony of his contemporaries. In other words, you would begin to distrust him because he had failed to go to the "sources" for his materials, or at least for a verification of them.

[Sidenote: The superiority of direct sources of knowledge]

How, then, shall one proceed in the writing of history in order to make sure of the indispensable quality of accuracy? Clearly, the first thing to be borne in mind is the necessity of getting information through channels which are as direct and immediate as possible. Just as in ascertaining the facts regarding an event of to-day it would be desirable to get the testimony of an eye-witness rather than an account after it had pa.s.sed from one person to another, suffering more or less distortion at every step, so, in seeking a trustworthy description of the battle of Salamis or of the personal habits of Charlemagne, the proper course would be to lay hold first of all of whatever evidence concerning these things has come down from Xerxes's or Charlemagne's day to our own, and to put larger trust in this than in more recent accounts which have been played upon by the imagination of their authors and perhaps rendered wholly misleading by errors consciously or unconsciously injected into them. The writer of history must completely divest himself of the notion that a thing is true simply because he finds it in print. He may, and should, read and consider well what others like himself have written upon his subject, but he should be wary of accepting what he finds in such books without himself going to the materials to which these writers have resorted and ascertaining whether they have been used with patience and discrimination. If his subject is Lincoln, he should, for example, make sure above everything else, of reading exhaustively the letters, speeches, and state papers which have been preserved, in print or in ma.n.u.script, from Lincoln's pen. Similarly, he should examine with care all letters and communications of every kind transmitted to Lincoln.

Then he should familiarize himself with the writings of the leading men of Lincoln's day, whether in the form of letters, diaries, newspaper and magazine articles, or books. The files, indeed, of all the princ.i.p.al periodicals of the time should be gone through in quest of information or suggestions not to be found in other places. And, of course, the vast ma.s.s of public and official records would be invaluable--the journals of the two houses of Congress, the dispatches, orders, and accounts of the great executive departments, the arguments before the courts, with the resulting decisions, and the all but numberless other papers which throw light upon the practical conditions and achievements of the governing powers, national, state, and local. However much one may be able to acquire from the reading of later biographies and histories, he ought not to set about the writing of a new book of the sort unless he is willing to toil patiently through all these first-hand, contemporary materials and get some warrant from them, as being nearest the events themselves, for everything of importance that he proposes to say. This rule is equally applicable and urgent whatever the subject in hand--whether the age of Pericles, the Roman Empire, the Norman conquest of England, the French Revolution, or the administrations of George Washington--though, obviously, the character and amount of the contemporary materials of which one can avail himself varies enormously from people to people and from period to period.

[Sidenote: Indirect character of all historical knowledge]

History is unlike many other subjects of study in that our knowledge of it, at best, must come to us almost wholly through indirect means.

That is to say, all our information regarding the past, and most of it regarding our own day, has to be obtained, in one form or another, through other people, or the remains that they have left behind them.

No one of us can know much about even so recent an event as the Spanish-American War, except by reading newspapers, magazines and books, talking with men who had part in it, or listening to public addresses concerning it--all indirect means. And, of course, when we go back of the memory of men now living, say to the American Revolution, n.o.body can lay claim to an iota of knowledge which he has not acquired through indirect channels. In physics or chemistry, if a student desires, he can reproduce in the laboratory practically any phenomenon which he finds described in his books; he need not accept the mere word of his text or of his teacher, but can actually behold the thing with his own eyes. Such experimentation, however, has no place in the study of history, for by no sort of art can a Roman legion or a German comitatus or the battle of Hastings be reproduced before mortal eye.

[Sidenote: An "historical source" defined]

[Sidenote: Written sources]

For our knowledge of history we are therefore obliged to rely absolutely upon human testimony, in one form or another, the value of such testimony depending princ.i.p.ally upon the directness with which it comes to us from the men and the times under consideration. If it reaches us with reasonable directness, and represents a well authenticated means of studying the period in question from the writings or other traces left by that period, it is properly to be included in the great body of materials which we have come to call historical sources. An historical source may be defined as any product of human activity or existence that can be used as direct evidence in the study of man's past life and inst.i.tutions. A moment's thought will suggest that there are "sources" of numerous and widely differing kinds. Roughly speaking, at least, they fall into two great groups: (1) those in writing and (2) those in some form other than writing.

