An introduction to the study of the middle ages (375-814)

Preface

The period of time of which this book treats is that lying between the greatest splendor of the Roman Empire and the beginning of what may properly be called the Middle Ages. It is a period which has often been passed over lightly by historians or dismissed with a sneer as the Dark Ages of the world. And this was done in spite of the fact that perhaps the greatest historian, all things considered, who has ever written in the English language, chose just this period for his theme. It is not improbable that the very title of Gibbon's great work may have done its part toward creating a false impression of the time he describes. If one comes to our period as a time of Decline and Fall merely, one can hardly fail to carry away from the study of it a depressing sense of gloom and wretchedness. Gibbon himself, great historian as he was, did not succeed in avoiding this danger. His splendid narrative is on the whole a mournful one. We feel ourselves to be dealing with the wild movements of men, either half brutal or wholly brutalized. We see a magnificent edifice crumbling to decay, but we are not impressed with the elements of life contained in this very process.

It is only when we realize that this is a period of decay vi

PREFACE.

only in the sense in which the leaf decays, that it may make the ground fruitful for more abundant life, that we are able to see its true meaning. If we can do this, then what had before seemed blind forces of destruction become agents working together in the making of a new and fairer civilization. It is the purpose of this book to dwell upon these elements of construction, to show how they originated, and how they were tending to produce the life of the great period which was to follow.

These forces were chiefly three : First, the organized Christian Church, and especially that part of it which had come to acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman papacy ; second, the Germanic races, coming in upon the soil of Rome, taking possession of the Roman land, subjecting the Roman population to their political control, but in their turn taking up the religion, the language, and the customs of the conquered third, the domination of the Frankish race over all the other Germanic nations of the continent. The history of these three lines of development finds its natural culmination in the union of the Frankish kingdom with the Roman papacy under the form of the Holy Roman Empire.

The sources of information for our period are meagre and difficult both to decipher and to understand. The result of this has been that there is hardly any subject within the range of our study upon which there are not man}^ and wide differences of opinion among scholars. It has, of course, not been possible to go into these controversies, but the effort has been made to let the pupil see that the information here given is not of the kind which he would find in a mathe-

PREFACE.

vii matical treatise, but is subject to correction whenever a better light can be thrown upon it.

It has further not been forgotten that this is an " Introduction," designed to lead the student to search for himself into the history of a later period.

The author is under obligations to many friends for their interest and their help. Especially to Professor G. P. Fisher and Mr. E. G. Bourne of Yale University, to Professor E. B. Andrews of Brown University, and Professor W. F. Allen of the University of Wisconsin, his thanks are due for very many useful suggestions and corrections which have added much to the value of the book. The chapters on law and the feudal system had the advantage of correction by the late Professor Ernest Young of Harvard University, whose lamented death is a serious loss to American scholarship.

Contents

PAGE

Preface , v

Suggestions to Teachers xi

Introduction

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS.

This book is not intended to do away with the teacher. On the contrary, it rests upon the conviction that a text-book of history is valuable only as it helps and is helped by the teacher's work. Nor, on the other hand, is it intended to be a pocket-encyclopsedia for the period it covers. It aims to present a narrative which can be read and studied by an intelligent pupil, who already knows something of Roman history, without weariness and without confusion, and which shall also open to both teacher and pupil an outlook over a wider field than it can itself occupy.

If the author had not believed that a book might do something to show these wider relations of history, he would not have wasted his time upon these pages, but he must frankly admit that the usefulness of his book will depend almost entirely upon the tact and enthusiasm of the teacher who uses it.

All historical instruction must rest upon two foundation-stones, — Geography and Chronology. Without these it is merely floating about in space and time.

Geography. — Let all historical geography rest upon physical geography, and never fail to bring it back to xii

INTRODUCTION, that. The too common habit of bounding one country by others tends to make pupils forget the natural features of the earth's surface, and they must be constantly reminded of them. It would be well if they could be led always to describe the situation of peoples and places by reference to these natural features. This is of especial importance in a period in which the races are constantly changing their homes and forming new political boundaries. If the student has not the " lay of the land " clearly in his mind, he will be in hopeless confusion.

