Part 19

The recriminations of the poor were directed against clerical and lay officers without distinction; and we hear of their grievances against bishops, abbots, and their legal representatives, as well as against the counts and other laymen. The Emperor’s efforts proved futile, and he not only could not resist the movement of his age, but he found himself promoting the evolution he criticised. He actually gave exemptions under his own seal to a certain number of religious houses. The counts, on their side, made a practice of giving exemptions and dispensations from military service. The landlord was allowed a kind of authority over the tenant in questions in which the holding of land was not involved. The rule that each landowner must be conducted to the place of mobilization by the count was broken, and the landed proprietors were allowed to appear ready for service, at the head of their tenants and dependents, a distinct anticipation of the later feudal custom.

The mass of the people did not fail to let their sentiments be known when the Emperor proceeded to extend the privilege of quartering his functionaries on private individuals. The imperial officers were assaulted and their baggage stolen. There was much complaint, too, of the incessant calls to military service. Many sacrificed, therefore, their free status, which simply meant to them the constant obligation to be under arms, and they entered the ecclesiastical profession or became dependents of those who were more powerful. Carolingian legislation permitted the freeman to “commend” himself to whomsoever he would “after the death of his lord,” and so that process began by which the central authority was robbed of its own subjects, the small, free landowners. Thus it was that the medieval régime took definite shape as a governmental hierarchy based on the possession of landed estates, great and small, worked either by serfs or by tenants, related to their overlord by various kinds of dependent tenures.

X THE CHURCH

In his relations with the Church, Charles gave a liberal interpretation to his acknowledged powers of guidance and direction; the kind of rôle he was willing to undertake shows that he drew no hard and fast line between the secular and spiritual prerogatives of a monarch. For example, in the Adoptionist Controversy, he took the initiative himself in settling a troublesome problem of theological speculation. According to the Adoptionists, in Christ there are a divine personality and a human personality, which latter becomes by adoption the Son of God. This tenet was eagerly embraced in Spain, its two best-known adherents being Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, Bishop of Urgel, the latter a city in the North of Spain under the authority of the Frankish King, who, therefore, immediately took steps to bring the subject in dispute before a council, assembled at Regensburg, “under the orders of the most glorious and orthodox King Charles.” Felix was convicted of false teaching and sent to Rome to appear before Pope Hadrian. Though Felix was deprived of his bishopric he continued to be supported by the Spanish episcopate, who collectively wrote to Charles for his restoration. At Frankfort, in 794, a council of prelates from various Frankish sees met and listened to the King, who read the letter from the Spanish bishops. The council then heard a long technical speech from their ruler on the questions at issue. The Bishop of Urgel was again condemned, but the matter was not decided until a few years later, in 799, when a long discussion, lasting over six days, took place at Aix between Felix and Alcuin, the conclusion of which was that Felix allowed that he was overcome in argument, and published a retraction.

Charles was equally interested in two other religious controversies of his time, and he made his personal point of view predominant in spite of the weight of church authority on the other side. At the Council of Frankfort the bishops had received from Pope Hadrian the acts passed at the Second General Council of Nicæa dealing with the subject of image worship, a matter that had been debated with much violence in the East and in Italy for several generations. At Frankfort it was supposed, owing to an inability to understand the precise meaning of certain Greek words, that the Nicene Council had formally ordered the adoration of images, and its decrees were therefore rejected. The Emperor undertook the defense of the Western point of view, and in doing so did not hesitate to differ with Rome itself. He also took up an independent position on a more vital point. It seems that during Leo III’s pontificate certain French monks residing in the East were charged with heresy because they inserted in the so-called Nicene Creed, in the article dealing with the procession of the Holy Spirit, i.e., where it is stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, the crucial word “filioque” (and from the Son). The matter was taken up by Charles, and after this recondite theological point had been studied, the action of the monks was officially sanctioned by the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 809, although the Pope refused to approve of any addition to the historic formula of Christian belief.

In considering the Frankish ruler’s attitude towards the Papacy, it is well to remember that the later administrative system of the Curia, which made so clear-cut the antagonism between the secular prince and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the medieval times after the age of Hildebrand, had not yet been developed. Charles reverenced the Papacy; indeed, the Pope’s counsel and the Pope’s words often played a decisive part in influencing his motives. He was a convinced believer in the Pope’s right to teach the faithful, and he saw in him the guardian of apostolic tradition. It was to this tradition that he appealed when he condemned the Adoptionists at the Council of Frankfort. The specific rights of the Papacy, from this point of view, lay in its teaching function and in its liturgical usages, which were to be taken by the Christians of Charles’ dominions as the correct norm of their practice. There was also a full recognition of the prerogatives of the Papacy in phases of administration and discipline, wherever ancient precedents could be cited. So we find Charles appealing, in the renewed disputes between the sees of Arles and Vienne, to the ancient directions of the Roman bishops governing this question.

