Part 9

Rulers less fortunate than Haroun al-Raschid sought not so much the friendship of the Western Emperor as his protection, and through his influence exiled kings of Wessex and Northumberland were able to recover their thrones. Most significant tribute of all to the honour in which Charlemagne’s name was held was the petition of the Patriarch of Jerusalem that he would come and rescue Christ’s city from the infidel. The message was accompanied by a banner and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre; but Charlemagne, though deeply moved by such a call to the defence of Christendom, knew that the campaign was beyond his power and put it from him. Were there not infidels to be subdued within the boundaries of his own Empire, fierce Saxon tribes that year after year made mock both of the sovereignty of the Franks and their religion?

The Saxons lived amongst the ranges of low hills between the Rhine and the Elbe. By the end of the eighth century, when other Teutonic races such as the Franks and the Bavarians had yielded to the civilizing influence of Christianity, they still cherished their old beliefs in the gods of nature and offered sacrifices to spirits dwelling in groves and fountains. The chief object of their worship was a huge tree trunk that they kept hidden in the heart of a forest, their priests declaring that the whole Heavens rested upon it. This _Irminsul_, or ‘All-supporting pillar’, was the bond between one group of Saxons and another that led them to rally round their chiefs when any foreign army appeared on their soil; though, if at peace with the rest of the world, they would fight amongst themselves for sheer love of battle.

[Sidenote: St. Boniface]

A part of the Saxon race had settled in the island of Britain, when the Roman authority weakened at the break-up of the Empire; and amongst the descendants of these settlers were some Christian priests who determined to carry the Gospel to the heathen tribes of Germany, men and women of their own race but still living in spiritual darkness. The most famous of these missionaries was St. Winifrith, or St. Boniface according to the Latin version of his name that means, ‘He who brings peace.’

About the time that Charles Martel was Duke of the Franks Boniface arrived in Germany and began to travel from one part of the country to another, explaining the Gospel of Christ, and persuading those whom he converted to build churches and monasteries. When he went to Rome to give an account of his work the Pope made him a bishop and sent him to preach in the Duchy of Bavaria. Later, as his influence increased and he gathered disciples round him, he was able to found not only parish churches but bishoprics with a central archbishopric at Mainz; thus, long before Germany became a nation she possessed a Church with an organized government that belonged not to one but to all her provinces.

Only in the north and far east of Germany heathenism still held sway; and St. Boniface, after he had gone at the Pope’s wish to help the Franks reform their Church, determined to make one last effort to complete his missionary work in the land he had chosen as his own. He was now sixty-five, but nothing daunted by the hardships and dangers of the task before him he set off with a few disciples to Friesland and began to preach to the wild pagan tribes who lived there. Before he could gain a hearing, however, he was attacked, and, refusing to defend himself, was put to death.

Thus passed away ‘the Apostle of Germany’ and with him much of the kindliness of his message. Christianity was to come indeed to these northern tribes, but through violence and the sword rather than by the influence of a gentle life. Charlemagne had a sincere love of the Catholic Faith, whose champion he believed himself; but he considered that only folly and obstinacy could blind men’s eyes to the truth of Christianity, and he was determined to enforce its doctrines by the sword if necessary.

The Saxons, on the other hand, though if they were beaten in battle they might yield for a time and might promise to pay tribute to the Franks and build churches, remained heathens at heart. When an opportunity occurred, and they learned that the greater part of the Frankish army was in Italy or on the Spanish border, they would sally forth across their boundaries and drive out or kill the missionaries. Charlemagne knew that he could have no peace within his Empire until he had subdued the Saxons; but the task he had set himself was harder than he had imagined, and it was thirty-eight years before he could claim that he had succeeded.

[Sidenote: Conquest of Saxon Tribes]

‘The final conquest of the Saxons’, says Eginhard, a scholar who lived at Charlemagne’s court and wrote his life, ‘would have been accomplished sooner but for their treachery. It is hard to tell how often they broke faith, surrendering to the King and accepting his terms, and then breaking out into wild rebellion once more.’ Eginhard continues that Charlemagne’s method was never to allow a revolt to remain unpunished but to set out at once with an army and exact vengeance. On one of these campaigns he succeeded in reaching the forest where the sacred trunk _Irminsul_ was kept and set fire to it and destroyed it; but the Saxons, though disheartened for the moment, soon rallied under the banner of a famous chief called Witikind. We know little of the latter except his undaunted courage that made him refuse for many years to submit to a foe so much stronger that he must obviously gain the final victory.

