barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the north; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race aud monarchy. 116 CHAP. XLIX. A. D. 911 in Ger France: Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive His succonstitution, the titles of emperor and Augustus were cessors, conferred on Charlemagne for the term of his life; and 814-887 his successors, on each vacancy, must have ascended in Italy; the throne by a formal or tacit election. But the asso-many; ciation of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the indepen- 987 in dent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor' seems on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was A. D. 813. commanded to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation116. The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the second; the Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honour of crowning and anointing these hereditary prin-` ces who were already invested with their power and dominion. The pious Lewis survived his brothers, and Lewis the embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his children, 814-840. quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and fraternal duty. The kingdoms Lothaire I. of Germany and France were for ever separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, 116 Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation; and Baronius has honestly transcribed it (A. 1) 813, No 13, &c. See Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508), howsoever adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the Carlov glans, see he historians of France, Italy, and Geɑmany; Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Mratori, and even Voltaire, whose pictures are sometimes just and always pleasing. A. D. 840-856. CHAP. to the Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition XLIX. of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two recent and tranLewis II. sitory kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger chilA. D. dren; and Lewis the second, his eldest son, was content 856-875. with the realm of Italy, the proper and sufficient patri the em mony of a Roman emperor. On his death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on the most obsequious or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the bald, the stammerer, the fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral branches, the whole inheritance devolved to Charles the Fat, the last Division of emperor of his family his insanity authorised the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed pire, A. D. 888. in a diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels, by whose contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the lords, usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some preference was shewn to the female or illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the first. Otho king ny re Otho was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; of Germa- and if he truly descended from Witikind, the adversary stores and and proselyte of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanates the quished people was exalted to reign over their conquerors. appropri Western empire, 117 He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose favour the dutchy of Saxony had been instituted, A. D. 858. Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno (Bibliot. Bunavianæ Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p 679), gives a splendid character of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216.) Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent from Witikind. 118 XLIX. A. D. 962. His father Henry the Fowler was elected, by the suf- CHAP. frage of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Cæsar and Tacitus. Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and Arles. In the north, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder; the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswick were fortified with German colonies: and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the pope, and for ever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany. From that memorable æra, two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff". the West The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced Transacto the East by the alteration of his style; and instead tons of of saluting his fathers, the Greek emperors, he presum- ern and ed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation of Eastern empires. brother120 Perhaps in his connexion with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious 118 See the treatise of Conringius (de Finibus Imperii Germanici, Francofurt, 1680 in 4to): he rejects the extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her vassals, and her neighbours. 119 The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I. and Henry I. the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which was never assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians, Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome. 120 Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P. imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus magnâ tulit patientiâ vicitque eorum contumacium-mittendo ad eos crebras legationes, et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28. p. 128). Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus, he affected some reluctance to receive the empire. CHAP. princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a XLIX. mother. The nature, the duration, the probable conse quences of such an union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of the West. The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: a proverb, “That the Franks were good friends and bad neighbours,” was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a neighbour who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp, on the banks of the river Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the Byzantine palace22. The Greeks were successively led through four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of the horse of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer, were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the doors of the presence chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the right of present possession. But the Greeks12 121 Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of Charles, Kapsa⢠(Chronograph. p. 399), and of his treaty of marriage with Irene (p. 402), which is unknown to the Latins. Gaillard relates his transactions with the Greek empire (tom. ii. p. 446-468). 122 Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant was a farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed represented in the presence, and for the benefit, of children of a larger growth. 123 Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi (tom. iii. A. D. 812, No. 7. A. D. 824. No. 10, &c.) the contrast of Charlemagne and his son: to the former the ambassadors of Michael (who were indeed disavowed) morę XLIX. soon forgot this humiliating equality, or remembered it CHAP. only to hate the Barbarians by whom it was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne with the acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in the person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed, "To "the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor of the "Franks and Lombards." When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the second of his hereditary title, and, with the barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His reply 24 is expreseive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning, that both in sacred and profane history, the name of king is synonomous with the Greek word basileus: if, at Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial sense, he claims from his ancestors, and from the pope, a just participation of the honours of the Roman purple. The same controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their ambassadors describes, in lively colours, the insolence of the Byzantine court 25. The Greeks affected to despise the poverty and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline, refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman emperors. of the em the popes, These emperors, in the election of the popes, conti- Authority nued to exercise the powers which had been assumed by perors in the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the importance of the electhis prerogative increased with the temporal estate and tions of spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman church. In the Chris- A. D. 800 tian aristocracy, the principal members of the clergy still-1060. formed a senate to assist the administration, and to supply the vacancy of the bishop. Rome was divided into suo, id est linguâ Græcâ laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et Bacie appellantes; to the latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c. 124 See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous writer of Salerno (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 243–254. c. 93–107), whom Baronius (A. D. 871, No. 51-71.) mistook for Erchempert, when he transcribed it in his Annals. 125 Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est Barn suâ linguâ sed ob indignationem Paya, id est regem nostrâ vocabat (Liutprand, in Legat. in Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 479). The pope had exhorted Nicephorus, emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with Otho, the august emperor of the Romans—quæ inscriptio secundum Græcos peccatria et temeraria-imperatorem inquiunt universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum, Nicephorum (p. 486). |