But this recognition of the rights of Rome did not prevent Charles from regarding himself as the director of the Frankish Church. He speaks openly of himself as “the pilot of the Church in his domains,” and when writing Leo III he explains his conception of the relation of the kingdom and the Papacy. “Our task it is, by the help of God, to protect by our arms outwardly the Holy Church of Christ from assaults of the heathen and from being wasted by the unbelievers and to establish it within by recognizing the Catholic faith. Your duty it is to support as Moses did, with uplifted arms our service in the battlefield, that the Christian people, being led through your petitions and prepared by God, may have constantly and everywhere victory over the enemies of His name.” While Charles assigned to the Pope a religious activity and nothing more, he regarded his own guardianship over the churches as extending beyond questions of their material welfare. In 789 in a message to the bishops he stated that he wished to coöperate with them, using his power as a ruler, and working through his subordinates to improve things where improvement was possible. These were the principles he used in his Church policy. Just as in secular matters he was not absolute, but followed the laws and customs of the people over whom he ruled, so in regard to the Church he observed its canonical system with a reverence for its minute details. But his capitularies, as we have seen, are filled with ecclesiastical legislation, and in Church matters the King acted as the supreme authority. Even synods laid their decrees before him for correction, and to secure his authoritative sanction. There was little place for a fully developed Papacy in an ecclesiastical system worked along these lines, and there are no examples during Charles’ reign of Papal interference in the administration of the Church in his own domains. The Pope, where and when he did act, did so in concert with Charles; even in cases of excommunication there was an understanding with the King; and often the extreme penalty was inflicted under his initiative. Even the exercise of discipline in connection with the episcopate was left in Charles’ hands without any protest on the part of the Pope.

These religious activities of Charles seemed natural to his contemporaries. Alcuin says of him that he was armed with two swords, the one to smite false teaching in the bosom of the Church, the other to protect it from the devastations of the heathen. He speaks of Charles as a parent and teacher, under whose rule the Church is placed; yet at the same time Alcuin had the highest reverence for the Papacy and never thought of the possibility of conflict between the Pope and the Emperor. In Rome itself there was no formal acceptance of this Frankish conception of an ecclesiastical polity in which the Pope’s place was that of a fifth wheel to the coach. Roman enthusiasm for the Emperor, as expressed by the Roman clergy, was limited to encomiums on him as protector of the Church. He was spoken of as the faithful ruler, who, by his energy and his benefactions, was doing valiant work for Rome and for the Papacy.

In matters of internal Church administration, the influence of the King was often paramount in questions affecting diocesan order. There was nothing revolutionary here, for the independence of the Church from the State implied a situation that was never dreamed of at this period, nor had it really existed since the time of Constantine. Theoretically, the choice of a bishop belonged rightfully to the clergy and to the laity of a diocese, but, as a matter of fact, the monarch controlled episcopal elections. These could not take place until the royal sanction had been secured, and the official in whose presence the electoral machinery was set in motion was an appointee of the King. The official papers recording the election had to be sent to the palace, and the successful candidate could not be consecrated except with the King’s approval. Often Charles himself selected the candidate; besides, if a man were known to be favored by him, he would, on the strength of this fact, be elected. Where bishops were to be appointed for sees created in territory newly conquered from the heathen, they were named by Charles without the form of an election. What is true of bishops holds also with regard to abbots, who, on account of the great expansion of monastic life, were of more importance than a diocesan bishop. Church councils were summoned by Charles; he could preside over them, and only through his consent were the decrees they passed valid. Much attention was given to a systematic organization of the hierarchy. There were twenty-two metropolitical sees in the Empire, and the bishop was given real and effective charge of the clergy under him. Counties and parishes, throughout the imperial domains especially, were growing in number, and were placed in the newly acquired territories under an assistant bishop.