The best way to keep these natural features permanently before the pupil, is to require him to draw maps. By using the outline maps of Europe, which can be had at very small expense from the publishers of this book, he will readily become accustomed to the fixedness of the surface lines and the variableness of the political boundaries. He will see how much or how little the latter depend upon the former, and will soon come to have his own ideas about them. Let him draw the outline of the states of Europe at frequent intervals, e.g. the Roman Empire before 375, Europe at the year 500, the lines of march of the Germanic peoples, the kingdom of Dagobert (628), Europe at the time of Charlemagne, and so on. Wherever an event is mentioned by which the map of Europe was changed, let him draw that change for himself. At first he may be allowed to copy his lines from some other map, but he will soon learn to draw his own lines from oral description. The sense that he is making maps for himself will rouse his pride and increase his interest. For ordinary purposes the maps here given will suffice, but a

INTBODUCTION, xiii larger historical atlas should always be at hand for

reference":

There is no really good historical atlas in English. The best are those of Keith Johnston and Labberton. Much better is a French atlas by Drioux and Leroy. Best of all for the student's use is the recent German work of Droysen. The great atlas of Spruner gives an enormous amount of detail, but, for that very reason, is very difficult for the ordinary student to find his way in.

The teacher will find much of value in Freeman's ''Historical Geography," and in Himly's "Histoire de la Formation Territorial des Etats de I'Europe Centrale."

Chronology. — It is equally important that a certain number of dates should be learned accurately and solidly. The danger here is that too much may be required, and the pupil's mind be thus burdened with a mass of in^ formation, the meaning of which he cannot understand. Kequire at first but few dates, but let these be such as mark great crises of history. Others may then be grouped about these, and will never be forgotten so long as the central dates are remembered. Do not ask pupils to learn lists of rulers, because rulers have not generally been the most important makers of history. It may be urged that the names of rulers form convenient pegs on which to hang our historical knowledge, but we can generally find better pegs. For example, when did Alaric the Visigoth sack Rome ? One answer might be, "In the reign of Honorius." And if we knew the dates for the reign of Honorius, we should of course be able to remember pretty nearly when Rome was sacked ; but the fact is, that Honorius was one of xiv

INTRODUCTION.

the least important persons in the Roman Empire, while Alaric was, for the time, the most important. "It would be well, therefore, to fix permanently in the mind the date when Alaric sacked Rome, and trust to our general knowledge to remember that at that time the nominal ruler of the western world chanced to be named Honorius the son of Theodosius.

A mistaken zeal in this matter of dates has probablybeen the main cause of the disgust felt by most pupils who have been taught history by the old methods. The dates to be learned by heart should be learned carefully, and be continually referred to as the fixed points in the pupil's knowledge. He should repeat them and write them very often, and should be made to form his own chronological tables by filling in between these fixed points such other dates and events as he is likely to remember, and no others. More dates have been given in this book than ought to be learned by heart. They have been given in order to show the continuity of the narrative. Such as ought to be learned at once and never forgotten are printed in bolder type.

An indispensable book for every historical student is Tillinghast's translation of Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History. Larger, and giving a more continuous narrative, with very valuable bibliography, maps, and chapters upon the history of civilization, is Dr. G. P. Fisher's " Outlines of Universal History." Haydn's Dictionary of Dates may be kept for occasional reference.

Memorizing. — How much of the text-book ought to be committed to memory is one of the most difficult problems of elementary education. My own answer

INTRODUCTION.

XV would be, " only that should be learned by heart which is fitted to become a permanent mental possession," and that surely cannot be claimed for the words of this book. It is an error to suppose that committing a thing to memory makes it one's own. We really owfi" only that which we have made our own by putting it, through the machinery of our own minds. The memorizing of another's words can give us only the skeleton of his ideas. If we would really understand him, we must work over for ourselves what he has given us. So in learning history one must memorize only the skeleton of the story, and must clothe this with flesh and blood by means of his own powers of assimilation. The pupil should be required, not to learn the words of this book by heart, but to reproduce its contents orally or in writing, as the teacher may require. This caution, which is happily superfluous for many teachers, is unfortunately still necessary in too many cases. Let the memory be called upon for dates, facts of geography, whatever is worth being retained verbally in the mind, and where it is called upon, let the demand be strictly enforced. But let it never be forgotten that if the pupil once comes to think that studying history means memorizing isolated facts, he is lost forever to the cause of historical learning.

Collateral Reading. — This book can be of little use to a teacher who has not carefully studied the period from more detailed sources of information. A text-book ought to be a book of texts, upon which the teacher can base his independent work. If, however, this wider knowledge must largely be gathered by the way, the books recommended should be so read as to xvi

INTRODUCTION.

furnish the most abundant illustration of the topic immediately under treatment.