Charlemagne, exasperated by repeated opposition, used every means to forward his aim. Sometimes he would bribe separate chieftains to betray their side; but often he would employ methods of deliberate cruelty in order to strike terror into his foes. Four thousand five hundred Saxons who had started a rebellion were once cut off and captured by the Franks. They pleaded that Witikind, who had escaped into Denmark, had prompted them to act against their better judgement. ‘If Witikind is not here you must pay the penalty in his stead,’ returned the King relentlessly, and the whole number were put to the sword.

At different times he transplanted hundreds of Saxon households into the heart of France, and in the place of ‘this great multitude’, as the chronicle describes them, he established Frankish garrisons. He also sent missionaries to build churches in the conquered territories and compelled the inhabitants to become Christians.

Often the bishops and priests thus sent would have to fly before a sudden raid of heathen Saxons hiding in the neighbouring forests and marshes; and, lacking the courage of St. Boniface, a few would hesitate to return when the danger was suppressed. ‘What ought I to do?’ cried one of the most timid, appealing to Charlemagne. ‘In Christ’s name go back to thy diocese,’ was the stern answer.

While the King expected the same obedience and devotion from church officials as from the captains in his army, he took care that they should not lack his support in the work he had set them to do.

‘If any man among the Saxons, being not yet baptized, shall hide himself and refuse to come to baptism, let him die the death.’

‘If any man despise the Lenten fast for contempt of Christianity, let him die the death.’

‘Let all men, whether nobles, free, or serfs, give to the Churches and the priests the tenth part of their substance and labour.’

These ‘capitularies’, or laws, show that Charlemagne was still half a barbarian at heart and matched pagan savagery with a severity more ruthless because it was more calculating. In the end Witikind himself, in spite of his courage, was forced to surrender and accept baptism, and gradually the whole of Saxony fell under the Frankish yoke.

The Duchy of Bavaria, that had been Christian for many years, did not offer nearly so stubborn a resistance; and after he had reduced both it and Saxony to submission, Charlemagne was ruler not merely in name but in reality of an Empire that included France, the modern Holland and Belgium, Germany, and the greater part of Italy. Some of the conquests he had made were to fall away, but Germany that had suffered most at his hands emerged in the end the greatest achievement of his foreign wars.

He swept away the black deceitful night And taught our race to know the only light,

wrote a Saxon monk of the ninth century, showing that already some of the bitterness had vanished. ‘In a few generations’, says a modern writer, ‘the Saxons were conspicuous for their loyalty to the Faith.’

No story of Charlemagne would be true to life that omitted his harsh dealings with his Saxon foe; and yet it would be equally unfair to paint him only as a warrior, mercilessly exterminating all who opposed him in barbaric fashion. Far more than a conqueror he was an empire-builder to whom war was not an end in itself, as to his Frankish forefathers, but a means towards the safeguarding of his realm.

The forts and outworks that he planted along his boundaries, the churches that he built in the midst of hostile territory, belonged indeed to his policy of inspiring terror and awe: but Charlemagne had also other designs only in part of a military nature. Roads and bridges that should make a network of communication across the Empire, acting like channels of civilization in assisting transport and encouraging trade and intercourse: royal palaces that should become centres of justice for the surrounding country: monasteries that should shed the light of knowledge and of faith: all these formed part of his dream of a Roman Empire brought back to her old stately life and power.

A canal joining the Rhine and Danube and thus making a continuous waterway between East and West was planned and even begun, but had to wait till modern times for its completion. Charlemagne possessed the vision and enterprise that did not quail before big undertakings, but he lacked the money and labour necessary for carrying them out. Unlike the Roman Emperors of classic times he had no treasury on whose taxes he could draw; but depended, save for certain rents, on the revenues of his private estates that were usually paid ‘in kind’, that is to say, not in coin but at the rate of so many head of cattle, or of so much milk, corn, or barley, according to the means of the tenant. Of these supplies he kept a careful account even to the number of hens on the royal farms and the quantity of eggs that they laid. Yet at their greatest extent revenues ‘in kind’ could do little more than satisfy the daily needs of the palace.

The chief debt that the Frankish nation owed to the state was not financial but military, the obligation of service in the field laid on every freeman. As the Empire increased in size this became so irksome that the system was somewhat modified. In future men who possessed less than a certain quantity of land might join together and pay one or two of their number, according to the size of their joint properties, to represent them in the army abroad, while the rest remained at home to see to the cultivation of the crops.