XI THE EMPIRE WITHOUT AND WITHIN

The diplomacy, as well as the strategy, of the Emperor was worthy of a far-seeing and cautious ruler. He kept the frontiers of the Empire assured by fortifications, wherever there was prospect of direct attack from the Danes or the Slavs, and by such means saw to it that the tribes bordering on the lines of defense were kept in awe and reduced to a state of dependence. In other places where the more distant Avars and the Bulgars might ultimately give trouble, the Emperor had taken care to come to a friendly arrangement with the Eastern Empire for mutual protection. This understanding did not, it is true, prevent friction between the two powers on the Adriatic Sea, where on several occasions the armies had met to decide their differences by arms. But on neither side was there any intention of developing consistent schemes for conquering the territory of the rival emperor. Disturbances were local and the border population was itself uncertain in allegiance, and ready to accept the guidance of its interests in determining the direction of its loyalty. This kind of hesitancy was not found in Italy, which remained inviolably faithful to Charles’ rule.

The rulers of Constantinople had no time nor inclination to repeat the experiment of Justinian and Constans during the reign of Charles; they were weakened by serious difficulties of their own, due to disputed succession and religious conflict, and to the need of constant watchfulness against Moslem aggression. It was fortunate for both empires that the Saracens were not united. This was the most decisive factor, indeed, of the history of this period. The East was freed from the type of attack which had kept Leo the Isaurian constantly on the defensive, and which only his high military talents were able to cope with, while in the West the inability of the Moslems to act together made it possible for Charles to expand his territory and to give the time needed for internal development in the consolidation of his rule.

It was one of the most permanent results of the activity of Charles as a conqueror that in the Spanish peninsula he strengthened not only the natural position of the petty and struggling Christian kingdoms, but by his personality made the ideal of a Christian ruler respected there, and so assured for the Christians in Spain a future which could be realized only when they had lived down their particularism and recognized the value of solidarity. But the wider field of armed conflict for the peoples included in his realm would have meant little, if it had not been accompanied by opportunities for real social progress.

The empire of Charles, though it was the concrete creation of an ideal government crudely understood and most inadequately worked out, illustrated the liberty-loving principles of the Germanic peoples who were gathered in its fold. In this respect, with all its imperfections, the rule of the great Frankish monarch is more closely allied to the political principles of modern times than were the more ambitious and more logical creations of the conquerors who preceded and who followed him. Unconsciously, it may be, his system of government gave scope for local diversities and recognized rights of deep-planted traditions with a generosity which is characteristic not of empires such as those of Cæsar and Napoleon, but of federal republics of the type of the United States, and the Federation of the Swiss Cantons. When he aimed at uniformity he did not lose sight of the fact that he was the ruler of heterogeneous nationalities, on whose good-will and coöperation the permanence of the Empire was dependent. The pressure of centralization was lightly exercised, simply because in the Emperor’s mind the ideas of Roman rule had to pass through the medium of German tribal tradition.

There was no steam roller set to work to equalize, if not to pulverize, the component parts of his realm. The divisions were not destroyed, but were rather combined in a higher political unity. The kingdom of the West Goths was at least preserved, though it had less of a definite character than the Lombard kingdom, which the Emperor took special pains to preserve in its integrity. Even the traditions of the Ostrogoths were allowed a value in so far as they stood for a strenuous opposition to the imperial policy of uniformity of administration and to the economic sacrifice of the local centers to the purposes of world politics. Lombard influence had overcome both Ostrogothic and Roman rule; it was irreconcilable, and stood for the stubborn and conservative standpoint that made the first Germanic invaders difficult to assimilate in the provinces of the Roman Empire, where by force of arms they became the ruling class. A similar obstinacy, with its preservation of the original political type, marked the Lombard kingdom and duchies which Charles had conquered. A picturesque example of local initiative was not crowded out by the Frankish overlordship in Venice; the seafaring community came into being in a favored spot, on the confines of the two empires, too remote to be crushed from Constantinople, and protected from the Western ruler by a few leagues of shallow sea.

The same centrifugal tendencies are seen in Southern Italy; and what is more important, in Northern and Central Italy, there was no attempt to stifle the germs of municipal activity which produced, later on, such marvelous fruitage in the Italian town life of the Middle Ages. The contrast between the Germanic and Roman elements in the Empire faded away gradually under the Emperor’s administration, but Roman civilization could not be eclipsed, while the laws of Justinian continued to be quoted as a model, and while the Church with its general use of the Latin language was regarded as the chief adjunct and support of continuity in imperial rule.