The pupil should be encouraged to read whatever bears upon the period. Poems, plays, novels, as well as more detailed histories, should be put in his way, and he should be helped to understand what he reads. He should be required to read passages in larger historical works or articles in encyclopaedias, and to report to the teacher in writing whatever adds to the narrative here given. He will thus learn the greatest lesson of all historical study, that history is not " all in the book," but is to be learned from a great variety of sources. The present increased interest in historical study is due mainly to the enforcement of this principle.

The most valuable sources of information on this subject are the publications of our great libraries, such as the Boston Athenseum, Boston Public, and Harvard University. The Boston Public Library Catalogue of Fiction is very complete and useful.

Sources. — The whole period of our study is one of the greatest literary depression. The Roman populations had lost their desire and their power for literary production, and the Germanic peoples had not yet learned how to express themselves in writing. As long as Rome had been steadily rising in power, her educated men had been proud to write of her splendid achievements, and even after Rome had ceased to conquer and yet was able to hold her own, the same impulse had gone on. Roman writers, trained in the best schools, both of Greece and Rome, still kept up to a high standard of literary taste.

But when the sun of Rome began to set, when along

INTRODUCTION, xvii all her borders the barbarian was pressing more and more violently for admittance, and when it became clear that he would no longer be denied, then literature in its turn began to feel the effects of the long strain. The old heroic spirit died out of Roman writing. In its place came the vulgar and fulsome panegyric of men, whose chief merit was that they had known how for a moment to put off the inevitable destruction. And all this only grew worse and worse as men came to turn their abilities and their learning more and more to the service of the Church. All the best minds from the third century on were concerned more to discover the true meaning of the articles of belief than to explore the history of their times or to give free play to the imagination in works of poetry or the drama.

We are concerned only with the effect of this literary dulness upon the writing of history. The list of historians from Valens to Charlemagne is meagre enough. In that whole period of about four hundred years there is about a score of names worthy of mention, but not half of these have any real claim to the title of historian. They are mainly gleaners of anecdotes, with little sense of true historical accuracy and little power of clear and vivid presentation. The rise and development of a new mediaeval historical literature will be traced in the chapters upon Frankish history.

No attempt has here been made to give anything like a full list of books upon our period. Only such have been named as are either especially useful in themselves or have the negative merit of being accessible. Books in foreign languages have generally been menxviii

INTRODUCTION, tioned only when there are none of value in English on the given topic.

The following works will be found serviceable during the whole course of the book : —

Edward Gibbon : The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 8 vols. In spite of all that has been written on the subject during the hundred years since it appeared, the work of Gibbon remains a splendid monument of industrious research, of profound historical insight, and of vivid presentation.

J. G. Sheppard : The Fall of Rome and the Rise of the New Nationalities. Lond. & N.Y. 1861. Lectures covering just our period; diffuse, but useful to the careful student.

William Robertson : Introduction to the History of Charles V. A brilliant picture of early European History, needing correction at many points from the results of later scholarship.

Laurent : Histoire de Thumanite. Vols. 5, 6, 7. 1857. A philosophical examination into the history of this period. Valuable for a general grasp of the whole subject.

T. H. Dyer: The City of Rome, its vicissitudes and monuments from its foundation to the end of the Middle Ages, — with remarks on the recent excavations. Lond. 1883.

E. A. Freeman : The Chief Periods of European History. Six Lectures. Lond. 1886.

C. J. Stille : Studies in Mediaeval History (early chapters). Phil. 1882.

Gelfcken : Church and State. Transl. and ed. by E. F. Taylor. 2 vols. Lond. 1877. A careful review of the relation of the Church power to the State, especially in mediaeval and modern Europe.

A. M. Curteis : History of the Roman Empire from the death of

Theodosius the Great to the coronation of Charles the Great.

Lond. & Phil. 1875. A short study of our period from the point

of view of Rome.

W. Assmann : Geschichte des Mittelalters. 2 vols. 1875-79, Of

especial value for the study of materials.

F. P. G. Guizot : History of Civilization in France.

Chapter I

Modern Works : — Theodor Mommsen : History of Rome. 6 vols.

