A Source Book of Mediaeval History Part 17

[161] The unit of measure was the _muid_. Charlemagne had a standard measure (_modius publicus_) constructed and in a number of his capitularies enjoined that it be taken as a model by all his subjects.

It contained probably a little less than six pecks. A smaller measure was the _setier_, containing about five and two-thirds pints.

[162] Clergymen attached to the church on or near the estate.

[163] "Attached to the royal villa, in the center of which stood the palace or manse, were numerous dependent and humbler dwellings, occupied by mechanics, artisans, and tradesmen, or rather manufacturers and craftsmen, in great numbers. The dairy, the bakery, the butchery, the brewery, the flour-mill were there.... The villa was a city in embryo, and in due course it grew into one, for as it supplied in many respects the wants of the surrounding country, so it attracted population and became a center of commerce."--Jacob I.

Mombert, _Charles the Great_ (New York, 1888), pp. 401-402.

[164] An ancient Gallic land measure, equivalent to about half a Roman _jugerum_ (the _jugerum_ was about two-thirds of an acre). The arpent in modern France has varied greatly in different localities. In Paris it is 4,088 square yards.

[165] The same as "pachak." The fragrant roots of this plant are still exported from India to be used for burning as incense.

[166] A kind of cabbage. The edible part is a large turnip-like swelling of the stem above the surface of the ground.

[167] A plant used both as a medicine and as a dye.

[168] "All the cereals grown in the country were cultivated. The flower gardens were furnished with the choicest specimens for beauty and fragrance, the orchards and kitchen gardens produced the richest and best varieties of fruit and vegetables. Charles specified by name not less than seventy-four varieties of herbs which he commanded to be cultivated; all the vegetables still raised in Central Europe, together with many herbs now found in botanical gardens only, bloomed on his villas; his orchards yielded a rich harvest in cherries, apples, pears, prunes, peaches, figs, chestnuts, and mulberries. The hill-sides were vineyards laden with the finest varieties of grapes."--Mombert, _Charles the Great_, p. 400.

[169] James Bryce, _The Holy Roman Empire_ (new ed., New York, 1904), p. 50.

[170] Irene, the wife of Emperor Leo IV. After the death of her husband in 780 she became regent during the minority of her son, Constantine VI., then only nine years of age. In 790 Constantine succeeded in taking the government out of her hands; but seven years afterwards she caused him to be blinded and shut up in a dungeon, where he soon died. The revolting crimes by which Irene established her supremacy at Constantinople were considered, even in her day, a disgrace to Christendom.

[171] This expression has given rise to a view which will be found in some books that Pope Leo convened a general council of Frankish and Italian clergy to consider the advisability of giving the imperial t.i.tle to Charlemagne. The whole matter is in doubt, but it does not seem likely that there was any such formal deliberation. Leo certainly ascertained that the leading lay and ecclesiastical magnates would approve the contemplated step, but that a definite election in council took place may be pretty confidently denied. The writer of the Annals of Lauresheim was interested in making the case of Charlemagne, and therefore of the later emperors, as strong as possible.

[172] Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, says that the king at first had such aversion to the t.i.tles of Emperor and Augustus "that he declared he would not have set foot in the church the day that they were conferred, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have foreseen the design of the Pope" (_Vita Caroli Magni_, Chap. 28).

Despite this statement, however, we are not to regard the coronation as a genuine surprise to anybody concerned. In all probability there had previously been a more or less definite understanding between the king and the Pope that in due time the imperial t.i.tle should be conferred. It is easy to believe, though, that Charlemagne had had no idea that the ceremony was to be performed on this particular occasion and it is likely enough that he had plans of his own as to the proper time and place for it, plans which Leo rather rudely interfered with, but which the manifest good-will of everybody constrained the king to allow to be sacrificed. It may well be that Charlemagne had decided simply to a.s.sume the imperial crown without a papal coronation at all, in order that the whole question of papal supremacy, which threatened to be a troublesome one, might be kept in the background.

[173] The celebration of the Nativity was by far the greatest festival of the Church. At this season the basilica of St. Peter at Rome was the scene of gorgeous ceremonials, and to its sumptuous shrine thronged the devout of all Christendom. Its magnificence on the famous Christmas of 800 was greater than ever, for only recently Charlemagne had bestowed the most costly of all his gifts upon it--the spoils of the Avar wars.

[174] Charles, the eldest son, since 789 king of Maine. In reality, of course, he was but an under-king, since Maine was an integral part of Charlemagne's dominion. He was anointed by Pope Leo in 800 as heir-apparent to the new imperial dignity of his father.

[175] The term "canonical" was applied more particularly to the clergy attached to a cathedral church, the clergy being known individually as "canons," collectively as a "chapter." In the present connection, however, it probably refers to the monks, who, living as they did by "canons" or rules, were in that sense "canonical clergy."

[176] The secular clergy were the bishops, priests, deacons, and other church officers, who lived with the people in the _saeculum_, or world, as distinguished from the monks, ascetics, cen.o.bites, anchorites, and others, who dwelt in monasteries or other places of seclusion.