[Sidenote: Court of Charlemagne]

Charlemagne was very anxious to raise a body of labourers from each district to assist in his building schemes, but this suggestion awoke a storm of indignation. Landowners maintained that they were only required by law to repair the roads and bridges in their own neighbourhood, not to put their tenants at the disposal of the Emperor that he might send them at his whim from Aquitaine to Bavaria, or from Austria to Lombardy; and in face of this opposition many of his designs ceased abruptly from lack of labour. A royal palace and cathedral, adorned with columns and mosaics from Ravenna, were, however, completed at Aachen; and here Charlemagne established his principal residence and gathered his court round him.

The life of this ‘new Rome’, as he loved to call it, was simple in the extreme; for the Emperor, like a true Frank, hated unnecessary ostentation and ceremony. When the chief nobles and officials assembled twice a year in the spring and autumn to debate on public matters, he would receive them in person, thanking them for the gifts they had brought him, and walking up and down amongst them to jest with one and ask questions of another with an informality that would have scandalized the court at Constantinople.

In this easy intercourse between sovereign and subject lay the secret of Charlemagne’s personal magnetism. To warriors and churchmen as to officials and the ordinary freemen of his demesnes he was not some far-removed authority, who could be approached only through a maze of court intrigue, but a man like themselves with virtues and failings they could understand.

If his temper was hasty and terrible when roused, it would soon melt away into a genial humour that appreciated to the full the rough practical jokes in which the age delighted. The chronicles tell us with much satisfaction how Charlemagne once persuaded a Jew to offer a ‘vainglorious bishop ever fond of vanities’ a painted mouse that he pretended he had brought back straight from Judea. The bishop at first declined to give more than £3 for such a treasure; but, deceived by the Jew’s prompt refusal to part with it for so paltry a sum, consented at length to hand over a bushel of silver in exchange. The Emperor, hearing this, gathered the rest of the bishops at his court together--‘See what one of you has paid for a mouse!’ he exclaimed gleefully; and we may be sure that the story did not stop at the royal presence but spread throughout the country, where haughty ecclesiastics were looked on with little favour.

We are told also that Charlemagne loved to bombard the people he met, from the Pope downwards, with difficult questions; but it was not merely a malicious desire to bring them to confusion that prompted his inquiries. Alert himself, and keenly interested in whatever business he had in hand, he despised slipshod or inefficient knowledge. He expected a bishop to be an authority on theology, an official to be an expert on methods of government, a scholar to be well grounded in the ordinary sciences of his day.

Hard work was the surest road to his favour, and he spared neither himself nor those who entered his service. Even at night he would place writing materials beneath his pillow that if he woke or thought of anything it might be noted down. On one occasion he visited the palace school that he had founded, and discovered that while the boys of humble birth were making the most of their opportunities, the sons of the nobles, despising book-learning, had frittered away their time. Commending those who had done well, the Emperor turned to the others with an angry frown. ‘Relying on your birth and wealth,’ he exclaimed, ‘and caring nothing for our commands and your own improvement, you have neglected the study of letters and have indulged yourselves in pleasures and idleness.... By the King of Heaven I care little for your noble birth.... Know this, unless straightway you make up for your former negligence by earnest study, you need never expect any favour from the hand of Charles.’

[Sidenote: Government of Charlemagne]

It was with the wealthy nobles and landowners that Charlemagne fought some of his hardest battles, though no sword was drawn or open war declared. Not only were most of the high offices at court in their hands, but it was from their ranks that the counts, and later the viscounts, were chosen who ruled over the districts into which the Empire was divided and subdivided.

The count received a third of the gifts and rents from his province that would have otherwise been paid to the King; and these, if he were unscrupulous, he could increase at the expense of those he governed. He presided in the local law-courts and was responsible for the administration of justice, the exaction of fines, and for the building of roads and bridges. He was in fact a petty king, and would often tyrannize over the people and neglect the royal interests to forward his selfish ambitions.

The Merovingians had tried to limit the authority of the counts and other provincial officials by occasionally sending private agents of their own to inquire into the state of the provinces and to reform the abuses that they found. Charlemagne adopted this practice as a regular system; and at the annual assemblies he appointed _Missi_, or ‘messengers’, who should make a tour of inspection in the district to which they had been sent at least four times in the year and afterwards report on their progress to the Emperor. Wherever they went the count or viscount must yield up his authority to them for the time being, allowing them to sit in his court and hear all the grievances and complaints that the men and women of the district cared to bring forward. If the _Missi_ insisted on certain reforms the count must carry them out and also make atonement for any charges proved against him.