— Wilhelm Ihne : History of Rome. 5 vols. Lond. 1871. — J. Y. Dm'uy: History of Rome and the Roman People from its origin to the establishment of the Christian Empire. Ed. J. P. Mahaffy. Trans, by Mr. Clarke and Miss Ripley. 6 vols, in 12 pts. Lond. 1884. Illus. — Charles Merivale : History of the Romans under the Empire. 7 vols, in 4. N.Y. 1880. — R. F. Leighton : History of Rome. N.Y. — Goldwin Smith : The Greatness of Rome. Tn his Lectures and Essays. 1881. — A. Neander: The Emperor Julian and his Generation. Trans, by I. G. V. Cox. N.Y. 1850. — L. Friedlander; Sittengeschichte Roms. 5th ed. 3 vols. 1881.

The following numbers of the " Epoch " Series : —

Wilhelm Ihne : Early Rome. — R. B. Smith : Rome and Carthage.

— A. H. Beesley: The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla. — W. W. Capes: The Early Empire from Julius Csesar to Domitian.

— W. W. Capes : The Roman Empire of the second century, or The Age of the Antonines.

The two peoples with whom we are to deal in this book are the Romans and the Germans, The Aryan branches of the Aryan or Indo-European ^^^e. race of men. There were eight principal branches of this race, five of which had their homes in Europe, and three in Asia. It is generally believed that at some very distant time, so far awaj^ that we have no record of it, these different branches all formed one people and lived somewhere in Western Asia, between the valley of the Euphrates and the valley of the Indus. Then, still before any written history, the race moved away from its home, and one part of it passed westward, probably by way of the opening between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, into Europe ; another remained settled in the Tigris-Euphrates vallej^ ; while a third part went to the east and south, down the Indus, into the valley of the Ganges. This branch became the great Indian race, which used the Sanskrit language, and which has preserved in its literature some traces of its wanderings. The second group comprised the Medes and the Persians, who successivelj^ controlled the Euphrates country and whose descendants live there to this day.^ The European Of fi^^ branches into which the Eurobranches, pean portion divided, the Kelts seem to have been in the advance and were probably pushed by the others towards the west until they came to live in the British Islands, in France, and Spain. Next behind them were the Germans, who filled in all the central part of Europe, from the Alps northward to the sea and spread out over the coasts of Scandinavia. Beyond the Germans, to the east, were the Slavs, a race which has never formed a united government for itself, but has mingled with other races, and forms to this day a large part of the population in Russia, Austria, Hungary, and the Danube provinces. Farther to the south came the Italians and the Greeks, whose homes you will have no difficulty in remembering.

1 The most recent investigations tend to throw doubt upon the original residence of the Aryans in Western Asia, but have not yet offered any satisfactory substitute.

It is only about a hundred years since men began to think that all these races might be parts of one single family, and it is much less than -^^^^^^^^^^^ythat since we have become tolerably certain of it. The chief reason for believing in the unity of the Indo- European race, is that all the langr^ages spoken by the various branches have so many root-words alike, that we can hardly believe that they are not derived from one common language.^

But however much alike they may once have been, they early became marked by very great Race differdifferences. The Greeks and Italians had e^ices. come into warm and fertile countries, where agriculture was easy and where a very long coast-line with many harbors tempted them to a seafaring life.^ The northern branches, on the other hand, had come to a country where everything was opposed to civilization, where dense forests or endless marshes covered the ground, where long and hard winters made even the maintenance of life a hard struggle, and where a rough and dangerous northern sea offered them no attractions on its farther shore to offset the peril of the voyage.

All these causes, working through a period whose length we cannot guess at, had made the races _

n \ . . What each

litted lor quite dmerent parts m the great race gave to drama of recorded history. The Greeks excelled in everything that had to do with beauty and with human thought in the abstract, but they did not

1 An idea of the process by which these results have been reached, may be gained from the popular writings of Prof. Max Mtiller in England, and Prof. W. D. Whitney of Yale University.

2 E. Curtius : History of Greece, Bk. I. Ch. L know how to carry out their thought into practice in such a way as to give men great organized institutions. They have left us a splendid inheritance in works of art and literature, in philosophy and in the history of political experiments. They never succeeded in founding a united Greek state. The Italians, on the other hand, especially the Romans, had the gift of practical politics. Their mission was to give law and order to the South of Europe. Of the Northern nations, but one claims our attention. The Kelt gave way whenever he was brought into contact with another race. The Slav has not yet risen to be conscious of his power. The German alone of Northmen has taken rank with Greek and Roman in the work of civilization. His part has been to take the best of what they had given him and to work it over into permanent institutions.

