The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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[Footnote 105: See the concise, but correct and original, work of
D'Anville, (Etats Formes en Europe apres la Chute de l'Empire
Romain en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.,) whose map includes the
empire of Charlemagne; the different parts are illustrated, by
Valesius (Notitia Galliacum) for France, Beretti (Dissertatio
Chorographica) for Italy, De Marca (Marca Hispanica) for Spain.
For the middle geography of Germany, I confess myself poor and
destitute.]

[Footnote 106: After a brief relation of his wars and conquests,
(Vit. Carol. c. 5 - 14,) Eginhard recapitulates, in a few words,
(c. 15,) the countries subject to his empire. Struvius, (Corpus
Hist. German. p. 118 - 149) was inserted in his Notes the texts
of the old Chronicles.]

[Footnote 107: On a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon
(A.D. 845) by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal
pedigree. I doubt whether some subsequent links of the ixth and
xth centuries are equally firm; yet the whole is approved and
defended by M. Gaillard, (tom. ii. p.60 - 81, 203 - 206,) who
affirms that the family of Montesquiou (not of the President de
Montesquieu) is descended, in the female line, from Clotaire and
Clovis - an innocent pretension!]

[Footnote 108: The governors or counts of the Spanish march
revolted from Charles the Simple about the year 900; and a poor
pittance, the Rousillon, has been recovered in 1642 by the kings
of France, (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom i. p. 220 -
222.) Yet the Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and annually
pays 2,600,000 livres, (Necker, Administration des Finances, tom.
i. p. 278, 279;) more people, perhaps, and doubtless more money
than the march of Charlemagne.]

[Footnote 109: Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 200,
&c.]

[Footnote 110: See Giannone, tom. i. p 374, 375, and the Annals
of Muratori.]

[Footnote 111: Quot praelia in eo gesta! quantum sanguinis
effusum sit! Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus
in quo regia Cagani fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem
humanae habitationis appareat. Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum
nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis pecunia et congesti
ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt. Eginhard, cxiii.]

[Footnote 112: The junction of the Rhine and Danube was
undertaken only for the service of the Pannonian war, (Gaillard,
Vie de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 312-315.) The canal, which would
have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces
are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains,
military avocations, and superstitious fears, (Schaepflin, Hist.
de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 256. Molimina
fluviorum, &c., jungendorum, p. 59-62.)]

[Footnote *: I should doubt this in the time of Charlemagne, even
if the term "expended" were substituted for "wasted." - M.]

Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.

Part V.

If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it
will be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east
and west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north
and south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the
perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal and
political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress
and division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain
and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or
Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian and
Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered
the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the
honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common
parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. ^113 He
maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al
Rashid, ^114 whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and
accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant,
and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other's person, and language, and religion: but their
public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote
situation left no room for a competition of interest. Two thirds
of the Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and
the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the
inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the choice
of his enemies, ^* we may be reasonably surprised that he so
often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the
south. The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in
the woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert
the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from
Italy and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks
would have insured an easy victory; and the holy crusade against
the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and
loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his
expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his
monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies
of civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future
emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light
of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could
be universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a
larger sphere of hostility. ^115 The subjugation of Germany
withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or
islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened
the torpid courage of their 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 and monarchy.

[Footnote 113: See Eginhard, c. 16, and Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361
- 385, who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of
Charlemagne and Egbert, the emperor's gift of his own sword, and
the modest answer of his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if
genuine, would have adorned our English histories.]

[Footnote 114: The correspondence is mentioned only in the French
annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph's friendship
for the Christian dog - a polite appellation, which Harun bestows
on the emperor of the Greeks.]

[Footnote *: Had he the choice? M. Guizot has eloquently
described the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons. Il y
fit face par le conquete; la guerre defensive prit la forme
offensive: il transporta la lutte sur le territoire des peuples
qui voulaient envahir le sien: il travailla a asservir les races
etrangeres, et extirper les croyances ennemies. De la son mode
de gouvernement et la fondation de son empire: la guerre
offensive et la conquete voulaient cette vaste et redoutable
unite. Compare observations in the Quarterly Review, vol.
xlviii., and James's Life of Charlemagne. - M.]

[Footnote 115: Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361 - 365, 471 - 476, 492.
I have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne's plan of
conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the
first and the second enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.)]

Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive
constitution, the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred
on Charlemagne for the term of his life; and his successors, on
each vacancy, must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit
election. But the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts
the independent 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 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
nation. ^116 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 honor of crowning and
anointing these hereditary princes, who were already invested
with their power and dominions. The pious Lewis survived his
brothers, and embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the
nations and the nobles, his bishops and his children, 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 of Germany and
France were forever separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the
Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with
Italy, to the Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of
his share, Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory
kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis the
Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the
proper and sufficient patrimony 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 bard, 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 emperor of his family: his
insanity authorized the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France:
he was deposed 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 shown 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.

[Footnote 116: Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this
coronation: and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 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
Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany;
Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose
pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]

Otho ^117 was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and
if he truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte
of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted
to reign over their conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was
elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the
kingdom of Germany. Its limits ^118 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 Caesar 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 Brandenburgh 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 forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation
of Germany. From that memorable aera, 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. ^119

[Footnote 117: He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in
whose favor the Duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858.
Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianae
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.]

[Footnote 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 neighbors.]

[Footnote 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.]

The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the
East by the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his
fathers, the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal
and familiar appellation of brother. ^120 Perhaps in his
connection 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 princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a
mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of
such a 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. ^121 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 neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to
provoke a neighbor 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 palace. ^122 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 Greeks ^123 soon forgot
this humiliating equality, or remembered it 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 ^124 is expressive of his
weakness: he proves, with some learning, that, both in sacred and
profane history, the name of king is synonymous 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 popes, a just participation of the honors of the Roman
purple. The same controversy was revived in the reign of the
Othos; and their ambassador describes, in lively colors, the
insolence of the Byzantine court. ^125 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.

[Footnote 120: Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P.
imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus) magna tulit patientia,
vicitque eorum contumaciam ... 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.]

[Footnote 121: Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of
Charles (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.)]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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) more suo, id est lingua
Graeca laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et appellantes; to the
latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 125: Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est sua lingua,
sed ob indignationem, id est regem nostra 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 - quae inscriptio secundum
Graecos peccatoria et temeraria ... imperatorem inquiunt,
universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum, Nicephorum, (p.
486.)]

These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to
exercise the powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and
Grecian princes; and the importance of this prerogative increased
with the temporal estate and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman
church. In the Christian aristocracy, the principal members of
the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration,
and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop. Rome was divided into
twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was governed by a cardinal
priest, or presbyter, a title which, however common or modest in
its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of kings. Their
number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of
the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical
senate was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman
province, who were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia,
Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines,
than by their weekly service in the Lateran, and their superior
share in the honors and authority of the apostolic see. On the
death of the pope, these bishops recommended a successor to the
suffrage of the college of cardinals, ^126 and their choice was
ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman
people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be
legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church,
had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The royal
commissioner examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the
proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the
qualifications of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of
fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively
enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms,
the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor;
and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and
to punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed
a treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the
candidate most acceptable to his majesty: ^127 his successors
anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed the Roman
benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their
chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a
Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition
of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most speciously
excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor who
had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were
stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises
of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in
a long and disgraceful servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the
ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and
murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence, after
the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that
they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise
the charity of a priest. ^128 The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth
and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most
strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and
their reign ^129 may have suggested to the darker ages ^130 the
fable ^131 of a female pope. ^132 The bastard son, the grandson,
and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated
in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen
years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. ^* His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion;
and the nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges
that were urged against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence
of Otho the Great. As John XII. had renounced the dress and
decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be
dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt,
the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming
and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of
distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if
it be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with
some surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in
public adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace
was turned into a school for prostitution, and that his rapes of
virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting
the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be
violated by his successor. ^133 The Protestants have dwelt with
malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a
philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous
than their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the
apostolic see was reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal
of Gregory VII. That ambitious monk devoted his life to the
execution of two projects. I. To fix in the college of
cardinals the freedom and independence of election, and forever
to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors and the Roman
people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a fief
or benefice ^134 of the church, and to extend his temporal
dominion over the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a
contest of fifty years, the first of these designs was
accomplished by the firm support of the ecclesiastical order,
whose liberty was connected with that of their chief. But the
second attempt, though it was crowned with some partial and
apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular
power, and finally extinguished by the improvement of human
reason.