The first group is by far the larger and more important. Foremost in it stand annals, chronicles, and histories, written from time to time all along the line of human history, on the cuneiform tablets of the a.s.syrians or the parchment rolls of the mediaeval monks, in the polished Latin of a Livy or the sprightly French of a Froissart. Works of pure literature also--epics, lyrics, dramas, essays--because of the light that they often throw upon the times in which they were written, possess a large value of the same general character. Of nearly equal importance is the great cla.s.s of materials which may be called doc.u.mentary--laws, charters, formulae, accounts, treaties, and official orders or instructions. These last are obviously of largest value in the study of social customs, land tenures, systems of government, the workings of courts, ecclesiastical organizations, and political agencies--in other words, of _inst.i.tutions_--just as chronicles and histories are of greatest service in unraveling the _narrative_ side of human affairs.

[Sidenote: Sources other than in writing]

Of sources which are not in the form of writing, the most important are: (1) implements of warfare, agriculture, household economy, and the chase, large quant.i.ties of which have been brought to light in various parts of the world, and which bear witness to the manner of life prevailing among the peoples who produced and used them; (2) coins, h.o.a.rded up in treasuries or buried in tombs or ruins of one sort or another, frequently preserving likenesses of important sovereigns, with dates and other materials of use especially in fixing chronology; (3) works of art, surviving intact or with losses or changes inflicted by the ravages of weather and human abuse--the tombs of the Egyptians, the sculpture of the Greeks, the architecture of the Middle Ages, or the paintings of the Renaissance; (4) other constructions of a more practical character, particularly dwelling-houses, roads, bridges, aqueducts, walls, gates, fortresses, and ships,--some well preserved and surviving as they were first fashioned, others in ruins, and still others built over and more or less obscured by modern improvement or adaptation.

[Sidenote: Various ways of using sources]

These are some of the things to which the writer of history must go for his facts and for his inspiration, and it is to these that the student, whose business is to learn and not to write, ought occasionally to resort to enliven and supplement what he finds in the books. As there are many kinds of sources, so there are many ways in which such materials may be utilized. If, for example, you are studying the life of the Greeks and in that connection pay a visit to a museum of fine arts and scrutinize Greek statuary, Greek vases, and Greek coins, you are very clearly using sources. If your subject is the church life of the later Middle Ages and you journey to Rheims or Amiens or Paris to contemplate the splendid cathedrals in these cities, with their spires and arches and ornamentation, you are, in every proper sense, using sources. You are doing the same thing if you make an observation trip to the Egyptian pyramids, or to the excavated Roman forum, or if you traverse the line of old Watling Street--nay, if you but visit Faneuil Hall, or tramp over the battlefield of Gettysburg. Many of these more purely "material" sources can be made use of only after long and sometimes arduous journeys, or through the valuable, but somewhat less satisfactory, medium of pictures and descriptions. Happily, however, the art of printing and the practice of acc.u.mulating enormous libraries have made possible the indefinite duplication of _written_ sources, and consequently the use of them at almost any time and in almost any place. There is but one Sphinx, one Parthenon, one Sistine Chapel; there are not many Roman roads, feudal castles, or Gothic cathedrals; but scarcely a library in any civilized country is without a considerable number of the monumental _doc.u.ments_ of human history--the funeral oration of Pericles, the laws of Tiberius Gracchus, Magna Charta, the theses of Luther, the Bill of Rights, the Const.i.tution of the United States--not to mention the all but limitless ma.s.ses of histories, biographies, poems, letters, essays, memoirs, legal codes, and official records of every variety which are available for any one who seriously desires to make use of them.