[177] This is really as splendid a guarantee of equality before the law as is to be found in Magna Charta or the Const.i.tution of the United States. Unfortunately there was not adequate machinery in the Frankish government to enforce it, though we may suppose that while the _missi_ continued efficient (which was not more than a hundred years) considerable progress was made in this direction.

[178] Serfs who worked on the fiscal lands, or, in other words, on the royal estates.

[179] Compare chapters 14 and 27.

[180] A benefice, as the term is here used, was land granted by the Emperor to a friend or dependent. The holder was to use such land on stated terms for his own and the Emperor's gain, but was in no case to claim ownership of it.

[181] The word has at least three distinct meanings--a royal edict, a judicial fine, and a territorial jurisdiction. It is here used in the first of these senses.

[182] There was little room under Charlemagne's system for professional lawyers or advocates.

[183] In other words, when the oath of allegiance is taken, as it must be by every man and boy above the age of twelve, all the obligations mentioned from Chap. 3 to Chap. 9 are to be considered as a.s.sumed along with that of fidelity to the person and government of the Emperor.

[184] That is, the laws of the Church.

[185] One of the greatest temptations of the mediaeval clergy was to spend time in hunting, to the neglect of religious duties. Apparently this evil was pretty common in Charlemagne's day.

[186] The _centenarii_ were minor local officials, subordinate to the counts, and confined in authority to their particular district or "hundred."

[187] In the Frankish kingdom, as commonly among Germanic peoples of the period, murder not only might be, but was expected to be, atoned for by a money payment to the slain man's relatives. The payment, known as the _wergeld_, would vary according to the rank of the man killed. If it were properly made, such "composition" was bound to be accepted as complete reparation for the injury. In this regulation we can discern a distinct advance over the old system of blood-feud under which a murder almost invariably led to family and clan wars. Plainly the Franks were becoming more civilized.

[188] If a murderer refused to pay the required composition his property was to be taken possession of by the Emperor's officers and the case must be laid before the Emperor himself. If the latter chose, he might order the restoration of the property, but this he was not likely to do.

[189] Beginning with the reign of Charlemagne there were really two a.s.semblies each year--one in the spring, the other in the autumn; but the one in the spring, the so-called "May-field," was much the more important. All the n.o.bles and higher clergy attended, and if a campaign was in prospect all who owed military service would be called upon to bring with them their portion of the war-host, with specified supplies. Charlemagne proposed all measures, the higher magnates discussed them with him, and the lower ones gave a perfunctory sanction to acts already determined upon. The meeting place was changed from year to year, being rotated irregularly among the royal residences, as Aix-la-Chapelle, Paderborn, Ingelheim, and Thionville; occasionally they were held, as in this instance, in places otherwise almost unknown.

[190] Stra.s.sfurt was some distance south of Magdeburg.

[191] The date of the festival of St. John the Baptist was June 22.

[192] From earliest Germanic times we catch glimpses of this practice of requiring gifts from a king's subjects. By Charlemagne's day it had crystallized into an established custom and was a very important source of revenue, though other sources had been opened up which were quite unknown to the German sovereigns of three or four hundred years before. Ordinarily these gifts, in money, jewels, or provisions, were presented to the sovereign each year at the May a.s.sembly.

[193] The t.i.tle "Patricius of Rome" was conferred on Charlemagne by Pope Hadrian I., in 774. Its bestowal was a token of papal appreciation of the king's renewal of Pepin's grant of lands to the papacy. In practice the t.i.tle had little or no meaning. It was dropped in 800 when Charlemagne was crowned emperor [see p. 130].

[194] That is, the law of the Church; in case of the monasteries, more especially the regulations laid down for their order, e.g., the Benedictine Rule.

[195] In the Middle Ages it was a.s.sumed that churchmen were educated; few other men had any claim to learning. Charlemagne here says that it is bad indeed when men who have been put in ecclesiastical positions because of their supposed education fall into errors which ought to be expected only from ordinary people.

[196] In rhetoric a trope is ordinarily defined as the use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it. The most common varieties are metaphor, metonomy, synechdoche, and irony.

CHAPTER X.

THE ERA OF THE LATER CAROLINGIANS

24. The Oaths of Stra.s.sburg (842)

The broad empire of Germanic peoples built up by Charlemagne was extremely difficult to hold together. Even before the death of its masterful creator, in 814, it was already showing signs of breaking up, and after that event the process of dissolution set in rapidly. It will not do to look upon this falling to pieces as caused entirely by the weakness of Charlemagne's successors. The trouble lay deeper, in the natural love of independence common to all the Germans, in the wide differences that had come to exist among Saxons, Lombards, Bavarians, Franks, and other peoples in the empire, and finally in the prevailing ill-advised principle of royal succession by which the territories making up the empire, like those composing the old Frankish kingdom, were regarded as personal property to be divided among the sovereign's sons, just as was the practice respecting private possessions. As a consequence of these things the generation following the death of Charlemagne was a period of much confusion in western Europe. The trouble first reached an acute stage in 817 when Emperor Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son and successor, was constrained to make a division of the empire among his three sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis. The Emperor expressly stipulated that despite this arrangement there was to be still "one sole empire, and not three"; but it is obvious that the imperial unity was at least pretty seriously threatened, and when, in 823, Louis's second wife, Judith of Bavaria, gave birth to a son and immediately set up in his behalf an urgent demand for a share of the empire, civil war among the rival claimants could not be averted. In the struggle that followed the distracted Emperor completely lost his throne for a time (833).