The union of the Empire and the Papacy kept up that tradition of civilization by which the isolation of Germanic tribal life was swept aside, and the Germans learned that there were other governmental principles than custom, and began to see that might was not the only right. The institutions of the Church did more than preserve the ideal element for the individual and for society. They stood for continuity in securing the best achievements of classic culture in government and in learning, and prevented just that kind of social cataclysm which marked the progress of Islam, when it attempted to handle mankind in the mass. Reverence for the Holy Scriptures, however imperfect may have been the acquaintance with them, had a powerful influence in maintaining the connection of Church and State, and acted constantly against the divisive tendencies of racial rule.

The Celts of Western France, the remnant of the people who had once dominated the whole of Occidental Europe, were brought into the sphere of general European life, and the same opportunities were given to the Germanic peoples. Allied with the population of Latin origin, they extended their sway over a territory which before had never felt the influence of centralization. The union of the two elements was of momentous importance, and this achievement stands out as the abiding result of the Emperor’s conquest. France and Germany made up a whole, in which the Teutonic element had a superior position, but without tyrannizing over the peoples of the Romance stock. In Burgundy and Neustria the elements of Latin blood were strongest, and the contrast gave a peculiar character to Austrasia.

The most significant factor of the Emperor’s rule was that it offered a center of unity to the Teutonic tribes, consolidating them, where the Merovingian kingdoms, which also stood for the old Germanic tribal traditions, had shown complete incapacity. But under the Carolingian rule, neither the Alemanni, nor the Bavarians, nor the Saxons, could claim predominance, for the sovereign’s authority was exercised apart from all these tribal influences, and yet at the same time the characteristics of the tribe, local sentiment, and customary law, were not broken up by the central government. The Teutonic local division, the “Gau,” was no more interfered with than the Gallic “Civitas.” The power at the top of all, formed by the armed hosts of the component parts of the Empire and by the clergy, was expressed in institutions that kept the body politic together. In the assemblies, all the different nationalities took part, and acted under the guidance of the single will of a single ruler, who was kept from the capricious action of a tyrant by his firm hold on the ideal of a Christian commonwealth. The principles of the whole imperial system harmonized with popular governmental traditions, and both in their social and in their religious aspects answered to the popular conceptions of membership in a world-wide church.

Charles, in his plans for the succession, looked forward to a ruling family controlling by descent a singularly heterogeneous collection of races. It is unthinkable, as an historical principle, that the traditions and customs of race and tribe could be long suppressed. Since the time of Germanic invasions they had been the most potent factor in the evolution of Western Europe; and, though they were kept in the background by the energy and character of the Emperor, it only needed a few crises to call them forth into activity. Out of the interplay of these tribal interests and racial divergencies has grown modern Europe.

A further weakness in the Carolingian structure was due to the relation of the secular and the ecclesiastical authority. The grounds of conflict, even in Charles’ own time, were never far distant. The Emperor’s diplomacy and personality smoothed the acerbities away, and his attitude of compromise found ready imitators in such Popes as Hadrian I and Leo III. There would have been a different outcome if, on his visits to Rome, he had been faced by a Pope of the temperament of Nicholas I. The possible independence of the spiritual power the Emperor did little to prevent by legislation. There was no way of avoiding such disputes, and the struggles for supremacy between Empire and Papacy attained their full development in the thirteenth century.

Charles, too, showed no willingness to deal radically with the customary laws of succession of the Frankish people, and in this sphere he was far more conservative than the Lombards or the Ostrogoths. The principle of division among the heirs rather than unity of territory, meant in itself a great danger. It would have caused trouble to Charles himself had not his brother been removed by death early in the reign. Yet the Emperor set a strong precedent for its recognition in his own disposition of the Empire among his three sons. The position of Louis was due to an accident, and the old question was bound to emerge again when the rights of his various children, as his heirs, came to be considered. Nothing was done to prescribe how the exercise of sole rule as Emperor was to be carried out when the subordinate rulers of his own house proved reluctant to obey their head.

The Empire plainly was only secure if its various rulers could consent to work harmoniously together; a division among them, a break between the Church and the State, the exaltation of the idea of nationality and race, were all possibilities which would surely destroy the integrity of Charles’ imperial construction. The history of the century after his death shows the weak sides of the Emperor’s benevolent optimism. He contemplated a great Christian republic directed by a family united in its members and guided by patriarchal instinct. In working out this program, Charles was an opportunist as well as an optimist; he took the component political factors as he found them, and introduced them as the stones of a mosaic, thinking more of the whole than of the parts, seemingly oblivious of the disparity of the elements he was introducing into the fabric. The distinctions of race were certain to become accentuated the moment the central power showed weakness and proved itself unable to be an effectual protection against anarchy within or attacks from the outside.