[Sidenote: The value of sources to the student]

But why should the younger student trouble himself, or be troubled, with any of these things? Might he not get all the history he can be expected to know from books written by scholars who have given their lives to exploring, organizing, and sifting just such sources? There can be no question that schools and colleges to-day have the use of better text-books in history than have ever before been available, and that truer notions of the subject in its various relations can be had from even the most narrow devotion to these texts than could be had from the study of their predecessors a generation ago. If the object of studying history were solely to acquire facts, it would, generally speaking, be a waste of time for high school or younger college students to wander far from text-books. But, a.s.suming that history is studied not alone for the mastery of facts but also for the broadening of culture, and for certain kinds of mental training, the properly regulated use of sources by the student himself is to be justified on at least three grounds: (1) Sources help to an understanding of the point of view of the men, and the spirit of the age under consideration. The ability to dissociate one's self from his own surroundings and habits of thinking and to put himself in the company of Caesar, of Frederick Barbarossa, or of Innocent III., as the occasion may require, is the hardest, but perhaps the most valuable, thing that the student of history can hope to get. (2) Sources add appreciably to the vividness and reality of history. However well-written the modern description of Charlemagne, for example, the student ought to find a somewhat different flavor in the account by the great Emperor's own friend and secretary, Einhard; and, similarly, Matthew Paris's picture of the raving and fuming of Frederick II. at his excommunication by Pope Gregory ought to bring the reader into a somewhat more intimate appreciation of the character of the proud German-Sicilian emperor. (3) The use of sources, in connection with the reading of secondary works, may be expected to train the student, to some extent at least, in methods of testing the accuracy of modern writers, especially when the subject in hand is one that lends itself to a variety of interpretations. In the sources the makers of history, or those who stood close to them, are allowed to speak for themselves, or for their times, and the study of such materials not only helps plant in the student's mind the conception of fairness and impartiality in judging historical characters, but also cultivates the habit of tracing things back to their origins and verifying what others have a.s.serted about them. So far as practicable the student of history, from the age of fourteen and onwards, should be encouraged to develop the critical or judicial temperament along with the purely acquisitive.

[Sidenote: Simplicity of many mediaeval sources]

In preparing a source book, such as the present one, the purpose is to further the study of the most profitable sources by removing some of the greater difficulties, particularly those of accessibility and language. Clearly impracticable as anything like historical "research"

undoubtedly is for younger students, it is none the less believed that there are abundant first-hand materials in the range of history which such students will not only find profitable but actually enjoy, and that any acquaintance with these things that may be acquired in earlier studies will be of inestimable advantage subsequently. It is furthermore believed, contrary to the a.s.sertions that one sometimes hears, that the history of the Middle Ages lends itself to this sort of treatment with scarcely, if any, less facility than that of other periods. Certainly Gregory's Clovis, a.s.ser's Alfred, Einhard's Charlemagne, and Joinville's St. Louis are living personalities, no less vividly portrayed than the heroes of a boy's storybook. Tacitus's description of the early Germans, Ammia.n.u.s's account of the crossing of the Danube by the Visigoths and his pictures of the Huns, Bede's narrative of the Saxon invasion of Britain, the affectionate letter Stephen of Blois to his wife and children, the portrayal of the sweet-spirited St. Francis by the Three Companions, and Froissart's free and easy sketch of the battle of Crecy are all interesting, easily comprehended, and even adapted to whet the appet.i.te for a larger acquaintance with these various people and events. Even solid doc.u.ments, like the Salic law, the Benedictine Rule, the Peace of Constance, and the Golden Bull, if not in themselves exactly attractive, may be made to have a certain interest for the younger student when he realizes that to know mediaeval history at all he is under the imperative necessity of getting much of the framework of things either from such materials or from text-books which essentially reproduce them. It is hoped that at least a reasonable proportion of the selections herewith presented may serve in some measure to overcome for the student the remote and intangible character which the Middle Ages have much too commonly, though perhaps not unnaturally, been felt to possess.