Thereafter he was ready to accept almost any arrangement that would enable him to live out his remaining days in peace. When he died, in 840, two of the sons, Louis the German and Judith's child, who came to be known as Charles the Bald, combined against their brother Lothair (Pepin had died in 838) with the purpose of wresting from him the imperial crown, which the father, shortly before his death, had bestowed upon him. At least they were determined that this mark of favor from the father should not give the older brother any superiority over them. In the summer of 841 the issue was put to the test in a great battle at Fontenay, a little distance east of Orleans, with the result that Lothair was badly defeated. In February of the following year Louis and Charles, knowing that Lothair was still far from regarding himself as conquered, bound themselves by oath at Stra.s.sburg, in the valley of the Rhine, to keep up their joint opposition until they should be entirely successful.

The pledges exchanged on this occasion are as interesting to the student of language as to the historian. The army which accompanied Louis was composed of men of almost pure Germanic blood and speech, while that with Charles was made up of men from what is now southern and western France, where the people represented a mixture of Frankish and old Roman and Gallic stocks. As a consequence Louis took the oath in the _lingua romana_ for the benefit of Charles's soldiers, and Charles reciprocated by taking it in the _lingua teudisca_, in order that the Germans might understand it. Then the followers of the two kings took oath, each in his own language, that if their own king should violate his agreement they would not support him in acts of hostility against the other brother, provided the latter had been true to his word. The _lingua romana_ employed marks a stage in the development of the so-called Romance languages of to-day--French, Spanish, and Italian--just as the _lingua teudisca_ approaches the character of modern Teutonic languages--German, Dutch, and English.

The oaths and the accompanying address of the kings are the earliest examples we have of the languages used by the common people of the early Middle Ages. Latin was of course the language of literature, records, and correspondence, matters with which ordinary people had little or nothing to do. The necessity under which the two kings found themselves of using two quite different modes of speech in order to be understood by all the soldiers is evidence that already by the middle of the ninth century the Romance and Germanic languages were becoming essentially distinct. It was prophetic, too, of the fast approaching cleavage of the northern and southern peoples politically.

Nithardus, whose account of the exchange of oaths at Stra.s.sburg is translated below, was an active partic.i.p.ant in the events of the first half of the ninth century. He was born about 790, his mother being Charlemagne's daughter Bertha and his father the noted courtier and poet Angilbert. In the later years of Charlemagne's reign, and probably under Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, he was in charge of the defense of the northwest coasts against the Northmen. He fought for Charles the Bald at Fontenay and was frequently employed in those troublous years between 840 and 843 in the fruitless negotiations among the rival sons of Louis. Neither the date nor the manner of his death is known. There are traditions that he was killed in 858 or 859 while fighting the Northmen; but other stories just as well founded tell us that he became disgusted with the turmoil of the world, retired to a monastery, and there died about 853. His history of the wars of the sons of Louis the Pious (covering the period 840-843) was undertaken at the request of Charles the Bald. The first three books were written in 842, the fourth in 843. Aside from a rather too favorable att.i.tude toward Charles, the work is very trustworthy, and the claim is even made by some that among all of the historians of the Carolingian period, not even Einhard excepted, no one surpa.s.sed Nithardus in spirit, method, and insight. It may further be noted that Nithardus was the first historical writer of any importance in the Middle Ages who was not some sort of official in the Church.

Source--Nithardus, _Historiarum Libri IV._ ["Four Books of Histories"], Bk. III., Chaps. 4-5. Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores_ (Pertz ed.), Vol. II., pp. 665-666.

[Sidenote: Movements of the hostile parties in 841-842]

Lothair was given to understand that Louis and Charles were supporting each other with considerable armies.[197] Seeing that his plans were crushed in every direction, he made a long but profitless expedition and abandoned the country about Tours. At length he returned into France,[198] worn out with fatigue, as was also his army. Pepin,[199] bitterly repenting that he had been on Lothair's side, withdrew into Aquitaine. Charles, learning that Otger, bishop of Mainz, objected to the proposed pa.s.sage of Louis by way of Mainz to join his brother, set out by way of the city of Toul[200] and entered Alsace at Saverne. When Otger heard of this, he and his supporters abandoned the river and sought places where they might hide themselves as speedily as possible. On the fifteenth of February Louis and Charles came together in the city formerly called Argentoratum, now known as Stra.s.sburg, and there they took the mutual oaths which are given herewith, Louis in the _lingua romana_ and Charles in the _lingua teudisca_. Before the exchange of oaths they addressed the a.s.sembled people, each in his own language, and Louis, being the elder, thus began:

[Sidenote: The speech of Louis the German]