Here are some of the evils that the men of Istria, a province on the Eastern Adriatic, suffered at the hands of their lord, ‘Johannes’, and that the inquiries of the royal _Missi_ at length brought to light. Johannes had sold the people on his estates as serfs to his sons and daughters: he had forced them to build houses for his family and to go voyages on his business across the sea to Venice and Ravenna: he had seized the common land and used it as his own, bringing in Slavs from across the border to till it for his private use: he had robbed his tenants of their horses and their money on the plea of the Emperor’s service and had given them nothing in exchange. ‘If the Emperor will help us,’ they cried, ‘we may be saved, but if not we had better die than live.’

From this account we can see that Charlemagne appeared to the mass of his subjects as their champion against the tyranny of the nobles, and in this sense his government may be called popular; but the old ‘popular’ assemblies of the Franks at which the laws were made had ceased by this reign to be anything but aristocratic gatherings summoned to approve of the measures laid before them.

The Emperor’s ‘capitularies’ would be based on the advice he had received from his most trusted _Missi_; and when they had been discussed by the principal nobles, they would be read to the general assembly and ratified by a formal acceptance that meant nothing, because it rarely or never was changed into a refusal.

Besides introducing new legislation in the form of royal edicts or capitularies, Charlemagne commanded that a collection should be made of all the old tribal laws, such as the Salic Law of the Franks, and of the chief codes that had been handed down by tradition, or word of mouth, for generations; and this compilation was revised and brought up to date. It was a very useful and necessary piece of work, yet Charlemagne for all his industry does not deserve to be ranked as a great lawgiver like Justinian. The very earnestness of his desire to secure immediate justice made his capitularies hasty and inadequate. He would not wait to trace some evil to its root and then try to eradicate it, but would pass a number of laws on the matter, only touching the surface of what was wrong and creating confusion by the multiplicity of instructions and the contradictions they contained.

Sometimes the _Missi_ themselves were not a success, but would take bribes from the rich landowners on their tour of inspection, and this would mean more government machinery and fresh laws to bring them under the royal control in their turn. If it was difficult to make wise laws, it was even harder in that rough age to carry them out; for the nobles found it to their interest to defy or at least hinder an authority that struck at their power; while the mass of the people were too ignorant to bear responsibility, and few save those educated in the palace schools could become trustworthy ‘counts’ or royal agents.

Dimly, however, the nation understood that the Emperor held some high ideal of government planned for their prosperity, ‘No one cried out to him’, says the chronicle, ‘but straightway he should have good justice’: and in every church throughout France those who had not been called to follow him to battle prayed for his safety and that God would subdue the barbarians before his triumphant arms.

To Charlemagne there was a higher vision than that of mere victory in battle, a vision born of his favourite book, the _Civitas Dei_, wherein St. Augustine had described the perfect Emperor, holding his sceptre as a gift God had given and might take away, and conquering his enemies that he might lead them to a greater knowledge and prosperity.

[Sidenote: Charlemagne and the Church]

Charlemagne believed that to him had been entrusted the guardianship of the Catholic Church, not only from the heathen without its pale, but from false doctrine and evil living within. To the Pope, as Christ’s vice-regent, he bore himself humbly, as on the day when he had climbed St. Peter’s steps on his knees, but to the Pope as a man dealing with other men he spoke as a lord to his vassal, tendering his views and expecting compliance, in return for which he guaranteed the support of his sword.

‘May the ruler of the Church be rightly ruled by thee, O King, and may’st thou be ruled by the right hand of the Almighty!’ In this prayer Alcuin probably expressed the Emperor’s opinion of his own position. Leo III, on the other hand, preferred to talk of his champion as a faithful son of the mother Church of Rome; thereby implying that the Emperor should pay a son’s duty of obedience: but he himself was never in a strong enough position to enforce this point of view, and the clash of Empire and Papacy was left for a later age.

Within his own dominions Charlemagne, like the Frankish kings before him, reigned supreme over the Church, appointing whom he would as bishops, and using them often as _Missi_ to assist him in his government. Yet the Church remained an ‘estate’ apart from the rest of the nation, supported by the revenues of the large sees belonging to the different bishoprics and by the _tithe_, or tenth part of a layman’s income. When churchmen attended the annual assembly they were allowed to deliberate apart from the nobles and freemen: when a bishop excommunicated some heretic or sinner, the Emperor’s court was bound to enforce the sentence. Thus the privileges and rights were many; but Charlemagne determined that the men who enjoyed them must also fulfil the obligations that they carried with them.

In earlier years Charles Martel and St. Boniface had struggled hard to raise the character of the Frankish Church, and Charlemagne continued their task with his usual energy, insisting on frequent inspections of the monasteries and convents and on the maintenance of a stricter rule of life within their walls.