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLY GERMANS

1. A Sketch by Caesar

One of the most important steps in the expansion of the Roman Republic was the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar just before the middle of the first century B.C. Through this conquest Rome entered deliberately upon the policy of extending her dominion northward from the Mediterranean and the Alps into the regions of western and central Europe known to us to-day as France and Germany. By their wars in this direction the Romans were brought into contact with peoples concerning whose manner of life they had hitherto known very little. There were two great groups of these peoples--the Gauls and the Germans--each divided and subdivided into numerous tribes and clans. In general it may be said that the Gauls occupied what we now call France and the Germans what we know as Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, and Austria. The Rhine marked a pretty clear boundary between them.

During the years 58-50 B.C., Julius Caesar, who had risen to the proconsulship through a long series of offices and honors at Rome, served the state as leader of five distinct military expeditions in this country of the northern barbarians. The primary object of these campaigns was to establish order among the turbulent tribes of Gauls and to prepare the way for the extension of Roman rule over them. This great task was performed very successfully, but in accomplishing it Caesar found it necessary to go somewhat farther than had at first been intended. In the years 55 and 54 B.C., he made two expeditions to Britain to punish the natives for giving aid to their Celtic kinsfolk in Gaul, and in 55 and 53 he crossed the Rhine to compel the Germans to remain on their own side of the river and to cease troubling the Gauls by raids and invasions, as they had recently been doing. When (about 51 B.C.) he came to write his _Commentaries on the Gallic War_, it is very natural that he should have taken care to give a brief sketch of the leading peoples whom he had been fighting, that is, the Gauls, the Britons, and the Germans. There are two places in the _Commentaries_ where the Germans are described at some length. At the beginning of Book IV. there is an account of the particular tribe known as the Suevi, and in the middle of Book VI. there is a longer sketch of the Germans in general. This latter is the pa.s.sage translated below. Of course we are not to suppose that Caesar's knowledge of the Germans was in any sense thorough. At no time did he get far into their country, and the people whose manners and customs he had an opportunity to observe were only those who were pressing down upon, and occasionally across, the Rhine boundary--a mere fringe of the great race stretching back to the Baltic and, at that time, far eastward into modern Russia. We may be sure that many of the more remote German tribes lived after a fashion quite different from that which Caesar and his legions had an opportunity to observe on the Rhine-Danube frontier. Still, Caesar's account, vague and brief as it is, has an importance that can hardly be exaggerated. These early Germans had no written literature and but for the descriptions of them left by a few Roman writers, such as Caesar, we should know almost nothing about them. If we bear in mind that the account in the _Commentaries_ was based upon very keen, though limited, observation, we can get out of it a good deal of interesting information concerning the early ancestors of the great Teutonic peoples of the world to-day.

Source--Julius Caesar, _De Bello Gallico_ ["The Gallic War"], Bk. VI., Chaps. 21-23.

[Sidenote: Their religion]

=21.= The customs of the Germans differ widely from those of the Gauls;[1] for neither have they Druids to preside over religious services,[2] nor do they give much attention to sacrifices. They count in the number of their G.o.ds those only whom they can see, and by whose favors they are clearly aided; that is to say, the Sun, Vulcan,[3] and the Moon. Of other deities they have never even heard. Their whole life is spent in hunting and in war. From childhood they are trained in labor and hardship....

[Sidenote: Their system of land tenure]

=22.= They are not devoted to agriculture, and the greater portion of their food consists of milk, cheese, and flesh. No one owns a particular piece of land, with fixed limits, but each year the magistrates and the chiefs a.s.sign to the clans and the bands of kinsmen who have a.s.sembled together as much land as they think proper, and in whatever place they desire, and the next year compel them to move to some other place. They give many reasons for this custom--that the people may not lose their zeal for war through habits established by prolonged attention to the cultivation of the soil; that they may not be eager to acquire large possessions, and that the stronger may not drive the weaker from their property; that they may not build too carefully, in order to avoid cold and heat; that the love of money may not spring up, from which arise quarrels and dissensions; and, finally, that the common people may live in contentment, since each person sees that his wealth is kept equal to that of the most powerful.

[Sidenote: Leaders and officers in war and peace]