Our book has to do with a time when Greek culture had lost its hold upon Western Europe, when the political institutions which the Romans had founded were passing away, and when the Germans were beginning to take up the work of civilization. Our main interest is in the transition from Roman to German institutions. Before we come to this main topic it will be well for us to recall to mind the process by which the Roman Empire of the fourth century after Christ had come to be the thing it was.

The Romans were a small and feeble branch of the How the Italian race, settled in a not very beautiful Romans had or healthful region on the lower course of the world. river Tiber. Their outward history for seven

c. 750 B.C. hundred years is one of steady and uninterrupted conquest. Beginning in their immediate neighborhood, they had beaten all their neighbors in war and had then Romanized them, making them one with themselves and using them as a means of conquering still more distant nations. They had never gone any faster in their conquests than they could go safely. They never took a new step until all the land through whicli they must pass had become Roman land. They bound these conquered peoples to themselves by giving them as large a share in their own political rights as seemed safe for the common liberty. They respected the religion and the private customs of the conquered, requiring only obedience to the public law of Rome, military service, and payment of taxes.

By these cautious and generous methods Rome had extended her government by the time of t,

o J Romanizing

Christ over all the countries bordering upon of the the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean P^°^^^^^^' had become a Roman Lake." From that time on, Rome made no more important conquests. In the four hundred years from Augustus to the time our story begins, the enormous empire over which Rome ruled was simplj^ becoming more and more Romanized. The Latin language replaced all the local languages except the Greek. Roman life, with all its refinements and elegancies, was carried into all the provinces. Roman schools taught the youth of at least the western portion of the Empire. We may properly speak of the inhabitants of all this vast territory as Romans."

But this enormous growth, steady and natural as it had been, had not come about without great gpij.it of the changes in the government of Rome itself. Eoman The earliest feeling of which we have any -^^P^^^^^* distinct record in Roman history is that of intense hatred of the name of "king." The people believed that there had once been kings among them, and that these had been driven out forever ; and so bitter vi^as the hatred of their memory that a law was passed making it high treason for any one henceforth to call himself a king of Romans. From that time on, during the whole time of conquest, Rome was a republic, governed by men of her own choosing. These officers, judges in peace and generals in war, were elected by popular vote and served generally but one year. A magnificent machinery of government, such as the world has never seen again, grew up by a natural growth, and was carried on during most of this long period by the best men of the state. Generation after generation the Roman Republic went on, sending out from the centre an endless supply of trained officials whose honor and whose interest were concerned in keeping alive the passion of loyalty which had made this great expansion possible.

But now evils began to be felt. The machinery of gov- ^ . . ernment was so perfect that men began to feel

G-rowmg m- . .

difference of somewhat indifferent as to who should manage citizens. .^^ rpj^^ great mass of citizens, busied with other matters, left the management of public affairs to a few clever men who began to find politics profitable for themselves. The demagogue became the great man of Rome. You will remember the names of the Demagogues, q^^^^^j^j^ Marius and Sulla, as men who

were aiming at power, either for its own sake or in order to accomplish something which could not be done by regular methods, and who were playing with the fire of popular approval or popular hatred. The greatest man m this series of party leaders was Cains

Julius 08BSd>ri

Julius Caesar. He may or may not have thought the time had come to throw off the trammels of republicanism and declare himself the permanent head of the state. At all events, a party devoted to the old order of things believed he had such ambitions, and murdered him.

They fancied that the republic was saved ; but things had already gone too far on the way towards a monarchy. The strife of parties went on after the death of Julius, and the survivor of the struggle was Augustus his nephew Octavianus, better known to us as ''imperator." Aug'ustus. A certain reverence for tradition kept him from reviving the hated name of " king," and led him to choose the familiar word "imperator" (emperor) for his title. This name and another which Augustus adopted, "princeps " (chief), might be used without implying the ruin of the republican forms. The Empire of Augustas was no violent break in the method of government. The administration went on much as before, only that now the powers of the various offices of consul, tribnne, pontifex maximus, etc., were assumed by one man. If others were allowed to bear these titles, it was clear that there was but one source of actual power. The offices were not abolished ; it was only that the strife^ of partly could no longer be borne, and men were glad to find comparative peace in the sovereignty of one mble man.

And this theory continued for nearly three ^^^^^ hundred years. The Roman emperors of this Empire period were, comparatively speaking, popular rulers. In spite of the detestable personal character of many of them, the government continued to be administered with singular moderation and success. \ Some writers have not hesitated to call the second cenjtury the happiest period in the history of the human race.